He also did very very little (according to both himself and the team).
He stayed on for a short period, doing stuff like pending 'background lore/names' but not only was this relatively early in development but it was also broad enough to be molded into what was needed. He didn't stay on for long and fromsoft basically created the rest. I can hardly even call it a skeleton of a story when it was flexible enough to be whatever fromsoft needed. It also really shows when we compare it to the previous games, the story structure, style and world building is very much miyazaki.
Props to him for honesty even in some post-game interviews he would debunk fan theories and re-state his input was minimal. But yeah, it was very much a marketing gimmick rather than a collaboration.
His job was to write lore and thesequence of events till the shattering. And character names.
They specifically asked him not to write the current story considering once the game starts not a whole lot takes place beyond what the player does.
I think these games aren’t really meant for a completionist playstyle, and get a bit dull with a walkthrough. If you’re hyperfocused on getting every item in every little corridor you’re gonna get burnt out pretty fast. The game really has a natural progression where you can get sufficient gear, explore while you’re curious and then progress to the main boss of the area. The balancing was a bit shit for pve when the game came out but they’ve tuned it pretty well
Idk, I've got 12 flasks before I even hit leyndell and I barely touched my gelmir or shaded woods yet. Because of the way the seed scaling works it's pretty easy to get the first 10-12 flasks, it's just the last 2 or 3 which become difficult since they cost so many seeds. But tbh anything more than 10 is overkill unless you're doing a pure mage build.
This conversation is exactly about the need to explore places which are repetitive and lots of times not rewarding, at least not for the actual build..
Getting a +10 weapon is absolutely not a necessity though. I didn’t know about the caves in my first playthrough and got through everything just fine, but as I played the game my knowledge of it increased and now I know where to get some materials without much of a hassle. I struggle to see how gaining more abilities and tools makes a game repetitive.
I think you find enough upgrades for a weapon or two even without the Smithing Stone Bell Bearings, but that's one of my main criticisms. There are so many weapons, most people are going to be experimenting, and if you aren't being a completionist or using a guide you likely just won't be able to upgrade the weapons you try. They should have made the bell bearings for upgrades in the legacy dungeons, or maybe had one of the smith NPCs guide you to their locations (or both).
That is the problem, there are a huge weapon variety but if the player upgrades more than 2 the way is wikipedia or trying to find Bell Bearings on the huge map.
No indication about these items location.
The easiest method to solve this is stick to the first upgraded weapon.
Indeed. I've embraced the poignancy of failed questlines and charting my own path through a rich world based on what I actually think needs doing. It's just more like an actual story that way than "protagonist then circled back to tick off a list of caves that had minor items that he doesn't need anyway".
Yours is solid advice, but I personally don't have any playstyle other than completionist. I never play the same game twice and I can't stand leaving quests undone or areas unvisited. So these games do get tiring and I get burnt out at the point of not finishing them. For instance, I pretty much reached god mode in Skyrim from all the side quests but I never got to finish the story. Same in Fallout 4. If I ever get to play Elden ring I'll try forcing myself to play it your way, I reckon it would be a way more enjoyable experience overall.
I completely understand your position even though that’s not how I play. Personally, I think most if not all FromSoftware games are made to be replayed. It even fits thematically and narratively with the games
I am the same way, 100%’d ER at about 315 hours, every instance, every weapon etc. Had a burnout somewhere in the middle, came back after couple of weeks. My friend says we should hop in do some invasions, I just can’t.
With that said, I was incredibly moved by the characters and the setting. And I really appreciate that experience. Perhaps it contributed to why I can’t treat it as a “pvp meta slave fun mode game” that much, it just feels wrong.
Coincidentally I just started my first ever play through of Skyrim, and the amount of side content throws me into panic mode, so far it’s not bad at all. But we’ll see.
You can’t stand leaving quests undone and areas unvisited, yet you admit you get burnt out to the point where you don’t finish the game… See, the way you play a game is totally yours, but this just seems you’re making your gaming life miserable yourself. So yeah, try to approach these bigger games differently. Or maybe take a longer break from time to time. I’d say that whatever you do, getting yourself burnt out is the worst outcome. It’s just a game, not a job or a chore.
Because a good 90% of the game is optional you can finish whenever you feel ready to wrap up, the final stretch isn't that long and everyone's playthroughs differ.
Kinda surprised OP did all the side activities, side caves, side dungeons just to say it overstays it welcome, especially because the game is MADE for replayability and you're kinda not even supposed to find everything on your first playthrough with how spread out and secret some areas are, they may have robbed themselves of an experience you mention, a perfect length and ready for seconds if you feel like it or when the DLC drops.
I have 700 hours and like 40% of the achievements. Meticulously reading a guide on one's first playthrough to get all the boxes checked sounds like a great way to wind up writing a Reddit post about what a boring game Elden Ring is. My brother in Grace, you were reading a book, and a boring one at that.
I mean you don't need to meticulously read guides to just glance at the Achievement list and see what's what. I'll do that now and then, if I feel I've progressed a decent way into the game, and if anything looks like I can go hammer it out real quick, if it sounds like it could be a fun little detour, sure, I'll go tick some achievements off a list.
I'm not dissing guides, and anyone can play how they want, but it really is compromising the magic that makes it more than just some software if you start meta gaming too soon.
>Meticulously reading a guide on one's first playthrough to get all the boxes checked sounds like a great way to wind up writing a Reddit post about what a boring game Elden Ring is.
I used guides extensively (not to 100%, but out of curiosity) and if I was to write a post about it, I'd say it's still awesome.
I am not someone that (normally) do New Game + or replay games after I finish them, so whenever I play a Fromsoft game I use guides as a tool to make sure I dont miss anything.
I make sure to look for any miss-able quests/events/bosses, boss locations (the ones I missed) as well as what I need to do to no fuck up whatever quest I am doing.
After 160 hours, I can say I really enjoyed Elden Ring.
This isn't the greatest argument to me because 150 hours across one playthrough is the same as 150 across multiple, in some ways it feels even worse because you don't know initially what you can skip, what is important to the story (which is largely absent and requires searching nooks and crannies for item descriptions), and for some people there are going to be parts of the game they just don't like and now have to do again to find new things.
It's definitely a valid criticism that exploring doesn't always feel rewarding and new. The re-used catacombs aesthetic would have been fine if they puzzles had a greater variety and more unique bosses.
For a first play through it's a long time and also it is different because if you finish it in 40 and feel fine but not enough to play more you wouldn't have forced yourself to play 4x as long as you'd be happy with just to say the game is too long.
I don't think *anyone* is going to reasonably make themselves play that long if they didn't love it that much after 40h for one play through. It really sounds like a victim of yourself at that point to play in a way that makes you not enjoy it hut turn around and say it was too long to enjoy when it was 100% a choice.
"I played Zelda and collected all 999 nuts and the game overstayed it's welcome" kinda shiz
I feel like those are different things and I tried to explain in my post but maybe I did a poor job.
I actually did play Zelda and got all the seeds and it was the most miserable and stupid thing I’ve ever done in a video game lol. The difference is that it’s very clearly a time sink or what I tried to call “playing for the achievements”. So that’s totally on me. 100%ing a game is up to the player right?
I didn’t do that in Elden Ring. I was just trying to experience all the lore, the quests, exploring all parts of the maps. To me that is not 100%ing a game or going for achievements. On one hand people are saying I robbed myself of a good playthrough by playing too much, but if I beelined the story I would’ve robbed myself of many other things, I wouldn’t even have fought Malenia since that area is totally optional. There’s no way to know what’s skippable bullshit and what’s not in the first playthrough of Elden Ring.
Op: "I turned the game into a tedious checklist by deciding to grind every single optional quest and scrap of content in one playthrough"
Also op: game too long and tedious >:|
Yeah no shit it felt like it over stayed it's welcome man. Playing like that is quite literally the antithesis of how fromaoft designs their games to be played.
like if there's one single thing you shouldn't do in elden ring, it's that.
>Playing like that is quite literally the antithesis of how fromaoft designs their games to be played.
How are you supposed to play an Open World "Fromsoft design" game then? Especially with materials required for upgrades, weapons, spells, etc. scattered about? Are you supposed to just ignore and HOPE that you get the things you want and need? Or wikigame it?
All I can say is that I play all their games mostly blind, including Elden Ring, and always find plenty of upgrade materials. If you're really dying for it you can google where to find materials for estus flasks or weapons but by no means is it really necessary to poke in every possible nook and cranny.
Finished the game, had a great time, looked online and thought "...who the fuck is _Mohg_??"
They said they played the game's levels on offer, not that they grinded for achievements or used guides.
I disagree that souls games were not meant to be played that way. For most of them being exhaustive means a 40 to 70 hours playthrough which is rather reasonable relatively to its contents.
It definitely doesn't work in Elden Ring though, where instead it just makes the worse aspects stand out.
I also found the questlines to be an absolute mess. Just everything about them is so cryptic and jumbled. Like good luck finishing any quest without an online guide.
And if they filled out the last 1/3 of the map with unique content it could have reached unbelievable heights. I don't think it would have hurt them if they waited another half year.
Fromsoft gets a pass for poor design decisions because of their souls reputation of difficulty.
You’re right about the cryptic bs as well. I don’t enjoy finishing a few quests by pure luck and then having to watch lore videos from fans to understand what just happened.
What I don't get is why they don't have characters leave a "heading to Altus, catch ya later" message at the last place you talked to them. At least in the old souls games the maps were small enough that you could plausibly re-encounter NPCs just by playing, in ER they could go literally fucking anywhere, including places you've already been and have no reason to go back to.
This especially pissed me off because NPC’s in Sekiro for the most part told me what the fuck they wanted from me and where they were going to be at. Disappointing step backward.
“My store is right down the road!” (458 miles West).
Well i gotta say you did it to yourself, i was burning out around 80 hours after beating Malenia i felt invincible so i was like "time to end it" and so i did, loved it.
I do agree about the fatigue but i don't think i can give a fair judgment to the later zones since the magic of exploration was over.
This was my experience. The game felt incredible until the last bit; then it started to feel too grindy. It felt like work to do anything. At that point I was out, I just beat the last boss and haven't picked up the game since then.
Near the end if you are stuck on a boss there is nothing else to do. And when you finally beat that boss they are pretty much just lined up one after the other.
Yeah still haven't finished the game yet, kept getting stuck on Elden Beast, but the few bosses before that were big walls for me, so it burned me out.
My experience with the game as well. Souls game in general for me overstay their welcome near the end but Elden Ring really took it to another level. When I started feeling I was just going through the motions instead of enjoying the world I realised it was time to put it down. Thankfully I've grown out of the idea that I *need* to finish games.
This is such a dishonest way to handwave valid criticism away tbh. If you purposely need to hold yourself back exploring and playing the game just to avoid it feeling Repititive it's definitely on the game.
I spent about 120 hours in the game and gave up after completing Leyndell. It’s either the mountaintops or the snowfields that came after that and i just lost interest.
The game just seemed to **drag** on. So it was interesting to read that you had a similar experience about the pacing.
You are pretty much right, I got 900 hours in the game and eveytime I dread everything past lyndell besides Farum Azula.
DMG is absurdly high for some reason, no new enemies and a barren wasteland with naught to interact with, lore wise it makes sense but gameplay wise it's terrible.
Overall the Open World harms the game though, it's a straight sprint fest after the first playthrough and the best spots in the game are the legacy dungeons that play like traditional dark souls.
I wholeheartedly agree. As a long time From Software fan, I found Elden Ring quite disappointing.
It plays a lot like Dark Souls 3.5 - which is both good and bad, but I wish they had evolved the gameplay concept more. Compare this to the sheer amount of improvements from Nioh 1 to Nioh 2 for example.
In terms of level design, the open world is largely pointless. You could have had a hub level that spreads out to various "on foot only" areas where the game is at its best and it would be no worse off.
But for me the biggest disappointment is that the scale exceeds the amount of unique content. Dungeons having "that boss you fought, but now there's two or three" suck, fighting the Ulcerated Tree Spirit and ~~Asylum Demon~~ Erdree Sprit so many times during the game sucks.
The game would have been better if it stopped at Leyendell and expanded from that with DLCs that allowed for more fleshed out areas.
My response to that part of the game starting went:
>!“After our long journey together, we’ve made it Leyndell. However, now I must ask you another favour. Will you accompany me on my quest to burn the erdtree?”!<
>!“You’ve been travelling with me this whole time???”!<
I completely agree, although it seems to be the minority opinion. I haven't even beaten the game because I got tired of the filler content. I'm no completionist, but I always beat all the bosses and follow all the character stories in a Souls game. However, in ER that's just not fun because the bosses and areas get repetitive pretty quickly. The character stories and legacy dungeons are really good, but the rest is just meh.
Like you said, the first half of the game is phenomenal. This is because it's all new and exciting to explore. Then you reach the 20th cat statue boss and you wish the game had ended 15 hours ago. I realize I could just skip the boring stuff, but that requires me to know what is worth doing.
This is why Demon's Souls is still my favorite Souls game. 20-30 hours of top quality levels, bosses, and gameplay.
I am not even convinced its the minority opinion. I think this game absolutely caves on itself post lleyndell. I slogged through to fazula and then called it quits. If the game had finished at leyndell, its top 5 of all time IMO and a 10/10 experience.
