FS managed to make a better worse game

[Ser Pepay]

I won't go into the "it's too hard" topic. I know it's supposed to be hard. I love myself a good challenge. Love/hated the first two Dark Souls. But this game is full of bullsh*t that makes it unfairly hard way too often.

First enemy you encounter you're not supposed to beat. Oh, it's a scripted boss, alright I guess. Second enemy you encounter is another boss that you're not supposed to beat (the knight). Hem... why?

As you go around in the very first area, it's full of enemies you shouldn't fight. How can you know it? By fighting them - and dying for it. Wait, I'm supposed to learn HOW to fight the monsters...

Then after a while you figure out what enemies you can fight, and the knights camp in front of the Stormgate finally feels like a good Dark Souls area.

But then you wonder where to go... you try the big gates, only to be pitted against 4 crossbow soldiers and a massive giant. Welp, guess it's not this way.

You go the other way around, towards the knight guarded bridge, aaaand... it's another boss that kills you in two hits. (I learned later that I just got unlucky by triggering the Night Sentinel fight on my first attempt to cross that bridge.)

You go look around still, you try the marshes, aaaand... it's another boss that kills you instantly. Now I'm starting to feel irritated...

So you figure out you can summon NPC spirits all the time using magic energy now, not through a rare consumable, and that the Grace sites on the map points to the right direction. You manage to make it through the Stormgate and up the Stormhill... only to be pitted against another unbeatable scripted boss. (Now I'm at the Knights' table place, and apparently I need to figure where to go next... again. Why did I have to go to a place if it wasn't where I needed to go???)

What the f*ck am I supposed to enjoy? In the first two Dark Souls, when you died, it's either you hadn't been careful enough, or you needed to learn something... not just "how many times can the devs make a player die on purpose, without giving them a chance, before they rage quit".

But what makes it the real deal breaker for me, is how many times I've been hit through my 100% physical deflect shield by normal blows (mostly by spears); how many times an enemy that has 0 HP still stands and can attack me; how many times my item slots swap without me pressing the button (mostly when I summon Torrent, way too often I press the button to disembark and I end up drinking a potion, or after I disembarked I end up with my 2nd weapon in hand).

Then you have all the times that your weapon swings through an enemy without recording a hit (last fight an enemy jumped at me, I did a upward stabbing power attack, my whole sword passed through the enemy, but his vertical swing that was swooping down WHILE my sword was inside him is the only hit that was recorded. In that same encounter, the blood dude invader in the gorge, the Blood Loss prevention berries I ate prior to the fight didn't slow down the blood loss counter in the slightest.)

Also, when I'm fighting a very tough enemy with many selectable parts (like a giant), and when I cycle through the targets there's a few very distant harmless animals included in the cycling. Good job From Software, you added crafting materials, now your combat targeting system has become worst than Ocarina of Time.

So... so many infuriating gameplay issues, paired with questionable (not to say moronic) enemy difficulty placement, makes me really question whether I'm gonna end up finishing this game.

Sure, it's visually stunning, they added plenty of cool stuff, the lore is great, but when you make a difficult game, don't make it unfairly difficult.

[Smoking Chihuahua]

This was my first souls games. All of ur points are valid and I also had these issues when I started .The only thing that helped me was information . Fextralife has amazing site for this game I suggest you check it out. Also youtube I hope you find a way to cope with these issuse like I did cause it is a ver cool game that at least deserves I playthrough...even if you have to use summons or ashes just relax and don't let the gate keepers in ur mind tell you " you need to do everything the hard way or you are a bad player "
Lack of direction in the beginning and the 2 trap bosses is bullisht along with how you get ur horse and summoning bell .....I bet the first dude played for 30 plus hours with out that horse lol

[Lobo]

heh, that's a lot of words
Elden Ring is great <3

[STOPchris]

Yeah, there were some VERY cheap moments in this game. This is the only “Souls” game that I’ve given a bad review. I actually thought everything up to the late game was great. They got cheap in the late game.

The game is meant to backtrack though. If an enemy is too difficult in the beginning put a sword marker on it and come back later. You’ll be able to beat the knight on the horse eventually pretty easily.

