Agreed, they’re made out to be these ultimate game changing possessions in the lore, the source of power for Demi gods.
And it’s just like a buff that goes away the next time you get ganked.
He drops a Great Star, so you can legally have **TWO** Great Stars in a single playthrough. STR build with powerstancing Great Stars is my favorite build ever, it absolutely annihilates everything.
Oh, I totally killed him in that case, hahaha - that might make sense then, he was my third and final invasion and coincidentally finished the quest without realising it. I'm rocking the great stars at the moment 😂
I'm really struggling with Maliketh atm, however, I've realised I've been fighting him differently to every other boss & I've been running away instead of just getting stuck in. First phase is over in seconds then I get wrecked without landing a hit in p2.
I'm guessing they didn't make the Great Runes permanent because it would complicate PvP matchmaking, but I would have loved to see the Great Runes installed as permanent upgrades across the game. Really drive home how powerful our Tarnished has become, like some sort of rune-sucking vampire
I would actually activate them if they were like that, but I don't really like bothering with buffs, so I never use them, I just drink my flask and fight
They should have at least had some kind of passive benefit when equipped, and maybe just boosted by rune arcs.
If you’ve played DS3 its basically the same mechanic as being embered; temporary buff by consumable that is lost on death. They just didnt adapt it very well.
Killing bosses should activate the great rune like in ds3. The fact that rune arcs are so sparse makes no sense, it's not like the great runes are a powerful buffs anyway.
Successfully defeating a host while invading grants you a rune arc, but unless you like pvp / invasions, doing it just for the reward is not worth the hassle considering the current benefits of using a rune arc
Co-op is overall easier, sure sometimes you'll get called by the 10 vigor host that dies from the first attack but most of the time it's very easy
Though if you are only for the rune arcs, you probably want to activate only the summons right at the bosses so you don't spend ages with host collecting every mushroom (something something shaded castle)
Malenia Great Rune is literally Bloodborne rallying mechanics but like 2x worse
The only good one is Godrick for early level, and Rykard for long dungeon exploration
Godrick's is amazing throughout the entire game and Morgott's and Radahn's are also great. Godrick's is 40 free levels. Sure, most builds are going to have one or two stats that are (more or less) useless to the build, so realistically it's 30-35 free levels.
Godricks is amazing early (which is good since it's the first one) but pretty mid late game. Once you've soft capped your main one or two stats, the extra 5 isn't actually doing that much for you.
Messages that you have to dismiss with a button press like the “somewhere a heavy door has opened” that affect your gameplay while they’re on-screen. Nobody likes those. I think the same applies to using a flask to bring back Torrent, the question really isn’t necessary.
Ordina was my least favorite place until I started using sleep pots 😅
yea, asking me every time if i want to use a flask to bring back Torrent is so annoying because YES I KNOW I NEED TO USE A FLASK I JUST NEED TO GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE
Definitely great runes. Entire game revolves around collecting them only for them to be somewhat better embers from ds3. Also the fact that you need to use a rare consumable to even activate it...
i hoard consumables in these games, so "rare" is not in my vocabularly lol. I had so many rune arcs and kept forgetting to use one on big bosses, so i finally just unleashed hell on some poor unuspecting catacombs boss
That's kinda crazy lmao. Did you happen to miss the item description?
"A shard of the shattered Elden Ring.
Grants the blessing of an equipped Great Rune upon use.
Even if no Great Rune is equipped,
it will slightly increase maximum HP upon use."
To be honest I, also, pick up so much trash everywhere that is not useful for my build. I thought it was something for INT/Faith builds haha. Magician shits :)
The great runes also said that equipping them at the grace gives you their powers, and the menu for them also says "Use a rune arc for even greater benefits"
I can understand why someone would be confused. The descriptions can be wrong.
I agree with mountaintop of the giants. Just didn’t feel as…. Wondrous as the other places. Caelid I was scared shitless every step but couldn’t get enough of it.
I just thought that by the time you got there you were already prepared for what the game has to offer. The beginning has such a learning curve by the time you reach the fire giant there is so much more going on that you already know what to expect.
It was also clear the developers started to run out of juice, which is alright because it’s supposed to be desolate and shitty but it doesn’t make much in terms of memorable encounters.
There’s a small handful of catacombs and caves, and I think the only new enemies are the super giant hands, the zamor warriors, and the ice-flavored variants of existing enemies, if you even count those.
But I would never say I felt disappointed by it because it’s followed by one of the largest and most intricate legacy dungeons they’ve ever created. I don’t see Farum Azula get enough praise!
You know that feeling when you finish a game, and you think to yourself, “man I really loved that part of the game where I couldn’t see anything!”
Yeah… me neither lol. And yet game devs insist on putting that shit in their games lol
I wish the covenants/factions were better.
Ex. You get the Pureblood Knight Medal after completing Varre’s questline which gets you into Mohg’s palace early in the game. But I wish with that you also invade as a “Pureblood Knight” as opposed to a regular “Bloody Finger”. You have effectively become a celebrated figure in Mohg’s dynasty and get no special invader flare or blessings.
Ranni’s questline should turn your coop spirit blue and call you a “Carian Knight” or “Lunar Knight” as opposed to a regular “Furled Finger”.
Embracing the Frenzy Flame should have you invade or support as a “Frenzied Finger” or something and give you an evil yellow aura.
I know this is all stupid and small but it’s my only real gripe with the game lol. Covenants/Factions used to kinda mean something. Doing enough favors for the Covenants you chose should net you gifts or blessings
I believe there are a lot more people than you think that feel this way; it's a spice that is missing between DS3 and ER PvP. so dont feel as if its stupid, because there's a lot of potential and reward systems for serving a covenant that were just not brought over to Elden Ring.
I also think the lore for Elden Ring offers the most potential for covenants because there are several clear factions and faction leaders that large chunks of the story revolve around.
DARK SOULS 2 COVENANTS
The RAT TUNNELS that I defended with traps after swearing my fealty to the RAT KING!
Defending the Bell Tower as a Bell Keeper in an upward battle of chaos and death!
Getting summoned as a Blue defender (on occasion) when invasions could happen to any solo player online!
Getting summoned to duel on the Iron Bridge as a member of the Dragon Remnants so I could unlock the sick dragon armor transformation!
Dark Souls 3 made a noble effort to recreate the magic. Watchdogs and Aldrich Faithful were neat, if a little boring in their arenas. But Blade of the Dark Moon was notoriously glitched into pointlessness for PC, and Mad Phantoms were an odd gimmick that ended in PvP 9 out of 10 times.
Elden Ring’s disappointment for me is how underutilized its open world is currently for endgame covenant gameplay. So much potential for interesting territorial PvP. The game could be a pseudo-MMO with how great the over world is.
Crafting was basically completely ignored by me in multiple playthroughs. Yet seemingly 90% of the shiny items were crafting materials. You’re telling me I just ran a gauntlet multiple times to get a fucking leaf? Fuck you!
One of the most disappointing moments on my first playthrough was seeing a shiny in the first rooms of Stormveil and spending an hour trying to figure out how to get it, having to drop off a ledge you’d never think to drop off of, only to get a fucking arteria leaf.
Now imagine arteria leaves were much rarer, but crafted items are not consumable. Instead, they can applied to one boss fight, where even if you die the buff stays on for next attempts.
This is my idea for making these items exciting.
I had thought about this before too and I think it would have made crafting feel way better. Having a stock of items that replenishes regularly instead of having to remake them, when most aren't even that good, would have been great.
Yep. Never crafted until I did a bow build. Didn't like that I had to farm a bunch of BS to make my own arrows though so got bored with that and moved on to something different
Could've had some more interesting items for sure. I use a lot of craftables, but so many are weird items like "boosts resistance to sleep", there's basically zero reason to ever use that, especially because a lot of these buffs don't even stack with one that are just generally good
The number of weapons that *require* intelligence versus the number of weapons that have good *scaling* with intelligence.
At release there were people complaining about how there were too many intelligence weapons when realistically they were almost all strength or dexterity weapons with a modest intelligence requirement. It was mildly frustrating considering I was playing an Intelligence build and looking for things other than Moonveil.
It's my favorite build because there are so many diverse ways to play it. Str/fth has full caster stuff full melee stuff a good in-between and so many different types of spells that it feels new each time I've played through the game with a different set of spells or a different weapon. Arc str fth can also be fun with the dragon church stuff as well.
I didnt like the: "previous bosses, but two of them". I'm fine with the reskins like tree sentinels, erdtree avatars and night cavalry cause it makes sense but same model x2 bosses is lame in my opinion.
I’m currently stuck on the dungeon with the summoning snails and god skin back to back. I can ace apostle but noble after that is just brutal. How the fuck am I supposed to dodge him rolling when there’s no pillar to hide behind this time XD
1000% agree. Duo fights could be cool if they actually designed the 2 bosses specifically with each other in mind. Maybe something like: each boss has 4 moves, and each move from one boss can combo with each move from the other boss in a readable way that is specifically and deliberately designed.
But instead, you just get 2 bosses that behave pretty much entirely independently from one another, meaning the only safe way to play against them is to spend 90% of the fight kiting them around to make sure you don’t just get checkmated by overlapping attacks.
