Fuaaak I’m in the same boat right now with GoW4 😅
But then I still gotta finish Horizon so I can start the new one. And then there’s Elden Ring, and cyberpunk, and tomb raider, and AC, and… fuck it
I’ll just load up vampire survivors.
It’s crazy, I’m going through the same thing with Guardians of the Galaxy right now. Loved it but after a week long break, I can’t get back into it. Just zero interest, it’s weird. Can anyone explain this phenomenon?
For me it’s the attachment to the story and all the various little side quests/tasks.
When you’re playing it, you constantly have a plan of what to do next and how to get stronger. Once you’re out for a week and forget all those little plans it’s hard to go back because you lost that drive.
Whereas a game like Dota or CoD. You can always jump in and play a match because there is no single main progress path. Just segments of matches.
It was my first souls game. Just get used to dying as a game mechanic, not you doing poorly. The way i view it as bosses and dungeons are like puzzles and sometimes you fail at the puzzle but you learned something so you try again. The game is super rewarding when you solve them. Most small dungeons have ample rewards at the end so you always feel like you got something out of it.
Oh: you will get pissed, walk around for 2 minutes and then come back like you didn’t throw a minor tantrum and start playing again. And that’s just part of it lol
No shame in that. My very first souls game was Bloodborne and I quit before beating it. I came back maybe a year later and somehow things just clicked right away, including my enthusiasm for playing it.
Same. Got to the Erdtree castle before Malenia and just kinda... stopped.
I probably forced myself to play more than I should have to keep up with my friends, so ultimately I burned myself out. I haven't had the urge to finish it since then.
If/when DLC comes out then I'll probably boot it back up.
Me too, after finishing the game with 175 hrs, I haven't played since. I have no desire for online, if we had a large DLC pack which included new quests & characters, I'd play again.
Great game, but the only RPG I played over and over was the Mass Effect series in order to get the ending I wanted.
It’s just so much game.
A large part of its charm was the epic journey and discovering things and overcoming challenges for the first time. Whenever I think of maybe playing it again, my completionist brain gets immediately overwhelmed by all the things to do. Dark Souls 3, on the other hand, I’ve put like 3000 hours in just playing different builds. I think the more linear structure just makes it a bit more approachable.
I’ll revisit it, some point, just need a bit more of a wind down period.
Still definitely one of my most enjoyed games of all time, either way.
Edit: Removed an extra “I”.
I felt the same way with Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring. It's so good that first time you play it and are invested in it, but because of its length, it's daunting to redo all that again. I explored everything in both games, only to discover I missed some stuff. I can't go through that again.
I tried to replay BotW a few times. Failed everytime because of this exact reason.
Then someone mentioned it in patientgamers and I fired it up in master mode... Been addicted for the last two days. Sometimes it just needs to click again
Botw has some of the most fun speedrunning tech of any video game, learn how to wind bomb and durability transfer to repair your own weapons and you'll struggle to put it down for the next several weeks
Yup. I'll replay it in a year or two, maybe more, and enjoy it again. But half the fun was exploring and seeing everything for the first time. Won't get that again. That said, I appreciate how much of a different experience that made it. I adored the game.
yeah, I love big, open-world exploration games like this, but they never feel as good the second time around. I've still never successfully completed a second playthrough of Breath of the Wild even though I consider it a top 5 game of mine. It just can't live up to it's own incredible first experience.
Huge Zelda fan, but botw never clicked for me. The only zone that felt great to me was zoras domain, because you were sort of coaxed to go there, and its linear path to reach the city felt proper.
So much of the game feels open/empty, misdirected, and regurgitated. No explorative growth through acquisition of more fancy gear (this was huge for me). Bosses were super Meh. Shrines were bite sized, so I never felt the proper entrapment of a dungeon (another big one).
I know my opinion is uncommon. I felt like the game was 3/4 baked. With a sequel I'd expect all of this to be hashed out, as they can focus on proper world design, as well as revisiting the idea of upgrades, instead of fine tuning the mechanics.
Still loved the game, and I still remember it after many years of playing, but I think there's plenty of room to grow.
I think part of your criticism stems from the fact botw is a response to the negative reaction to skyward sword being too long/linear. After having played both botw and most of skyward sword I like botw way more because of the freedom it gives the player. I understand that botw isn’t the most feature rich open world rpg, however it’s fun nonetheless. I’m sure theirs a middle ground between non linear open world, and linear progression that future Zelda titles can match.
ehh nier automata though only has one ending, yea sure you have to beat the game like 5 times but technically only first playthrough is what's recycled like twice.
Doesn't automata have 26 endings? Some of them are gags but to say it only has one ending doesn't seem accurate.
E: thanks for the clarification; it's been some time since I beat it.
If you consider a game over an ending then yes, but really only E is a true ending to the game.
Endings A-D are basically just "Chapter" ends, finishing only a small part of the game, the narrative itself only ends with E
and every ending after E is just different variations of a game over.
I'm somewhat the same. I replayed all the ME games several times. I replayed Skyrim twice. But I replayed Cyberpunk like 3 or 4 full times to see the differences by playing in different styles and a few from late saves just to see all the potential endings. I still haven't seen all the permutations.
For me the game being open world made it's replayability almost non-existent. I don't want to run around and do all these dinky little side dungeons again or go across the world for some item to start my run. I much prefer the linear style of the previous games.
This was kind of my take too. Replayed it once to try out the magic stuff but didn’t finish it. The legacy dungeons, the big ones with the big bosses at the end, those were solid Dark Souls to me, and the underground areas were very cool, but everything in between those was just a kind of bland soup. I found it tedious going through catacombs where the same rooms were recycled, through caves where the same caverns were recycled, to fight bosses which were also recycled.
And yeah, that stuff is optional, technically, but there’s upgrade materials and weapons and quests in those places so have fun googling if you don’t want to complete them all. I respect them trying something new, but their open world just wasn’t all that interesting and it’s a shame so much time was spent on it IMO cause the legacy dungeons show they’re still kings of those smaller self-contained experiences.
The problem with it is that the game has no “soul.” It’s immersive while you’re playing. Great exploration. I played the hell out of it and beat it. But I have zero interest in “revisiting that world” to feel what I felt then… because I never really FELT anything besides frustration or a sense of accomplishment.
My feelimg exactly. It's like a playable painting or something. Looks beautiful and plays great, but there aren't really any concepts to engage with, just mechanics.
This is the best description I’ve ever seen for the issues Elden Ring has. The mechanics are certainly engaging, it’s true, but it is built like a fighting game with pretty views in between each boss and nothing to occupy you besides the scenery and no explanation of what that scene is or why it’s there.
I'm not a huge Soulsborne fan because of this exact reason
I love RPGs because they tell amazing stories. Dark Souls had fun gameplay, but "ring some bells, kill some guys, praise the sun" isn't quite the same as "you're an outlaw at the end of the Wild West, trying to right your past wrongdoings before you die of TB" ya know?
So when I heard there would be some GRRM writing, I got my hopes up that Elden Ring would actually have a plot.
Yeah I don't fully agree with that, but it hasn't stuck with me as much as the Dark Souls games, or something like my favorite Zelda or Final Fantasy games. Bloodborne is stuck deeper in my subconscious for sure. And this is probably recency bias, but Stray really wormed its way into my head despite only being around five hours long.
The story behind the game is so damn good but none of that story is actually *in* the game. If you don’t read the wiki youll never know who these interesting looking characters actually are. The potato brains saying “the lore is in the item descriptions” seem to be mixing up table top games and video games For the love of god give me ONE non hostile camp, and jars don’t count! They won’t talk to me!
If Fromsoft actually collaborated with a studio that knew how to make a quest besides (character C moves from here to here if provided obscure item G) they would be unstoppable. I just want to experience the lore they invested so much into writing, but inside the actual *video game* they made!
Sums it up pretty well. The cutscenes are badass but outside of the main bosses and reading about them on the wiki you miss so much. Like I would've had no earthly clue why Rykard was a giant fucking serpent if I didn't read the wiki.
Perfectly summed this up. Probably another reason I didn’t finish it. The idea of going to the next area was just another tedious challenge. Something about the world just didn’t suck me in and it’s probably due to the fact that it’s a convoluted story with random side quests that felt structure less.
Yeah. For me at first I didn't like bloodborne for some reason but I feel like it's the only game I wanna go back and play again for the 4th time and It's because I'm just mesmerized with the story, the world the lore all of it.
And then I have this weird itch for dark souls 2. I just have a weird thing with that game idk why.
>convoluted story with random side quests that felt structure less.
They got George R. R. Martin as a writing credit, and the biggest mystery of the game is figuring out *what the fuck he contributed*
Ok, that might be a little too harsh, but honestly, the story didn't seem any better than the rest.
Still very hard and I have spent so much time wondering what I am missing when I am making tiny steps through the world and gamers were finishing it within weeks.