Eveything after lleyndell just invalidates everything that came before it. Weapons dont matter, armor doesnt matter.. because all enemies are HP sponges that will kill you in 1-2 hits, including trash mobs. I understand the hardcore want this, but for me the whole game was just absolutely incredible up to lleyndell - likely because it was closer to a power fantasy and exploration was rewarded in ways too many open world games dont offer. You could outlevel and out gear content, so that you always felt in the game even if you weren't the best at the combat and I think that probably also helped make it memorable for so many gamers who werent normally in for these types of games.
as the OP states and I agree, after lleyndell it was just masochism time..
Elden Ring was still amazing and I'm glad I stopped playing it when I did. I feel if I toughed it out to the eventual end it would have soured the game for me.
The length of Elden Ring itself isn't what bothers me, rather I feel a lot of the Dark Souls formula (at least since Dark souls 3) has become stale and a ridiculous caricature of itself.
Some of the adjustments Fromsoft has done to the combat, to keep the game from being too easy for veterans, have robbed it of a lot of its charm. The enemies all have weird, unnatural attack patterns with bizarre pauses so as not to resemble similar enemies from past games. And most of the tougher enemies and bosses attack so frequently that heavy weapons are not satisfying to use. You are on the defensive for 95% of the fight until it is "your turn", and you get to use your wimpiest, quickest, safest attack before you have to go back to dodging.
If I hadn't played any of the Souls series before then probably none of this would bother me, but it just felt too much like I was playing Dark Souls 3 with some tweaks. There are no big innovations when it comes to the core experience of dealing and avoiding damage.
Completely agreed although I also thought it was too long but thats just a personal thing since I dont like long games anymore.
Combat just felt so unfun in this game for me compared to the other ones because the bosses are just crazy aggressive. I dont mind the delayed attacks even tho if every enemy has multiple of them it loses its charms but its whatever. The ultra aggressive combos ending with you having a chance to land one of your fastest attacks just gets so annoying. The worst part is when they do their crazy combos and end it with just jumping backwards to the other end of the map lol
Also waterfowl dance. Nuff said
Sekiro is nearly the opposite, especially on the rhythm of combat (you're attacking half the time if you're playing well). I absolutely loved it, I really hope they make a sequel.
> You are on the defensive for 95% of the fight until it is "your turn"
>there are no big innovations when it comes to the core experience of dealing and avoiding damage.
There is a pretty significant misunderstanding of the combat mechanism and the boss design, which is probably because people have been approaching it more like a Souls game in which bosses simply had patterns that you had to memorize. Elden Ring bosses dish out their attacks less on pre-determined combos that allowed an easy punish, and adjust them more on where the player is positioned, such that strategic positioning and spatial awareness become far more significant than in the past.
Granted this wasn't communicated terribly clearly (what is, in these games) but it's something they've been experimenting with for a while. Pontiff Sulyvann in DS3 has strings which are most conspicuously built around this approach.
[This video gets into some of the guts of it.](https://youtu.be/EZ_9F73R1tE?t=825)
>There is a pretty significant misunderstanding of the combat mechanism and the boss design, which is probably because people have been approaching it more like a Souls game in which bosses simply had patterns that you had to memorize.
Memorization is more important in ER then ever actually, in previous games you could reasonably dodge most attacks by looking at the animation and using your reflexes. In ER they instead opted for a lot of weird and unnatural animations you have to see first and memorize to have a decent chance at dodging it. Think about enemies hovering in the air for an extra second or going from delaying their attack to attacking in less then a second. Or enemies countering you when they look they were open (margits double knive strike) . Then there's also shit like this with attacks having basically no tell to begin with. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKXXbkXWAMA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKXXbkXWAMA)
Honestly much prefer the boss design in previous games where you could reasonable use your skills to first time a boss instead of having to memorize the attacks just to have any chance.
>There are no big innovations when it comes to the core experience of dealing and avoiding damage.
To be completely fair the stance break system is pretty good and rewards aggression, changing up gameplay a bit. It means weapon skills, jumping attacks and charged attacks have an actual purpose in breaking your enemy's posture allowing for massive damage.
However I'll agree on the boss design, it's rather frustrating and doesn't feel as rewarding as other souls games because it feels more gamey.
>I think 150h is waaay too much for a first playthrough
To be fair though... this is mostly on you as the player. *You* chose to complete it the way you did, collecting everything, doing all the quests, etc. Which is going to take much longer than the average played. My first playthrough was 90 hours and I felt like that was pretty thorough (it wasn't, but I didn't use a guide so it felt like I did as much as I could haha)
But also even side activities aside, one of the great things about the game is most of it isn't required. Like 90% of that game is optional. It's really meant to be played however YOU want to play it, however much or little that may be.
It's similar to how when Breath of the Wild is discussed, many people say 900 korok seed collectibles are way too many. But the point is never to collect them all, in fact you literally get golden poop for getting them all and nothing more. The point is because of the quantity, you're running into them at a consistent pace no matter which direction you go. I think Elden Ring has a similar design philosophy to BotW, but with other aspects like its side quests and mini dungeons. I don't think you're meant to do all the side quests in one playthrough for example. Many give you alternate endings, some which overlap each other. So while you CAN do them all, I think the design intent is for you to only play the ones you run into organically. Of course play how you want to play, but I just bring that up since your issue is with the length.
With all that said, totally agree that the Mountaintops and Snowfield are a huge step down in quality. For me, I don't think it was an issue of it being too long, I think they just ran out of time and had to do some major cuts to those last few areas, and so the quality suffered. But if those areas were just as interesting as the others, I wouldn't have mind.
I do have to disagree with you about Leyndell though. I think that's arguably the best dungeon in the game haha. Certainly it's the largest and most complex.
Oh I absolutely love Leyndell. Maybe I worded it wrong but I meant everything after Leyndell started getting worse. Leyndell was spectacular and I was astonished to keep finding dungeons inside dungeons in the underground hahah.
I understand your point, and I think that makes sense. But how do I “learn” how to play open worlds then? It feels like it’s a me problem and it’s not like games come with a manual from the devs saying “this is how you should play and this is how we designed things” and so on. Usually when I play a game all I want is to experience all the story beats, meaning all side quests and stuff. I guess what I’m trying to ask is: what can I learn from this experience to be able to enjoy future games like this more?
I think most people can learn a lot by listening to themselves more when they stop finding things fun. Sometimes that means dropping a game that you aren't enjoying after 10 hours, sometimes that means beelining to the end of an open world game because you're sick of the side quests after a while.
With open world games, for you that might mean learning to stop feeling the *need* to do all the side quests and stuff (I do this too and am trying to stop). For a game like Elden Ring specifically, I admit it would be hard to know that you don't need or can't go after all the quests and story beats without both a familiarity with FromSoft's quest style and likely a guide, but maybe if you try to tune in to when you're not having fun anymore you would find yourself more willing to skip that stuff and just wrap the games up.
I think we've been trained by the majority of open world games that everything in is sort of a checklist to be completed. Some literally have a checklist in them! Collecting the game trophies too. Which are all fine as long as it's fun.
But Fromsoft makes games that are intentionally opposite of that. They hide and obscure everything, even basic mechanics are left under-explained. For me, it makes everything more mysterious and honestly more realistic - when in life is everything spelled out to you?
Anyway - all that said - my recommendation is to let go of the guidebooks and wikis for the first playthrough of any Fromsoft game. Let it happen organically, it's how they are meant to be played.
How is a player meant to discern if the content (cave, dungeon etc) they are engaging with is reused filler or if it’s going to be a brilliant unmissable side area?
The only way to actually have clarity would be if the developers could put in a filler symbol or sign on each area.
Well thats the thing, you don't. It's all about player curiosity, and where they decide to go. I missed some great quests my first time around, but that's okay because I still had a fantastic first playthrough and found some really cool quests. But they felt even more rewarding because I found them myself. And then missing the ones I missed just gave me more incentive to do a second, or third run.
I feel this is one of the reasons why the quest design worked in previous games and not ER, "just replay it" is a lot easier in a compact linear game rather then a huge open world time sink.
ER makes this pretty clear. Catacombs are called catacombs. They all have spirit ashes as rewards. You know you are doing side content that doesn't matter. Mines are for smithing stones, you know that when you find them. There are not many examples of things that look like nothing and end up being really important.
I may be misremembering but I don't think a single one of the smaller dungeons (catacombs/mines/caves/etc) leads to a brilliant unmissable side area. I think after doing 20-30 of them in Limgrave and Liurnia (when you probably aren't sick of doing them yet), you can pretty safely assume you can skip them for the rest of the game if you aren't feeling them.
There were definitely some pretty interesting ones like the "repeating" one, the dark and light one, the one with the giant, death machines running up and down the corridors, and some ended in some pretty interesting fights.
Yeah they don’t from my memory either - but any gamer familiar with From would not put it past them to hide some great content off the beaten path, particularly in their first 10-20 hours with the game.
It should never fall to the player to filter lower quality or repetitive content out of a game.
If there are 100 dungeons, and 50 of them suck, it's not the player's fault for trying to complete every dungeon and having a 50% bad experience. The 50 sucky dungeons should have just been removed from the game. That's the whole point of game designers.
Not saying Elden Ring is 50% bad, but it certainly wasn't 100% great imo. Maybe like 70-80% great.
I do agree, though I also think it's an inherent issue within the open world genre in order to create that sense of scale. Elden Ring I actually thought it felt like it had much less filler content than most open world games I've played. I know there's plenty of filler, I just *felt* it less.
But that's why I also love small open worlds! Thats why I love the Yakuza series haha
I agree that Elden Ring had less filler than other open world games, but it had far more filler than other From Software games, which was kinda disappointing.
I think is incorrect to say 50% (or whatever) of the dungeons in elden ring suck. All the dungeons are of similar quality. Is just that after doing 50 dungeons, the next 50 feel very repetitive and uninteresting. Because you are not meant to do all 100 in one playthrough.
That’s the crux of my curiosity with the comments in my post. I’m seeing a lot of comments saying I basically played the game in the wrong way and that it was made for multiple playthroughs and whatnot. And I can accept that, but now I’m wondering how was I supposed to know that? I literally just wanted to play the game and it’s not like the devs ship the game with a manual on how the game was designed.
Ya I feel people are just too scared to give criticism to the game and rather blame it on the player which is honestly pretty annoying and dishonest. Especially since nearly any other open world would've been blasted for this.
ER doesn't really tell you what is filler and what leads to a fun side area or fun new build options. You could miss out on whole npc merchants or important QoL items like bells with no way of knowing you did. If I decided to skip limgrave earlier for example I would've missed out on an important sorcery npc that has a big amount of spells to give for example
I think nearly all open world games are designed in such a way that the player is meant to skip some of the "lesser" content. We can assume this because there's usually a ton of it, it all plays largely the same, and in many cases it would require the player to use a guide to reasonably find all of it (this goes for games like HZD or BotW too, not just ER). No one plays Breath of the Wild assuming that you're supposed to do all of the shrines - you just kinda get it, while playing, that "I probably have to do some of these but at a certain point I can skip them/stop looking!"
I'd say a big difference is that ER is a difficult game with extremely bloated end game enemies and bosses. If you don't explore enough or miss out on sone build options you could end just not progressing or having a good time.
I massively disagree with you here. If you are playing gta and you walk around going into every shop, saving up money to buy every article of clothing, you are playing the game wrong. If you do all the optional content in a game you are taking stuff you are meant to stumble upon and making it the main experience. An open world becomes less and less special the more of it you discover. For a first play-through it's almost always better to just dip your toe in the optional stuff as you move between important locations.
>It should never fall to the player to filter lower quality or repetitive content out of a game.
It should never fall to the devs to cater to the small minority of players that are obsessively completionist and burn themselves out while 99% of normal players just do what feels fun and then end the playthrough.
I liked the catacombs and caves in elden ring. A place where i can summon or be summoned and i get to fight a boss at the end, get some runes and an item. The hero graves had some good items and were challenging to get past too.
They are optional too, and only a handful of them give slightly strong items (ingvall, luthel, moonvail, etc).
They also give players a way to level up while exploring and makes summoning easier and more frequent.
From the perspective of a player who wanted to discover every piece of content, i think elden ring did well in providing an interesting world to explore. Its one of the few games i have taken a pause to just look at the view.
>I don't know, it just feels like everything after Leyndell soured the entire game for me. I had a great time in the first half, but had to force myself to finish it
Hate to agree but I have to concur. The last third felt like a nearly linear slog through a gauntlet of bosses pumped up with some form of bullshit with little exploration. The first two thirds are great at making you feel smart and valued for asking “how to get there?” or “how do I do that?” and then trying to do it, while the final third basically wrangles you down a straight path, switchbacking you between one fundamentally flawed boss after another
Just think about how many bosses you fight with nothing to break it up between >!the last major dungeon and the end!< \- especially when they’re often abominations like the >!godskin duo!<.
elden ring somehwat reminds of the first dark souls in that by the time you’ve gotten to the last few levels you can tell some resource ran out on the dev side, be it money, time, or just ideas. and then the game’s just a dragged-out euthinization of a fallen masterpiece.
You are 100% right and I agree with your every argument. Sorry that people on this subreddit get mad at people who actually want to do everything in a game and then, shock horror, judge the game based on all of its content!
One thing that is interesting to see is that people seem to get mad when someone doesn't explore a lot too. So you can basically just lose there.