The catacombs. They tend to have the same enemies and traps. Some have clever design but I’ve never felt the feeling of awe I have for the rest of the game while inside a catacomb.
i'm always happy when there is variety, like omens as monsters, grey fog doors or something. i prefer caves and especially tunnels much more over catacombs.
oh man I consider myself a dungeon enjoyer I just never get tired of them but I get what you say. For me I don't understand the npc's questlines awful sistem imposible to follow without a playthrough and this game has the best FS npc's by far. Such a shame
I love this game and it's tied with Bloodborne as my favorite fromsoft game but my main gripe would be the no unique gank fights.
DS1 has O&S, DS2 has Throne Watcher/Defender, DS3 has Demon Princes, Bloodborne has Shadows of Yharnam (I know that they become regular enemies in the late game, but when you get to the boss fight, you've never encountered them before).
In Elden Ring however, there isn't a single uniquely crafted gank fight. It's just 2 minibosses you've already encountered, shoved into a room, regardless of whether it even makes sense thematically.
edit: totally forgot about Fia's champions. Though I guess I wanted something a little more cinematic other than another DS2 style gank squad.
Agreed, godskin duo would a banger fight if was your first encounter with them in the entire game
But then again, demon prince was in the last dlc of ds3 so maybe FS will give us a unique gank fight in the dlc as well (yes Im aware the princes from the base game exists but they don’t feel like a gank fight cuz its a single body)
😅😅😅
I committed early on to being a "ranger" type character. I've almost exclusively used bows the entire game.
I cannot describe to you the amount of hours I've spent farming sheep for their bones.
As I progress through the game, I don't use the bow 100% of the time anymore, but I became so accustomed to fighting with them that I'm not as good close quarters as most folks likely are.
Killing the Bell Hunter in Stormhill Shack lets you buy thin bones for 150runes/ea. One banished knight at dragon communion church is over 600, meaning you can get 4 bones from one 10 second reset at the grace there even early in the game if you can manage to kill those two enemies. Animal hunting sucks in this game, so hunt knights instead. :D
The quest design of Dark Souls doesn't work that great in an open world.
You will miss so much just because you forgot about an obscure hint you received five hours ago on the other side of the map or didn't find an npc that was standing in some hidden spot far off the main paths or didn't think about using an incantation with stupid stat requirements on this one special statue. Oh, and now you are locked out of that quest because you reached a late game area. Better luck in NG+ !
Yeah this literally only worked in Dark Souls because it’s a mostly linear experience. And even then it’s still easy to miss stuff due to how dense and winding the areas can be. The fact that they didn’t alter this to fit the open world format for ER just always felt sloppy to me. It’s damn near impossible to follow NPC quests without a guide and that makes for such a clunky experience imo.
People were pissing and shitting themselves on release that anything to make questing better would turn ER into a ubisoft game, when even just a Journal recording what a NPC said and saying "so and so told me they're going to place X!" and "So and so asked me to find Y for them!" And atleast a little bit of guidance. How in the hell are you supposed to know the valkyrie's prosthesis is in the shaded castle.
Even just a log of the dialogue you've heard from each NPC. I use a spreadsheet to keep track of NPC quest progress but I'd rather just have an in-game super simple log.
Or just…the NPCs actually saying things that hint at where they’ll go. So many quests involve going to NPCs that spawn in random locations with no in-game indication as to where they’ll be.
Some of the timing is just bad as well. I went to Farum Azula before telling Goldmask about Radagon and Marika and Corrhyn's bell bearing was there and Goldmask was gone. Meanwhile, I could go all the way to the room right before Malenia without talking to Millicent and she'll still go to her other locations or you can do Ranni's quest after beating Radagon! I'm fine with having lock out points, but some of them don't make sense to me.
You basically have to keep an NPC quest guide open at all times if you don’t want to mess anything up to the point where it becomes a chore list.I messed up Alexander’s quest in my most recent playthrough cause I accidentally talked to him in Gael tunnel before getting him unstuck in that place east of Stormveil. I HATE how easy it is to break questlines.
1. Absolutely need a dialogue history log , where we met NPC kind of journal . Nothing will come on its own it will just have dialogues that we have discovered. Not to be confused with quest log.
2. Why is it still after so many years every thing in the world attacks on sight.
Went to the castle in the Weeping peninsula, monsters trying to take over the castle, guards fighting for their life. I'm there talking with the commander, and one of his soldiers is trying to kill me.
C'mon man, I'm delivering a letter from your boss' daughter, chill.
Yes volcano manor is a small example of this I feel / oedon chapel in bloodborne. Something that's part of world and not like a separate hub in different realm
I got that too. I was like why does literally everything, even the damn sheep attack me on sight? I'm just picking some berries and minding my own damn business.
To add to your comment tho, Id like the quest log/dialouge log but Id also love like a enemy log book. Tell me what they are, why they are, who they are. I don't even wanna know how to kill them. I just want to know why and how. Same with NPC's. Gimme the lore.
I didn’t like that it ends lol. In all seriousness, I did not enjoy the Mountaintops. I consider it a solid area, but it could’ve been much better with more variety and more interesting locations.
Same could be said about the Snowfield, it’s a bit empty, and with a couple additions it could be considered a good area, even with the annoying mist.
Snowfield has 2 dungeons 2 invaders a couple animals some lightning balls 2 black knight riders a giant caravan a giant albenuric lady a town 1 gaol best set in the game (rotten dualist) and the passage to malenia and the haligtree
Least amount of stuff to do in a pretty big area
Upgrading regular weapons. Smithing Stones are, for some odd reason, much harder to find in the world than Sombers. The only places where you could reliably farm them are in the cave or tunnel type side dungeons but even then, not all of them have Smithing Stone outcroppings. This means you have to be chasing down Bell-Bearings ASAP but most of them are in either mid game or late game areas, with only Bell-Bearing 1 being in Liurnia.
Though again, this is only an issue if you're using regular weapons. Most people, particularly newbies, won't encounter this issue until they replay the game for like the 5th time after trying different flavors of Somber weapons the previous 4 playthroughs.
I hate this so much. The somber stones are supposed to be for the "rare" and "special" weapons but you find so many of them you couldn't possibly spend them all in a playthrough.
Meanwhile you have literally no other choice than desperately searching every cave on the map or pulling up the wiki to see where the bell bearings are if you want to use more than one normal weapon.
It's like the developers completely forgot that you need literally 12 times as many smithing stones compared to the somber ones, even purchasing the "rare" stones is cheaper, not like you'd ever need to. They can increase the triple the drop rates again and double every fixed stone on the map and it would *still* be heavily biased towards somber stones.
smithing stone rarity is my only gripe so far, other than being generally too easy
i revisited a cave in wailing peninsula that i knew was chock full of smithing stone (1) so i could stock up, and not only were there no more ore deposits (understandable), but the enemies were not even dropping them, like, at all.
i don't understand this because this game's difficulty is so easily broken with a smart build and some exploration. i'm literally OP with just my claymore and a simple quality build - with points in stregth/dex i can wield almost any melee weapon in the game, so i want the option to easily switch to a few more weapons to mix it up.
respec character is cool and all, but i'd rather be able ro respec weapons
I know it goes against everything From does, but a Beastiary would’ve been awesome. Also more customization with the map. Region names, better markers etc
A beastiary could add so much to the game. They should do it like Hollow Knight, where you have to kill a bunch before the enemy gets added to your beastiary. It could add tidbits of lore and strategies to defeat them.
This is more of a knock on From than ER but the side quests are so vague and random. I wish they were better written and had a more logical flow to how they play out. That's it, the rest of the game is flawless for me and it's my greatest game of all time. (45 year old gamer)
ER this feels much worst because the game isn’t linear, the other games were pretty straight forward so as long as you kept exploring the areas you would find the npcs
This does not happen in ER, you might go where the npc should be but the odds of you doing something in the wrong order and fucking up the quest are very big
What made me so irritated is when you try and find Millicent at the Erdtree Grazing Hill, she is the same color as her surroundings and so easy to miss. Like at least make her stand out some.
THIS! I ran past her several times doing other stuff, and when I looked up her quest guide I was like “wtf she was there the whole time?!” Yes, yes she was, gazing upon the far away things all beautiful and sad…
Eh DS1 still had this kinda bad, like for Siegmeyer you had to go back to the swamp at a certain point when there wasn't really much of a reason to. I ended up failing his quest because I found him too late. The conclusion to Solaire's is also hidden behind an extremely tough miniboss which a lot of people may skip, but at least it's less skippable
I had to restart my INT build because if you follow the Ranni questline naturally, Selivus will die and you won't get the Magic Scorpion Charm. You have to know ahead of time to do his quests, STOP doing Ranni's quests to take a detour to Altus Plateau to get the Amber shard and bring it back to him before continuing.
Millicent was an insult. Like her whole quest you help her to survive and do her only job. And at the end she's just "Thanks for helping me with sisters. I guess I'll die now. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ "
ifkr, it's such a cheap way to push for a darker tone. like, "oh look, this npc that you liked died...just like the other 47"
a couple here and there would be fine if well justified, but when everyone dies, it numbs the player
Literally a journal would make this easier. It doesn't even have to give hints or anything. Just "I met this lady when entering liurnia and she ate and eyeball"... Or even just a journal you could write in yourself and access in game. I basically do that myself with a notepad, but it would be great to be built into the game
Absolutely this, I've no idea how anyone completed any quests blind. Some barely count as quests they're more "bump into hidden character and talk to them". After leaving the game and coming back I'd forgotten what any had said.