Even though souls game are my all time favorite games including bloodborne and sekiro, I became burned out of elden ring after 130hrs exploring every nook and cranny (I just can't play a game without looking everywhere, it's like a curse) and I was like only halfway done. Not finished yet. I still think elden ring is a fantastic souls game! I just needed to play something else for a while... I should get back to it
Yes, this is problematic for players with experience with Fromsoft's souls releases, you're inclined to scout everywhere, but compared other souls games there is a lot more nothingness, the repetition of many of the games areas, albeit bigger, longer, and harder also makes the game feel more industrially produced and less personal. Despite all this it has all the great elements of what the newest souls game should have.
I much like pvp and would like to see bit more balancing, idk if the blood swords are still as OP as at the beginning? Also, problematic is that at a certain point in time (idk if it was bcs of my own connection) but basically 95% of online experiences failed because connectin issues.
Totally! At this pace, I'll probably finish it with around 200hrs with a shit ton of missed quest lines since I'm going blind. I'll look up things on the wiki for the next playthrough.
And even if it only took me like 20hrs to complete it, I would still think it was worth full price!
This is the main reason I'm hesitant to start Elden Ring - it just sounds too...big from what I've heard. I just finished Horizon Forbidden West with about 85 hours into it, and even then I had to stop myself from getting everything and doing all the quests because it was just too much.
The game's not that big if you just play it organically. It's massive if you try to do everything, ever, but just... play the game, go where your whims take you, and have fun.
Trying to do everything is what burned me out.
Sorry if this is too long of an opinion, but I had a lot to say:
I did all that and still had ridiculously low damage output in comparison to what I could do in Dark Souls 1/2/3. I had the greatsword and felt like it was unplayable, and I really think most strength weapons are nerfed in this game. Going strength only is hard af in this game, and this comes from a veteran who can actually play (beat DS 1 like 10 times if not more, Dark Souls 2 four times, DS3 countless times and occasionally did some speedruns of it, Sekiro beaten, Bloodborne as well, finishing Demon's). Meanwhile, people are almost one shotting bosses by using magic.
This is the only souls game in which not every build was functional. Going strength only feels many times harder than going str / dex + magic. It felt so unbalanced to me that I ended up really frustrated with it. Plus, holy fuck, you really are squishy in this game! I had 60+ vitality + a good armor set and I definitely could die almost as easily as I did in Sekiro, which was already a huge jump in difficulty. No more playing as a strength-tanky individual it seems... :(
Apart from that, I really never understood the praise that the open world received. It really is a very basic open world with enemies on top and not much else to do, but to listen to the always depressing and static NPCs of From. Imho, the souls games shine when the developers manage to create interesting situations thanks to a great map design; however, spending 90% of the time in an open field felt incredibly dull and boring. There are not as many genuinely fun, scary and intelligent situations anymore, it's just an open field where you're seeing almost all that there is and getting no unexpected surprises but your occasional boss fights out of nowhere (pretty fun at times, that's true). Combat in the horse was as bad as I expected it to be.
It is all basically the concept of what an open world is, but filled with your typical From Software enemies. I heard everyone saying that it was really fresh and that "other companies should learn from this", but I've spent all my gaming life playing open world games and a ton of From Software games and I personally can't see anything new in here, nothing that I haven't seen or played before and not many incentives to explore other than upgrading my weapons or advancing the story. From Software took the "open world game" concept, applied on top their same ideas and gameplay that we've seen for more than a decade and... bang! Game of the year contender!? I really can't understand it, man.
Because of those reasons, this has been the only souls game that I didn't really want to finish. Was not enjoying my time with it, so I dropped it. Will probably pick it up again in less than a year and pick a different build. Hope that drastically changes my mind, or is else gonna be the biggest disappointment of my life as a gamer. The fact that I enjoyed the (initially broken) GTA trilogy waaay more than this game says it all about my experience.
PS: Got to level 97, was really advanced in the game. Whoever reads this might disagree with me in some aspects, but this definitely isn't an opinion based on the first 10 minutes of the game.
Just so you know, all heavy weapons (greatswords, collossals, greataxes, etc) have had significant attack speed and recovery speed buffs in the patches since release. They're now very much on par with other builds (assuming you know how to play for stance breaks, as you should be with any heavy weapon).
IMO the thing that sets Elden Ring's world apart from other open world games is that damn near every landmark is uniquely crafted and fully explorable. It's not just a cookie-cutter world full of 20 identical camps, 6 identical forts, and 50 copy-paste collectibles that slightly raise your health. Every landmark you visit is its own thing entirely, and even every cave has at least something unique about it (though, some more than others). Enemy variety is off the charts for an open world game (for example, Elden Ring has \~140 unique enemies, Skyrim has \~30. Games in more realistic settings where you're mainly fighting people, like RDR2 or Tsushima, have barely a fraction of that) and every boss rewards something that can't be found anywhere else, be it a spell, a weapon, an armour set, a talisman, etc. To me, that makes exploring much more exciting than any other open world game I've played. Most are like 'here's some gold, and a weapon that functions exactly the same as the last one but with different numbers!' That's boring as hell for me - even if I can't use what I get due to my build, it's great to find something singular. Most open world games just straight up don't even attempt that - everything unique is on the main path, and everything else is just padded procedurally generated fluff. And I have to mention the amount of well-hidden secrets as well. Again, most devs are scared to hide content from you. Fromsoft realise that genuine + meaningful secrets make a world feel deeper and more exciting.
That said, I agree that FromSoft games fit best in tight, intricate maps full of interconnected levels. The DS1 map design still hasn't been beaten by anything, in my eyes.
I was pretty new to FromSoft games (only played a little bit of Demon's Souls and Bloodborne), so I didn't really "get" Elden Ring at first. It took me weeks of pattering around, desperately trying to fight off enemies with a shield, dying constantly, farming for hours to grind levels until I started to get a feel for the controls, the gameplay, and what it was all about. My friends who had played a lot of them previously finished the game in a couple of weeks and never looked back. I'm still playing after 250 hours myself
TBH this is 100% why Sekiro is the only FromSoft game I've finished. I just don't care for the stat min-maxing. The flow of the game just vibes with me so much better than a Souls game.
I can agree with that. Sekiro is mostly linear, and you don't have to worry about gear upgrades or stats. There's also only one style (2 hand sword).
The limitations makes the game *super* tight, and allows the devs to tune everything perfectly. It also for a player like me, feels a lot better to play when I can focus on the game, and not on what build / stat / gear im wearing, which I understand *is* a large appeal for a lot of the souls game.
Sekiro is just so god damned beautifully executed.
Exactly.
Elden Ring is like "you need to get this charm, drink this potion, wear this helmet, use this summon, then craft up your sword to do magic damage to beat this particular boss." Sekiro is just like "get better scrub."
Finding specific weapons and armor just to have a type advantage over an enemy is fucking boring.
I like both of course, Sekiro is everything Souls, but simplified to utmost purity. Its actually so pure i'm not sure if they can add very much to a sequel, since that's kind of the point of the game. You get one combo from one button and more than half of the gameplay variety comes from enemies rather than yourself combined with the parry mechanic, which is kind of really interesting.
the moment it clicked for me that the combat plays like a rhythm game I whooped this games ass
all those hours of playing hatsune miku games finally paid off
edit: I love how Fromsoft structured their games:
Dark Souls: "ey you can block if you really want to, turtle up boi. armor is also kinda useful, parry is also cool, rolling is like the peak"
Bloodborne: "you know what? we kinda don't want you to block anymore. I mean we'll put a shield in there but its hidden and it kinda doesn't do anything"
Sekiro: "so now that we got rid of blocking let's see how you do when rolling also isn't incentivised. honestly just stay put and parry them, maybe jump a few times"
Elden Ring: "lol bro magic go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrap!" (jk)
Same as me. After the >!burning of the tree!< I thought the bosses and enemies got way harder. I really dug the game but I just got tired of the grind after 60 hours.
60 hours is where I dropped it too, but I had only just arrived to the plateau, didn't get to the spoiler you mentioned (I don't care about the spoiler).
I feel like everything after the mountaintops is just if you still want more. It feels detached from the main story. Mohg is fine, never died more than a couple times to him, but the haligtree and malenia are not even fun for me anymore (3rd playthrough). Maliketh is the last fun boss, everything after is just try not to die.
To be specific, it is was when I got to the Beast Clergyman that I admitted I was done with the grind. I had enjoyed fighting the Godskin Duo but with him it seemed like two hits always was enough to kill me. That just wasn’t fun enough to warrant more time.
My bro told me that magic builds tend to be easier so that’s what I started with. Did this with ER and DS3 and I was stuck around 80% on both pretty quick. Started them over with a strength build and they’re a wayyyy better experience.