[zero]

sounds to me you died and kept trying new paths as opposed to the dark souls way of learning why you died, lvling up, and trying again.

doubly so when you talk about a "scripted" boss that you cannot beat, cause those 100% do not exist in this game, you can hit your head aganist any boss as long as you want to beat it, hence how people are still doing slvl 1 runs.

[STOPchris]

Originally posted by Lobo:

heh, that's a lot of words
Elden Ring is great <3

If you didn’t read it, then why bother posting?

[STOPchris]

Originally posted by zero:

sounds to me you died and kept trying new paths as opposed to the dark souls way of learning why you died, lvling up, and trying again.

doubly so when you talk about a "scripted" boss that you cannot beat, cause those 100% do not exist in this game, you can hit your head aganist any boss as long as you want to beat it, hence how people are still doing slvl 1 runs.

You can beat the very first boss, but I doubt many have. It is part of the script.

[FakeKeima]

Could be worse, you could be playing Bloodborne. Dying a lot and horrible loading times. At least here you can run away explore, and level. I recommend exploring and finding the farming areas. Or just look up exploits like the 100,000 rune easy kill dragon.

[Onni]

10 seconds in and you're already wrong. You're not supposed to beat the boss after the Grafted Scion? The Knight of Godrick is the biggest joke boss since Pinwheel tf.

Sounds like you're just struggling at the game cause you're not good at it yet, you have encountered like 10 scripted events at most and those are just talking to npcs or cutscene triggers.

[zero]

Originally posted by STOPchris:

Originally posted by zero:

sounds to me you died and kept trying new paths as opposed to the dark souls way of learning why you died, lvling up, and trying again.

doubly so when you talk about a "scripted" boss that you cannot beat, cause those 100% do not exist in this game, you can hit your head aganist any boss as long as you want to beat it, hence how people are still doing slvl 1 runs.

You can beat the very first boss, but I doubt many have. It is part of the script.

its not scripted if you are able to beat it.

a scripted defeat is a mechanic in which even if you were to bring the boss down to 1 hp, you will still lose, gain no reward, and the game progresses you to the next point.

even the tutorial grafted isn't scripted in such a way, you can very much beat it.

a scripted bosses would be like the very first dragon in dragons dogma, you cannot beat it, you do 0 damage to it, once your hp gets low enough, the plot just moves you forward.

[Onni]

Originally posted by zero:

Originally posted by STOPchris:

You can beat the very first boss, but I doubt many have. It is part of the script.

its not scripted if you are able to beat it.

a scripted defeat is a mechanic in which even if you were to bring the boss down to 1 hp, you will still lose, gain no reward, and the game progresses you to the next point.

even the tutorial grafted isn't scripted in such a way, you can very much beat it.

a scripted bosses would be like the very first dragon in dragons dogma, you cannot beat it, you do 0 damage to it, once your hp gets low enough, the plot just moves you forward.

Exactly, Genichiro is a scripted loss, you beat him and you just get alternate cutscene. Grafted Scion is a boss you can beat and gain souls from, proved by the fact that when you fall off the cliff after them you keep the souls and the weapons. Basically same thing as killing Asylum Demon early and getting the big hammer.

[Certified Fentanyl Dealer]

This game doesn't do good job of telling you where you should go at the start and it absolutely doesn't want you to start following the story right away.

It's better than the first Dark Souls and the graveyard because it's easier to see there are more options for places to go, but it's definitely a big shock for anyone not used to From's design philosophy of making it hard to tell where they expect you to go when.

I'm guessing you ran into Margit at the castle. He's literally and figuratively a gatekeeper for the area, because even enemies who don't have his health bar are going to have moves that will hurt a lot once you're inside. The good news is there's an entire peninsula to the south of where you start you can explore before taking on the castle. Watch guides about fighting Margit. He's not easy despite being an early enemy, but he does have one major weakness.

Controls and such are lacking, always have been in these games. Die-hard From fans consider them to be feature even though if anyone else does it they have meltdowns over how terrible the QA was. No real way to get around that.

[BassChamber]

Originally posted by Відредаговане:

This game doesn't do good job of telling you where you should go at the start and it absolutely doesn't want you to start following the story right away.