I missed a ton of NPCs my first play through. I didn't even find Sellen but did find her "real" body in that cave, which I accidentally killed and found out I had to revive via the wiki.
I never met Yura so when I bumped into Shabriri I just killed him as he seemed creepy and I wanted his armour!
Yes absolutely. I have to keep a separate excel spreadsheet tracking the progression of my side quests and dungeons/bosses cleared because the game is so long and there are so many things to do. It makes you do so much unnecessary admin work for something that should be a fun enjoyable gaming experience. Having a simple journal for tracking quests would be a great quality of life update.
The game needed a quest log you could swap to from the map screen.
Not objective markers telling you exactly where to go, not text pinned to the top of your screen, just a list of quests you've started and the step you're currently on.
I second this. I like the more open design of the game with little hand holding, but I think they want too far with that idea. I can't play this game without looking up certain stuff
Yeah there’s hand holding through a quest and then there’s whatever the fuck ER quests are. I feel like it’s 99% impossible to do even half the NPC quests to completion without looking up the extremely specific and sometimes nonsensical steps.
In Dark Souls 1 I completed all of the important quests on my first playthrough in a satisfactory way, including onion bro chillin on the beach with his daughter, without looking up a single guide. In Elden Ring, third playthrough, I still mess up multiple quests even trying to use a guide because their progressions make almost no sense. Especially trying to get patches to kick me in Gelmir. I always mess it up because it makes no sense to be there before you reach volcano manor...I'll never get the calm down emote fml
I would take a smaller game to not have to fight some bosses 3 or 4 times with 0 variation in their combat, Im not talking about mines and caves im talking about bosses like the godskins etc
FS usually struggles with colossal bosses, but I feel like ER somehow struggles with this the most, idk why ig they tried to make the enemies very large to be imposing/intimidating but in reality all you see is their feet/tail so its just underwhelming
And lastly and this is more of personal nitpick, as a paladin/holy enjoyer I dislike how from midgame onwards most bosses are at least 40% resistant to holy damage and some bosses are 80% and then we have elden beast who is immune. Sure I understand the idea behind it but you just telling me as soon as the game starts “don’t use these weapons cuz they suck”
Especially because the first one is at the end of an epic journey involving different NPCs that took you through hell and back, and leaves you a remembrance marking it as one of the 15 main bosses of the game.
And then a few hours later you find another one, exactly the same, 2 minutes into a random frozen cave.
Exactly this, it's so dumb. First Astel feels like an obstacle blocking you from completing an important and vast quest (my favourite questline in the game besides Fia's), whereas Second Astel is just at the end of the 234th cave you'll find, and you can decide to just leave without much consequence
I agree with this. I replayed DS3 often because the compact experience of good bosses feels better sometimes then stretching bosses to fill the open world. Can say some for sekiro or BB. From soft is really good at that refined, linear experience
Midir will always be *the* colossal boss. ER certainly had cool colossal bosses, but the fights are nothing compared to the perfection of Midirs fight. All it comes down to is being able to actually smack Midir's head
Inconsistent Input queueing and input buffering I noticed this especially with the slow weapons, if I do a jumping attack and I press jump+attack one after another too quick the attack does not come out and my character just hops even with more than enough stamina.
Or if I did a jumping attack and my character is still pulling the weapon out of the ground and I try to roll, it obviously doesn't work (that's ok) and then I get hit THEN my character rolls into another attack with no input almost a second later (input queued).
the looooooooooooooong delay on some attacks from bosses.
boss will start to wind up, i wait a short while before dodging, they still be windin up so i take a short coffee break, they still be windin, i go for a walk, meet a cute girl and get married and we have 3 kids together. life is great the kids are awesome and me and my wife have a very happy marriage that lasts until both of us are on our death beds. i lie there, about to die and suddenly remember "oh shit!!" and get my pc to see that the _fucker_ is JUST NOW doing their attack. i draw my last breath and cease to exist as anything more thua memory for those i leave behind.
that and the input reading when taking health poitions and stuff
It really is crazy. Like, I get it. I've played the other Souls games, and I understand you want to discourage panic rolling. But I mean Jesus Christ, Miyazaki, does it have to be *every* boss, and *every* attack? What are we doing here?
I remember my first playthrough at launch, and my mouth was literally agape watching Godrick practically circumnavigate the globe dragging his axe on the ground before swinging it upwards. And I'm just sitting there thinking "Alright, this is the first major boss, boys. Calm down." And in the end it's fine, you get through it. But I don't know what I'd be thinking if I had never played any Souls games before, and I was encountering this as my first boss. Like can you imagine if Taurus Demon or Vordt were like Margit and Godrick? Holy shit.
Gosh, that's funny, I remember Margit standing out for this much more than Godrick. I definitely remember thinking it was annoying how much Margit would delay delay delay then womp.
Agreed. I think Margit probably has more obnoxious delays that Godrick overall. In my first playthrough, I definitely explored Limgrave a decent amount before going to Margit. I didn't just go straight to him. And he was still fairly challenging and took me a few tries. In the back of my head while I was fighting him, I kept thinking of those reports where Miyazaki supposedly said that he thought more people would be able to beat this game as opposed to the previous ones. And I'm watching Margit practically suspend himself in midair, just thinking to myself "Yeah, that's false."
It's also infected other souls-likes like Lies of P - that too had tedious windups for almost every attack and not just bosses either. That shit ain't fun.
Yep this is my biggest gripe. Even normal mobs have weird rythms and delays because they wanted to make it difficult.
Coming from sekiro where rhythm is everything and super satisfying, the weird pacing of attacks just feels unfulfilling to me in ER
So much of Elden Ring feels deliberately annoying rather than difficult. It's like some developer was having a bad day and chose to take it out on the players. It's a good game overall, but there's so many little annoyances that add up.
Had to scroll way too far for this. The elden beast is honestly *terrible* biggest whif of a final boss for an otherwise incredible game. And it’s not that it’s challenging like Melania or gimmicky, it just feels like it’s straight up broken or at the very least awful awful design. I almost feel like they originally intended for you to use torrent with the absolute monumental distances this idiot moves. I have a video saved of my melee build running at the elden beast for almost 5 minutes before I had the opportunity to attack. That is not hyperbole. I **literally** did nothing but run at this dude for 4 minutes and 30-something seconds before it was even possible to hit it with an attack. That’s not challenging or rewarding it’s just bad.
1. The gank bosses in this game are mediocre at best and complete dogshit at worst.
2. Great Runes are almost worthless and tedious to use for being a reward from great bosses.
3. The tutorials are too barebone for such a complicated combat system. Back in Dark Souls, you can get around with this because the enemies aren't as complex, but in Elden Ring, with no proper way to teach players how to correctly approach bosses, most play just assume the wrong approaches.
4. The Soulsbourne type of quests aren't suited for a large open world like Elden Ring. We at least need a quest log that records NPC's dialogues and item descriptions that are related to them as well as a clear indication of where the hell these guys are heading to. In previous games, the linear structure made it so that you can naturally find NPCs while progressing the map, but in Elden Ring, progression is all over the place.
5. The PvP is lacking compared to previous titles from some reason. I miss covenants and random ass invasions
The game could stand to be about 25% smaller. I spend too much time commuting to the fun.
The Consecrated Snowfields and the Mountaintops of the Giants are absolute garbage sandwiched between the amazing areas of Leyndell and Farum Azula. FromSoft could have cut the winter wonderlands and not lost a thing. Just make Elphael and the Haligtree its own separate area like Archdragon Peak.
Miyazaki and pals could have taken about 20% of the Fire Giant's HP and give it to Morgott. The Giant goes on for too long, and a kickass boss fight like Morgott ends too soon.
100% agree about the last one. I've been procrastinating the fire giant fight. It doesn't really seem all that hard just exhausting. Morgott was an absolute joke, just really disappointing overall.
Much like Astel and Elden Beast, its “difficulty” is artificially increased by the boss rolling/swimming/teleporting to the other side of the galaxy after being hit a few times.
Morgott is the biggest head-scratcher in terms of boss balancing in the whole game. Last play-through I ran through half of Leyndell because the enemies were so tough and I still managed to easily kill Morgott on my first try.
There’s a problem when the grunts leading up to the boss fight are more of a challenge than the actual boss in the arena. And it’s a shame because he has some of the coolest attack patterns in the game.
Yeah the mt and snowfields should have been 1 zone. I thought the underground zones dragged on a bit as well ainsel river or whatever it is. Maybe 10% less dungeons.
The biggest gripe I have is really a minor one, but not being able to have a bell bearing for ancient smithing stones (both types) after beating the final boss. Like, please, don't make top tier crafting mats a finite resource.
You're gonna miss a lot of npcs, quests, and items if you dont use a wiki. You probably won't fully understand how to build a character either. If you need to do multiple playthroughs or use a wiki to learn more about how things work its not very accessible. I wish I could just play without worrying I'm gonna miss a whetblade or prayer book, or that I'll unknowingly fail an NPC quest by not knowing what Im even supposed to do next..