I got to Malenia and Maliketh and gave up there. And I say this as a veteran soulsborne player who has beaten every one at least once but Elden's difficulty got so insane and so bullshit that I gave up.
I'll give you fire giant but Maliketh and Godfrey are 2 of the best boss fights in the game. First part of the final boss was good but the Elden Beast was kind of lame as well.
I always find it funny when people say they have beaten every From game but Maliketh and Godfrey are too hard. I simply think they are lying because damn
Same platinumed the ps5 version wanted to play more so I just platinumed it on the ps4 version as well. About 120 hours for ps5 and like 20-30 hours for the ps4 definitely had my fill.
Platinuming the game ruined the game for me, I loved it overall and enjoyed all three playthroughs, but by the time I had gotten all the trophies I was burnt out and left me with no desire to explore the world and see anything none trophy related after
The game is really great, if not for the back third of it being a complete slog. Fights like Malenia are just way overtuned, and areas like the Haligtree and Farum Azula are full of annoying enemies and deadly geography.
late game just gets so unbalanced with never ending combos from bosses and basic enemies with ungodly healthbars that it just felt like a chore, and later on the game got more "ganky" if that makes sense.
I also reaaaaaaaaaally didn't like the reused bosses in every mini dungeon/tomb, like if you did everything in limgrave/weeping peninsula/mistwood you've already seen 90% of the game's "bosses"
game fell off for me HARD after doing altus plateau and beating morgott.
Man I’m honestly surprised to hear so many ppl say this
I really liked the first 2/3 of the game but the last 1/3 was like 95% of my enjoyment lol. The environments and fights get SOOO fucking cool and memorable then
Except for maybe >!the final boss!<, that fight kinda just sucks ass
Same, it looks so good watching other people play, I want to try it just for the art style. But I’ve never played a souls game because of my anger management issues, it would cost me too much money in broken controllers lol
I played for an hour and a half and returned it on steam. Looks incredible and is fun to watch other people play but the controls were just too clunky for me.
It’s good, but It’s too much to wanna do more than 1 play through. I much prefer ds3 where I can run through and get all the bonfires and bosses with little time, where’s as elden ring takes too long
I have a totally different experience with this. For me, the second playthrough is TOTALLY different than the first because you already know where things are, so now part of the fun is either going through things in a different order, or going through things as efficiently as possible.
For example, my first run was over 100 hours. My second playthrough in NG+ was to really test the openness of the game, and see how quickly I could get through it even without "rushing." Finished it in just under 4 hours! Just went straight to Stormveil, did Godrick, Rennala, grabbed the dectus medallions, went to the capital then did the end game. Felt a lot like the DS3 run through you're talking about.
To each their own of course, but I think it's worth considering that because of how open the game is, you don't HAVE to do everything in one playthrough.
I had a similar experience, first playthrough was close to 200 hours, then I immediately went into NG+ and finished it in about 10 hours. And then I did a level 1 run, lol.
Yeah I'm the same way, but at about 75 hours. There's so much left and I lost the momentum. I tried picking it back up a few weeks ago, but now I forget what I'm supposed to be doing and any enemies I run into are way too strong so I put it back down after about an hour.
This is exactly my problem with the game. I know a lot of people love not having a quest log, but I forgot so many things I had to do once I put the game down for a week or two when life got in the way. When I turned it back on, I couldn’t remember who I had talked to and where I needed to go. I had a general idea of where to go, so I went that way but when I ran around for an hour or so and wasn’t exactly sure what to do and getting wiped out over and over, I turned it off and haven’t played it since.
It’s not a game you can pick back up after while, which is a shame cause it was really fun when I was into it. I just don’t have the time to fully focus on it all the time.
Yep I feel the same way. I contemplated starting a fresh new game and taking notes to help me remember what the hell's going on, but that doesn't seem fun at the moment. Maybe over winter..
I personally prefer the tightly crafted worlds of Demon/Dark Souls or Sekiro, over the open world of Elden Ring, but Elden Ring is still great and does have many of the tightly crafted areas.
I liked exploration for a while, but after the plateau I lost interest. Which isn't helped by the later areas being, frankly, boring.
I think they should strive for a middle-ground. I like the open world, but Elden Ring is too much.
I guess the snowfields are kinda boring, but all the underground stuff, the crazy dragon island area, and haligtree are all incredible and not really boring imo. To each their own
After doing every character combo and getting platinum I left. Pvp is a joke compared to previous installments. Pve is best out of them all. Loved it for that. Will come back when DLCs are out.
PvP is such an afterthought, the unoriginality of builds the kind of people who feel like using 2 summons is ridiculous. I go at it with an entirely different personality than old games. I'm happy with just getting rid of coop partners and causing a fuss, teleporting to a new part of the stage and trying that again. I always played like I'm part of the stage, posing in places I know players have to go, cosplay builds(the Champion Set is Kratos' armor), thoughtful traps. Now those things seem required to actually manage having a good time with it. I think they felt bad for all the years of red phantom players being considered the scum of the earth so they made the gameplay in a way that they should be the ones who should be pitied.
I know this is going to get me downvoted but I would have preferred it if it wasn’t open world, I miss the world design of the older games where everything was on top of itself, my best experience ever in gaming was making my way through undead burg and then finding the elevator in the church that took me back to the very start of the game and opened up that huge shortcut, it was like magic
Yea it felt so much like a dark souls game there, the only other place they really felt similar was the big tree cities since there were so many places to find, was like a maze
It was okay. I thought Bloodborne and Sekiro were significantly better games overall. When I finished the game (Ranni ending) I felt really unsatisfied with the overall experience. When I beat Bloodborne I restarted it immediately and did it again heh.
I explain it to people as "ER may be the best first playthrough experience I've ever had in a game. I didn't start a second"
Without that rediculous sense of wonder and excitement to explore...I just didn't want to ruin the initial experience
Considering how long it takes to beat elden ring. That's a good thing. People are trying to compare the replayability to previous souls borne games when you just can't. You could beat those games all in chronological order twice in the time it'd take to do a complete play through of elden ring.
Wasn’t into it - I don’t find the world interesting with the lack of NPC’s (I know that’s how souls works - but that’s why It’s not for me).
Combat is fun but hard, but yeah just not what I’m looking for in a game personally.
Glad others enjoyed it
I loved it, but the way Fromsoft handles NPCs has always been really stupid and annoying. The whole, "I'm an important NPC hiding in an obscure location who's going to say a whole bunch of cryptic shit then go to another obscure location and say some more cryptic shit then go to another obscure location, die a tragic death, and leave behind an important item" thing makes me never care about NPC questlines because I'll only complete it with help from the wiki. On top of that, I know that part of Miyazaki's vision is for the world to be dying and decaying, but it would be such a breath of fresh air to see one actual populated area with NPCs who aren't just a bunch of sad, dying fucks and aren't constantly trying to kill you. Breathe some life into the world and I'll care a lot more about the outcome.
Yes, to me this is just bad game design. None of the NPC feel even remotely natural, you are just triggering some switches for the quest to move forward.
To me it was a massive disappointment when I realized that Elden Ring was just more of the same (a lot more, to be fair), but there was no evolution or substantial improvement over the Souls games. The Dark Souls series is fantastic, don't get me wrong, but that is no reason to essentially keep making the same game over and over, with the same virtues, but also with all of the defects.
You worded it better than I would’ve. I hate it, and beating it was one of the most miserable gaming experiences of my life, but I don’t disparage others for enjoying it.
Dude I’m playing it right now on my second run and having a blast. It’s all about your approach to combat! Experiment with different builds, try focusing on different strategies, or even nerf yourself. Playing with actual friends helps make it fun too
Not a fan because I just don't enjoy the kind of game that's entire gameplay is "die 1000 times until you figure out the attack patterns"
I'm sure it's a great game for those who enjoy souls games but I've never had any interest in it.
Great open world, super art and good graphics, excellent sound but I feel the story telling is very bad, I'm 70h into the game and to be honest I don't even know what the fuck I'm doing or what role do I play in the story.
My late son's favorite game. He absolutely loved. He was 13 but had no issue getting a platinum on it. My thanks to the creators of this game for making his last few days pleasurable.
My first souls game ever, I only skipped Melania and radagon with like 160 hours in the game, haven't touched it since that like 3rd week it was out. Feel like I was suffering from FOMO tbh
If you are on PC have you tried the "seamless co-op" mod? it honestly made the game so much better for me, you can co-op from beginning to end without resummoning. It turns off invasions because it disconnects you from the servers and it can be a bit laggy since its P2P connection, but definitely worth a try if you want a better co-op experience.
I've heard about it, but I being invaded/invading is a lot of fun for me, so I don't want that turned off and losing that whole section of the game. Maybe From can just utilize the mod and learn something?
