@seikenfreak: I enjoyed Dark Souls 2 a lot more than Dark Souls 1. There are... dozens of us.

@humanity: absolutely,the atmosphere of DS2 is one of a kind.

I keep going back and forth on how I feel about Elden Ring. FromSoft's games kind of became like the Pokemon series to me, where I feel compelled to buy each title only to end up playing and losing interest halfway through. Funnily enough it's the Soulslike games that seem to hook me. There's just a certain something about FromSoft's style that's just never fully clicked with me.

It's the same here. I'm enjoying Elden Ring, but I'm not enjoying it as much as most people seem to be. At this point it feels like I'm playing a video game while everyone else is communing with God. Either I just don't understand the language, or I'm destined to forever be a heathen.

The difficulty I'm having when I try to talk about it is that whatever small quibble I'd come up with I'll almost immediately go back on after thinking about it a bit, but I won't totally give up on feeling that there's something worth criticizing. Maybe the hype has just built up my expectations to unreasonable degrees and my issues come down to a matter of personal taste.

Anyway, I guess what I mean to say is Elden Ring, as a whole, is exhausting and also 2022's GOTY.

*emerges from the darkness with a controller, madness in their eyes*

"I.. I just wanted to say, it's a damn good game.. A damn good game.."

*slowly cackles as they are enveloped by the dark once more, ne'er to be seen again?*

@mindbullet: I feel very similarly. I recognize that it is a great game in many ways and it's certainly staying on my mind a lot. That said it's definitely not a game without fault. I don't think From Soft redefined the genre by any means. Elden Ring is a great open world adaptation of their iconic formula that carries with it all the good and the bad that legacy entails. You are still bound by classic open world rules. The ace that From Soft have up their sleeve is the purposeful obfuscation of systems. Since nothing is highlighted to the player your imagination does tend to fill in the gaps. There are plenty of interesting things to discover in the world of Elden Ring but there is also plenty of classically empty, open-world space, that doesn't offer anything worthy of note. Yet because you simply never know where something incredibly important might be, like a vendor, you scour the map a lot more intently than you would otherwise.

As Jeff pointed out on the Bombcast this is a double edged sword in many ways. The highs are high but missing a key vendor and not having access to them for hours on end because you simply never made a left turn on this gigantic map can sting. On one hand this is organic discoverability in it's purest form, but it can also be exhausting because you sort of have to methodically check off all the nooks and crannies of the map lest you miss that "important thing" that could have made your life a lot easier.

@humanity: I dunno about this. Like yeah the game doesn't have visible Ubisoft markers or anything but everything important or noteworthy that I've come across has been a highly visible unique landmark on the map.

It doesn't take very long playing to recognize even what the specific drawings on the map are representing so you know if you need upgrade materials that's what a mine looks like and so on.

I have two faults with the game so far. One is the frame rate and stuttering. This is pretty wretched for a game this high profile. It's a decent looking game, but it's not like it's doing ray tracing or anything crazy like that. I have a 2080TI and I feel like I should be able to play this at 4K 60 fps with no problems. Nope.

The other fault I have which was pretty much echoed on the Nextlander podcast, was missing important chance encounters. I busted my ass trying to beat Margit, and then I listened to Alex talk about how you needed to meet this one lady, at this one specific place, at this specific time in order to get the ability to get summons. So, I went to that place, where he said, at the time he said, and she never showed up. I spent like half an hour trying to figure it out on my own. No luck.

I had to go online to look up that you were supposed to go there at a certain point, and if you took too long to go there, she would never show up. The only way for you to get the ability for summons at that point was to go to the Roundtable Hold and buy the bell from a character there. That was a major flaw for me, because there was no indication of anything like this, especially for a mechanic that is so crucial to the game. Overall, the game is still fantastic, gigantic, and super addicting, but these two things are extremely frustrating. FromSoftware, release that patch already!

Gotta say, ironically for a game the introduces open world to the series, the dungeon design in this game (specifically the cities) is STUPID good. The addition of jumping and the extra dimension it adds has let them go completely wild. It wasn't as evident in Sekiro, as the world was so rural, but the urban areas here could rival any of the best open-world cities I've played in. Maybe not in size, but in intricacies and detail. Pretty much any major area in this game where you can't use your horse is just a maze of possibilities.