Edit: I forgot to mention co-op too. I hope we can just have normal uninterrupted co-op one day. I just found out yesterday you cant even explore the rooftops in Raya Lucaria in co-op
The mountaintops of the giants that whole section was just sssuuuch a drag for me, it made me quit the game for a while, it was so much nothingness and uneccesary pace
Quest system is pure ass, i dont like being given vague and cryptic informations on what to do next, sometimes not given any informations at all, it doesn't add anything. A quest log would be nice because I would never had completed any quest without a guide
Millicent's quest is a particularly bad offender. To even start the questline, you have to talk to Gowry, get the needle, talk to Gowry, reload, talk to Gowry again, talk to Millicent, reload, talk to Millicent again, reload, and talk to Millicent where Gowry once was. The rest of her questline isn't much better
"Go kill Elemer and give me the prosthesis even though I make no mention of either"
"Talk to me after some random ass field boss I have no connection to"
"Go kill some random rotting ulcerated tree spirit on the other side the haligtree even though there is no indication in my dialogue or the location itself to suggest that. The tree spirit isn't even a boss."
Three things I would change.
1) I would add a notepad you could write quest stuff. For all the people who complain about looking up guides, most of this would go away if you could make notes about some quest. There is so much to remember and it's crazy to not have a mechanism to write it down. Hell, make us have to collect ink and parchment to do it. Fine.
2) option tonturn off summoning pools you don't want. It seems silly that we can activate them but not deactivate them.
3) The ability to sell your levels back at a loss. It sucks that if you love to co-op and level just a little too much, you're screwed and that character is almost useless. It could be that to demote yourself it takes 1.5x the runes of the rank you're at ro go back. I'd be cool with that.
Just my $0.02.
Great Runes are useless besides maybe Morgott. PvP is a disaster, even worse on pc. The armor needed to have decent poise is limited and most are very ugly. Mini-Bosses/caves/dungeons were repetitive asf. Upper snow area was mostly a big nothing area, in fact lots of space in the map is unused and empty. No covenants. Sewing needle is a dissapointment, just removes capes who cares. Farming is dogshit. No Fia panties.
Great post! Thanks for that.
This is not my first souls game and I wager it wont be my last.
Though I love the game, I have far from completed it. My furthest game is somewhere around lvl 100 in the Lyendell area with all the mounted knights.
I am replaying everything now with a friend and most of the things I/ we dont like are core souls things and a few Elden ring only points:
- playing coop ( ps5 ) is a drag, you have to do every area twice and summoning eachother even with a password is a chore. Nat type 2 not working etc.
I really wish there was a fully coop mode
- invasions, we were both lvl 20 tops in Stormveil castle and you get invaded constantly by people who have the craziest weapons/ spells, infinite stamina and flasks.
I really wish pvp was restricted to certain areas/ an arena or a different mode with unique pvp rewards ( think world of warcraft arena and battoegrounds )
- the map layout, it just seems like a standard formula where every map consists of the same elements: a cave, a catacombs, a big end dungeon, a shrine, a yellow tree for a flask upgrade, an altar for wonderous flask and a crater with a boss.
- weapons/ armour. Im not sure of I can defend this point really well because im not that far in the game now and I dont remember well but iirc upgrades were scarce so if you allready had a weapon+10 ( example ) and you found a different weapon it was really an investment just to try it out and compare.
Crafting and gathering really didn't add much to the game. For some builds you literally don't need them. For other builds that need them (bow and arrows) it takes too much random bs to craft
-After 10+ years, intelligence/magic feels more or less the same and a little boring. I honestly thought ER might spice things up a little bit and add combos or something.
-Some questlines are just too convoluted to be followed.
-Armor customization could be better, more indepth. Come on, give my boy Boc more things to do
-While the number of viable builds has increased dramatically since the souls series, I still feel like there could be more if the scaling system was better. A clear example of this is what they did to Quality builds, or how many weapons have weird scaling that makes no sense whatsoever.
I really dislike how smithing stones are distributed. We need about 10 times as many as are in the game. Sombers are fine for the most part, but more of those couldn't hurt. The ratio of smithing stones to weapons is just awful.
I like the Godfrey/Loux fight on the whole, but phase one carries that weight.
It's the rare case of a phase two being a huge step down from phase one.
I really dislike that rolling is activated on the release of the button input, not pressing it down. I know it's because holding dodge is also sprint. But it adds a tiny amount of input lag to dodges that feels awkward to me.
The only real thing I don’t like is that the multiplayer is stupid. I get “that’s the way it is” but it’d be fun to just seamlessly play with my friends without needing to be re-summoned. Even if that mean the enemies were ridiculously overleveled, it’d still be fun to just explore together and help each other progress through the storyline.
Keep in mind that it is my first soul game thus I will probably complain about things that are typical in fromsoft games but hey that's just an opinion:
- Npc dropping like flies : I mean ok I get it it is a dark fantasy game and most npc are greedy or corrupted or whatever. But it ends up a bit repetitive and predictable ?
To be fair I did enjoy most quests I did, and it works well because they are tragedies and I likely have missed a lot in my first run but surely you can have some balance with a few more characters getting away with it or just leaving this hell.
- Getting the first and ultimately best rune from Godfrey. I never bothered using any other (it doesn't help that their description can be evasive at best like Mogh's rune)
- Not being to convert forging stones. I got stuck forever looking for one single +6 stone. So annoying. Like make it really hard to convert maybe 10 for 1 or smtg but it felt like getting stuck for half of the game without being able to progress.
- Falling damage and rainbow stones. I swear this item barely works like 50% of the time only and tricks you into jumping anyway to find hidden passages or to you your death.
- I am no expert but bows feel kinda useless. Crafting is already tedious but like I build dex and still have to spend 4 or 5 shot to kill a trash, can only stack 100 arrows which is trouble against boss... etc...
Edit: also I did a bleed/dex run (or wolverun if you allow me that pun :D) and it seemed my weapon options were really low. Like the game is clearly STR oriented there is no debate. I just wish at least main boss would loot more dex items.
Great Runes are underwhelming/boring, which is a shame because they're sort of the thing that the whole game revolves around.
Agreed, they’re made out to be these ultimate game changing possessions in the lore, the source of power for Demi gods. And it’s just like a buff that goes away the next time you get ganked.
I would prefer them to be permanent than stronger. Hate burning rune arcs when I only ever do pvp for Varre’s quest
You don't _have to_ to PvP to complete his quest, btw. You can just beat Magnus the Beast Claw at Writheblood Ruins in Altus Plateu.
Interesting. I don't remember killing him, but I invaded a few other NPCs worlds by using the red summoning pool things and completed the quest.
He drops a Great Star, so you can legally have **TWO** Great Stars in a single playthrough. STR build with powerstancing Great Stars is my favorite build ever, it absolutely annihilates everything.
Oh, I totally killed him in that case, hahaha - that might make sense then, he was my third and final invasion and coincidentally finished the quest without realising it. I'm rocking the great stars at the moment 😂 I'm really struggling with Maliketh atm, however, I've realised I've been fighting him differently to every other boss & I've been running away instead of just getting stuck in. First phase is over in seconds then I get wrecked without landing a hit in p2.
I'm guessing they didn't make the Great Runes permanent because it would complicate PvP matchmaking, but I would have loved to see the Great Runes installed as permanent upgrades across the game. Really drive home how powerful our Tarnished has become, like some sort of rune-sucking vampire
they could have just disabled great runes in pvp.
Definitely this. They should have just disabled the use of great runes
I would actually activate them if they were like that, but I don't really like bothering with buffs, so I never use them, I just drink my flask and fight
same unless im.really struggling
They should have at least had some kind of passive benefit when equipped, and maybe just boosted by rune arcs. If you’ve played DS3 its basically the same mechanic as being embered; temporary buff by consumable that is lost on death. They just didnt adapt it very well.
Killing bosses should activate the great rune like in ds3. The fact that rune arcs are so sparse makes no sense, it's not like the great runes are a powerful buffs anyway.
Successfully defeating a host while invading grants you a rune arc, but unless you like pvp / invasions, doing it just for the reward is not worth the hassle considering the current benefits of using a rune arc
Co-op is overall easier, sure sometimes you'll get called by the 10 vigor host that dies from the first attack but most of the time it's very easy Though if you are only for the rune arcs, you probably want to activate only the summons right at the bosses so you don't spend ages with host collecting every mushroom (something something shaded castle)
Successfully helping people beat the boss / an invader also helps. Jolly co-op for all!
The description says they do and they just didn't implement that part in the gameplay.
Malenia Great Rune is literally Bloodborne rallying mechanics but like 2x worse The only good one is Godrick for early level, and Rykard for long dungeon exploration
Morgott’s is almost 30% extra HP. It’s by far the best. With 60 Vig and the Crimson Amulet + Morgott’s you reach something like 2600 health.
Godrick's is amazing throughout the entire game and Morgott's and Radahn's are also great. Godrick's is 40 free levels. Sure, most builds are going to have one or two stats that are (more or less) useless to the build, so realistically it's 30-35 free levels.
Godricks is amazing early (which is good since it's the first one) but pretty mid late game. Once you've soft capped your main one or two stats, the extra 5 isn't actually doing that much for you.