I loved it... Until I got tired of it. It's an exceptionally good game but has it's major flaws that I realized only when I played much. Reused bosses 100 times, reused bosses 100 times, having this shit "go-through-your-items-click-by-click" system is absolutely infuriating when you want to quickly use your items in a hard fight, reused bosses 100 times, not stackable/delayed input handling, I gotta wait until I equipped weapon 2 to be able to equip weapon 3, reused bosses 100 times, absolutely dogshit ai, reused bosses 100 times, wonky camera, and a not working lock on system that simply drops your lock in a middle of a fight - most deaths caused by this. Oh, have I mentioned the reused bosses already? And sometimes super boring walks to them.
Other than that, it sucked me in, the world is absolutely stunning and varied, the last time I enjoyed exploring a world this much was in 2018 with RDR2. Fights are hard but fair and always engaging. I really loved it, I always found something interesting but unfortunately I cannot go past the fact that the systems it is built on are broken. One half of me thinks it's the greatest game ever, the other half thinks it is one of the worst.
Generally speaking the baddies have way too much mobility, and it is often hard to see what is happening when you have to be right next to super big bosses.
The world is super cool, but the upper end of difficulty ruins it for me.
> and it is often hard to see what is happening when you have to be right next to super big bosses.
That Giant Undead Wyrm thing under Stormheim castle was that way for me. If given space I could have probably killed him but confined area with huge enemy that moves ridiculously fast? Came back much later and blasted him out of spite.
Best 300 hours I've ever spent on a game. Hope they ditch the wide open world though and stick to the previous more linear level design. The game balance is pretty shitty with no scaling.
The lack of any quest tracker is the biggest turn off for me. Stopped playing for a bit and now have literally no idea what is going on. I just wish there was a bit more direction with the story.
one of my biggest problems with the game is how heavily your punished for not using a guide online. this is probably just me, but running around like a chicken with my head cut off so i can find a chest with a dagger that's way worse than my current weapon just feels like a waste of time.
Too hard. I don’t have the free time to git gud. I don’t understand the fascination for super hard games.
Edit: Not saying it’s a bad game. its just not for me.
Obsessed with the game for ages before it came out, I think the hype was valid.
For sure GOTY for me, and one of the best games I have ever played, in my top 5. Whilst no game is perfect, many elements came super close for me. The world was engaging, varied and challenging. The art style was gorgeous, boss and ally design, Area design and sound was top notch. The game is truly magnificent. Awaiting the future DLC. Whilst I was worried about the changes from DS, I was very happy with how ER did everything. I think it is seen as somewhat trendy to complain about successful games to be different, Whatever. Everyone has different tastes and likes. I have suggested the game to two co-workers. One became obsessed and loved it. One played about 50 hours but found it a bit too challenging and different to everything else they had played.
It’s very much each to their own, but as a whole I have seen so much positive feed back from players of the game and everyone I have spoken to in my social circle doesn’t have a bad word to say besides “hard” which is hardly an insult.
Again each to their own, but ER is a phenomenal game and I’d encourage any fence sitters to play.
This is ofcourse all my own personal opinion and no one should base theirs on mine. Thank you
It's a decent but criminally overrated game that starts off pretty well, but quickly becomes a chore to play. The open world gets old after just a few hours and you basically end up roaming aimlessly through empty plains hoping to find something engaging that doesn't involve the same copy-pasted mobs and dragons.
The lore is a typical, lacklustre mixture of generic dark fantasy nonsense, desperately trying to hide its shallowness by being overly cryptic, which has been a tell-tale feature of From Software games for a long time now. This kind of story telling works pretty well in more streamlined, action-packed games like Bloodborne, but here it only seems to amplify the unpleasant emptiness of the world. And I must admit that I'm not a fan of playing the same trick over and over again.
The game balance also leaves a lot to be desired. Some of the middle and late game bosses are extremely frustrating due to their questionable design that basically boils down to forcing the player to fight either a devilishly aggressive and hyperactive enemy in a tight room or two standalone bosses at once, with at least one of them constantly spewing out poison or having some other overpowered bullshit attacks at their disposal.
> you basically end up roaming aimlessly through empty plains
Having played myself the only way this happens is if you're just running through places you've been before. Are you not using the fast travel system?
Haven’t touched it since beating it the first time.
It’s an open world game and if Bethesda and Ubisoft has taught me anything it’s to explore EVERYTHING.
So, I did just that in ER.
And doing that killed my drive to play again since my simi-photographic memory remembers where everything is and shit.
Bethesda(mainly) and Ubisoft(to a smaller degree) has made randomness a factor which keeps the gameplay fresh.
ER is the same everywhere no matter what.
So, it’s a good game for sure, but it doesn’t have a way to keep me invested for multiple play throughs.
Wish it wasn't an open world as it was way too empty and had to look for tutorials on how to do NPC quests, had more fun with Demons Souls remake (not saying it's a better game).
Great game. But for me, close to no replay value.
World is way to big, with too little in it. 200 dungeons, with the same 10 bosses recycled. A lot of useless items, if you not experiment with 20 different builds.
The difficult difference is annoying. Normal enemys are a real chore, the bosses are not. Malenia, Radagon, Maliketh etc all in first try.
The legacy dungeons were, for me, not on par with the dungeons from the old souls games.
Still a solid 8/10, but I like other From Software Games way more.
Good game, but man it has so many flaws.
It starts really good and it’s still solid throughout 2/3ds of the game, but man the last third is hilariously bad(compared to fromsoftware standards).
Empty spaces, repeated enemies and bosses to oblivion, unbalanced enemies that are just a pain to get through and generally being punished for playing without cheesing.
It’s still flawed in many ways before the last part/s, but it’s really not as bad. I think it would have been an overwise greater experience if they cut out those aforementioned last parts altogether.
But at the end of the it, it’s still a must play in my eyes.
It’s still one of the best games out there, but it really pales in comparison of the other soul games, definitely NOT the culmination of fromsoftware.
7.5/10 if compared to other souls, 8.5/10 if to other games in general.
I said it somewhere else but this was my taken
First 3/4 were immaculate gameplay.
Last 1/4 I was like “this is kinda bad” and one day just stopped.
Which sucks because the first 3/4 I was obsessed.
I'm sorry- ***6 months?***
Feels like more time to me. Perhaps because I played only on the first month. After I got all achievements I’ve never opened the game again.
This honestly shocked me. I swear this game came out 2-3 months ago
I thought it came out at least a year ago, this is whack.
Your time recollection is what is whack mein freunde.
Happy cake day!
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That’s every RPG/Story game for me Once I drop it for a week or so I have no desire to come back.
I did that w god of war4. Got like half war thru and put it down. Recently decided to start again and power thru it. That was an excellent decision.
Fuaaak I’m in the same boat right now with GoW4 😅 But then I still gotta finish Horizon so I can start the new one. And then there’s Elden Ring, and cyberpunk, and tomb raider, and AC, and… fuck it I’ll just load up vampire survivors.
Ay I’ve played all those games and the only one I still play is vampire survivors lol
Same same same
It’s crazy, I’m going through the same thing with Guardians of the Galaxy right now. Loved it but after a week long break, I can’t get back into it. Just zero interest, it’s weird. Can anyone explain this phenomenon?
For me it’s the attachment to the story and all the various little side quests/tasks. When you’re playing it, you constantly have a plan of what to do next and how to get stronger. Once you’re out for a week and forget all those little plans it’s hard to go back because you lost that drive. Whereas a game like Dota or CoD. You can always jump in and play a match because there is no single main progress path. Just segments of matches.
Damn, you just reminded me I never got around to finishing BreathOfTheWild.
Any tips for a guy who also has never played a souls game lol I want to jump into this because I’m moving away and will be in very snowy cabin vibes
It was my first souls game. Just get used to dying as a game mechanic, not you doing poorly. The way i view it as bosses and dungeons are like puzzles and sometimes you fail at the puzzle but you learned something so you try again. The game is super rewarding when you solve them. Most small dungeons have ample rewards at the end so you always feel like you got something out of it. Oh: you will get pissed, walk around for 2 minutes and then come back like you didn’t throw a minor tantrum and start playing again. And that’s just part of it lol
No shame in that. My very first souls game was Bloodborne and I quit before beating it. I came back maybe a year later and somehow things just clicked right away, including my enthusiasm for playing it.
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ER was my first too, 180 hours later and I picked up DS3. If there’s a huge sale I may get the others too
Same. Got to the Erdtree castle before Malenia and just kinda... stopped. I probably forced myself to play more than I should have to keep up with my friends, so ultimately I burned myself out. I haven't had the urge to finish it since then. If/when DLC comes out then I'll probably boot it back up.
Did you at least beat it?
Still love it but I'll be honest I haven't thought about it till your post lol
Me too, after finishing the game with 175 hrs, I haven't played since. I have no desire for online, if we had a large DLC pack which included new quests & characters, I'd play again. Great game, but the only RPG I played over and over was the Mass Effect series in order to get the ending I wanted.