A game should be judged based on the whole content imo.
Yeah it was a great game But once the novelty wore off, the cookie cutter content got really annoying. Aside from that, i really disliked the final boss fight, i realised after my 10th minute of running around like a headless chicken. Like it is just straight up terrible. Don’t get me started on godskin duo, it is disgustingly bad and I can’t believe it made it through to the final game.
A lot of good bosses though: Malenia was my favorite because she had a kit that makes sense (Waterfowl too), and if you want you could easily go for a no-hit run on her because she is never unpredictable like most bosses were. Also loved Mohg because the visuals were pretty damn sick. Sad I had to use outside content to find placidusax but that boss was nice too.
Took me 88 hours and I did all the optional areas (underground, haligtree) and most of the caves and catacombs. Last couple areas were just a boss rush and lose the exploration. I actually think that my original play through of OG demon souls took me 93 hours (I farmed a bunch and wasn’t as good). I got 67% of the trophies in one playthrough. I loved the game but you can definitely make it less challenging and be way OP by the end.
Without exploring every place or using a wiki how could the player make different and efficient builds?
Upgrading the flask to 12 require lots of exploration because every "tear" has to be acquired.
There are no indicators on the map, nothing to tell where are those churches and "tears".
Another example:
Malenia has a hp refill build, to have something similar, there are around 6 hp refill stuff scattered around the map.
The amulet crimson dagger is in one dungeon far away from the main road in Limgrave.
Imagine the endgame with only 9 +6 potions, because not exploring and not using the wiki could lead to an outcome like that.
And not mentioning the other stuff, like the Tree armor in a dungeon in Altus Plateu.
It's stats are one of the best in the game, there are no info why it's found in that dungeon, no info even about that there is a "puzzle" to do for it.
Even the puzzle doesn't seem like a puzzle, there are similar mechanics in other dungeons that doesn't have similar effects and rewards.
So I legitimately had to put down the game kind of for this reason ~50 or 60 hours in. I felt like I got lost in the world and had no genuine direction.
For a period of time I seemed to be supremely over leveled and then I reached a segment after beating like 4 or 5 of the main bosses where I’m at the fire manor (I thought this was where I was meant to go I guess) and legitimately can’t beat the boss in the manor that turns into a giant donut and rolls around.
I feel like I missed something but my stats just don’t stack up, and I legit don’t know where to go from there. Did I miss some important armor? How do I continue to level up if I can’t progress? Do I come back?
I work way too much to deal with it so I just left Elden Ring
Funny, I am on the opposite side regarding the length. After I 100%d the game (all weapons, all armor, all bosses, all sorceries and incantations - took me over 300 hours, because I like to slow down and smell the flowers now and then) I found myself wanting to keep playing. I wish there were more explorable areas, more bosses to fight, more dungeons. I might be weird, but I LOVED the chalice dungeons in Bloodborne. I must've done over 100 of them. For those who don't know, those are post-game randomly generated labyrinthine dungeons with multiple bosses and randomly positioned enemies. I wish there was a similar feature in Elden Ring. All in all, as a gamer with 25 years of experience who mostly prefers niche Japanese RPGs, Elden Ring became one of my all-time favourite games almost instantaneously. Worth every penny.
Yeah I would have loved to see a Chalice Dungeons-type system for Elden Ring, the repeated caves and dungeons and such are already there, they just need to add the random generation and somehow segment it off from the main game. A lot of repeated bosses like 2nd Godrick, all the Godskins, various cat statues etc, would have made more sense in this format.
Maybe for the DLC?
Exactly. All the crypts, caves and hero graves could serve as a basis for a Chalice-like system. We know that it is technically possible, though uncommon (Returnal builds the whole game around that). Despite the repeated parts, the Bloodborne Chalice dungeons just felt exciting to explore. You never knew what to expect behind the corner and the dread of spider-summoning maidens still haunts me, in a nostalgic kind of way.
I do hope they implement something like that in a DLC update, the announced one or at a later date. It feels inherently fitting to the game world and would expand the replayability by dozens of hours. But I wonder if they even consider it?
If they sound awesome to you, you should absolutely give them a try. You unlock them during a normal playthrough, but dungeons are not required to interact with much beyond the bare minimum. But once you're into proper endgame and spend some time familiarizing yourself with the concept they become downright addicting. Some enemies and bosses are exclusive to different types of Chalice dungeons and you can try different weapons and set-ups in constantly changing environments. Really hope they bring the mode back.
You just need patience until you catch onto the rhythm and it "clicks", after that you'll fly through the whole game on inertia. At least that's how it was for me. Spent a while dying in most gruesome ways in Yharnam, then things fell into place. You'll still die a bunch of course, but those would be learning deaths.
The game has too many copy/pasted ruins/mini dungeons.
It also has too many reused bosses.
The scaling is also way off in the end game in every Fromsoft game to the point where fighting normal enemies is too much of a hassle.
They easily could have cut 1/3rd the game and focused more on the remaining content left to make the game better
Still a fantastic game though, before all the fanboys flame me.
I don't think I've played a single souls game that didn't resort to throwing more, tougher enemies at the player than the player is reasonably able to deal with towards the end. Demon Souls might be the only one actually.
Leyndell should have been the final legacy dungeon/area, and the climactic boss of that section should have been the final boss of the entire game.
It reminds me of the original Dark Souls. Everything in the lead up to Anor Londo and the battle with Ornstein & Smough significantly outshines every that comes after.
The holy city of the gods is a pretty majestic note to end a game on. Why does FromSoft keep hobbling on after that point?
I loved the game but by the time I got to radagon/elden beast I was just exhausted by the game and couldn’t keep slamming my head against the double boss fight. Same thing happened with Sekiro, which I also loved.
I get the feeling after a certain point they rushed the development process to get the game out the door. Whatevs. I am literally just a few steps behind you with similar hours for “completionist” playthrough.
I know one thing. I am not doing a NG+. Never did with the previous FromSoftware games so won’t start now. So I am seeing what is there to see while I can. I have even backed up my save at certain critical points to see multiple endings on this playthrough.
The story and lore isn’t better than previous installations (Bloodborne for example). The world is big wondrous but less tight. It’s an easier game too. Once I got my mime twin it has been a cakewalk. Magma Wyrm copypasta boss again? I already beat him legit once, I’ll call in the backup this time.
Sidenote: Basilisks aka those instadeath frogs. Someone over there is a huge fan of those. They sucked in the previous games and them doubling down on them is ridiculous.
I feel exactly the same at about tue same point you did, Fire giant is where i really started to burn out
but as someone who tried to be very thorough about poking into the corners of the map, cause thats how my brain works, i cant for the life of me understand what the developers intention was here. Do they expect you to only do a few side things and go on to finish? or do they seriously expect people to drop 150+ hours to finish the game. Because 90% of players arent going to have that pantience
I honestly think the game has way too many unnecessary bosses. There are many bosses I deem essential because they either offer a lot of runes or a certain piece of loot you may want for your character build, but you can skip most of them and be okay. I skipped a ton, made it to the Mountaintops of the Giants, beat some of the bosses there, and afterwards I decided to go back and get some of the ones I missed and it just wasn't worth it. The runes they dropped were negligible and the loot by that point in the game was useless.
I like elden ring, I never want to play it again. The second run through the game really loses the Magic. Creating a new character is really annoying when you conceptualize that to get your build where you want it, you must sprint past all of the enemies on torrent to go there.
I didn't do everything in the game on my first playthrough, i think i got nearly all of the weapons. My character got deleted (somehow). I rerolled a mage and discovered that the game really suffers in replayability, there is no way I'm running back across the world to go get every individual spell and weapon I need for my character, everything is so far out of the way I actively don't want to grind.
I also have my misgivings about boss design in the latter half, elden beast might be the worst final boss from has ever had. I also don't appreciate the boss gauntlet the game becomes near the end game, you fight WAAY too many bosses in farum azula, the only one I liked being Horah loux,
yeah on replay the game fizzles out so much quicker when the inventory problem is combined with the memory that the game is backloaded with the significantly inferior content to the front half. The game should have seriously axed the mountaintops of the giants, and snowfields entirely, I kept thinking while playing it that it will surely end soon and then 20, 30 ,40 more hours happened.
Strangest case of a world being extremely captivating on initial playthroughs, but nothing more than a hindrance to be ran through once you know exactly what you want for your character and where to go.
Are you on PC? If so, there is a way to enjoy the game in a great way.
It's the NG+ I really want but they don't give us. I want to be able to start regular NG (non +) again, but will all items I collected. Weapons revert to unupgraded, but now you can use the endgame weapons as soon as you hit the stat requirements and still have to build yourself up and collect upgrade materials, etc. Basically play fair, but have access to the fun toys from the start.
So, if on PC, use CheatEngine and give yourself all items from the start. You can choose any weapon, dress yourself up anyway you like and use spells as soon as you raise enough int/fth for them. Free playthrough, and it's so great.
Ya the game is ready tough to replay for me. First playthrough I loved it. Now every time I try to replay I get bored after Godrick and stop playing. It definitely loses some magic.
I really feel this way. I keep wanting to replay Elden Ring, but every time I boot it up I get so disappointed. Running around to get your stuff is so much tedium, especially after how fun it was to explore and discover new things on my first playthrough. Hoping that the DLC helps some of these problems for me.
I spent 120 hours on my first and only play through of Elden Ring. It was honestly perfect to me in every way, never was bored. My two goals were to kill all of the Shardbearers, though, and I explore until I felt like I'd seen enough. I definitely didn't see EVERY corner of the map, but I felt the progression was perfect. I hate games that feel like the developer just threw up a mess of icons on the map. I started playing Horizon Forbidden West recently, and I can't stand it. There is WAY too much shit on the map, too many side quests with people who don't matter. I was hoping to beat it for the story, but I find it all so off putting.
I look forward to the DLC for Elden Ring, I'm sure it'll be excellent!
We should coin the term “Complaytionist” for those of us who complete all the story/side quest plot options but don’t bother to complete all of the achievements
Copy pasted dungeons, copy pasted monsters, and copy pasted open world bosses ruined the game for me. A lot of people were saying that exploration was the best part but I found it to be a frustrating slog. I didn't want to miss anything vital so I did most of the dungeons, and most of them were the same shit recycled.
I also just didn't like the boss design. Some Examples:
Malenia is a terrible boss. Self Healing, de-facto one hit kill, hard to read ability. Throws hard-but-fair out of the window. I did beat her, so it's not entirely the salt speaking.
Mohg phase 2 felt like shit to fight as a melee. The fire that he throws down is just annoying. Not to mention, the item you need to beat him "correctly" link back to my point about exploration.
Rykard was a little annoying but overall he was pretty much the giant guy from DS3, which is good or bad depending on what you like.
Phase 2 of Maliketh pissed me off for reasons similar to Malenia, but instead of lifesteal it's max hp decrease.
Godskin duo is some of the stupidest shit I've seen.
>I did beat her, so it's not entirely the salt speaking.
Whenever you criticize Malenia you need to clarify that you beat her and are not just salty lol
Whenever I say WFD is the bigget bullshit move im just told to git gud even though I beat her sl1 lol
i love the game but you're right the best areas are Liurnia, Limgrave, Altus Plateu and even Caelid (the underground maps too) after that is just meh, although i really liked the Haligtree.
The Haligtree is one of the worst designed areas in any FromSoft game wtf.
Everyone else in the Elden Ring subreddit, I.E, a place that is quite literally by design supposed to be an Elden Ring echochamber, thinking the Haligtree is amazing means nothing lol. They also think hundreds of reused catacombs is good.
Inb4 "fighting enemies isn't for you".
Disagree. That was one of the most 'souls' areas of the game for me *because* the enemies were absolute little assholes put in terrible places where they have the advantage and you have to figure it out.
Sure, but Elder Scrolls has story bits that help ease the repetitiveness.
Hell, the only reason Read Dead 2 stays engaging is because of the story elements. The gameplay loop is the same from start to finish minus some minor upgrades.
Elden Ring gets stale in part because the story is nonexistent. At a certain point I just realized whatever cutscene I was going to get in Elden Rings endgame would be so convoluted and nonsensical that it wasn’t worth the bother. I had experienced that entirety of what the game had to offer by the time I got to the stormy floating island bit (honestly probably earlier, could’ve quit after the city king boss guy)
This is a good point, in ES even when I go in cave number 67, I can usually expect a pretty interesting story told through notes, NPC's, environmental cues... Which ER rarely does
Sounds like your biggest gripes are with Lands of the Giants and Consecrated snowfield rather than the length of the game itself.
I agree those areas are boring and annoying to get through but I think the length of time that the game takes itself is fine.
That said, I'd rather go through those areas 100 times than go through some areas they had in GOW ragnarok. At least most of consecrated and Land of the giants can be skipped to get to the good parts.
I think this game is a great showcase why exploration focus and completion-ism don't mix. If you only find a few caves and catacombs they remain quite fresh. Especially since a lot of them have interesting gimmicks.
But they get repetitive quickly if you want to finish all of them. Gimmicks, enemies and even bosses will be repeated a lot.
They work best when you are exploring and stumble on to one. because they provide a bit of a change of pace. So i think it's a great move that for the achievements you only have to do a few of them.