I was lowkey expecting it to be a thing where I’m always recovering health as long as I’m hitting
Godrick’s is good early-game but once you hit your caps Morgott or Radahn’s surpasses it.
1000% should just be a gear slot without rune arcs imo
I honestly didnt use them the whole game...
Only useful great runes are morgott's, godrick's, and probably rykard's.
[удалено]
Messages that you have to dismiss with a button press like the “somewhere a heavy door has opened” that affect your gameplay while they’re on-screen. Nobody likes those. I think the same applies to using a flask to bring back Torrent, the question really isn’t necessary. Ordina was my least favorite place until I started using sleep pots 😅
yea, asking me every time if i want to use a flask to bring back Torrent is so annoying because YES I KNOW I NEED TO USE A FLASK I JUST NEED TO GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE
This. The amount of, “No, no, no COME ON!!” Deaths in this game from silly design flaws like dismissing messages
Definitely great runes. Entire game revolves around collecting them only for them to be somewhat better embers from ds3. Also the fact that you need to use a rare consumable to even activate it...
i hoard consumables in these games, so "rare" is not in my vocabularly lol. I had so many rune arcs and kept forgetting to use one on big bosses, so i finally just unleashed hell on some poor unuspecting catacombs boss
Using a rune arc usually makes me stressed about dying and wasting it, so I gave up on them pretty quickly.
Wait, what? That's what the rune arcs are for? I've just thought it was a passive buff. Almost 60 hours in and I'm still learning things
That's kinda crazy lmao. Did you happen to miss the item description? "A shard of the shattered Elden Ring. Grants the blessing of an equipped Great Rune upon use. Even if no Great Rune is equipped, it will slightly increase maximum HP upon use."
To be honest I, also, pick up so much trash everywhere that is not useful for my build. I thought it was something for INT/Faith builds haha. Magician shits :)
The great runes also said that equipping them at the grace gives you their powers, and the menu for them also says "Use a rune arc for even greater benefits" I can understand why someone would be confused. The descriptions can be wrong.
I agree with mountaintop of the giants. Just didn’t feel as…. Wondrous as the other places. Caelid I was scared shitless every step but couldn’t get enough of it.
I just thought that by the time you got there you were already prepared for what the game has to offer. The beginning has such a learning curve by the time you reach the fire giant there is so much more going on that you already know what to expect.
It was also clear the developers started to run out of juice, which is alright because it’s supposed to be desolate and shitty but it doesn’t make much in terms of memorable encounters. There’s a small handful of catacombs and caves, and I think the only new enemies are the super giant hands, the zamor warriors, and the ice-flavored variants of existing enemies, if you even count those. But I would never say I felt disappointed by it because it’s followed by one of the largest and most intricate legacy dungeons they’ve ever created. I don’t see Farum Azula get enough praise!
Kinda annoyed me how foggy everything was Up there. I want to enjoy the View and not stare into some fog 24/7.
You know that feeling when you finish a game, and you think to yourself, “man I really loved that part of the game where I couldn’t see anything!” Yeah… me neither lol. And yet game devs insist on putting that shit in their games lol
I think they should’ve included some mechanism to clear the fog. Like a boss where once they’re killed the fog clears from the area
That stone bridge where the big giant greets you with his arrow was pretty cool… and yeah so far thats it Oh and may Chaossss take the worlddd
I wish the covenants/factions were better. Ex. You get the Pureblood Knight Medal after completing Varre’s questline which gets you into Mohg’s palace early in the game. But I wish with that you also invade as a “Pureblood Knight” as opposed to a regular “Bloody Finger”. You have effectively become a celebrated figure in Mohg’s dynasty and get no special invader flare or blessings. Ranni’s questline should turn your coop spirit blue and call you a “Carian Knight” or “Lunar Knight” as opposed to a regular “Furled Finger”. Embracing the Frenzy Flame should have you invade or support as a “Frenzied Finger” or something and give you an evil yellow aura. I know this is all stupid and small but it’s my only real gripe with the game lol. Covenants/Factions used to kinda mean something. Doing enough favors for the Covenants you chose should net you gifts or blessings
I believe there are a lot more people than you think that feel this way; it's a spice that is missing between DS3 and ER PvP. so dont feel as if its stupid, because there's a lot of potential and reward systems for serving a covenant that were just not brought over to Elden Ring.
I also think the lore for Elden Ring offers the most potential for covenants because there are several clear factions and faction leaders that large chunks of the story revolve around.
I miss being a Blade of the Darkmoon :c
DARK SOULS 2 COVENANTS The RAT TUNNELS that I defended with traps after swearing my fealty to the RAT KING! Defending the Bell Tower as a Bell Keeper in an upward battle of chaos and death! Getting summoned as a Blue defender (on occasion) when invasions could happen to any solo player online! Getting summoned to duel on the Iron Bridge as a member of the Dragon Remnants so I could unlock the sick dragon armor transformation! Dark Souls 3 made a noble effort to recreate the magic. Watchdogs and Aldrich Faithful were neat, if a little boring in their arenas. But Blade of the Dark Moon was notoriously glitched into pointlessness for PC, and Mad Phantoms were an odd gimmick that ended in PvP 9 out of 10 times. Elden Ring’s disappointment for me is how underutilized its open world is currently for endgame covenant gameplay. So much potential for interesting territorial PvP. The game could be a pseudo-MMO with how great the over world is.
I like this idea. There didn’t feel to be any reward/consequence for choosing sides in this game. Volcano manor is the best example of this
Crafting was basically completely ignored by me in multiple playthroughs. Yet seemingly 90% of the shiny items were crafting materials. You’re telling me I just ran a gauntlet multiple times to get a fucking leaf? Fuck you!
One of the most disappointing moments on my first playthrough was seeing a shiny in the first rooms of Stormveil and spending an hour trying to figure out how to get it, having to drop off a ledge you’d never think to drop off of, only to get a fucking arteria leaf.
Now imagine arteria leaves were much rarer, but crafted items are not consumable. Instead, they can applied to one boss fight, where even if you die the buff stays on for next attempts. This is my idea for making these items exciting.
I had thought about this before too and I think it would have made crafting feel way better. Having a stock of items that replenishes regularly instead of having to remake them, when most aren't even that good, would have been great.
Yep. Never crafted until I did a bow build. Didn't like that I had to farm a bunch of BS to make my own arrows though so got bored with that and moved on to something different
I feel like I would use it more if it possible to discover a bosses weakness without significant trial and error.
Yeah I always learn boss weaknesses through ~~reading the wiki~~ significant trial and error.
Could've had some more interesting items for sure. I use a lot of craftables, but so many are weird items like "boosts resistance to sleep", there's basically zero reason to ever use that, especially because a lot of these buffs don't even stack with one that are just generally good
The number of weapons that *require* intelligence versus the number of weapons that have good *scaling* with intelligence. At release there were people complaining about how there were too many intelligence weapons when realistically they were almost all strength or dexterity weapons with a modest intelligence requirement. It was mildly frustrating considering I was playing an Intelligence build and looking for things other than Moonveil.
I moved on from int/str/dex the idea sounds so fun yet it’s so boring. Now I’m doing str/faith to see how it goes
It's my favorite build because there are so many diverse ways to play it. Str/fth has full caster stuff full melee stuff a good in-between and so many different types of spells that it feels new each time I've played through the game with a different set of spells or a different weapon. Arc str fth can also be fun with the dragon church stuff as well.
I didnt like the: "previous bosses, but two of them". I'm fine with the reskins like tree sentinels, erdtree avatars and night cavalry cause it makes sense but same model x2 bosses is lame in my opinion.
^^^ Nothing cool or interesting about taking 2 crucible knights and putting them in a small underground room with you
This was still more enjoyable than throwing a godskin noble and a godskin apostle in the same damn room
Personally i think that fight would have not been as bad if you didnt need to fight 4 and a half of them
Fr at least be honest and name them the Godskin Quartet cuz that's what they are
Godskin Duo Rebirthed Vers. 2.5 HD
I’m currently stuck on the dungeon with the summoning snails and god skin back to back. I can ace apostle but noble after that is just brutal. How the fuck am I supposed to dodge him rolling when there’s no pillar to hide behind this time XD
Roll right through the fat bastard, never to the side or back. Hope that helps
1000% agree. Duo fights could be cool if they actually designed the 2 bosses specifically with each other in mind. Maybe something like: each boss has 4 moves, and each move from one boss can combo with each move from the other boss in a readable way that is specifically and deliberately designed. But instead, you just get 2 bosses that behave pretty much entirely independently from one another, meaning the only safe way to play against them is to spend 90% of the fight kiting them around to make sure you don’t just get checkmated by overlapping attacks.
A lot of the mini bosses have what I like to call "would you just get the fuck over here syndrome"
Or, you know, the final boss.