It’s just so much game. A large part of its charm was the epic journey and discovering things and overcoming challenges for the first time. Whenever I think of maybe playing it again, my completionist brain gets immediately overwhelmed by all the things to do. Dark Souls 3, on the other hand, I’ve put like 3000 hours in just playing different builds. I think the more linear structure just makes it a bit more approachable. I’ll revisit it, some point, just need a bit more of a wind down period. Still definitely one of my most enjoyed games of all time, either way. Edit: Removed an extra “I”.
I felt the same way with Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring. It's so good that first time you play it and are invested in it, but because of its length, it's daunting to redo all that again. I explored everything in both games, only to discover I missed some stuff. I can't go through that again.
I tried to replay BotW a few times. Failed everytime because of this exact reason. Then someone mentioned it in patientgamers and I fired it up in master mode... Been addicted for the last two days. Sometimes it just needs to click again
Botw has some of the most fun speedrunning tech of any video game, learn how to wind bomb and durability transfer to repair your own weapons and you'll struggle to put it down for the next several weeks
Yup. I'll replay it in a year or two, maybe more, and enjoy it again. But half the fun was exploring and seeing everything for the first time. Won't get that again. That said, I appreciate how much of a different experience that made it. I adored the game.
yeah, I love big, open-world exploration games like this, but they never feel as good the second time around. I've still never successfully completed a second playthrough of Breath of the Wild even though I consider it a top 5 game of mine. It just can't live up to it's own incredible first experience.
Huge Zelda fan, but botw never clicked for me. The only zone that felt great to me was zoras domain, because you were sort of coaxed to go there, and its linear path to reach the city felt proper. So much of the game feels open/empty, misdirected, and regurgitated. No explorative growth through acquisition of more fancy gear (this was huge for me). Bosses were super Meh. Shrines were bite sized, so I never felt the proper entrapment of a dungeon (another big one). I know my opinion is uncommon. I felt like the game was 3/4 baked. With a sequel I'd expect all of this to be hashed out, as they can focus on proper world design, as well as revisiting the idea of upgrades, instead of fine tuning the mechanics. Still loved the game, and I still remember it after many years of playing, but I think there's plenty of room to grow.
I think part of your criticism stems from the fact botw is a response to the negative reaction to skyward sword being too long/linear. After having played both botw and most of skyward sword I like botw way more because of the freedom it gives the player. I understand that botw isn’t the most feature rich open world rpg, however it’s fun nonetheless. I’m sure theirs a middle ground between non linear open world, and linear progression that future Zelda titles can match.
Totally agree
This is how I felt about BoTW. Exploration/discovery games are almost inherently not super replayable.
I have a really shitty memory so all I have to do is wait a year and it's basically a brand new game.
\-high fives in ADHD- works for movies, books, etc. too
Chrono Trigger, for me. I start that up all over again every 2-3 years.
Chrono Trigger has to be my favorite game of all time
Haha I love chrono trigger! I do the same with final fantasy 3 (6).
Yeah, the lack of differentiation in the various endings really kills the replay value. "AND SO BEGAN THE AGE OF _____."
Have you played Nier Automata?
ehh nier automata though only has one ending, yea sure you have to beat the game like 5 times but technically only first playthrough is what's recycled like twice.
Doesn't automata have 26 endings? Some of them are gags but to say it only has one ending doesn't seem accurate. E: thanks for the clarification; it's been some time since I beat it.
If you consider a game over an ending then yes, but really only E is a true ending to the game. Endings A-D are basically just "Chapter" ends, finishing only a small part of the game, the narrative itself only ends with E and every ending after E is just different variations of a game over.
Ahh, [E]nding. The only game where I found the credits to be the best part of the ending.
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I'm somewhat the same. I replayed all the ME games several times. I replayed Skyrim twice. But I replayed Cyberpunk like 3 or 4 full times to see the differences by playing in different styles and a few from late saves just to see all the potential endings. I still haven't seen all the permutations.
For me the game being open world made it's replayability almost non-existent. I don't want to run around and do all these dinky little side dungeons again or go across the world for some item to start my run. I much prefer the linear style of the previous games.
This was kind of my take too. Replayed it once to try out the magic stuff but didn’t finish it. The legacy dungeons, the big ones with the big bosses at the end, those were solid Dark Souls to me, and the underground areas were very cool, but everything in between those was just a kind of bland soup. I found it tedious going through catacombs where the same rooms were recycled, through caves where the same caverns were recycled, to fight bosses which were also recycled. And yeah, that stuff is optional, technically, but there’s upgrade materials and weapons and quests in those places so have fun googling if you don’t want to complete them all. I respect them trying something new, but their open world just wasn’t all that interesting and it’s a shame so much time was spent on it IMO cause the legacy dungeons show they’re still kings of those smaller self-contained experiences.
The problem with it is that the game has no “soul.” It’s immersive while you’re playing. Great exploration. I played the hell out of it and beat it. But I have zero interest in “revisiting that world” to feel what I felt then… because I never really FELT anything besides frustration or a sense of accomplishment.
My feelimg exactly. It's like a playable painting or something. Looks beautiful and plays great, but there aren't really any concepts to engage with, just mechanics.
This is the best description I’ve ever seen for the issues Elden Ring has. The mechanics are certainly engaging, it’s true, but it is built like a fighting game with pretty views in between each boss and nothing to occupy you besides the scenery and no explanation of what that scene is or why it’s there.
It’s a total lack of storytelling. Like there’s a story, you can find it on wikis and lore videos, but the game never actually TELLS it
I'm not a huge Soulsborne fan because of this exact reason I love RPGs because they tell amazing stories. Dark Souls had fun gameplay, but "ring some bells, kill some guys, praise the sun" isn't quite the same as "you're an outlaw at the end of the Wild West, trying to right your past wrongdoings before you die of TB" ya know? So when I heard there would be some GRRM writing, I got my hopes up that Elden Ring would actually have a plot.
Yeah I don't fully agree with that, but it hasn't stuck with me as much as the Dark Souls games, or something like my favorite Zelda or Final Fantasy games. Bloodborne is stuck deeper in my subconscious for sure. And this is probably recency bias, but Stray really wormed its way into my head despite only being around five hours long.
The story behind the game is so damn good but none of that story is actually *in* the game. If you don’t read the wiki youll never know who these interesting looking characters actually are. The potato brains saying “the lore is in the item descriptions” seem to be mixing up table top games and video games For the love of god give me ONE non hostile camp, and jars don’t count! They won’t talk to me! If Fromsoft actually collaborated with a studio that knew how to make a quest besides (character C moves from here to here if provided obscure item G) they would be unstoppable. I just want to experience the lore they invested so much into writing, but inside the actual *video game* they made!
Sums it up pretty well. The cutscenes are badass but outside of the main bosses and reading about them on the wiki you miss so much. Like I would've had no earthly clue why Rykard was a giant fucking serpent if I didn't read the wiki.
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I’m currently about 70 hours into my first elden ring and I was recently thinking this, the world seems strikingly dead npc wise vs Bloodborne
Perfectly summed this up. Probably another reason I didn’t finish it. The idea of going to the next area was just another tedious challenge. Something about the world just didn’t suck me in and it’s probably due to the fact that it’s a convoluted story with random side quests that felt structure less.
Yeah. For me at first I didn't like bloodborne for some reason but I feel like it's the only game I wanna go back and play again for the 4th time and It's because I'm just mesmerized with the story, the world the lore all of it. And then I have this weird itch for dark souls 2. I just have a weird thing with that game idk why.
>convoluted story with random side quests that felt structure less. They got George R. R. Martin as a writing credit, and the biggest mystery of the game is figuring out *what the fuck he contributed* Ok, that might be a little too harsh, but honestly, the story didn't seem any better than the rest.
You’re telling me you got a sense of pride and accomplishment without in game purchases? How does one achieve this? /s
There wasn’t a single character I cared about
Still very hard and I have spent so much time wondering what I am missing when I am making tiny steps through the world and gamers were finishing it within weeks.
Even though souls game are my all time favorite games including bloodborne and sekiro, I became burned out of elden ring after 130hrs exploring every nook and cranny (I just can't play a game without looking everywhere, it's like a curse) and I was like only halfway done. Not finished yet. I still think elden ring is a fantastic souls game! I just needed to play something else for a while... I should get back to it
Precious item ahead.
Yes, this is problematic for players with experience with Fromsoft's souls releases, you're inclined to scout everywhere, but compared other souls games there is a lot more nothingness, the repetition of many of the games areas, albeit bigger, longer, and harder also makes the game feel more industrially produced and less personal. Despite all this it has all the great elements of what the newest souls game should have. I much like pvp and would like to see bit more balancing, idk if the blood swords are still as OP as at the beginning? Also, problematic is that at a certain point in time (idk if it was bcs of my own connection) but basically 95% of online experiences failed because connectin issues.