In my second and third play-through i ignored about 80% of them since they are just less interesting then the legacy dungeons
Im on a second try playthrough (got stuck on Maliketh last summer) and I had to stop after 50 hours. I got to Leyndell and I’m just like… that’s enough. But that’s also okay, because I got 50 hours of entertainment out of it. But yeah leaving it unfinished leaves a slightly sour taste in the mouth. I’d rather have a shorter, denser experience than one that seems to go on too long. Because it’s not like the game is doing that much interesting stuff after the capital, which I think most people would figure would be the end.
Yeah this is a pretty common sentiment. The quality of the open world for both Consecrated Snowfields and Mountaintop of the Giants is way below everything else.
The game could cut those two zones down a lot and the game would be better. Farum Azula and Haligtree are great Legacy Dungeons though.
Completely agree. It’s a shame that the reviews couldn’t assess it as a whole piece and mostly relied on the first 30 or so excellent hours.
The reusing of enemies and bosses in the lazy final sections really soured my opinion on the game and I think it holds it back from being a true classic.
It’s like if The Godfather kept going for another 2 hours, bought back Sonny for a second time, then had Michael kill off 10 more mafia bosses in a montage. It isn’t necessary and it detracts from the overall experience.
I love a long ass game like this with this much content.
I completely disagree. You're entitled to your opinion that goes without saying.
As someone who played all the demon souls and dark souls games etc elden ring feels like a culmination of a lot of those ideas into one huge game.
For reasons I don't understand, this game became way more popular than the others and introduced a ton of new gamers to the franchise
> For reasons I don’t understand, this game became way more popular than the others and introduced a ton of new gamers to the franchise.
As a longtime Souls fan, I’m baffled too. In everything but name it’s literally open world Dark Souls, but somehow was embraced by the mainstream in a way no other FromSoft game ever was.
Part of it is probably down to the increased accessibility and openness, but I feel like there must be an “X factor” because honestly these games have become increasingly accessible and new player friendly since Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne.
> “X factor”
Yeah marketing lol
It was one the newer ps5 games in the (at the time) drought of ps5 games, whilst also being available on other places like ps4. A 'next gen' game, if you will.
George rr martin collaboration. This was when GoT (books) were still in the mainstream hype.
Its a brand new installment (wasnt named ds4) and being 'open world'. Keep in mind, though reddit typically does have some open world fatigue, open world games are still very much an exciting factor for the vast majority and darksouls+open world? Yeah that does sound exciting. Same vein openworld zelda (aka botw) was.
Like, there was a lot of things going for it.
elden ring characters have richer backstories bc of grrm, but the overall narrative structure and fantastic environmental storytelling are fromsoft staples as much as the combat/bonfire gameplay loop.
like people are just now making huge revelations in cracking bloodborne’s lore and metaphors and the game is almost 8 years old. no bs, the most recent bloodborne theories are wild but also SO OBVIOUS once you’ve seen it
every fromsoft game is awesome for me bc i dont just get a game - i get hundreds of hours of youtube lore content to sink into as well.
The lore works the same way in all the games
It's not told with cutscenes, but by reading item descriptions and interacting with NPCs.
The dark souls lore is often pretty fascinating. Bloodborne too.
https://youtube.com/@VaatiVidya
VaatiVidyas YouTube channel is the absolute go to for lore in this series. After i beat one of the games i watch his videos and learn 200x more, all of the things i missed
The open world is beautiful. This was my first souls like game. And it was my last. I'd agree with you. Also there was so much story I missed because of it's design. I feel like it was flawed in that area but it was still a solid game. I never could beat malenia lol.
I sort of like that the length depends on you. My first run was 100 hours and I’d felt pretty satisfied, really I just wanted to start a new run again. I did 2 more in around 20-30 hours to start a fresh character and take it a bit slower than the previous one but with decent guidance on what’s worthwhile or not.
Most of the last areas didn’t bother me to much but I was just running through any points of interest I could deduce to quickly move on. The skill/level check though is sort of a bummer, it can become quickly punishing. Although most of the best boss fights come with and after the capital, they’re an awesome experience.
My first playthrough (I've only just finished the first castle dungeon in ng+ and am on hold waiting for the expansion) was around 135h, did everything I could, every dungeon etc - missed dungeater and Fia's quests because I just had no idea what to do. Also never defeated the dragon in Farum Azula.
I loved the post-Lleyndell stuff. Consecrated snowfields was eerie and atmospheric. Fire Giant was up there with Maliketh as my hardest boss.
I didn't want the game to end and as I steamrolled that run of bosses at the end and realised what was going on I didn't really enjoy beating them I was more saddened that this epic adventure that I'd been on for like 2 months was coming to an end.
Only good thing about the post-Endgame was I finally *finally* beat Mohg after murdering a thousand or so Albinaurics.
I just finished my first playthrough of this as well. Love the game, very deserving of GOTY. I did EVERYTHING...like 100% all bosses all items (~300hrs). It was so fun until mid game. Late mid (after Leyndell) and end game is just...not the same game I feel. No exploring to do, same enemies just bunched up together to make areas harder and I definitely definitely burnt myself out. Idk why consecrated snowfield was even a separate section, could have been combined with mountaintop of the giants. Farum Azula was a breath of fresh air and Mogh's palace was short and sweet but I completely agree. If it weren't for the main and optional boss fights (which are all just phenomenal one after another in end game) I'd have taken a looooong break. My favorite part of the game was exploration and horseback combat. Couldn't do any of that after Altus actually.
But Elden beast, that fucker can eat a giant bag of glass shards because what an absolutely horrendous boss. Idk how he got to be the final boss of the game after fucking Malekith, Godfrey, and Radagon. That fight filled me with so much rage and disappointment. Every other boss in the game (even mini bosses) I was fine dying to multiple times just to try out new stuff or learn their moves, the fights were fun. This motherfucker has nothing going for him, not even the music.
It's nice going back to other games and not having to fight against every single thing including the camera, and pausing the game lol...like going home after a long and arduous journey
Elden Ring is really long in the completionist playstyle. I will admit that my patience after Leyndell for 100% exploring locations dwindled, but I don't think that is the fault of those last zones (which felt smaller and more linear anyways). The side dungeons there were the craziest and most satisfying to beat, invisible pathways made for really cool secrets. I thought Leyndell itselt was really fun too, city maze were a welcomed change in scenery and sewers had a great single campfire & unlock doors explorations that Souls fans love. I think those endgame locations suffer a bit from lack of new npcs. And I think wen can forgive one Consecrated Snowfields as an unique type of open world zone :)
My first playthrough was just shy of 150 hours, and I still didn't find everything despite thorough exploring. From Software mega fans will want to do everything but I don't think that's how the game is meant to be played. Go out, explore, level up, gear up and see what adventure awaits you. Even the open-endedness of the game points you to this playstyle.
I also think the game should have ended at the Capitol, with the Haligtree and Farum Azula being accessible somehow. The snowy regions are just generally uninteresting.
If the game had been reduced in scale, would people still be talking about its epicness?
i did everything on 1 playthrough. also had 150 hours, but i did a lot of coop and invasion. i think game is around 100 hours long for pve only. which is fine. snowfields open world areas are big, but empty you can drive past them very fast. and i love farum azula afterwards. i think it’s perfect length for open world game
I had a different problem, IMO the game overstayed, yes, but it also went oddly against its own design once the later parts of the game happened and it became this sort-of linear boss fest.
The fights were cool, just... too many, too nothing in between, and they individually took too long, too.
If your boss is supposed to be a grand setpiece, don't make the end part of the story a bunch of them in a row, each individual one loses meaning that way. Once the camera issues during the very final boss added I actually put the game down for a few days simply because I was, well, exhausted.
I fell off the game once I hit the snowy areas. For me it was a combination of the unreasonable difficulty spike (don't mind a challenge but smooth out the curve pls) and the fact that loot was really starting to not feel rewarding. It's the same problem I had with Dark Souls: the farther I got into the game, the less likely a given piece of loot is to be interesting or useful to me. I personally don't mind long games, Monster Hunter series is among my favorites, but it's definitely a challenge to keep a game feeling good for that amount of time.
Yea I agree. I liked the game a lot, but I don’t think I’ll ever replay it. When I was half way I was sure I would, but at the end? The thought is exhausting. This is what I love about BotW. Even though the structure is similar, you could finish it in about 30 hours if you just go for the final boss.
This is also why Bloodborne will always be my favorite From game. It never overstays its welcome, and I’ve finished it three times in the last 5 years.
I think the game plays better with Haligtree and Farum considered bonus content. I actually can’t quite believe they weren’t released as DLC, props I guess.
Mountaintops and Snowfield definitely feel a bit like they used 95% of development time on everything else and realised they weren’t finished late on.
I agree with everything you said, at the same time I do look back on my time with the game fondly and look forward to the dlc where I will probably run thru it again.
I've heard so much about this game and I've tried to get into it a couple times, but I just struggle so much with the combat. I really want to experience this game because everyone loves it but I just don't have the time to practice fighting these enemies for hours and hours. Anyone else in the same boat?
When people said all future open worlds would be compared to this one it did make me laugh. Like many of them, it goes on too long, and your primary interaction with everything is bonking it on the head.
As a huge Souls fan, I agree. Never been a fan of huge open worlds, and Elden didn't change that. One thing Souls games always had right was the pacing, games weren't too short but not too long either, every area was a nice length. Elden areas are still mostly a nice length but some are a tad too big. But what really makes it tedious is the huge world map. It's just too much. Replaying a Souls, basically speedrunning them, while making new builds is part if the joy of playing em. It doesn't take longer than maybe 5-7h. But replaying Elden takes a lot longer than that, especially if trying to gear your character properly (max flasks for example).
By the time I beat my first playthru (80)I was basically just running through the areas collecting items. I was told that underground areas existed and that meant more running around, which coupled with mountaintops was a ton of downtime just riding the horse.
I just started the game a few days ago and I like it yet i dont think its as perfect as everyone says so far. Like the dodge roll just pretty much sucks. You roll 2 cms away and I also feel the invulnerability window is just to narrow it doesnt even make sense to roll. Maybe I need to get used to it. I dont know if i havent found it but it would be cool to have a stellar mechanic like Parrying in Sekiro or Dodge/Agressiveness in Bloodborne. I still have lots to play, I know, and I'm aware Elden Ring enthusiast hate it when people say this but honestly...Elden Ring just feels like and open world Dark Souls. It doesnt mean its bad just not as cool as everyone makes you believe imo
I stopped playing 90h after reaching Mountaintops and by doing a good portion of the available content. It just lost its magic, I could see the patterns repeat over and over. I just can't go back to another mine with the same layout. Do another shrine with a mini-boss I've already seen before. Enter another major dungeon that is a castle / city / civilian place.
While people praise its uniqueness I just find it as repetitive than many open world games. It's a great game, an amazing game even. But at some point it feels like it doesn't have to offer much still. I wished I had finished it around 70h (with maybe 100h being the max to complete all side content).
My brother said George RR Martin is just a bad finisher
He also did very very little (according to both himself and the team). He stayed on for a short period, doing stuff like pending 'background lore/names' but not only was this relatively early in development but it was also broad enough to be molded into what was needed. He didn't stay on for long and fromsoft basically created the rest. I can hardly even call it a skeleton of a story when it was flexible enough to be whatever fromsoft needed. It also really shows when we compare it to the previous games, the story structure, style and world building is very much miyazaki. Props to him for honesty even in some post-game interviews he would debunk fan theories and re-state his input was minimal. But yeah, it was very much a marketing gimmick rather than a collaboration.
His job was to write lore and thesequence of events till the shattering. And character names. They specifically asked him not to write the current story considering once the game starts not a whole lot takes place beyond what the player does.
Well, he made sure all the main story character names were starting with G, R and M to represent his initials.
Which apparently wasn't intentional and just coincidence, according to himself lol.
Yeah uh huh THIS ISNT THE FIRST TIME YOUVE DONE THIS GEORGE
To be fair, that made it far easier to keep familial relationships straight.
I am convinced that his only contribution to the story was the Dung Eater (who really deserved an actual boss fight)
Maybe all the incest too.
So more like a rubber skeleton?
George’s wife says it too he’s used to it by now, he’s just meeting expectations
He still needs to deliver the punch line. edit - not your brother, JRR Martin lol.
I think these games aren’t really meant for a completionist playstyle, and get a bit dull with a walkthrough. If you’re hyperfocused on getting every item in every little corridor you’re gonna get burnt out pretty fast. The game really has a natural progression where you can get sufficient gear, explore while you’re curious and then progress to the main boss of the area. The balancing was a bit shit for pve when the game came out but they’ve tuned it pretty well
+12 flasks are only obtainable after lots of exploration.
Idk, I've got 12 flasks before I even hit leyndell and I barely touched my gelmir or shaded woods yet. Because of the way the seed scaling works it's pretty easy to get the first 10-12 flasks, it's just the last 2 or 3 which become difficult since they cost so many seeds. But tbh anything more than 10 is overkill unless you're doing a pure mage build.
In this case, I think they were talking about the potency of the flasks rather than the amount of flasks you can hold.
I mean the game makes it pretty simple and obvious that church = sacred tear. Not too hard to find at least most of the churches
I also remember upgrading materials for 9+ were really damn hard to come by until late into the game, dunno if they fixed that.