@efesell: Not everything important is highly visible such as the case with MisterSims. Although I think that is a very unique case but I heard plenty of people miss that specific interaction. I have missed NPC interactions and vendors simply because I didn't show up somewhere at the right time or I didn't go in the right direction. Although this is nothing new to a Souls game, there is a lot of "go here, then go there, now travel away and come back and see what has changed" stuff going on.

I agree with pretty much everything @humanity said. The game seems great, but it also just seems like a From Soft game in an open world. It isn't necessarily doing anything new.. Like Breath of the Wild didn't feel new to me, was pretty weak for a Zelda title, and I don't understand the reverence for it. Elden Ring is far better than that.

Funnily enough with people mentioning missed NPCs and summoning.. I finally found the NPC that lets you buy the crafting kit yesterday. He's right near the start. I must've just walked around that structure, proceeded to explore nearly this whole map, and then came back down to the start area looking for this crafting kit. I also noticed my first summoning sign at Margit (maybe it was there before and I didn't notice) but yea.. obliterated him on the first try with that.

I guess it doesn't bother me if I don't know about it? I'm trying not to look up guides or "don't miss this!" videos etc. Ignorance is bliss in this case. I'll just continue to meander through the game, doing whatever, and hopefully I beat it which I will then allow myself to watch all the lore and secrets videos.

Missing those NPCs specifically is very funny because they’re clearly intended to be in the early game hub and it feels like From assumed everyone would get there and return there and that’s definitely just some “Ah first open world?” stuff.

@humanity: Count me in as one of those dozens who dig DS2. Most of the boss fights in that game were pretty neat. Pursuer became one of my favorites in the base game. Sir Alonne and Fume Knight became my all-time favorites in the DLCs.

for what it's worth i'm with you on this. i'm having an outstanding time with the game- it's taken over all of my free time. buuut- and this is partially a personal hang up (universal praise always gets a quizzical eyebrow raise from me)- i think the breathless praise for Elden Ring is laying it on a bit thick.

it's an expertly crafted, super-iterative souls game with an utterly marvelous (in the true sense of the word) open world. but it also feels like that open world is a straight swap of their traditional spoked hub...and all the repetition that implies. to be fair- this game is better than most at keeping the open world varied...but i've seen enough giants caravans, chalice-dungeon esque catacombs and repeated/repurposed boss encounters to where it still very much feels like a 2022 open world, minus the icons and fetch quests.

i'm not very far progression-wise (despite dumping an absurd amount of hours in the short span since its release)- but i have an inkling when it's all said and done- i might prefer the tightness of a dark souls 1 or bloodborne to the free exploration offered here- but that's a matter of personal taste. i never found the other From games constrained in their design, and the free exploration (for me) is more of timesink than game-changer. but i do recognize that if the open world gets more people in, having a good time- all the better.

Danny put it best on NoClip's Elden Ring Impressions podcast (which has basically no spoilers and I think is a fantastically level headed listen for fans and non-fans alike!) when he says at one point that people should look at Elden Ring like Demon's Souls if they pulled the hub element out of the core, set it off to the side, but otherwise still designed the game as though you would be bouncing between worlds and depths of those worlds, looking for items to ease your journey along. As somebody who's also been playing Demon's Souls just this winter, that really clicked with me.

@mistersims@humanity: I had this exact debate with someone over on the GB subreddit just last afternoon. The long and short of it: I appreciate when FromSoft obfuscates certain elements in their games. Again, as someone playing Demon's Souls right now, I appreciate that if Ostrava dies in 1-1 and you collect his gear it can kickstart a beeline towards an endgame boss you can cheese for a weapon that makes the rest of the game a bit of a farce. And that despite most opening guides presuming he pretty much always dies, he didn't for me and became a passive soul farming mechanic for me long before I was aware there could be any other outcome. Or the boss who's essentially immortal unless you noticed the one nook prior to her great hall and found her worshipper or whatever at the top of a tower. I think all that stuff is really neat.