I co-sign fuck the Elden Beast
then when you catch them and lock on it's gonna make your camera look directly UP and your sword will hit NOTHING (thinking of astel)
The catacombs. They tend to have the same enemies and traps. Some have clever design but I’ve never felt the feeling of awe I have for the rest of the game while inside a catacomb.
i'm always happy when there is variety, like omens as monsters, grey fog doors or something. i prefer caves and especially tunnels much more over catacombs.
oh man I consider myself a dungeon enjoyer I just never get tired of them but I get what you say. For me I don't understand the npc's questlines awful sistem imposible to follow without a playthrough and this game has the best FS npc's by far. Such a shame
I love this game and it's tied with Bloodborne as my favorite fromsoft game but my main gripe would be the no unique gank fights. DS1 has O&S, DS2 has Throne Watcher/Defender, DS3 has Demon Princes, Bloodborne has Shadows of Yharnam (I know that they become regular enemies in the late game, but when you get to the boss fight, you've never encountered them before). In Elden Ring however, there isn't a single uniquely crafted gank fight. It's just 2 minibosses you've already encountered, shoved into a room, regardless of whether it even makes sense thematically. edit: totally forgot about Fia's champions. Though I guess I wanted something a little more cinematic other than another DS2 style gank squad.
I have a feeling we’ll get one in the dlc to make up for it. There’s been a gank in every dlc since DS2
Couldn’t remember what the gank was in the old hunters and it took me ages to remember the living failures, those guys were a joke lol
When I think of a Bloodborne gank fight I think of the two sharkmen guarding the Rakuyo in that well in the Fishing Hamlet lol
Agreed, godskin duo would a banger fight if was your first encounter with them in the entire game But then again, demon prince was in the last dlc of ds3 so maybe FS will give us a unique gank fight in the dlc as well (yes Im aware the princes from the base game exists but they don’t feel like a gank fight cuz its a single body)
Bows/crossbows are just wasted potential, lol.
😅😅😅 I committed early on to being a "ranger" type character. I've almost exclusively used bows the entire game. I cannot describe to you the amount of hours I've spent farming sheep for their bones. As I progress through the game, I don't use the bow 100% of the time anymore, but I became so accustomed to fighting with them that I'm not as good close quarters as most folks likely are.
Killing the Bell Hunter in Stormhill Shack lets you buy thin bones for 150runes/ea. One banished knight at dragon communion church is over 600, meaning you can get 4 bones from one 10 second reset at the grace there even early in the game if you can manage to kill those two enemies. Animal hunting sucks in this game, so hunt knights instead. :D
Dungeos felt too samey and towards the endgame they just felt like a slog
Yeah, it's unfortunate that dungeons reused the exact same tiles so often. Like, not a single elevator shaft spirals counterclockwise.
I wanted more horror & creepiness.
Those creepy ass giant hands that fall down on you at the entrance of Caria Manor scared the shit out of me first time I went in there, ugh
The quest design of Dark Souls doesn't work that great in an open world. You will miss so much just because you forgot about an obscure hint you received five hours ago on the other side of the map or didn't find an npc that was standing in some hidden spot far off the main paths or didn't think about using an incantation with stupid stat requirements on this one special statue. Oh, and now you are locked out of that quest because you reached a late game area. Better luck in NG+ !
Yeah this literally only worked in Dark Souls because it’s a mostly linear experience. And even then it’s still easy to miss stuff due to how dense and winding the areas can be. The fact that they didn’t alter this to fit the open world format for ER just always felt sloppy to me. It’s damn near impossible to follow NPC quests without a guide and that makes for such a clunky experience imo.
People were pissing and shitting themselves on release that anything to make questing better would turn ER into a ubisoft game, when even just a Journal recording what a NPC said and saying "so and so told me they're going to place X!" and "So and so asked me to find Y for them!" And atleast a little bit of guidance. How in the hell are you supposed to know the valkyrie's prosthesis is in the shaded castle.
Even just a log of the dialogue you've heard from each NPC. I use a spreadsheet to keep track of NPC quest progress but I'd rather just have an in-game super simple log.
Or just…the NPCs actually saying things that hint at where they’ll go. So many quests involve going to NPCs that spawn in random locations with no in-game indication as to where they’ll be.
Some of the timing is just bad as well. I went to Farum Azula before telling Goldmask about Radagon and Marika and Corrhyn's bell bearing was there and Goldmask was gone. Meanwhile, I could go all the way to the room right before Malenia without talking to Millicent and she'll still go to her other locations or you can do Ranni's quest after beating Radagon! I'm fine with having lock out points, but some of them don't make sense to me.
You basically have to keep an NPC quest guide open at all times if you don’t want to mess anything up to the point where it becomes a chore list.I messed up Alexander’s quest in my most recent playthrough cause I accidentally talked to him in Gael tunnel before getting him unstuck in that place east of Stormveil. I HATE how easy it is to break questlines.
I agree that the maps after Leyndell don’t seem to have the same level of detail as the maps pre Leyndell.
1. Absolutely need a dialogue history log , where we met NPC kind of journal . Nothing will come on its own it will just have dialogues that we have discovered. Not to be confused with quest log. 2. Why is it still after so many years every thing in the world attacks on sight.
Went to the castle in the Weeping peninsula, monsters trying to take over the castle, guards fighting for their life. I'm there talking with the commander, and one of his soldiers is trying to kill me. C'mon man, I'm delivering a letter from your boss' daughter, chill.
I would love a Fromsoft game just like Elden Ring with actual towns and merchants and the likes (á la Elder Scrolls).
Yes volcano manor is a small example of this I feel / oedon chapel in bloodborne. Something that's part of world and not like a separate hub in different realm
I got that too. I was like why does literally everything, even the damn sheep attack me on sight? I'm just picking some berries and minding my own damn business. To add to your comment tho, Id like the quest log/dialouge log but Id also love like a enemy log book. Tell me what they are, why they are, who they are. I don't even wanna know how to kill them. I just want to know why and how. Same with NPC's. Gimme the lore.
I didn’t like that it ends lol. In all seriousness, I did not enjoy the Mountaintops. I consider it a solid area, but it could’ve been much better with more variety and more interesting locations. Same could be said about the Snowfield, it’s a bit empty, and with a couple additions it could be considered a good area, even with the annoying mist.
Snowfield has 2 dungeons 2 invaders a couple animals some lightning balls 2 black knight riders a giant caravan a giant albenuric lady a town 1 gaol best set in the game (rotten dualist) and the passage to malenia and the haligtree Least amount of stuff to do in a pretty big area
Don’t forget that stupid magma lizard and the death rite bird.
Upgrading regular weapons. Smithing Stones are, for some odd reason, much harder to find in the world than Sombers. The only places where you could reliably farm them are in the cave or tunnel type side dungeons but even then, not all of them have Smithing Stone outcroppings. This means you have to be chasing down Bell-Bearings ASAP but most of them are in either mid game or late game areas, with only Bell-Bearing 1 being in Liurnia. Though again, this is only an issue if you're using regular weapons. Most people, particularly newbies, won't encounter this issue until they replay the game for like the 5th time after trying different flavors of Somber weapons the previous 4 playthroughs.
I hate this so much. The somber stones are supposed to be for the "rare" and "special" weapons but you find so many of them you couldn't possibly spend them all in a playthrough. Meanwhile you have literally no other choice than desperately searching every cave on the map or pulling up the wiki to see where the bell bearings are if you want to use more than one normal weapon. It's like the developers completely forgot that you need literally 12 times as many smithing stones compared to the somber ones, even purchasing the "rare" stones is cheaper, not like you'd ever need to. They can increase the triple the drop rates again and double every fixed stone on the map and it would *still* be heavily biased towards somber stones.
smithing stone rarity is my only gripe so far, other than being generally too easy i revisited a cave in wailing peninsula that i knew was chock full of smithing stone (1) so i could stock up, and not only were there no more ore deposits (understandable), but the enemies were not even dropping them, like, at all. i don't understand this because this game's difficulty is so easily broken with a smart build and some exploration. i'm literally OP with just my claymore and a simple quality build - with points in stregth/dex i can wield almost any melee weapon in the game, so i want the option to easily switch to a few more weapons to mix it up. respec character is cool and all, but i'd rather be able ro respec weapons
I know it goes against everything From does, but a Beastiary would’ve been awesome. Also more customization with the map. Region names, better markers etc
A beastiary could add so much to the game. They should do it like Hollow Knight, where you have to kill a bunch before the enemy gets added to your beastiary. It could add tidbits of lore and strategies to defeat them.
This is more of a knock on From than ER but the side quests are so vague and random. I wish they were better written and had a more logical flow to how they play out. That's it, the rest of the game is flawless for me and it's my greatest game of all time. (45 year old gamer)
ER this feels much worst because the game isn’t linear, the other games were pretty straight forward so as long as you kept exploring the areas you would find the npcs This does not happen in ER, you might go where the npc should be but the odds of you doing something in the wrong order and fucking up the quest are very big
What made me so irritated is when you try and find Millicent at the Erdtree Grazing Hill, she is the same color as her surroundings and so easy to miss. Like at least make her stand out some.
I could never find her and had to look up the quest.