It's better than the first Dark Souls and the graveyard because it's easier to see there are more options for places to go, but it's definitely a big shock for anyone not used to From's design philosophy of making it hard to tell where they expect you to go when.

I'm guessing you ran into Margit at the castle. He's literally and figuratively a gatekeeper for the area, because even enemies who don't have his health bar are going to have moves that will hurt a lot once you're inside. The good news is there's an entire peninsula to the south of where you start you can explore before taking on the castle. Watch guides about fighting Margit. He's not easy despite being an early enemy, but he does have one major weakness.

Controls and such are lacking, always have been in these games. Die-hard From fans consider them to be feature even though if anyone else does it they have meltdowns over how terrible the QA was. No real way to get around that.

Good post, I think the same.

OP should go to peninsula first, because I made the "mistake" of clearing Stormveil and when I went to peninsula it was boring because I was overleveled.

[Moban351]

felt the same way as you when i started. Then i realized you can just go around and level up your character. Along the way doing that, i would come across some caves and stuff so I'd check them out and level up more. That's kind of the core game play loop right there and what makes the game so fun.

[RyuKazé]

There's no "you're not supposed to beat X boss" situation in Elden Ring. A situation like that would be when you first meet Seath in Dark Souls or the Dragon God in Demon's Souls. If you beat the first boss, the Grafted Scion, you get a sword and shield. If it wasn't supposed to happen, you wouldn't get anything. The only thing scripted about that boss is that it will show up once you cross the threshold.

The second boss, the Soldier of Godrick is a pushover and you must beat him to progress. I think he dies to 1 riposte and a slash. The 3rd boss you see, the Tree Sentinel is another one that can be beaten or you can bypass him and return when stronger.

The Site of Grace points you in the direction you should go and literally tells you this, as does Varre, the first NPC you ever meet outside, so if you deviate from that guidance and meet monsters (only 3 I can think of are Agheel, Knight's Cavalry and the Leonine Misbegotten in Weeping Peninsula, the latter needing a fog gate to be passed) the blame for that lies with you.

When you said the gate has a giant and guys with crossbows so you went the other way around, that's not the other way around. That's a totally different direction. If you're there at the gate, you should already have Torrent and it's easy as running past and jumping over those enemies.

A lot of this just reads like you didn't actually read any of the prompts the game gave you on how to do certain things, use certain things and utilize various UI elements to help you out.

[Cacomistle]

As someone new to the series (and hadn't held a controller in the last 5 years or so), I didn't experience most of this.

You don't get penalized for dying to the tutorial boss, so I don't think that one matters.

Tree sentinel seemed really obviously meant to be a strong enemy. I fought it once just out of curiosity, and obviously died, but if the game penalized death with more than 10 seconds of walking I would have walked around him.

Not gonna lie, I had some trouble with the early foot soldiers. Then I got the controls down and figured out obvious things like the fact you can lock on. The big shield guy still gave me a bit of trouble, but he just ate all my flasks, I still killed him.

Then I went to the "Welp, guess it's not this way" area with the 4 xbows and the troll. I just walked backwards after the troll spawned and fought it 1v1. Not gonna lie, I died a couple times to it, but there's a difference between "this is too hard for a new player" deaths and "I haven't held a controller in 5 years, horrible stuttering because I'm being too dumb to lower the graphics, and have never touched this genre" deaths.

After 2-3 hours or so, that same troll that gave me issues could barely touch me (and its not cause I leveled up, I restarted and beat him again on a new character).


I think where to go was a bit confusing. But it wasn't punishing. It was pretty easy to tell what were hard enemies and what weren't, and there's not really any hard enemies you can't just run away from if you start losing up until margit. Even the tree sentinel you can pretty much just run past and he'll miss you.

So yeah... just go somewhere else and don't fight margit yet if you hate dying. That's literally the only point I found in the game where I fought an enemy that seemed too strong for me and I couldn't run away from (which was a whopping 1 death to figure that one out, I made a conscious decision to die another 20 times to him instead of coming back later). I don't think there's a single other enemy in the game that's misplaced.