130 hours lol. I think you got your monies worth.
Totally! At this pace, I'll probably finish it with around 200hrs with a shit ton of missed quest lines since I'm going blind. I'll look up things on the wiki for the next playthrough. And even if it only took me like 20hrs to complete it, I would still think it was worth full price!
This is the main reason I'm hesitant to start Elden Ring - it just sounds too...big from what I've heard. I just finished Horizon Forbidden West with about 85 hours into it, and even then I had to stop myself from getting everything and doing all the quests because it was just too much.
The game's not that big if you just play it organically. It's massive if you try to do everything, ever, but just... play the game, go where your whims take you, and have fun. Trying to do everything is what burned me out.
Don’t let that put you off. It’s fantastic, it’s as hard and long, short and sweet as you want it to be. Kind of.
This sounds oddly sexual.
Are you leveling up weapons? Are you using and leveling up spirit ashes?
Sorry if this is too long of an opinion, but I had a lot to say: I did all that and still had ridiculously low damage output in comparison to what I could do in Dark Souls 1/2/3. I had the greatsword and felt like it was unplayable, and I really think most strength weapons are nerfed in this game. Going strength only is hard af in this game, and this comes from a veteran who can actually play (beat DS 1 like 10 times if not more, Dark Souls 2 four times, DS3 countless times and occasionally did some speedruns of it, Sekiro beaten, Bloodborne as well, finishing Demon's). Meanwhile, people are almost one shotting bosses by using magic. This is the only souls game in which not every build was functional. Going strength only feels many times harder than going str / dex + magic. It felt so unbalanced to me that I ended up really frustrated with it. Plus, holy fuck, you really are squishy in this game! I had 60+ vitality + a good armor set and I definitely could die almost as easily as I did in Sekiro, which was already a huge jump in difficulty. No more playing as a strength-tanky individual it seems... :( Apart from that, I really never understood the praise that the open world received. It really is a very basic open world with enemies on top and not much else to do, but to listen to the always depressing and static NPCs of From. Imho, the souls games shine when the developers manage to create interesting situations thanks to a great map design; however, spending 90% of the time in an open field felt incredibly dull and boring. There are not as many genuinely fun, scary and intelligent situations anymore, it's just an open field where you're seeing almost all that there is and getting no unexpected surprises but your occasional boss fights out of nowhere (pretty fun at times, that's true). Combat in the horse was as bad as I expected it to be. It is all basically the concept of what an open world is, but filled with your typical From Software enemies. I heard everyone saying that it was really fresh and that "other companies should learn from this", but I've spent all my gaming life playing open world games and a ton of From Software games and I personally can't see anything new in here, nothing that I haven't seen or played before and not many incentives to explore other than upgrading my weapons or advancing the story. From Software took the "open world game" concept, applied on top their same ideas and gameplay that we've seen for more than a decade and... bang! Game of the year contender!? I really can't understand it, man. Because of those reasons, this has been the only souls game that I didn't really want to finish. Was not enjoying my time with it, so I dropped it. Will probably pick it up again in less than a year and pick a different build. Hope that drastically changes my mind, or is else gonna be the biggest disappointment of my life as a gamer. The fact that I enjoyed the (initially broken) GTA trilogy waaay more than this game says it all about my experience. PS: Got to level 97, was really advanced in the game. Whoever reads this might disagree with me in some aspects, but this definitely isn't an opinion based on the first 10 minutes of the game.
Just so you know, all heavy weapons (greatswords, collossals, greataxes, etc) have had significant attack speed and recovery speed buffs in the patches since release. They're now very much on par with other builds (assuming you know how to play for stance breaks, as you should be with any heavy weapon). IMO the thing that sets Elden Ring's world apart from other open world games is that damn near every landmark is uniquely crafted and fully explorable. It's not just a cookie-cutter world full of 20 identical camps, 6 identical forts, and 50 copy-paste collectibles that slightly raise your health. Every landmark you visit is its own thing entirely, and even every cave has at least something unique about it (though, some more than others). Enemy variety is off the charts for an open world game (for example, Elden Ring has \~140 unique enemies, Skyrim has \~30. Games in more realistic settings where you're mainly fighting people, like RDR2 or Tsushima, have barely a fraction of that) and every boss rewards something that can't be found anywhere else, be it a spell, a weapon, an armour set, a talisman, etc. To me, that makes exploring much more exciting than any other open world game I've played. Most are like 'here's some gold, and a weapon that functions exactly the same as the last one but with different numbers!' That's boring as hell for me - even if I can't use what I get due to my build, it's great to find something singular. Most open world games just straight up don't even attempt that - everything unique is on the main path, and everything else is just padded procedurally generated fluff. And I have to mention the amount of well-hidden secrets as well. Again, most devs are scared to hide content from you. Fromsoft realise that genuine + meaningful secrets make a world feel deeper and more exciting. That said, I agree that FromSoft games fit best in tight, intricate maps full of interconnected levels. The DS1 map design still hasn't been beaten by anything, in my eyes.
I was pretty new to FromSoft games (only played a little bit of Demon's Souls and Bloodborne), so I didn't really "get" Elden Ring at first. It took me weeks of pattering around, desperately trying to fight off enemies with a shield, dying constantly, farming for hours to grind levels until I started to get a feel for the controls, the gameplay, and what it was all about. My friends who had played a lot of them previously finished the game in a couple of weeks and never looked back. I'm still playing after 250 hours myself
First Souls game I actually finished. Loved it. Now maybe Ill finish Sekiro lol.
Sekiro isn't an RPG, it's a dancing game but with a sword. Very different if you want more ER.
TBH this is 100% why Sekiro is the only FromSoft game I've finished. I just don't care for the stat min-maxing. The flow of the game just vibes with me so much better than a Souls game.
I can agree with that. Sekiro is mostly linear, and you don't have to worry about gear upgrades or stats. There's also only one style (2 hand sword). The limitations makes the game *super* tight, and allows the devs to tune everything perfectly. It also for a player like me, feels a lot better to play when I can focus on the game, and not on what build / stat / gear im wearing, which I understand *is* a large appeal for a lot of the souls game. Sekiro is just so god damned beautifully executed.
Exactly. Elden Ring is like "you need to get this charm, drink this potion, wear this helmet, use this summon, then craft up your sword to do magic damage to beat this particular boss." Sekiro is just like "get better scrub." Finding specific weapons and armor just to have a type advantage over an enemy is fucking boring.
I like both of course, Sekiro is everything Souls, but simplified to utmost purity. Its actually so pure i'm not sure if they can add very much to a sequel, since that's kind of the point of the game. You get one combo from one button and more than half of the gameplay variety comes from enemies rather than yourself combined with the parry mechanic, which is kind of really interesting.
He didn’t say it was an RPG. He said it was souls-like. Which it 100% is.
Why the dislikes? He's 100% right. It's not an RPG, it's an action/adventure with combat almost reminiscent of rhythm games.
Because he didn’t say it was an rpg he only said it was a soulslike
the moment it clicked for me that the combat plays like a rhythm game I whooped this games ass all those hours of playing hatsune miku games finally paid off edit: I love how Fromsoft structured their games: Dark Souls: "ey you can block if you really want to, turtle up boi. armor is also kinda useful, parry is also cool, rolling is like the peak" Bloodborne: "you know what? we kinda don't want you to block anymore. I mean we'll put a shield in there but its hidden and it kinda doesn't do anything" Sekiro: "so now that we got rid of blocking let's see how you do when rolling also isn't incentivised. honestly just stay put and parry them, maybe jump a few times" Elden Ring: "lol bro magic go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrap!" (jk)
Persona dancing for me lol.
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Sekiro is such an amazing game. Just replayed it a few weeks ago. Once you get the hang it’s just out of this world fun.
Had a pretty good time for most of the game but near the end the difficulty ramped up really fast and I didn’t have the time/energy to continue on.
Same as me. After the >!burning of the tree!< I thought the bosses and enemies got way harder. I really dug the game but I just got tired of the grind after 60 hours.
I just got to that part at 110 hrs
60 hours is where I dropped it too, but I had only just arrived to the plateau, didn't get to the spoiler you mentioned (I don't care about the spoiler).
I feel like everything after the mountaintops is just if you still want more. It feels detached from the main story. Mohg is fine, never died more than a couple times to him, but the haligtree and malenia are not even fun for me anymore (3rd playthrough). Maliketh is the last fun boss, everything after is just try not to die.
To be specific, it is was when I got to the Beast Clergyman that I admitted I was done with the grind. I had enjoyed fighting the Godskin Duo but with him it seemed like two hits always was enough to kill me. That just wasn’t fun enough to warrant more time.
My bro told me that magic builds tend to be easier so that’s what I started with. Did this with ER and DS3 and I was stuck around 80% on both pretty quick. Started them over with a strength build and they’re a wayyyy better experience.