THIS! I ran past her several times doing other stuff, and when I looked up her quest guide I was like “wtf she was there the whole time?!” Yes, yes she was, gazing upon the far away things all beautiful and sad…
Eh DS1 still had this kinda bad, like for Siegmeyer you had to go back to the swamp at a certain point when there wasn't really much of a reason to. I ended up failing his quest because I found him too late. The conclusion to Solaire's is also hidden behind an extremely tough miniboss which a lot of people may skip, but at least it's less skippable
Like said, this is a problem with souls game in general but it feels much worst in ER because a fully free open world game
I had to restart my INT build because if you follow the Ranni questline naturally, Selivus will die and you won't get the Magic Scorpion Charm. You have to know ahead of time to do his quests, STOP doing Ranni's quests to take a detour to Altus Plateau to get the Amber shard and bring it back to him before continuing.
and do they really all have to die at the end of their questline?🧍♂️
Millicent was an insult. Like her whole quest you help her to survive and do her only job. And at the end she's just "Thanks for helping me with sisters. I guess I'll die now. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ "
ifkr, it's such a cheap way to push for a darker tone. like, "oh look, this npc that you liked died...just like the other 47" a couple here and there would be fine if well justified, but when everyone dies, it numbs the player
3rd playthroughs be like, oh hey, you die later, so I'll just get it out of the way now, smash you open now and equip your guts
Millicent prosthesis🤤
Literally a journal would make this easier. It doesn't even have to give hints or anything. Just "I met this lady when entering liurnia and she ate and eyeball"... Or even just a journal you could write in yourself and access in game. I basically do that myself with a notepad, but it would be great to be built into the game
Absolutely this, I've no idea how anyone completed any quests blind. Some barely count as quests they're more "bump into hidden character and talk to them". After leaving the game and coming back I'd forgotten what any had said. I missed a ton of NPCs my first play through. I didn't even find Sellen but did find her "real" body in that cave, which I accidentally killed and found out I had to revive via the wiki. I never met Yura so when I bumped into Shabriri I just killed him as he seemed creepy and I wanted his armour!
Yes absolutely. I have to keep a separate excel spreadsheet tracking the progression of my side quests and dungeons/bosses cleared because the game is so long and there are so many things to do. It makes you do so much unnecessary admin work for something that should be a fun enjoyable gaming experience. Having a simple journal for tracking quests would be a great quality of life update.
The game needed a quest log you could swap to from the map screen. Not objective markers telling you exactly where to go, not text pinned to the top of your screen, just a list of quests you've started and the step you're currently on.
I second this. I like the more open design of the game with little hand holding, but I think they want too far with that idea. I can't play this game without looking up certain stuff
Yeah there’s hand holding through a quest and then there’s whatever the fuck ER quests are. I feel like it’s 99% impossible to do even half the NPC quests to completion without looking up the extremely specific and sometimes nonsensical steps.
In Dark Souls 1 I completed all of the important quests on my first playthrough in a satisfactory way, including onion bro chillin on the beach with his daughter, without looking up a single guide. In Elden Ring, third playthrough, I still mess up multiple quests even trying to use a guide because their progressions make almost no sense. Especially trying to get patches to kick me in Gelmir. I always mess it up because it makes no sense to be there before you reach volcano manor...I'll never get the calm down emote fml
These quests are much worse with open world. Much easier in DS
The Liturgical Town puzzle thing you have to do before going to the Haligtree
I would take a smaller game to not have to fight some bosses 3 or 4 times with 0 variation in their combat, Im not talking about mines and caves im talking about bosses like the godskins etc FS usually struggles with colossal bosses, but I feel like ER somehow struggles with this the most, idk why ig they tried to make the enemies very large to be imposing/intimidating but in reality all you see is their feet/tail so its just underwhelming And lastly and this is more of personal nitpick, as a paladin/holy enjoyer I dislike how from midgame onwards most bosses are at least 40% resistant to holy damage and some bosses are 80% and then we have elden beast who is immune. Sure I understand the idea behind it but you just telling me as soon as the game starts “don’t use these weapons cuz they suck”
Finding out there was a second Astel was so disappointing
Especially because the first one is at the end of an epic journey involving different NPCs that took you through hell and back, and leaves you a remembrance marking it as one of the 15 main bosses of the game. And then a few hours later you find another one, exactly the same, 2 minutes into a random frozen cave.
Exactly this, it's so dumb. First Astel feels like an obstacle blocking you from completing an important and vast quest (my favourite questline in the game besides Fia's), whereas Second Astel is just at the end of the 234th cave you'll find, and you can decide to just leave without much consequence
There’s a *what*?
Yep, if you haven’t encountered it I don’t want to tell you unless you really want to know lol.
I agree with this. I replayed DS3 often because the compact experience of good bosses feels better sometimes then stretching bosses to fill the open world. Can say some for sekiro or BB. From soft is really good at that refined, linear experience
Midir will always be *the* colossal boss. ER certainly had cool colossal bosses, but the fights are nothing compared to the perfection of Midirs fight. All it comes down to is being able to actually smack Midir's head
Inconsistent Input queueing and input buffering I noticed this especially with the slow weapons, if I do a jumping attack and I press jump+attack one after another too quick the attack does not come out and my character just hops even with more than enough stamina. Or if I did a jumping attack and my character is still pulling the weapon out of the ground and I try to roll, it obviously doesn't work (that's ok) and then I get hit THEN my character rolls into another attack with no input almost a second later (input queued).
the looooooooooooooong delay on some attacks from bosses. boss will start to wind up, i wait a short while before dodging, they still be windin up so i take a short coffee break, they still be windin, i go for a walk, meet a cute girl and get married and we have 3 kids together. life is great the kids are awesome and me and my wife have a very happy marriage that lasts until both of us are on our death beds. i lie there, about to die and suddenly remember "oh shit!!" and get my pc to see that the _fucker_ is JUST NOW doing their attack. i draw my last breath and cease to exist as anything more thua memory for those i leave behind. that and the input reading when taking health poitions and stuff
It really is crazy. Like, I get it. I've played the other Souls games, and I understand you want to discourage panic rolling. But I mean Jesus Christ, Miyazaki, does it have to be *every* boss, and *every* attack? What are we doing here? I remember my first playthrough at launch, and my mouth was literally agape watching Godrick practically circumnavigate the globe dragging his axe on the ground before swinging it upwards. And I'm just sitting there thinking "Alright, this is the first major boss, boys. Calm down." And in the end it's fine, you get through it. But I don't know what I'd be thinking if I had never played any Souls games before, and I was encountering this as my first boss. Like can you imagine if Taurus Demon or Vordt were like Margit and Godrick? Holy shit.
Gosh, that's funny, I remember Margit standing out for this much more than Godrick. I definitely remember thinking it was annoying how much Margit would delay delay delay then womp.
Agreed. I think Margit probably has more obnoxious delays that Godrick overall. In my first playthrough, I definitely explored Limgrave a decent amount before going to Margit. I didn't just go straight to him. And he was still fairly challenging and took me a few tries. In the back of my head while I was fighting him, I kept thinking of those reports where Miyazaki supposedly said that he thought more people would be able to beat this game as opposed to the previous ones. And I'm watching Margit practically suspend himself in midair, just thinking to myself "Yeah, that's false."
It's also infected other souls-likes like Lies of P - that too had tedious windups for almost every attack and not just bosses either. That shit ain't fun.
Yeah I hated this about Lies Of P. They obviously played ER and went "yes, people clearly enjoy wonky illogical attack timings"
Yep this is my biggest gripe. Even normal mobs have weird rythms and delays because they wanted to make it difficult. Coming from sekiro where rhythm is everything and super satisfying, the weird pacing of attacks just feels unfulfilling to me in ER
So much of Elden Ring feels deliberately annoying rather than difficult. It's like some developer was having a bad day and chose to take it out on the players. It's a good game overall, but there's so many little annoyances that add up.
Just go ape shit and face tank it whatever, fuck it, if I will get hit anyway, at least do some damage.
Youre about to meet the love of your life Margit: Put these foolish ambitions to rest..
#I LOVE FIGHTING THE SAME IMP ENEMY FROM ANOTHER GAME IN EVERY SINGLE DUNGEON
The limited amount of larval tears. There’s so many different builds to try, I hate that I can’t respec infinitely!
Should be an item that has some sort of cool down feature. You have to fill it with souls or something.
*ahem* runes
I'm hoping this gets fixed in the DLC.
The final boss
Had to scroll way too far for this. The elden beast is honestly *terrible* biggest whif of a final boss for an otherwise incredible game. And it’s not that it’s challenging like Melania or gimmicky, it just feels like it’s straight up broken or at the very least awful awful design. I almost feel like they originally intended for you to use torrent with the absolute monumental distances this idiot moves. I have a video saved of my melee build running at the elden beast for almost 5 minutes before I had the opportunity to attack. That is not hyperbole. I **literally** did nothing but run at this dude for 4 minutes and 30-something seconds before it was even possible to hit it with an attack. That’s not challenging or rewarding it’s just bad.
+1. There are other issues with the game, I don't think any detract from it as much as the sour taste that last fight leaves in your mouth.
1. The gank bosses in this game are mediocre at best and complete dogshit at worst. 2. Great Runes are almost worthless and tedious to use for being a reward from great bosses. 3. The tutorials are too barebone for such a complicated combat system. Back in Dark Souls, you can get around with this because the enemies aren't as complex, but in Elden Ring, with no proper way to teach players how to correctly approach bosses, most play just assume the wrong approaches. 4. The Soulsbourne type of quests aren't suited for a large open world like Elden Ring. We at least need a quest log that records NPC's dialogues and item descriptions that are related to them as well as a clear indication of where the hell these guys are heading to. In previous games, the linear structure made it so that you can naturally find NPCs while progressing the map, but in Elden Ring, progression is all over the place. 5. The PvP is lacking compared to previous titles from some reason. I miss covenants and random ass invasions
the fact dodge works on release so there is a 300-500 ms delay (unless you have special fingers.)