However, when you add a sprawling open world to that equation and time of day modifiers, I think FromSoft should have been more considerate of what that means for the player. Here is where I got pushback, being accused of not taking the open world seriously or of trying to speed through the game as quickly as possible and so it's somehow my fault for not being at the church at nighttime to meet this witch. To which I say: I took the open world element of this game incredibly seriously, and in twelve hours have discovered four distinct worlds, conducted a hilarious mid-afternoon raid on a fort full of ridiculous enemies (very well-guarded, that!) then ran into an old hag who knew what the item I'd found there was for, collected six or seven unique summons I had no idea how to use, upgraded my main weapon to +3, collected by my estimation five or six unique side quests though now that it's been 24 hours I'm not sure who asked me for what 'cause I'm not about to take notes like some nerd...and finally, after all that, stumbled on Magrit and could barely scratch him until I happened to be listening to the Nextlander podcast while playing, realized what area they were talking about, went there and got the summons, at which point I could reliably get him down to 1/4 health left before my summons all died and he mercilessly beat me into the ground. If doing all that and not beating even one boss is "speeding through the game", I've misunderstood what the open world ever implied for a Souls experience.

So why, then, is it on me to just magically be at that location right outside the tutorial temple at the right time of day when there's all that other shit out there that's way more interesting than some rubble housing a Santa Claus cosplayer? I'll avoid the rest of the examples and nuance of the conversation in that thread for the sake of brevity, but suffice to say: there's a lot of obfuscation I'm willing to tolerate in these games, but to me if you're gonna throw so many of these things in my face and never once hint at how, when or where I'll be able to use them - and, critically, the cost to use them seems affordable to every class, therefore not something I locked myself out of purely because of my build - I think that's a major blunder on FromSoft's part that can't be handwaved away as "well, that's just how these games are." The core design of this game is like nothing they've done before, and now I'm left wondering if I need to sit at each and ever site of grace scrubbing through time to see if I've missed anything anywhere else. That's not clever or cute, it's offensive.

I think I might be done with this game. I'm level 26 with a +3 weapon, 16 hours in, I have done plenty of exploring, and I've used an npc summon and spirit summons at the same time to try and defeat Margit to no avail. He just destroys me. I can't get the dodge timing down on these 5 hit combos, which he just spams constantly in the 2nd phase. He hits so goddamn hard for a 1st boss at what I think as being to high a level at 26. It feels like if you don't have perfect dodging technique you're screwed. I just can't keep it up. And trying to stagger him with guard counter's just decimates my health and doesn't do much damage to him anyway. Maybe I have just lost whatever mojo I had at this point. Its kinda gutting honestly. I have adored all their previous games but this just feels so unbalanced and try hard compared to even Sekiro. I'm honestly not having very much fun anymore either as a result. Exploring is starting to get boring and aimless and I'd like to feel some progression, but if it only gets harder it seems I am not cut out for these games anymore. That really really hurts too. Bummer I guess. Hope ya'll have a good time.

@spacemanspiff00: Yesterday I saw someone post a video on the game's subreddit titled "finally beat Margit on my 4th try!" in which he was wearing some basic black pants, no shirt shoes or helmet and sporting a club of some kind and proceeded to get right in Margit's ass, perfect parry every single attack and take him down in about a minute. It was the sort of video not unlike when I watched a speedrunner play Returnal before getting my own hands on the game and thought to myself "and they say this game is hard? Looks pretty simple!"

So long as I'm enjoying exploring the world I'm content with my purchase in a way my last impulsive FromSoft buy, Sekiro, could never let me be (seriously, I'd have enjoyed exploring that world and fighting regular mobs forever if I could've just avoided the bosses and still progressed into new worlds) and I hope by the time I'm kinda forced to tackle these bosses I'll just be some stupid level like 50 or something with absurd armor, weapons and summons and can just kinda waltz my way through the game the way I did Bloodborne (not counting the DLC, 'cause fuck those dudes).

But yea, I agree, personally his attack patterns are pretty, uh, demanding.

@nodima: I agree it can be rough with the night / day cycle unless you really live these games. I watch Lance McDonald on Twitch, the guy who made the Bloodborne 60 FPS patch, and he is like Sherlock Holmes to me. The way he plays these games is so slow and methodical and he finds all these secrets and pieces together all these encounters. I mean it's astounding to me, but also it's proof that yah there are people who will organically take the time and solve these riddles. I know that I'm absolutely not one of them. Just recently Lance finished the castle, which I also had finished, and upon entering the next area there were two NPC's waiting for him at a site of grace that I never got. One of which I know I've completed their questline.. so.. why? Who knows.

@spacemanspiff00: If it helps I would argue that the game probably doesn't get THAT much more difficult than Margit if we are just considering relative levels that you're expected to be when you probably face him.