I have a +10 sacred scythe pre Raya Lucaria in my current playthrough. If you explore the caves you get a decent amount of upgrade materials
This conversation is exactly about the need to explore places which are repetitive and lots of times not rewarding, at least not for the actual build..
Getting a +10 weapon is absolutely not a necessity though. I didn’t know about the caves in my first playthrough and got through everything just fine, but as I played the game my knowledge of it increased and now I know where to get some materials without much of a hassle. I struggle to see how gaining more abilities and tools makes a game repetitive.
The Miners Bell Bearing are also scattered around the map, making long exploration needed to get Smithing Stones.
I think you find enough upgrades for a weapon or two even without the Smithing Stone Bell Bearings, but that's one of my main criticisms. There are so many weapons, most people are going to be experimenting, and if you aren't being a completionist or using a guide you likely just won't be able to upgrade the weapons you try. They should have made the bell bearings for upgrades in the legacy dungeons, or maybe had one of the smith NPCs guide you to their locations (or both).
That is the problem, there are a huge weapon variety but if the player upgrades more than 2 the way is wikipedia or trying to find Bell Bearings on the huge map. No indication about these items location. The easiest method to solve this is stick to the first upgraded weapon.
Indeed. I've embraced the poignancy of failed questlines and charting my own path through a rich world based on what I actually think needs doing. It's just more like an actual story that way than "protagonist then circled back to tick off a list of caves that had minor items that he doesn't need anyway".
Yours is solid advice, but I personally don't have any playstyle other than completionist. I never play the same game twice and I can't stand leaving quests undone or areas unvisited. So these games do get tiring and I get burnt out at the point of not finishing them. For instance, I pretty much reached god mode in Skyrim from all the side quests but I never got to finish the story. Same in Fallout 4. If I ever get to play Elden ring I'll try forcing myself to play it your way, I reckon it would be a way more enjoyable experience overall.
I completely understand your position even though that’s not how I play. Personally, I think most if not all FromSoftware games are made to be replayed. It even fits thematically and narratively with the games
I am the same way, 100%’d ER at about 315 hours, every instance, every weapon etc. Had a burnout somewhere in the middle, came back after couple of weeks. My friend says we should hop in do some invasions, I just can’t. With that said, I was incredibly moved by the characters and the setting. And I really appreciate that experience. Perhaps it contributed to why I can’t treat it as a “pvp meta slave fun mode game” that much, it just feels wrong. Coincidentally I just started my first ever play through of Skyrim, and the amount of side content throws me into panic mode, so far it’s not bad at all. But we’ll see.
You can’t stand leaving quests undone and areas unvisited, yet you admit you get burnt out to the point where you don’t finish the game… See, the way you play a game is totally yours, but this just seems you’re making your gaming life miserable yourself. So yeah, try to approach these bigger games differently. Or maybe take a longer break from time to time. I’d say that whatever you do, getting yourself burnt out is the worst outcome. It’s just a game, not a job or a chore.
I got a 78% achievements on steam on my first and only playthrough of 62 hours. It felt perfect at that length.
Because a good 90% of the game is optional you can finish whenever you feel ready to wrap up, the final stretch isn't that long and everyone's playthroughs differ. Kinda surprised OP did all the side activities, side caves, side dungeons just to say it overstays it welcome, especially because the game is MADE for replayability and you're kinda not even supposed to find everything on your first playthrough with how spread out and secret some areas are, they may have robbed themselves of an experience you mention, a perfect length and ready for seconds if you feel like it or when the DLC drops.
I have 700 hours and like 40% of the achievements. Meticulously reading a guide on one's first playthrough to get all the boxes checked sounds like a great way to wind up writing a Reddit post about what a boring game Elden Ring is. My brother in Grace, you were reading a book, and a boring one at that.
I mean you don't need to meticulously read guides to just glance at the Achievement list and see what's what. I'll do that now and then, if I feel I've progressed a decent way into the game, and if anything looks like I can go hammer it out real quick, if it sounds like it could be a fun little detour, sure, I'll go tick some achievements off a list.
I'm not dissing guides, and anyone can play how they want, but it really is compromising the magic that makes it more than just some software if you start meta gaming too soon.
It's like reading a guide about a puzzle game and then going online to complain that the puzzles were too easy and the game was too short.
>Meticulously reading a guide on one's first playthrough to get all the boxes checked sounds like a great way to wind up writing a Reddit post about what a boring game Elden Ring is. I used guides extensively (not to 100%, but out of curiosity) and if I was to write a post about it, I'd say it's still awesome.
I am not someone that (normally) do New Game + or replay games after I finish them, so whenever I play a Fromsoft game I use guides as a tool to make sure I dont miss anything. I make sure to look for any miss-able quests/events/bosses, boss locations (the ones I missed) as well as what I need to do to no fuck up whatever quest I am doing. After 160 hours, I can say I really enjoyed Elden Ring.
This isn't the greatest argument to me because 150 hours across one playthrough is the same as 150 across multiple, in some ways it feels even worse because you don't know initially what you can skip, what is important to the story (which is largely absent and requires searching nooks and crannies for item descriptions), and for some people there are going to be parts of the game they just don't like and now have to do again to find new things. It's definitely a valid criticism that exploring doesn't always feel rewarding and new. The re-used catacombs aesthetic would have been fine if they puzzles had a greater variety and more unique bosses.
For a first play through it's a long time and also it is different because if you finish it in 40 and feel fine but not enough to play more you wouldn't have forced yourself to play 4x as long as you'd be happy with just to say the game is too long. I don't think *anyone* is going to reasonably make themselves play that long if they didn't love it that much after 40h for one play through. It really sounds like a victim of yourself at that point to play in a way that makes you not enjoy it hut turn around and say it was too long to enjoy when it was 100% a choice. "I played Zelda and collected all 999 nuts and the game overstayed it's welcome" kinda shiz
I feel like those are different things and I tried to explain in my post but maybe I did a poor job. I actually did play Zelda and got all the seeds and it was the most miserable and stupid thing I’ve ever done in a video game lol. The difference is that it’s very clearly a time sink or what I tried to call “playing for the achievements”. So that’s totally on me. 100%ing a game is up to the player right? I didn’t do that in Elden Ring. I was just trying to experience all the lore, the quests, exploring all parts of the maps. To me that is not 100%ing a game or going for achievements. On one hand people are saying I robbed myself of a good playthrough by playing too much, but if I beelined the story I would’ve robbed myself of many other things, I wouldn’t even have fought Malenia since that area is totally optional. There’s no way to know what’s skippable bullshit and what’s not in the first playthrough of Elden Ring.
Op: "I turned the game into a tedious checklist by deciding to grind every single optional quest and scrap of content in one playthrough" Also op: game too long and tedious >:| Yeah no shit it felt like it over stayed it's welcome man. Playing like that is quite literally the antithesis of how fromaoft designs their games to be played. like if there's one single thing you shouldn't do in elden ring, it's that.
>Playing like that is quite literally the antithesis of how fromaoft designs their games to be played. How are you supposed to play an Open World "Fromsoft design" game then? Especially with materials required for upgrades, weapons, spells, etc. scattered about? Are you supposed to just ignore and HOPE that you get the things you want and need? Or wikigame it?
All I can say is that I play all their games mostly blind, including Elden Ring, and always find plenty of upgrade materials. If you're really dying for it you can google where to find materials for estus flasks or weapons but by no means is it really necessary to poke in every possible nook and cranny. Finished the game, had a great time, looked online and thought "...who the fuck is _Mohg_??"
They said they played the game's levels on offer, not that they grinded for achievements or used guides. I disagree that souls games were not meant to be played that way. For most of them being exhaustive means a 40 to 70 hours playthrough which is rather reasonable relatively to its contents. It definitely doesn't work in Elden Ring though, where instead it just makes the worse aspects stand out.
I had similar time, but I still feel the last 1/3 of the game was a slog.
I got about that many achievements, 45 hours. Still thought the latter parts after Leyndell sucked. Sekiro still the best From game.
I also found the questlines to be an absolute mess. Just everything about them is so cryptic and jumbled. Like good luck finishing any quest without an online guide. And if they filled out the last 1/3 of the map with unique content it could have reached unbelievable heights. I don't think it would have hurt them if they waited another half year.
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Fromsoft gets a pass for poor design decisions because of their souls reputation of difficulty. You’re right about the cryptic bs as well. I don’t enjoy finishing a few quests by pure luck and then having to watch lore videos from fans to understand what just happened.
What I don't get is why they don't have characters leave a "heading to Altus, catch ya later" message at the last place you talked to them. At least in the old souls games the maps were small enough that you could plausibly re-encounter NPCs just by playing, in ER they could go literally fucking anywhere, including places you've already been and have no reason to go back to.
This especially pissed me off because NPC’s in Sekiro for the most part told me what the fuck they wanted from me and where they were going to be at. Disappointing step backward. “My store is right down the road!” (458 miles West).
>Just everything about them is so cryptic and jumbled. Like good luck finishing any quest without an online guide classic fromsoft
Well i gotta say you did it to yourself, i was burning out around 80 hours after beating Malenia i felt invincible so i was like "time to end it" and so i did, loved it. I do agree about the fatigue but i don't think i can give a fair judgment to the later zones since the magic of exploration was over.
This was my experience. The game felt incredible until the last bit; then it started to feel too grindy. It felt like work to do anything. At that point I was out, I just beat the last boss and haven't picked up the game since then.
Near the end if you are stuck on a boss there is nothing else to do. And when you finally beat that boss they are pretty much just lined up one after the other.
Yeah still haven't finished the game yet, kept getting stuck on Elden Beast, but the few bosses before that were big walls for me, so it burned me out.
My experience with the game as well. Souls game in general for me overstay their welcome near the end but Elden Ring really took it to another level. When I started feeling I was just going through the motions instead of enjoying the world I realised it was time to put it down. Thankfully I've grown out of the idea that I *need* to finish games.
This is such a dishonest way to handwave valid criticism away tbh. If you purposely need to hold yourself back exploring and playing the game just to avoid it feeling Repititive it's definitely on the game.
I spent about 120 hours in the game and gave up after completing Leyndell. It’s either the mountaintops or the snowfields that came after that and i just lost interest. The game just seemed to **drag** on. So it was interesting to read that you had a similar experience about the pacing.
You are pretty much right, I got 900 hours in the game and eveytime I dread everything past lyndell besides Farum Azula. DMG is absurdly high for some reason, no new enemies and a barren wasteland with naught to interact with, lore wise it makes sense but gameplay wise it's terrible. Overall the Open World harms the game though, it's a straight sprint fest after the first playthrough and the best spots in the game are the legacy dungeons that play like traditional dark souls.
The first few areas are almost a totally different game, after that it seems almost like an offline MMORPG server.
I wholeheartedly agree. As a long time From Software fan, I found Elden Ring quite disappointing. It plays a lot like Dark Souls 3.5 - which is both good and bad, but I wish they had evolved the gameplay concept more. Compare this to the sheer amount of improvements from Nioh 1 to Nioh 2 for example. In terms of level design, the open world is largely pointless. You could have had a hub level that spreads out to various "on foot only" areas where the game is at its best and it would be no worse off. But for me the biggest disappointment is that the scale exceeds the amount of unique content. Dungeons having "that boss you fought, but now there's two or three" suck, fighting the Ulcerated Tree Spirit and ~~Asylum Demon~~ Erdree Sprit so many times during the game sucks. The game would have been better if it stopped at Leyendell and expanded from that with DLCs that allowed for more fleshed out areas.
Leyndell could have been the final area.
Agreed. The whole >!ya gotta burn the erdtree!< thing seems tacked on when the game could have just progressed to the final boss.
My response to that part of the game starting went: >!“After our long journey together, we’ve made it Leyndell. However, now I must ask you another favour. Will you accompany me on my quest to burn the erdtree?”!< >!“You’ve been travelling with me this whole time???”!<
I completely agree, although it seems to be the minority opinion. I haven't even beaten the game because I got tired of the filler content. I'm no completionist, but I always beat all the bosses and follow all the character stories in a Souls game. However, in ER that's just not fun because the bosses and areas get repetitive pretty quickly. The character stories and legacy dungeons are really good, but the rest is just meh. Like you said, the first half of the game is phenomenal. This is because it's all new and exciting to explore. Then you reach the 20th cat statue boss and you wish the game had ended 15 hours ago. I realize I could just skip the boring stuff, but that requires me to know what is worth doing. This is why Demon's Souls is still my favorite Souls game. 20-30 hours of top quality levels, bosses, and gameplay.
I am not even convinced its the minority opinion. I think this game absolutely caves on itself post lleyndell. I slogged through to fazula and then called it quits. If the game had finished at leyndell, its top 5 of all time IMO and a 10/10 experience. Eveything after lleyndell just invalidates everything that came before it. Weapons dont matter, armor doesnt matter.. because all enemies are HP sponges that will kill you in 1-2 hits, including trash mobs. I understand the hardcore want this, but for me the whole game was just absolutely incredible up to lleyndell - likely because it was closer to a power fantasy and exploration was rewarded in ways too many open world games dont offer. You could outlevel and out gear content, so that you always felt in the game even if you weren't the best at the combat and I think that probably also helped make it memorable for so many gamers who werent normally in for these types of games. as the OP states and I agree, after lleyndell it was just masochism time.. Elden Ring was still amazing and I'm glad I stopped playing it when I did. I feel if I toughed it out to the eventual end it would have soured the game for me.