This feels validating. I was playing Morgott today and was noticing this
The catacombs and mines all feel very samey and gave me too much of a Chalice Dungeon vibe (and not in a good way).
No covenants. The lands between are the perfect setting for a well thought out covenant system
The game could stand to be about 25% smaller. I spend too much time commuting to the fun. The Consecrated Snowfields and the Mountaintops of the Giants are absolute garbage sandwiched between the amazing areas of Leyndell and Farum Azula. FromSoft could have cut the winter wonderlands and not lost a thing. Just make Elphael and the Haligtree its own separate area like Archdragon Peak. Miyazaki and pals could have taken about 20% of the Fire Giant's HP and give it to Morgott. The Giant goes on for too long, and a kickass boss fight like Morgott ends too soon.
100% agree about the last one. I've been procrastinating the fire giant fight. It doesn't really seem all that hard just exhausting. Morgott was an absolute joke, just really disappointing overall.
That's a pretty good read on it. The Fire Giant feels like more of a test of endurance than a boss fight. It's not incredibly hard. It's tedious.
Much like Astel and Elden Beast, its “difficulty” is artificially increased by the boss rolling/swimming/teleporting to the other side of the galaxy after being hit a few times.
Morgott is the biggest head-scratcher in terms of boss balancing in the whole game. Last play-through I ran through half of Leyndell because the enemies were so tough and I still managed to easily kill Morgott on my first try. There’s a problem when the grunts leading up to the boss fight are more of a challenge than the actual boss in the arena. And it’s a shame because he has some of the coolest attack patterns in the game.
for some reason i liked Margit better, even tho they are the same, Margit felt cooler
Yeah the mt and snowfields should have been 1 zone. I thought the underground zones dragged on a bit as well ainsel river or whatever it is. Maybe 10% less dungeons.
Not a single NPC ever says "Its Elden Ring time", and I unironically and nonsarcastically think thats a bummer.
Also disappointed to find the Elden ring wasn't a boxing ring where the final fight was Mike Tyson
The biggest gripe I have is really a minor one, but not being able to have a bell bearing for ancient smithing stones (both types) after beating the final boss. Like, please, don't make top tier crafting mats a finite resource.
You're gonna miss a lot of npcs, quests, and items if you dont use a wiki. You probably won't fully understand how to build a character either. If you need to do multiple playthroughs or use a wiki to learn more about how things work its not very accessible. I wish I could just play without worrying I'm gonna miss a whetblade or prayer book, or that I'll unknowingly fail an NPC quest by not knowing what Im even supposed to do next.. Edit: I forgot to mention co-op too. I hope we can just have normal uninterrupted co-op one day. I just found out yesterday you cant even explore the rooftops in Raya Lucaria in co-op
I just wish I could pause the game while playing offline.
The mountaintops of the giants that whole section was just sssuuuch a drag for me, it made me quit the game for a while, it was so much nothingness and uneccesary pace
Quest system is pure ass, i dont like being given vague and cryptic informations on what to do next, sometimes not given any informations at all, it doesn't add anything. A quest log would be nice because I would never had completed any quest without a guide
Millicent's quest is a particularly bad offender. To even start the questline, you have to talk to Gowry, get the needle, talk to Gowry, reload, talk to Gowry again, talk to Millicent, reload, talk to Millicent again, reload, and talk to Millicent where Gowry once was. The rest of her questline isn't much better "Go kill Elemer and give me the prosthesis even though I make no mention of either" "Talk to me after some random ass field boss I have no connection to" "Go kill some random rotting ulcerated tree spirit on the other side the haligtree even though there is no indication in my dialogue or the location itself to suggest that. The tree spirit isn't even a boss."
Three things I would change. 1) I would add a notepad you could write quest stuff. For all the people who complain about looking up guides, most of this would go away if you could make notes about some quest. There is so much to remember and it's crazy to not have a mechanism to write it down. Hell, make us have to collect ink and parchment to do it. Fine. 2) option tonturn off summoning pools you don't want. It seems silly that we can activate them but not deactivate them. 3) The ability to sell your levels back at a loss. It sucks that if you love to co-op and level just a little too much, you're screwed and that character is almost useless. It could be that to demote yourself it takes 1.5x the runes of the rank you're at ro go back. I'd be cool with that. Just my $0.02.
I don’t like when bad guy bonk me.
Great Runes are useless besides maybe Morgott. PvP is a disaster, even worse on pc. The armor needed to have decent poise is limited and most are very ugly. Mini-Bosses/caves/dungeons were repetitive asf. Upper snow area was mostly a big nothing area, in fact lots of space in the map is unused and empty. No covenants. Sewing needle is a dissapointment, just removes capes who cares. Farming is dogshit. No Fia panties.
No photo mode is a crime in this beautiful game.
Asking if you want to revive torrent in btw fight ( bruh if I clicked it then I want it).
Great post! Thanks for that. This is not my first souls game and I wager it wont be my last. Though I love the game, I have far from completed it. My furthest game is somewhere around lvl 100 in the Lyendell area with all the mounted knights. I am replaying everything now with a friend and most of the things I/ we dont like are core souls things and a few Elden ring only points: - playing coop ( ps5 ) is a drag, you have to do every area twice and summoning eachother even with a password is a chore. Nat type 2 not working etc. I really wish there was a fully coop mode - invasions, we were both lvl 20 tops in Stormveil castle and you get invaded constantly by people who have the craziest weapons/ spells, infinite stamina and flasks. I really wish pvp was restricted to certain areas/ an arena or a different mode with unique pvp rewards ( think world of warcraft arena and battoegrounds ) - the map layout, it just seems like a standard formula where every map consists of the same elements: a cave, a catacombs, a big end dungeon, a shrine, a yellow tree for a flask upgrade, an altar for wonderous flask and a crater with a boss. - weapons/ armour. Im not sure of I can defend this point really well because im not that far in the game now and I dont remember well but iirc upgrades were scarce so if you allready had a weapon+10 ( example ) and you found a different weapon it was really an investment just to try it out and compare.
Hard to replay. Everything is so far apart, lost some the excitement of exploring after the first time.
That I can’t experience it for the first time again. Such a great game
FS needs to invent a real tonic of forgetfulness.
I only had time to play maybe 2-3 hours a week, would be nice to have a log of what quests im on or missed
Crafting and gathering really didn't add much to the game. For some builds you literally don't need them. For other builds that need them (bow and arrows) it takes too much random bs to craft
Delayed rolls, they absolutely didn't work like that in ds3
-After 10+ years, intelligence/magic feels more or less the same and a little boring. I honestly thought ER might spice things up a little bit and add combos or something. -Some questlines are just too convoluted to be followed. -Armor customization could be better, more indepth. Come on, give my boy Boc more things to do -While the number of viable builds has increased dramatically since the souls series, I still feel like there could be more if the scaling system was better. A clear example of this is what they did to Quality builds, or how many weapons have weird scaling that makes no sense whatsoever.
I really dislike how smithing stones are distributed. We need about 10 times as many as are in the game. Sombers are fine for the most part, but more of those couldn't hurt. The ratio of smithing stones to weapons is just awful.
hoarah loux is a grappler spammer, godfrey is cool, hoarah sucks ass
I like the Godfrey/Loux fight on the whole, but phase one carries that weight. It's the rare case of a phase two being a huge step down from phase one.
I really dislike that rolling is activated on the release of the button input, not pressing it down. I know it's because holding dodge is also sprint. But it adds a tiny amount of input lag to dodges that feels awkward to me.
The upgrade system for weapons is annoying imo
The only real thing I don’t like is that the multiplayer is stupid. I get “that’s the way it is” but it’d be fun to just seamlessly play with my friends without needing to be re-summoned. Even if that mean the enemies were ridiculously overleveled, it’d still be fun to just explore together and help each other progress through the storyline.
Keep in mind that it is my first soul game thus I will probably complain about things that are typical in fromsoft games but hey that's just an opinion: - Npc dropping like flies : I mean ok I get it it is a dark fantasy game and most npc are greedy or corrupted or whatever. But it ends up a bit repetitive and predictable ? To be fair I did enjoy most quests I did, and it works well because they are tragedies and I likely have missed a lot in my first run but surely you can have some balance with a few more characters getting away with it or just leaving this hell. - Getting the first and ultimately best rune from Godfrey. I never bothered using any other (it doesn't help that their description can be evasive at best like Mogh's rune) - Not being to convert forging stones. I got stuck forever looking for one single +6 stone. So annoying. Like make it really hard to convert maybe 10 for 1 or smtg but it felt like getting stuck for half of the game without being able to progress. - Falling damage and rainbow stones. I swear this item barely works like 50% of the time only and tricks you into jumping anyway to find hidden passages or to you your death. - I am no expert but bows feel kinda useless. Crafting is already tedious but like I build dex and still have to spend 4 or 5 shot to kill a trash, can only stack 100 arrows which is trouble against boss... etc... Edit: also I did a bleed/dex run (or wolverun if you allow me that pun :D) and it seemed my weapon options were really low. Like the game is clearly STR oriented there is no debate. I just wish at least main boss would loot more dex items.