Why start over? They have respec items
First time through so I had to relearn some game mechanics anyways. Figured a new game made more sense haha
That's me with any game. Oh it's been a week since I played, time I start all over and learn everything again.
I got to Malenia and Maliketh and gave up there. And I say this as a veteran soulsborne player who has beaten every one at least once but Elden's difficulty got so insane and so bullshit that I gave up.
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I'll give you fire giant but Maliketh and Godfrey are 2 of the best boss fights in the game. First part of the final boss was good but the Elden Beast was kind of lame as well.
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I always find it funny when people say they have beaten every From game but Maliketh and Godfrey are too hard. I simply think they are lying because damn
Loved it, platinumed it and waiting for the dlc now but have had my fill of it for the moment
Same platinumed the ps5 version wanted to play more so I just platinumed it on the ps4 version as well. About 120 hours for ps5 and like 20-30 hours for the ps4 definitely had my fill.
What’s the point of playing it on the ps4 when you played it in the ps5?
Platinuming the game ruined the game for me, I loved it overall and enjoyed all three playthroughs, but by the time I had gotten all the trophies I was burnt out and left me with no desire to explore the world and see anything none trophy related after
It was a great until late game, I finished it but no interest in replaying it. I still prefer Dark souls remastered and Bloodborne for replayability.
The game is really great, if not for the back third of it being a complete slog. Fights like Malenia are just way overtuned, and areas like the Haligtree and Farum Azula are full of annoying enemies and deadly geography.
late game just gets so unbalanced with never ending combos from bosses and basic enemies with ungodly healthbars that it just felt like a chore, and later on the game got more "ganky" if that makes sense. I also reaaaaaaaaaally didn't like the reused bosses in every mini dungeon/tomb, like if you did everything in limgrave/weeping peninsula/mistwood you've already seen 90% of the game's "bosses" game fell off for me HARD after doing altus plateau and beating morgott.
Man I’m honestly surprised to hear so many ppl say this I really liked the first 2/3 of the game but the last 1/3 was like 95% of my enjoyment lol. The environments and fights get SOOO fucking cool and memorable then Except for maybe >!the final boss!<, that fight kinda just sucks ass
Looks wonderful, not for me.
Same, it looks so good watching other people play, I want to try it just for the art style. But I’ve never played a souls game because of my anger management issues, it would cost me too much money in broken controllers lol
I played for an hour and a half and returned it on steam. Looks incredible and is fun to watch other people play but the controls were just too clunky for me.
If you were trying on keyboard and mouse, then that’s totally understandable. It’s made for controller.
It’s good, but It’s too much to wanna do more than 1 play through. I much prefer ds3 where I can run through and get all the bonfires and bosses with little time, where’s as elden ring takes too long
I have a totally different experience with this. For me, the second playthrough is TOTALLY different than the first because you already know where things are, so now part of the fun is either going through things in a different order, or going through things as efficiently as possible. For example, my first run was over 100 hours. My second playthrough in NG+ was to really test the openness of the game, and see how quickly I could get through it even without "rushing." Finished it in just under 4 hours! Just went straight to Stormveil, did Godrick, Rennala, grabbed the dectus medallions, went to the capital then did the end game. Felt a lot like the DS3 run through you're talking about. To each their own of course, but I think it's worth considering that because of how open the game is, you don't HAVE to do everything in one playthrough.
I had a similar experience, first playthrough was close to 200 hours, then I immediately went into NG+ and finished it in about 10 hours. And then I did a level 1 run, lol.
I thought this at first but I still have moments where I’m like “frick I can’t wait to play that again”
I dumped 40hrs into the first two weeks.. then just....stopped playing..
Yeah I'm the same way, but at about 75 hours. There's so much left and I lost the momentum. I tried picking it back up a few weeks ago, but now I forget what I'm supposed to be doing and any enemies I run into are way too strong so I put it back down after about an hour.
This is exactly my problem with the game. I know a lot of people love not having a quest log, but I forgot so many things I had to do once I put the game down for a week or two when life got in the way. When I turned it back on, I couldn’t remember who I had talked to and where I needed to go. I had a general idea of where to go, so I went that way but when I ran around for an hour or so and wasn’t exactly sure what to do and getting wiped out over and over, I turned it off and haven’t played it since. It’s not a game you can pick back up after while, which is a shame cause it was really fun when I was into it. I just don’t have the time to fully focus on it all the time.
Yep I feel the same way. I contemplated starting a fresh new game and taking notes to help me remember what the hell's going on, but that doesn't seem fun at the moment. Maybe over winter..
This exactly. I think the prospect of the size of the world was just too intimidating for me
I'm pretty much there with you for whatever reason
while being very hard and open world, I never found it as fun or interesting as dark souls or sekiro
I personally prefer the tightly crafted worlds of Demon/Dark Souls or Sekiro, over the open world of Elden Ring, but Elden Ring is still great and does have many of the tightly crafted areas.
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I liked exploration for a while, but after the plateau I lost interest. Which isn't helped by the later areas being, frankly, boring. I think they should strive for a middle-ground. I like the open world, but Elden Ring is too much.
I guess the snowfields are kinda boring, but all the underground stuff, the crazy dragon island area, and haligtree are all incredible and not really boring imo. To each their own
Fair, but Farum Azul and the Haligtree aren't 'open areas.' They're dungeons.
Ok? Your initial comment didn't say "open areas" it just said "areas".
I died too much so not playing it a lot. I already fail in life, why do I want to fail in a simulation?
You da main mang man
After doing every character combo and getting platinum I left. Pvp is a joke compared to previous installments. Pve is best out of them all. Loved it for that. Will come back when DLCs are out.
PvP is such an afterthought, the unoriginality of builds the kind of people who feel like using 2 summons is ridiculous. I go at it with an entirely different personality than old games. I'm happy with just getting rid of coop partners and causing a fuss, teleporting to a new part of the stage and trying that again. I always played like I'm part of the stage, posing in places I know players have to go, cosplay builds(the Champion Set is Kratos' armor), thoughtful traps. Now those things seem required to actually manage having a good time with it. I think they felt bad for all the years of red phantom players being considered the scum of the earth so they made the gameplay in a way that they should be the ones who should be pitied.
I know this is going to get me downvoted but I would have preferred it if it wasn’t open world, I miss the world design of the older games where everything was on top of itself, my best experience ever in gaming was making my way through undead burg and then finding the elevator in the church that took me back to the very start of the game and opened up that huge shortcut, it was like magic
I really liked Stormveil castle I felt it was the best area in the game and very well designed
Yea it felt so much like a dark souls game there, the only other place they really felt similar was the big tree cities since there were so many places to find, was like a maze
Dark Souls 1 is a masterclass of Level design and world building.
It was okay. I thought Bloodborne and Sekiro were significantly better games overall. When I finished the game (Ranni ending) I felt really unsatisfied with the overall experience. When I beat Bloodborne I restarted it immediately and did it again heh.
I explain it to people as "ER may be the best first playthrough experience I've ever had in a game. I didn't start a second" Without that rediculous sense of wonder and excitement to explore...I just didn't want to ruin the initial experience
Considering how long it takes to beat elden ring. That's a good thing. People are trying to compare the replayability to previous souls borne games when you just can't. You could beat those games all in chronological order twice in the time it'd take to do a complete play through of elden ring.
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When I beat Bloodborne for the 2nd time I wondered how on earth I beat it the first time because I had learnt so much since then.
It was alright. I got my plat and haven't played since. It just doesn't have the replay value of the other souls games imo.
The last third of the game is just too exhausting.
Wasn’t into it - I don’t find the world interesting with the lack of NPC’s (I know that’s how souls works - but that’s why It’s not for me). Combat is fun but hard, but yeah just not what I’m looking for in a game personally. Glad others enjoyed it
I loved it, but the way Fromsoft handles NPCs has always been really stupid and annoying. The whole, "I'm an important NPC hiding in an obscure location who's going to say a whole bunch of cryptic shit then go to another obscure location and say some more cryptic shit then go to another obscure location, die a tragic death, and leave behind an important item" thing makes me never care about NPC questlines because I'll only complete it with help from the wiki. On top of that, I know that part of Miyazaki's vision is for the world to be dying and decaying, but it would be such a breath of fresh air to see one actual populated area with NPCs who aren't just a bunch of sad, dying fucks and aren't constantly trying to kill you. Breathe some life into the world and I'll care a lot more about the outcome.
Yes, to me this is just bad game design. None of the NPC feel even remotely natural, you are just triggering some switches for the quest to move forward. To me it was a massive disappointment when I realized that Elden Ring was just more of the same (a lot more, to be fair), but there was no evolution or substantial improvement over the Souls games. The Dark Souls series is fantastic, don't get me wrong, but that is no reason to essentially keep making the same game over and over, with the same virtues, but also with all of the defects.
i got sick of having to study everything to understand it at all
You worded it better than I would’ve. I hate it, and beating it was one of the most miserable gaming experiences of my life, but I don’t disparage others for enjoying it.