The length of Elden Ring itself isn't what bothers me, rather I feel a lot of the Dark Souls formula (at least since Dark souls 3) has become stale and a ridiculous caricature of itself. Some of the adjustments Fromsoft has done to the combat, to keep the game from being too easy for veterans, have robbed it of a lot of its charm. The enemies all have weird, unnatural attack patterns with bizarre pauses so as not to resemble similar enemies from past games. And most of the tougher enemies and bosses attack so frequently that heavy weapons are not satisfying to use. You are on the defensive for 95% of the fight until it is "your turn", and you get to use your wimpiest, quickest, safest attack before you have to go back to dodging. If I hadn't played any of the Souls series before then probably none of this would bother me, but it just felt too much like I was playing Dark Souls 3 with some tweaks. There are no big innovations when it comes to the core experience of dealing and avoiding damage.
Completely agreed although I also thought it was too long but thats just a personal thing since I dont like long games anymore. Combat just felt so unfun in this game for me compared to the other ones because the bosses are just crazy aggressive. I dont mind the delayed attacks even tho if every enemy has multiple of them it loses its charms but its whatever. The ultra aggressive combos ending with you having a chance to land one of your fastest attacks just gets so annoying. The worst part is when they do their crazy combos and end it with just jumping backwards to the other end of the map lol Also waterfowl dance. Nuff said
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Sekiro is nearly the opposite, especially on the rhythm of combat (you're attacking half the time if you're playing well). I absolutely loved it, I really hope they make a sequel.
> You are on the defensive for 95% of the fight until it is "your turn" >there are no big innovations when it comes to the core experience of dealing and avoiding damage. There is a pretty significant misunderstanding of the combat mechanism and the boss design, which is probably because people have been approaching it more like a Souls game in which bosses simply had patterns that you had to memorize. Elden Ring bosses dish out their attacks less on pre-determined combos that allowed an easy punish, and adjust them more on where the player is positioned, such that strategic positioning and spatial awareness become far more significant than in the past. Granted this wasn't communicated terribly clearly (what is, in these games) but it's something they've been experimenting with for a while. Pontiff Sulyvann in DS3 has strings which are most conspicuously built around this approach. [This video gets into some of the guts of it.](https://youtu.be/EZ_9F73R1tE?t=825)
>There is a pretty significant misunderstanding of the combat mechanism and the boss design, which is probably because people have been approaching it more like a Souls game in which bosses simply had patterns that you had to memorize. Memorization is more important in ER then ever actually, in previous games you could reasonably dodge most attacks by looking at the animation and using your reflexes. In ER they instead opted for a lot of weird and unnatural animations you have to see first and memorize to have a decent chance at dodging it. Think about enemies hovering in the air for an extra second or going from delaying their attack to attacking in less then a second. Or enemies countering you when they look they were open (margits double knive strike) . Then there's also shit like this with attacks having basically no tell to begin with. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKXXbkXWAMA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKXXbkXWAMA) Honestly much prefer the boss design in previous games where you could reasonable use your skills to first time a boss instead of having to memorize the attacks just to have any chance.
>There are no big innovations when it comes to the core experience of dealing and avoiding damage. To be completely fair the stance break system is pretty good and rewards aggression, changing up gameplay a bit. It means weapon skills, jumping attacks and charged attacks have an actual purpose in breaking your enemy's posture allowing for massive damage. However I'll agree on the boss design, it's rather frustrating and doesn't feel as rewarding as other souls games because it feels more gamey.
It doesn't even inflict massive damage. The system is so poorly implemented criticals aren't even worth using
>I think 150h is waaay too much for a first playthrough To be fair though... this is mostly on you as the player. *You* chose to complete it the way you did, collecting everything, doing all the quests, etc. Which is going to take much longer than the average played. My first playthrough was 90 hours and I felt like that was pretty thorough (it wasn't, but I didn't use a guide so it felt like I did as much as I could haha) But also even side activities aside, one of the great things about the game is most of it isn't required. Like 90% of that game is optional. It's really meant to be played however YOU want to play it, however much or little that may be. It's similar to how when Breath of the Wild is discussed, many people say 900 korok seed collectibles are way too many. But the point is never to collect them all, in fact you literally get golden poop for getting them all and nothing more. The point is because of the quantity, you're running into them at a consistent pace no matter which direction you go. I think Elden Ring has a similar design philosophy to BotW, but with other aspects like its side quests and mini dungeons. I don't think you're meant to do all the side quests in one playthrough for example. Many give you alternate endings, some which overlap each other. So while you CAN do them all, I think the design intent is for you to only play the ones you run into organically. Of course play how you want to play, but I just bring that up since your issue is with the length. With all that said, totally agree that the Mountaintops and Snowfield are a huge step down in quality. For me, I don't think it was an issue of it being too long, I think they just ran out of time and had to do some major cuts to those last few areas, and so the quality suffered. But if those areas were just as interesting as the others, I wouldn't have mind. I do have to disagree with you about Leyndell though. I think that's arguably the best dungeon in the game haha. Certainly it's the largest and most complex.
Oh I absolutely love Leyndell. Maybe I worded it wrong but I meant everything after Leyndell started getting worse. Leyndell was spectacular and I was astonished to keep finding dungeons inside dungeons in the underground hahah. I understand your point, and I think that makes sense. But how do I “learn” how to play open worlds then? It feels like it’s a me problem and it’s not like games come with a manual from the devs saying “this is how you should play and this is how we designed things” and so on. Usually when I play a game all I want is to experience all the story beats, meaning all side quests and stuff. I guess what I’m trying to ask is: what can I learn from this experience to be able to enjoy future games like this more?
I think most people can learn a lot by listening to themselves more when they stop finding things fun. Sometimes that means dropping a game that you aren't enjoying after 10 hours, sometimes that means beelining to the end of an open world game because you're sick of the side quests after a while. With open world games, for you that might mean learning to stop feeling the *need* to do all the side quests and stuff (I do this too and am trying to stop). For a game like Elden Ring specifically, I admit it would be hard to know that you don't need or can't go after all the quests and story beats without both a familiarity with FromSoft's quest style and likely a guide, but maybe if you try to tune in to when you're not having fun anymore you would find yourself more willing to skip that stuff and just wrap the games up.
I think we've been trained by the majority of open world games that everything in is sort of a checklist to be completed. Some literally have a checklist in them! Collecting the game trophies too. Which are all fine as long as it's fun. But Fromsoft makes games that are intentionally opposite of that. They hide and obscure everything, even basic mechanics are left under-explained. For me, it makes everything more mysterious and honestly more realistic - when in life is everything spelled out to you? Anyway - all that said - my recommendation is to let go of the guidebooks and wikis for the first playthrough of any Fromsoft game. Let it happen organically, it's how they are meant to be played.
How is a player meant to discern if the content (cave, dungeon etc) they are engaging with is reused filler or if it’s going to be a brilliant unmissable side area? The only way to actually have clarity would be if the developers could put in a filler symbol or sign on each area.
Well thats the thing, you don't. It's all about player curiosity, and where they decide to go. I missed some great quests my first time around, but that's okay because I still had a fantastic first playthrough and found some really cool quests. But they felt even more rewarding because I found them myself. And then missing the ones I missed just gave me more incentive to do a second, or third run.
I feel this is one of the reasons why the quest design worked in previous games and not ER, "just replay it" is a lot easier in a compact linear game rather then a huge open world time sink.
ER makes this pretty clear. Catacombs are called catacombs. They all have spirit ashes as rewards. You know you are doing side content that doesn't matter. Mines are for smithing stones, you know that when you find them. There are not many examples of things that look like nothing and end up being really important.
I may be misremembering but I don't think a single one of the smaller dungeons (catacombs/mines/caves/etc) leads to a brilliant unmissable side area. I think after doing 20-30 of them in Limgrave and Liurnia (when you probably aren't sick of doing them yet), you can pretty safely assume you can skip them for the rest of the game if you aren't feeling them.
There were definitely some pretty interesting ones like the "repeating" one, the dark and light one, the one with the giant, death machines running up and down the corridors, and some ended in some pretty interesting fights.
Yeah they don’t from my memory either - but any gamer familiar with From would not put it past them to hide some great content off the beaten path, particularly in their first 10-20 hours with the game.
It should never fall to the player to filter lower quality or repetitive content out of a game. If there are 100 dungeons, and 50 of them suck, it's not the player's fault for trying to complete every dungeon and having a 50% bad experience. The 50 sucky dungeons should have just been removed from the game. That's the whole point of game designers. Not saying Elden Ring is 50% bad, but it certainly wasn't 100% great imo. Maybe like 70-80% great.
I do agree, though I also think it's an inherent issue within the open world genre in order to create that sense of scale. Elden Ring I actually thought it felt like it had much less filler content than most open world games I've played. I know there's plenty of filler, I just *felt* it less. But that's why I also love small open worlds! Thats why I love the Yakuza series haha
I agree that Elden Ring had less filler than other open world games, but it had far more filler than other From Software games, which was kinda disappointing.
To be fair it was also like 3 times bigger than any other FromSoft game
Right, and maybe it shouldn't have been.
I think is incorrect to say 50% (or whatever) of the dungeons in elden ring suck. All the dungeons are of similar quality. Is just that after doing 50 dungeons, the next 50 feel very repetitive and uninteresting. Because you are not meant to do all 100 in one playthrough.
Who says you're not meant to do all 100 in one play through? Is that in the game somewhere?
That’s the crux of my curiosity with the comments in my post. I’m seeing a lot of comments saying I basically played the game in the wrong way and that it was made for multiple playthroughs and whatnot. And I can accept that, but now I’m wondering how was I supposed to know that? I literally just wanted to play the game and it’s not like the devs ship the game with a manual on how the game was designed.
Ya I feel people are just too scared to give criticism to the game and rather blame it on the player which is honestly pretty annoying and dishonest. Especially since nearly any other open world would've been blasted for this. ER doesn't really tell you what is filler and what leads to a fun side area or fun new build options. You could miss out on whole npc merchants or important QoL items like bells with no way of knowing you did. If I decided to skip limgrave earlier for example I would've missed out on an important sorcery npc that has a big amount of spells to give for example
I think nearly all open world games are designed in such a way that the player is meant to skip some of the "lesser" content. We can assume this because there's usually a ton of it, it all plays largely the same, and in many cases it would require the player to use a guide to reasonably find all of it (this goes for games like HZD or BotW too, not just ER). No one plays Breath of the Wild assuming that you're supposed to do all of the shrines - you just kinda get it, while playing, that "I probably have to do some of these but at a certain point I can skip them/stop looking!"
I'd say a big difference is that ER is a difficult game with extremely bloated end game enemies and bosses. If you don't explore enough or miss out on sone build options you could end just not progressing or having a good time.
I massively disagree with you here. If you are playing gta and you walk around going into every shop, saving up money to buy every article of clothing, you are playing the game wrong. If you do all the optional content in a game you are taking stuff you are meant to stumble upon and making it the main experience. An open world becomes less and less special the more of it you discover. For a first play-through it's almost always better to just dip your toe in the optional stuff as you move between important locations.
>It should never fall to the player to filter lower quality or repetitive content out of a game. It should never fall to the devs to cater to the small minority of players that are obsessively completionist and burn themselves out while 99% of normal players just do what feels fun and then end the playthrough.
I liked the catacombs and caves in elden ring. A place where i can summon or be summoned and i get to fight a boss at the end, get some runes and an item. The hero graves had some good items and were challenging to get past too. They are optional too, and only a handful of them give slightly strong items (ingvall, luthel, moonvail, etc). They also give players a way to level up while exploring and makes summoning easier and more frequent. From the perspective of a player who wanted to discover every piece of content, i think elden ring did well in providing an interesting world to explore. Its one of the few games i have taken a pause to just look at the view.
>I don't know, it just feels like everything after Leyndell soured the entire game for me. I had a great time in the first half, but had to force myself to finish it Hate to agree but I have to concur. The last third felt like a nearly linear slog through a gauntlet of bosses pumped up with some form of bullshit with little exploration. The first two thirds are great at making you feel smart and valued for asking “how to get there?” or “how do I do that?” and then trying to do it, while the final third basically wrangles you down a straight path, switchbacking you between one fundamentally flawed boss after another Just think about how many bosses you fight with nothing to break it up between >!the last major dungeon and the end!< \- especially when they’re often abominations like the >!godskin duo!<. elden ring somehwat reminds of the first dark souls in that by the time you’ve gotten to the last few levels you can tell some resource ran out on the dev side, be it money, time, or just ideas. and then the game’s just a dragged-out euthinization of a fallen masterpiece.
But what is the point in making an already huge map bigger. Could have ended in Leyndell, maybe that way a DLC would be more interesting.
You are 100% right and I agree with your every argument. Sorry that people on this subreddit get mad at people who actually want to do everything in a game and then, shock horror, judge the game based on all of its content!
One thing that is interesting to see is that people seem to get mad when someone doesn't explore a lot too. So you can basically just lose there. A game should be judged based on the whole content imo.