Like there are absolutely more demanding boss patterns but also the leveling curve in this game is HIGHLY unstable and it's really easy to overpower through exploration especially if you deviate from what is the intended route.

@nodima What really bothers me is that I've looked up videos to get some help but most of them seem to rely on specific summons, or crazy levels of parry skill like you mentioned. Which has shown me that even the most skilled players need to apply these strats or cheese strats to get by. This doesn't really inspire confidence in the fights design overall. I've never struggled with a Bloodborne boss the way I am struggling with Margit. I would rather fight Kos or final isshin at this point. From has clearly stepped up the game in a way that I am not sure I am equipped to handle I guess. And its really made me feel like all that exploring and leveling isn't helping me at all. Its all just becoming dauntlessly frustrating to me with the aimless open world. Its like if I don't find the right things I'm just screwed. And if I don't have god tier skill I am screwed in the long run. I honestly miss the old, more focused design of their games.

@efesell: I wish it helped. But its a little bit hard to swallow 16 hours of exploration not preparing me really at all for the first real boss of the game. I don't know where I'm supposed to be exactly, level wise, but 26 still seems high for a first boss. But maybe there are far less main bosses in the main story. That still doesn't really inspire me to just wander around hoping I will find something useful. Everything is just starting to feel very disjointed and honestly less interesting as I have gone deeper. It feels very reliant on you just meandering around and preying you run into something useful. I understand that some people like that, I don't think I am one of them. I miss the old formula, and maybe I'll come back to this when my only followed streamer finishes his walkthrough. I'm just too busted up over it to continue right now.

@spacemanspiff00: Well.. yeah if you are already disillusioned with wandering the world then there's certainly not going to be less of that moving forward. It is the vast majority of the game after all.

@spacemanspiff00: It sounds like you are mentally where I was yesterday. You'll get over the hump. I could barely get him to half health just doing it by myself. For whatever reason, noticed the NPC summon sign and beat him on first or second try I think. No parrys or spirit summons. No funny business. NPC just gave me enough of a distraction to get in there and land some hits. Also, at least with my Samurai dude, my weapon skill does a lot so I just spam that when I can. Easier when NPC is distracting him.

Only things I found in the open world that made anything "easier" was more seeds to buff up my flask. Had it at like +3 at the time I think? With 5 or 6 health flasks (and 0 FP flasks) but at that point I felt I had enough that I could spare one for FP so that also helps with being able to spam my weaponskill. My uchigatana was +2 or 3 I think. Same armor I started with. None of the Talismans really helped at this point. Used the Wonderous Flask at the start of the fight.

Point is, the hang up is all in your head. Margit seemed like cheap bs to me but honestly, thats how I feel about every boss, especially a first boss, in all of these games lol I'm tellin you.. gotta get your souls legs.

I did Margit yesterday and just spent most of today going through the castle. Whoever mentioned above about the castle being like its own city wasn't kidding. It's big and dense and hard. Clearly they designed these areas to contrast the giant open world. It felt like much more of the traditional Souls structure. And then once I was out, I felt relieved being back in the open world and cheesing shit on horseback

Just had a real productive two hours that I feel really good about, wish I could've kept going honestly but I've got tickets to see the bat on the big screen. Where I last left off I was in the Temple Quarter which is a really bizarre and abstract area that seems almost pointlessly dense, but I decided to check out one last landmark before I went off in another direction and discover a rundown church (I think it was called the Church of Roses?) that has some...unfavorable aspects to it. First time I used a marker to remind myself of something a month or two down the road!

Then I noticed that, while I thought I'd gone pretty far south before, my southern most grace had a trail leading further southward, so I went in that direction and found the Weeping Peninsula, which I've seen others mention either here or on Reddit if you're having trouble with the bosses. This has been a fun little area with a lot of things to look at and stumble onto with very weak enemies that nonetheless are in pretty big clusters and have nice rune drop rates. Down here I've found a big shield that's great against fire and way, way higher physical protection, an amulet that increases my max HP (cling ring! the name isn't as fun, unfortunately), some cool spells and now I've just entered a castle with a letter I'm meant to deliver. From the outside, the castle looks huge but we'll see. I'm excited to get back to this, though I'll likely be booting Gran Turismo when I get home if this Batman flick is as stress-inducing as some of the hype would like you to think.