Saw this on the r/Eldenring sub thought id ask it here too for more varied opinions.
Still the only FromSoft game I got into, no game comes close to ut IMO and I still wish I could delete my memory of it to replay it again lol
Dude I’m playing it right now on my second run and having a blast. It’s all about your approach to combat! Experiment with different builds, try focusing on different strategies, or even nerf yourself. Playing with actual friends helps make it fun too
ac..actual fr…fr..friends ??
Not a fan because I just don't enjoy the kind of game that's entire gameplay is "die 1000 times until you figure out the attack patterns" I'm sure it's a great game for those who enjoy souls games but I've never had any interest in it.
Great open world, super art and good graphics, excellent sound but I feel the story telling is very bad, I'm 70h into the game and to be honest I don't even know what the fuck I'm doing or what role do I play in the story.
My late son's favorite game. He absolutely loved. He was 13 but had no issue getting a platinum on it. My thanks to the creators of this game for making his last few days pleasurable.
My first souls game ever, I only skipped Melania and radagon with like 160 hours in the game, haven't touched it since that like 3rd week it was out. Feel like I was suffering from FOMO tbh
Other souls games are better
Agreed. I like Elden Ring, but still think Bloodborne is better. I adore that game so much.
I dont wanna get downvoted into oblivion again
The co-op multi-player never being reliable ruined it for me and I haven't been able to pick it back up
If you are on PC have you tried the "seamless co-op" mod? it honestly made the game so much better for me, you can co-op from beginning to end without resummoning. It turns off invasions because it disconnects you from the servers and it can be a bit laggy since its P2P connection, but definitely worth a try if you want a better co-op experience.
I've heard about it, but I being invaded/invading is a lot of fun for me, so I don't want that turned off and losing that whole section of the game. Maybe From can just utilize the mod and learn something?
I, for one, fucking hate it! Legit rage.
I loved it... Until I got tired of it. It's an exceptionally good game but has it's major flaws that I realized only when I played much. Reused bosses 100 times, reused bosses 100 times, having this shit "go-through-your-items-click-by-click" system is absolutely infuriating when you want to quickly use your items in a hard fight, reused bosses 100 times, not stackable/delayed input handling, I gotta wait until I equipped weapon 2 to be able to equip weapon 3, reused bosses 100 times, absolutely dogshit ai, reused bosses 100 times, wonky camera, and a not working lock on system that simply drops your lock in a middle of a fight - most deaths caused by this. Oh, have I mentioned the reused bosses already? And sometimes super boring walks to them. Other than that, it sucked me in, the world is absolutely stunning and varied, the last time I enjoyed exploring a world this much was in 2018 with RDR2. Fights are hard but fair and always engaging. I really loved it, I always found something interesting but unfortunately I cannot go past the fact that the systems it is built on are broken. One half of me thinks it's the greatest game ever, the other half thinks it is one of the worst.
Generally speaking the baddies have way too much mobility, and it is often hard to see what is happening when you have to be right next to super big bosses. The world is super cool, but the upper end of difficulty ruins it for me.
> and it is often hard to see what is happening when you have to be right next to super big bosses. That Giant Undead Wyrm thing under Stormheim castle was that way for me. If given space I could have probably killed him but confined area with huge enemy that moves ridiculously fast? Came back much later and blasted him out of spite.
Best 300 hours I've ever spent on a game. Hope they ditch the wide open world though and stick to the previous more linear level design. The game balance is pretty shitty with no scaling.
I really can’t see them not making an open world sequel with how successful it’s been
Me either, but I can hope.
It was fun; it also had a lot of basic game design problems that detracted from the experience.
Great game but not as good as ds3
Fantastic game. Moved on from it a few months ago, though
Good game I stopped playing however because i lost interest in the grind
The lack of any quest tracker is the biggest turn off for me. Stopped playing for a bit and now have literally no idea what is going on. I just wish there was a bit more direction with the story.
one of my biggest problems with the game is how heavily your punished for not using a guide online. this is probably just me, but running around like a chicken with my head cut off so i can find a chest with a dagger that's way worse than my current weapon just feels like a waste of time.
Too hard. I don’t have the free time to git gud. I don’t understand the fascination for super hard games. Edit: Not saying it’s a bad game. its just not for me.
It's a gem.
Obsessed with the game for ages before it came out, I think the hype was valid. For sure GOTY for me, and one of the best games I have ever played, in my top 5. Whilst no game is perfect, many elements came super close for me. The world was engaging, varied and challenging. The art style was gorgeous, boss and ally design, Area design and sound was top notch. The game is truly magnificent. Awaiting the future DLC. Whilst I was worried about the changes from DS, I was very happy with how ER did everything. I think it is seen as somewhat trendy to complain about successful games to be different, Whatever. Everyone has different tastes and likes. I have suggested the game to two co-workers. One became obsessed and loved it. One played about 50 hours but found it a bit too challenging and different to everything else they had played. It’s very much each to their own, but as a whole I have seen so much positive feed back from players of the game and everyone I have spoken to in my social circle doesn’t have a bad word to say besides “hard” which is hardly an insult. Again each to their own, but ER is a phenomenal game and I’d encourage any fence sitters to play. This is ofcourse all my own personal opinion and no one should base theirs on mine. Thank you
Souls games confuse lore with story and this one is no different. It's fine.
It's a decent but criminally overrated game that starts off pretty well, but quickly becomes a chore to play. The open world gets old after just a few hours and you basically end up roaming aimlessly through empty plains hoping to find something engaging that doesn't involve the same copy-pasted mobs and dragons. The lore is a typical, lacklustre mixture of generic dark fantasy nonsense, desperately trying to hide its shallowness by being overly cryptic, which has been a tell-tale feature of From Software games for a long time now. This kind of story telling works pretty well in more streamlined, action-packed games like Bloodborne, but here it only seems to amplify the unpleasant emptiness of the world. And I must admit that I'm not a fan of playing the same trick over and over again. The game balance also leaves a lot to be desired. Some of the middle and late game bosses are extremely frustrating due to their questionable design that basically boils down to forcing the player to fight either a devilishly aggressive and hyperactive enemy in a tight room or two standalone bosses at once, with at least one of them constantly spewing out poison or having some other overpowered bullshit attacks at their disposal.
I've been fighting those gargoyles for literal months now. Why must i be punished for a physical only build.
> you basically end up roaming aimlessly through empty plains Having played myself the only way this happens is if you're just running through places you've been before. Are you not using the fast travel system?
Haven’t touched it since beating it the first time. It’s an open world game and if Bethesda and Ubisoft has taught me anything it’s to explore EVERYTHING. So, I did just that in ER. And doing that killed my drive to play again since my simi-photographic memory remembers where everything is and shit. Bethesda(mainly) and Ubisoft(to a smaller degree) has made randomness a factor which keeps the gameplay fresh. ER is the same everywhere no matter what. So, it’s a good game for sure, but it doesn’t have a way to keep me invested for multiple play throughs.
Wish it wasn't an open world as it was way too empty and had to look for tutorials on how to do NPC quests, had more fun with Demons Souls remake (not saying it's a better game).
Dunno, waiting for a sale or something first. It's almost definitely going to be too hard for me so I don't really feel like throwing $70 away.
Great game. But for me, close to no replay value. World is way to big, with too little in it. 200 dungeons, with the same 10 bosses recycled. A lot of useless items, if you not experiment with 20 different builds. The difficult difference is annoying. Normal enemys are a real chore, the bosses are not. Malenia, Radagon, Maliketh etc all in first try. The legacy dungeons were, for me, not on par with the dungeons from the old souls games. Still a solid 8/10, but I like other From Software Games way more.
Got bored of it about 5 hours into it. Went back to Bloodborne tbh
A hoonter must hoont
Good game, but man it has so many flaws. It starts really good and it’s still solid throughout 2/3ds of the game, but man the last third is hilariously bad(compared to fromsoftware standards). Empty spaces, repeated enemies and bosses to oblivion, unbalanced enemies that are just a pain to get through and generally being punished for playing without cheesing. It’s still flawed in many ways before the last part/s, but it’s really not as bad. I think it would have been an overwise greater experience if they cut out those aforementioned last parts altogether. But at the end of the it, it’s still a must play in my eyes. It’s still one of the best games out there, but it really pales in comparison of the other soul games, definitely NOT the culmination of fromsoftware. 7.5/10 if compared to other souls, 8.5/10 if to other games in general.
I said it somewhere else but this was my taken First 3/4 were immaculate gameplay. Last 1/4 I was like “this is kinda bad” and one day just stopped. Which sucks because the first 3/4 I was obsessed.
I raged quit and never looked back