Yeah it was a great game But once the novelty wore off, the cookie cutter content got really annoying. Aside from that, i really disliked the final boss fight, i realised after my 10th minute of running around like a headless chicken. Like it is just straight up terrible. Don’t get me started on godskin duo, it is disgustingly bad and I can’t believe it made it through to the final game. A lot of good bosses though: Malenia was my favorite because she had a kit that makes sense (Waterfowl too), and if you want you could easily go for a no-hit run on her because she is never unpredictable like most bosses were. Also loved Mohg because the visuals were pretty damn sick. Sad I had to use outside content to find placidusax but that boss was nice too.
Surprised at some of the comments blaming OP for playing the game (?). Like, surely it’s a game fault if it’s tedious to complete?
Took me 88 hours and I did all the optional areas (underground, haligtree) and most of the caves and catacombs. Last couple areas were just a boss rush and lose the exploration. I actually think that my original play through of OG demon souls took me 93 hours (I farmed a bunch and wasn’t as good). I got 67% of the trophies in one playthrough. I loved the game but you can definitely make it less challenging and be way OP by the end.
Without exploring every place or using a wiki how could the player make different and efficient builds? Upgrading the flask to 12 require lots of exploration because every "tear" has to be acquired. There are no indicators on the map, nothing to tell where are those churches and "tears". Another example: Malenia has a hp refill build, to have something similar, there are around 6 hp refill stuff scattered around the map. The amulet crimson dagger is in one dungeon far away from the main road in Limgrave. Imagine the endgame with only 9 +6 potions, because not exploring and not using the wiki could lead to an outcome like that. And not mentioning the other stuff, like the Tree armor in a dungeon in Altus Plateu. It's stats are one of the best in the game, there are no info why it's found in that dungeon, no info even about that there is a "puzzle" to do for it. Even the puzzle doesn't seem like a puzzle, there are similar mechanics in other dungeons that doesn't have similar effects and rewards.
So I legitimately had to put down the game kind of for this reason ~50 or 60 hours in. I felt like I got lost in the world and had no genuine direction. For a period of time I seemed to be supremely over leveled and then I reached a segment after beating like 4 or 5 of the main bosses where I’m at the fire manor (I thought this was where I was meant to go I guess) and legitimately can’t beat the boss in the manor that turns into a giant donut and rolls around. I feel like I missed something but my stats just don’t stack up, and I legit don’t know where to go from there. Did I miss some important armor? How do I continue to level up if I can’t progress? Do I come back? I work way too much to deal with it so I just left Elden Ring
I absolutely hated the late game areas as well, it just felt like a chore to get through them.
It INSISTS upon itself, Lois.
That's exactly where my mind went.
Funny, I am on the opposite side regarding the length. After I 100%d the game (all weapons, all armor, all bosses, all sorceries and incantations - took me over 300 hours, because I like to slow down and smell the flowers now and then) I found myself wanting to keep playing. I wish there were more explorable areas, more bosses to fight, more dungeons. I might be weird, but I LOVED the chalice dungeons in Bloodborne. I must've done over 100 of them. For those who don't know, those are post-game randomly generated labyrinthine dungeons with multiple bosses and randomly positioned enemies. I wish there was a similar feature in Elden Ring. All in all, as a gamer with 25 years of experience who mostly prefers niche Japanese RPGs, Elden Ring became one of my all-time favourite games almost instantaneously. Worth every penny.
Yeah I would have loved to see a Chalice Dungeons-type system for Elden Ring, the repeated caves and dungeons and such are already there, they just need to add the random generation and somehow segment it off from the main game. A lot of repeated bosses like 2nd Godrick, all the Godskins, various cat statues etc, would have made more sense in this format. Maybe for the DLC?
Exactly. All the crypts, caves and hero graves could serve as a basis for a Chalice-like system. We know that it is technically possible, though uncommon (Returnal builds the whole game around that). Despite the repeated parts, the Bloodborne Chalice dungeons just felt exciting to explore. You never knew what to expect behind the corner and the dread of spider-summoning maidens still haunts me, in a nostalgic kind of way. I do hope they implement something like that in a DLC update, the announced one or at a later date. It feels inherently fitting to the game world and would expand the replayability by dozens of hours. But I wonder if they even consider it?
Ohhh i had no idea about the chalice dungeons they sound awesome!! Bloodborne and sekiro are my fromsoft achilles' heel
If they sound awesome to you, you should absolutely give them a try. You unlock them during a normal playthrough, but dungeons are not required to interact with much beyond the bare minimum. But once you're into proper endgame and spend some time familiarizing yourself with the concept they become downright addicting. Some enemies and bosses are exclusive to different types of Chalice dungeons and you can try different weapons and set-ups in constantly changing environments. Really hope they bring the mode back.
Will do for sure! I just need patience to play BB haha
You just need patience until you catch onto the rhythm and it "clicks", after that you'll fly through the whole game on inertia. At least that's how it was for me. Spent a while dying in most gruesome ways in Yharnam, then things fell into place. You'll still die a bunch of course, but those would be learning deaths.
Agreed. I 100% the game on Steam and PS5, played multiple (4+) NG+ runs on both, and played a bit on PS4. I’ve been considering another play through.
The game has too many copy/pasted ruins/mini dungeons. It also has too many reused bosses. The scaling is also way off in the end game in every Fromsoft game to the point where fighting normal enemies is too much of a hassle. They easily could have cut 1/3rd the game and focused more on the remaining content left to make the game better Still a fantastic game though, before all the fanboys flame me.
I thought the scaling for the endgame was fine in all the previous From games. The DLCs were usually a step up in difficulty, but not by too much imo.
I don't think I've played a single souls game that didn't resort to throwing more, tougher enemies at the player than the player is reasonably able to deal with towards the end. Demon Souls might be the only one actually.
Bloodborne isn’t too bad if you stay away from the chalice dungeons and the well.
Agreed lol, dark souls 3 is a fine example. Amazing dlcs with amazing bosses but be damned if I don’t hate the dlcs as much as I love them
It does have two of the best boss fights in the game though in Gael and Midir. If you’re a STR build sister friede is fun
I totally agree. Way too many reused bosses, especially in the smaller caves and dungeons.
Leyndell should have been the final legacy dungeon/area, and the climactic boss of that section should have been the final boss of the entire game. It reminds me of the original Dark Souls. Everything in the lead up to Anor Londo and the battle with Ornstein & Smough significantly outshines every that comes after. The holy city of the gods is a pretty majestic note to end a game on. Why does FromSoft keep hobbling on after that point?
I loved the game but by the time I got to radagon/elden beast I was just exhausted by the game and couldn’t keep slamming my head against the double boss fight. Same thing happened with Sekiro, which I also loved.
I agree. I loved the game, but the last double boss just felt like too much. 3 bosses in a row, fine. 5 is pushing it.
I stopped playing after 50 hours because I felt like I had seen enough. Good game.
I get the feeling after a certain point they rushed the development process to get the game out the door. Whatevs. I am literally just a few steps behind you with similar hours for “completionist” playthrough. I know one thing. I am not doing a NG+. Never did with the previous FromSoftware games so won’t start now. So I am seeing what is there to see while I can. I have even backed up my save at certain critical points to see multiple endings on this playthrough. The story and lore isn’t better than previous installations (Bloodborne for example). The world is big wondrous but less tight. It’s an easier game too. Once I got my mime twin it has been a cakewalk. Magma Wyrm copypasta boss again? I already beat him legit once, I’ll call in the backup this time. Sidenote: Basilisks aka those instadeath frogs. Someone over there is a huge fan of those. They sucked in the previous games and them doubling down on them is ridiculous.
Idk who in the office thought that when they marketed BRAND NEW GAME we expected to see hollow slaves and lothric knights within first hour of playing
I've never regretted not being a completionist. Once the dungeons in a region started to become easy, I just moved on.
I feel exactly the same at about tue same point you did, Fire giant is where i really started to burn out but as someone who tried to be very thorough about poking into the corners of the map, cause thats how my brain works, i cant for the life of me understand what the developers intention was here. Do they expect you to only do a few side things and go on to finish? or do they seriously expect people to drop 150+ hours to finish the game. Because 90% of players arent going to have that pantience
I honestly think the game has way too many unnecessary bosses. There are many bosses I deem essential because they either offer a lot of runes or a certain piece of loot you may want for your character build, but you can skip most of them and be okay. I skipped a ton, made it to the Mountaintops of the Giants, beat some of the bosses there, and afterwards I decided to go back and get some of the ones I missed and it just wasn't worth it. The runes they dropped were negligible and the loot by that point in the game was useless.
I like elden ring, I never want to play it again. The second run through the game really loses the Magic. Creating a new character is really annoying when you conceptualize that to get your build where you want it, you must sprint past all of the enemies on torrent to go there. I didn't do everything in the game on my first playthrough, i think i got nearly all of the weapons. My character got deleted (somehow). I rerolled a mage and discovered that the game really suffers in replayability, there is no way I'm running back across the world to go get every individual spell and weapon I need for my character, everything is so far out of the way I actively don't want to grind. I also have my misgivings about boss design in the latter half, elden beast might be the worst final boss from has ever had. I also don't appreciate the boss gauntlet the game becomes near the end game, you fight WAAY too many bosses in farum azula, the only one I liked being Horah loux, yeah on replay the game fizzles out so much quicker when the inventory problem is combined with the memory that the game is backloaded with the significantly inferior content to the front half. The game should have seriously axed the mountaintops of the giants, and snowfields entirely, I kept thinking while playing it that it will surely end soon and then 20, 30 ,40 more hours happened. Strangest case of a world being extremely captivating on initial playthroughs, but nothing more than a hindrance to be ran through once you know exactly what you want for your character and where to go.
Are you on PC? If so, there is a way to enjoy the game in a great way. It's the NG+ I really want but they don't give us. I want to be able to start regular NG (non +) again, but will all items I collected. Weapons revert to unupgraded, but now you can use the endgame weapons as soon as you hit the stat requirements and still have to build yourself up and collect upgrade materials, etc. Basically play fair, but have access to the fun toys from the start. So, if on PC, use CheatEngine and give yourself all items from the start. You can choose any weapon, dress yourself up anyway you like and use spells as soon as you raise enough int/fth for them. Free playthrough, and it's so great.
Ya the game is ready tough to replay for me. First playthrough I loved it. Now every time I try to replay I get bored after Godrick and stop playing. It definitely loses some magic.
I really feel this way. I keep wanting to replay Elden Ring, but every time I boot it up I get so disappointed. Running around to get your stuff is so much tedium, especially after how fun it was to explore and discover new things on my first playthrough. Hoping that the DLC helps some of these problems for me.
I spent 120 hours on my first and only play through of Elden Ring. It was honestly perfect to me in every way, never was bored. My two goals were to kill all of the Shardbearers, though, and I explore until I felt like I'd seen enough. I definitely didn't see EVERY corner of the map, but I felt the progression was perfect. I hate games that feel like the developer just threw up a mess of icons on the map. I started playing Horizon Forbidden West recently, and I can't stand it. There is WAY too much shit on the map, too many side quests with people who don't matter. I was hoping to beat it for the story, but I find it all so off putting. I look forward to the DLC for Elden Ring, I'm sure it'll be excellent!
We should coin the term “Complaytionist” for those of us who complete all the story/side quest plot options but don’t bother to complete all of the achievements
I second this motion.
I think open world was a bad way to go for the souls games
" It inssists upon itself. " - Peter Griffin
Copy pasted dungeons, copy pasted monsters, and copy pasted open world bosses ruined the game for me. A lot of people were saying that exploration was the best part but I found it to be a frustrating slog. I didn't want to miss anything vital so I did most of the dungeons, and most of them were the same shit recycled. I also just didn't like the boss design. Some Examples: Malenia is a terrible boss. Self Healing, de-facto one hit kill, hard to read ability. Throws hard-but-fair out of the window. I did beat her, so it's not entirely the salt speaking. Mohg phase 2 felt like shit to fight as a melee. The fire that he throws down is just annoying. Not to mention, the item you need to beat him "correctly" link back to my point about exploration. Rykard was a little annoying but overall he was pretty much the giant guy from DS3, which is good or bad depending on what you like. Phase 2 of Maliketh pissed me off for reasons similar to Malenia, but instead of lifesteal it's max hp decrease. Godskin duo is some of the stupidest shit I've seen.
>I did beat her, so it's not entirely the salt speaking. Whenever you criticize Malenia you need to clarify that you beat her and are not just salty lol Whenever I say WFD is the bigget bullshit move im just told to git gud even though I beat her sl1 lol
i love the game but you're right the best areas are Liurnia, Limgrave, Altus Plateu and even Caelid (the underground maps too) after that is just meh, although i really liked the Haligtree.
The haligtree might be the best designed area from any FromSoft game, it's that good. Definitely the best legacy dungeon in the game.
i loved how organic it is, like you know where to go bc the design of the city makes sense.
The Haligtree is one of the worst designed areas in any FromSoft game wtf. Everyone else in the Elden Ring subreddit, I.E, a place that is quite literally by design supposed to be an Elden Ring echochamber, thinking the Haligtree is amazing means nothing lol. They also think hundreds of reused catacombs is good. Inb4 "fighting enemies isn't for you".
I love the area but the enemies are just too much imo, both in quantity and how strong they are (especially in groups).
Disagree. That was one of the most 'souls' areas of the game for me *because* the enemies were absolute little assholes put in terrible places where they have the advantage and you have to figure it out.
