Never played a Souls game before. How badly is Elden Ring gonna spank me?

[Dusty the TV Head Man]

This a legit question btw. The closest things to a Souls game that I’ve played were Ghost of Tsushima and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order on the hardest difficulties, but I wasn’t even very good at those and I know it’s not even close to a good comparison. Since this might be my first true Souls game, how badly am I likely to do?

[TonkatsuRamen]

The difficulty of Soulslike games scale with your ability to learn. At the beginning you will be slapped around. You can adjust for that a little bit through leveling and using summons.

Once you understand the mechanics and how the combat works. You can basically finish the whole game as a level 1 character armed only with a wooden club. But it takes a lot of skill to get there.

[Lord Bob]

That really depends on how you play, your build, how observant you are, if you use all the tools the games provides for you and if you learn from your mistakes.

Noone who ever played a soulslike was a god at it immediatly, but rather got gut after a long time of learning the mechanics and strategies.

[𝓢𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓿𝓻𝓸𝓼]

Elden Ring is about 3x harder then Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order on the hardest difficulties..... (in my personal experience). What's most frustrating is that you might even end up losing ALL your progress every time you..... died....

[Xelane]

It really depends on where you go. If you rush straight to the main story areas right off the bat, or higher level areas than you can handle, you're probably in for a rough time.

But if you stick to exploring areas that are around your level, you should be fine. A lot of us went straight to the first main boss and got wrek'd over and over again until we got lucky gud and beat him. So probably don't do that.

[Deverti]

just as hard as you want it to be.
you ll manage, enjoy

[El Fuerte]

Very badly at the beginning. But since we are already here on Elden Ring release just go for it. There is no point in going to play Demon's Souls or Dark Souls 1 just to develop skill. You will develop the "souls skill" needed at the beginning of Elden Ring. Then if you really enjoyed this game go play the Souls series and don't forget Sekiro.

If the game becomes too much, summon the ash creatures.

[Sickerton]

A person's first Souls game is always the hardest because there's a lot different from other games, even down to the basic stuff such as general control scheme. But once you get past that initial learning curve you've more-or-less done it for all the others as well, making it much easier to just jump into another.

[Mrrshan68]

It’s pretty hard since souls games tend to have a slow deliberate kinda movement.
My advice is pick vagabond to start first 5 or so levels in endurance so you can wear the full armour set without a slow dodge roll. Use halberd+shield.
Then pump vigor to 40.
Use jump attacks a lot and remember any attack can be blocked even ridiculous ♥♥♥♥ like whole damn avalanches can be blocked and negated by a shield.
I found this play style to be super forgiving since you can make many many mistakes before dying.
That’s the key IMO cause if 2-3 mistakes = death you spend more time looking at the loading screen than playing and that sucks.
The above starting build is how I eventually found the fun.

Oh and pick the imp spirit ashes as the gift, they are tons better than the other early game ashes.

[Deykar]

Its gonna be spankalishous. But very enjoyable regardless if you like to create different builds and like to rise to a challenge. If you feel its too hard you can also summon for help or look up guides online for better weapons /sorceries or rune farms to lvl your character faster.

[An Irate Walrus]

Originally posted by TonkatsuRamen:

The difficulty of Soulslike games scale with your ability to learn. At the beginning you will be slapped around. You can adjust for that a little bit through leveling and using summons.

Once you understand the mechanics and how the combat works. You can basically finish the whole game as a level 1 character armed only with a wooden club. But it takes a lot of skill to get there.

This is about the best summation of the Souls learning curve I've ever seen. Expect to get flat thrashed at the beginning, but if you can hang in and learn from each death, you'll be competently handling all but the optional bosses within a single playthrough.

[King of Games]

Originally posted by 𝓢𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓿𝓻𝓸𝓼:

Elden Ring is about 3x harder then Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order on the hardest difficulties..... (in my personal experience). What's most frustrating is that you might even end up losing ALL your progress every time you..... died....

i found parts of Fallen Order to be alot more difficult than ER.
ER really onlt gets tough on a few bosses

[paulaus333]

If you want to finish the game alone without much help, it can take many attempts to learn the bosses patterns (in Dark Souls, over 50+ times for newbies) and defeat them. With npc summons (which are not available at all times) and spirit ashes, the game is significantly easier.

I've played the DS games and found Elden Ring challenging at first (countered by exploring / levelling up weapon), moderately difficult until about the halfway point, a bit harder after that but not too bad, and then really unforgiving towards the end without spirit ashes. I caved and used help due to impatience. This is not necessary if you have lots of time and are willing to practice.

So, if you learn the fundamentals of these games (dodging, backstabbing, hiding behind shield, prioritise defense, wait for enemy to finish a number of different attack combos you have to memorise before attacking) you can beat it. Just depends how much time you want to invest.

[Koro]

Elden Ring is the first FromSoft game I'm close to completing. There is a strong difficulty to the game, but with the right weapons (for your playstyle) and levelling, the difficulty can be easily scaled to what you enjoy.
I love a good challenge. So when I heard that, this time around, mages were extremely powerful, I went with a strength build (swords and axes bigger than my character, slow swings with big damage and so on). Though there have been times where I've hit "♥♥♥♥ it", levelled my magic skills a bit, and used magic against certain bosses I struggled with.

It's like Asmongold said (and I'm paraphrasing here), "There 'is' a difficulty slider in the game, but it's not in the settings menu. It's in the weapons you choose to use, what stats you choose to level and what paths in the story you take".

I've had plenty of instances where I've been beaten by a boss about 10-20 times and thought, "Nah. I'm gonna go and do something else for a bit. Maybe that side quest I picked up, or some exploring". Then, when I come back to said boss, I'm a higher level and more able to deal with it's difficulty.

There's something of an adjustment period to the difficulty, but there's no rush to completion or anything like that. As far as I'm aware, no quests are a race against time. There's always something to do in Elden Ring, cos it's so huge!

[Cooperal]

You will be fine. Fallen Order is hardly the worst comparison. Fallen Order carries itself on a single weapon with a continuously growing set of moves/stances/powers that work with it.

Elden Ring characters have a far more customisable selection of playstyles but individually, weapons and spells are more simple to get to grips with.

Beside that main difference they demand a lot of the same skills from the player, particularly when it comes to avoiding needless damage.

[Moth]

Originally posted by AlexCrewSucksAtGames:

This a legit question btw. The closest things to a Souls game that I’ve played were Ghost of Tsushima and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order on the hardest difficulties, but I wasn’t even very good at those and I know it’s not even close to a good comparison. Since this might be my first true Souls game, how badly am I likely to do?

Elden Ring is the most friendly, you have ample choice to regulate your difficulty, as a long-time-player of Souls i'd wager Elden Ring is by far the easiest if you use all tools at your disposal.

Remember to learn the game and understand that it's ok to die against a boss, if you can't do it explore, level up, gear up and don't get too frustrated everything can be cracked one way or another.

Oh, an level Vigor PLEASE level Vigor that will help you -tremendously-