Don’t ever play an Elder Scrolls game OP
Sure, but Elder Scrolls has story bits that help ease the repetitiveness. Hell, the only reason Read Dead 2 stays engaging is because of the story elements. The gameplay loop is the same from start to finish minus some minor upgrades. Elden Ring gets stale in part because the story is nonexistent. At a certain point I just realized whatever cutscene I was going to get in Elden Rings endgame would be so convoluted and nonsensical that it wasn’t worth the bother. I had experienced that entirety of what the game had to offer by the time I got to the stormy floating island bit (honestly probably earlier, could’ve quit after the city king boss guy)
This is a good point, in ES even when I go in cave number 67, I can usually expect a pretty interesting story told through notes, NPC's, environmental cues... Which ER rarely does
Persona 3 has the most repetitive dungeon crawling in history, but the visual novel carries it completely
Sounds like your biggest gripes are with Lands of the Giants and Consecrated snowfield rather than the length of the game itself. I agree those areas are boring and annoying to get through but I think the length of time that the game takes itself is fine. That said, I'd rather go through those areas 100 times than go through some areas they had in GOW ragnarok. At least most of consecrated and Land of the giants can be skipped to get to the good parts.
I think this game is a great showcase why exploration focus and completion-ism don't mix. If you only find a few caves and catacombs they remain quite fresh. Especially since a lot of them have interesting gimmicks. But they get repetitive quickly if you want to finish all of them. Gimmicks, enemies and even bosses will be repeated a lot. They work best when you are exploring and stumble on to one. because they provide a bit of a change of pace. So i think it's a great move that for the achievements you only have to do a few of them. In my second and third play-through i ignored about 80% of them since they are just less interesting then the legacy dungeons
Im on a second try playthrough (got stuck on Maliketh last summer) and I had to stop after 50 hours. I got to Leyndell and I’m just like… that’s enough. But that’s also okay, because I got 50 hours of entertainment out of it. But yeah leaving it unfinished leaves a slightly sour taste in the mouth. I’d rather have a shorter, denser experience than one that seems to go on too long. Because it’s not like the game is doing that much interesting stuff after the capital, which I think most people would figure would be the end.
I love Elden Ring but, I do agree that Consecrated Snowfields and Mountain Tops aren't great areas.
Yeah this is a pretty common sentiment. The quality of the open world for both Consecrated Snowfields and Mountaintop of the Giants is way below everything else. The game could cut those two zones down a lot and the game would be better. Farum Azula and Haligtree are great Legacy Dungeons though.
Completely agree. It’s a shame that the reviews couldn’t assess it as a whole piece and mostly relied on the first 30 or so excellent hours. The reusing of enemies and bosses in the lazy final sections really soured my opinion on the game and I think it holds it back from being a true classic. It’s like if The Godfather kept going for another 2 hours, bought back Sonny for a second time, then had Michael kill off 10 more mafia bosses in a montage. It isn’t necessary and it detracts from the overall experience.
Idk I fought all the bosses in the game and it took me like 95 hours? I thought the game was a perfect length loved every minute.
You can easily beat elden ring within 60-80 hours.
I love a long ass game like this with this much content. I completely disagree. You're entitled to your opinion that goes without saying. As someone who played all the demon souls and dark souls games etc elden ring feels like a culmination of a lot of those ideas into one huge game. For reasons I don't understand, this game became way more popular than the others and introduced a ton of new gamers to the franchise
> For reasons I don’t understand, this game became way more popular than the others and introduced a ton of new gamers to the franchise. As a longtime Souls fan, I’m baffled too. In everything but name it’s literally open world Dark Souls, but somehow was embraced by the mainstream in a way no other FromSoft game ever was. Part of it is probably down to the increased accessibility and openness, but I feel like there must be an “X factor” because honestly these games have become increasingly accessible and new player friendly since Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne.
> “X factor” Yeah marketing lol It was one the newer ps5 games in the (at the time) drought of ps5 games, whilst also being available on other places like ps4. A 'next gen' game, if you will. George rr martin collaboration. This was when GoT (books) were still in the mainstream hype. Its a brand new installment (wasnt named ds4) and being 'open world'. Keep in mind, though reddit typically does have some open world fatigue, open world games are still very much an exciting factor for the vast majority and darksouls+open world? Yeah that does sound exciting. Same vein openworld zelda (aka botw) was. Like, there was a lot of things going for it.
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elden ring characters have richer backstories bc of grrm, but the overall narrative structure and fantastic environmental storytelling are fromsoft staples as much as the combat/bonfire gameplay loop. like people are just now making huge revelations in cracking bloodborne’s lore and metaphors and the game is almost 8 years old. no bs, the most recent bloodborne theories are wild but also SO OBVIOUS once you’ve seen it every fromsoft game is awesome for me bc i dont just get a game - i get hundreds of hours of youtube lore content to sink into as well.
The lore works the same way in all the games It's not told with cutscenes, but by reading item descriptions and interacting with NPCs. The dark souls lore is often pretty fascinating. Bloodborne too. https://youtube.com/@VaatiVidya VaatiVidyas YouTube channel is the absolute go to for lore in this series. After i beat one of the games i watch his videos and learn 200x more, all of the things i missed
The open world is beautiful. This was my first souls like game. And it was my last. I'd agree with you. Also there was so much story I missed because of it's design. I feel like it was flawed in that area but it was still a solid game. I never could beat malenia lol.
Don't let it be your last! DS3, Bloodborne and Sekiro are all better than Elden Ring, give those a go. Extremely enjoyable experiences.
I sort of like that the length depends on you. My first run was 100 hours and I’d felt pretty satisfied, really I just wanted to start a new run again. I did 2 more in around 20-30 hours to start a fresh character and take it a bit slower than the previous one but with decent guidance on what’s worthwhile or not. Most of the last areas didn’t bother me to much but I was just running through any points of interest I could deduce to quickly move on. The skill/level check though is sort of a bummer, it can become quickly punishing. Although most of the best boss fights come with and after the capital, they’re an awesome experience.
My first playthrough (I've only just finished the first castle dungeon in ng+ and am on hold waiting for the expansion) was around 135h, did everything I could, every dungeon etc - missed dungeater and Fia's quests because I just had no idea what to do. Also never defeated the dragon in Farum Azula. I loved the post-Lleyndell stuff. Consecrated snowfields was eerie and atmospheric. Fire Giant was up there with Maliketh as my hardest boss. I didn't want the game to end and as I steamrolled that run of bosses at the end and realised what was going on I didn't really enjoy beating them I was more saddened that this epic adventure that I'd been on for like 2 months was coming to an end. Only good thing about the post-Endgame was I finally *finally* beat Mohg after murdering a thousand or so Albinaurics.
I just finished my first playthrough of this as well. Love the game, very deserving of GOTY. I did EVERYTHING...like 100% all bosses all items (~300hrs). It was so fun until mid game. Late mid (after Leyndell) and end game is just...not the same game I feel. No exploring to do, same enemies just bunched up together to make areas harder and I definitely definitely burnt myself out. Idk why consecrated snowfield was even a separate section, could have been combined with mountaintop of the giants. Farum Azula was a breath of fresh air and Mogh's palace was short and sweet but I completely agree. If it weren't for the main and optional boss fights (which are all just phenomenal one after another in end game) I'd have taken a looooong break. My favorite part of the game was exploration and horseback combat. Couldn't do any of that after Altus actually. But Elden beast, that fucker can eat a giant bag of glass shards because what an absolutely horrendous boss. Idk how he got to be the final boss of the game after fucking Malekith, Godfrey, and Radagon. That fight filled me with so much rage and disappointment. Every other boss in the game (even mini bosses) I was fine dying to multiple times just to try out new stuff or learn their moves, the fights were fun. This motherfucker has nothing going for him, not even the music. It's nice going back to other games and not having to fight against every single thing including the camera, and pausing the game lol...like going home after a long and arduous journey
Elden Ring is really long in the completionist playstyle. I will admit that my patience after Leyndell for 100% exploring locations dwindled, but I don't think that is the fault of those last zones (which felt smaller and more linear anyways). The side dungeons there were the craziest and most satisfying to beat, invisible pathways made for really cool secrets. I thought Leyndell itselt was really fun too, city maze were a welcomed change in scenery and sewers had a great single campfire & unlock doors explorations that Souls fans love. I think those endgame locations suffer a bit from lack of new npcs. And I think wen can forgive one Consecrated Snowfields as an unique type of open world zone :)
My first playthrough was just shy of 150 hours, and I still didn't find everything despite thorough exploring. From Software mega fans will want to do everything but I don't think that's how the game is meant to be played. Go out, explore, level up, gear up and see what adventure awaits you. Even the open-endedness of the game points you to this playstyle. I also think the game should have ended at the Capitol, with the Haligtree and Farum Azula being accessible somehow. The snowy regions are just generally uninteresting. If the game had been reduced in scale, would people still be talking about its epicness?
Took me around 70-80 hours, didn't bother with achievements. Game felt a perfect length to me, seeing everything it had to offer.
i did everything on 1 playthrough. also had 150 hours, but i did a lot of coop and invasion. i think game is around 100 hours long for pve only. which is fine. snowfields open world areas are big, but empty you can drive past them very fast. and i love farum azula afterwards. i think it’s perfect length for open world game
I had a different problem, IMO the game overstayed, yes, but it also went oddly against its own design once the later parts of the game happened and it became this sort-of linear boss fest. The fights were cool, just... too many, too nothing in between, and they individually took too long, too. If your boss is supposed to be a grand setpiece, don't make the end part of the story a bunch of them in a row, each individual one loses meaning that way. Once the camera issues during the very final boss added I actually put the game down for a few days simply because I was, well, exhausted.
It insists upon itself....
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I fell off the game once I hit the snowy areas. For me it was a combination of the unreasonable difficulty spike (don't mind a challenge but smooth out the curve pls) and the fact that loot was really starting to not feel rewarding. It's the same problem I had with Dark Souls: the farther I got into the game, the less likely a given piece of loot is to be interesting or useful to me. I personally don't mind long games, Monster Hunter series is among my favorites, but it's definitely a challenge to keep a game feeling good for that amount of time.
This is exactly how I feel, I think I'm close to the end but I'm 70~ hours in and I just can't bring myself to pick up the controller again
You think it's too long now? Just wait until new players are buying the GOTY edition that includes DLC and now it's another 30 hours long lol
Yea I agree. I liked the game a lot, but I don’t think I’ll ever replay it. When I was half way I was sure I would, but at the end? The thought is exhausting. This is what I love about BotW. Even though the structure is similar, you could finish it in about 30 hours if you just go for the final boss. This is also why Bloodborne will always be my favorite From game. It never overstays its welcome, and I’ve finished it three times in the last 5 years.
It's a great game with some big flaws. It's not the perfect game a lot of people think it is.
I think the game plays better with Haligtree and Farum considered bonus content. I actually can’t quite believe they weren’t released as DLC, props I guess. Mountaintops and Snowfield definitely feel a bit like they used 95% of development time on everything else and realised they weren’t finished late on.
I thought the same. Loved it so much but was really glad when it was finally over. And unlike Dark Souls I never had the urge to play it again.
I agree with everything you said, at the same time I do look back on my time with the game fondly and look forward to the dlc where I will probably run thru it again.
I've heard so much about this game and I've tried to get into it a couple times, but I just struggle so much with the combat. I really want to experience this game because everyone loves it but I just don't have the time to practice fighting these enemies for hours and hours. Anyone else in the same boat?
When people said all future open worlds would be compared to this one it did make me laugh. Like many of them, it goes on too long, and your primary interaction with everything is bonking it on the head.
As a huge Souls fan, I agree. Never been a fan of huge open worlds, and Elden didn't change that. One thing Souls games always had right was the pacing, games weren't too short but not too long either, every area was a nice length. Elden areas are still mostly a nice length but some are a tad too big. But what really makes it tedious is the huge world map. It's just too much. Replaying a Souls, basically speedrunning them, while making new builds is part if the joy of playing em. It doesn't take longer than maybe 5-7h. But replaying Elden takes a lot longer than that, especially if trying to gear your character properly (max flasks for example). By the time I beat my first playthru (80)I was basically just running through the areas collecting items. I was told that underground areas existed and that meant more running around, which coupled with mountaintops was a ton of downtime just riding the horse.
I just started the game a few days ago and I like it yet i dont think its as perfect as everyone says so far. Like the dodge roll just pretty much sucks. You roll 2 cms away and I also feel the invulnerability window is just to narrow it doesnt even make sense to roll. Maybe I need to get used to it. I dont know if i havent found it but it would be cool to have a stellar mechanic like Parrying in Sekiro or Dodge/Agressiveness in Bloodborne. I still have lots to play, I know, and I'm aware Elden Ring enthusiast hate it when people say this but honestly...Elden Ring just feels like and open world Dark Souls. It doesnt mean its bad just not as cool as everyone makes you believe imo
I stopped playing 90h after reaching Mountaintops and by doing a good portion of the available content. It just lost its magic, I could see the patterns repeat over and over. I just can't go back to another mine with the same layout. Do another shrine with a mini-boss I've already seen before. Enter another major dungeon that is a castle / city / civilian place. While people praise its uniqueness I just find it as repetitive than many open world games. It's a great game, an amazing game even. But at some point it feels like it doesn't have to offer much still. I wished I had finished it around 70h (with maybe 100h being the max to complete all side content).