Elden Ring bosses are terrible

[Crimzarkin]

I genuinely don’t mean to stomp on anyones fingers but I can comfortably say Elden Ring’s bosses suck. While design, mechanics, and flow have never been better, a lot of the main game bosses have been buffed to the point it may not be impossible to do it without a summon but their link combo’s combined with their reaction to your input (which yes is a very real thing) makes it unbearably difficult.

I have no issue with a boss being difficult, orphan of Kos and demon of hatred want a chat, what I don’t like is artificial difficulty which I think Elden Ring thrives off of, Godfrey and Malikeith are 2 great examples where you touch them then they freak out, then if you pin them the go for their cheapest move, Godfrey’s stomp and Malikeith’s black blade midair combo

A lot of boss share these abilities to give the impression of difficulty but they’re cheap cop outs. I still think from a gameplay standpoint Elden Ring is the best with everything the player can do, the bosses just seem lackluster to its 6 other counterparts

Full credit to theDeModcracy and I just wanted to post my own opinions about the whole subject

Cheers everyone!

https://youtu.be/8dlt7THiE08

EDIT: Cause no one reads anything, the entire video I posted was about taking on Elden Ring bosses solo, those are my grips, but as always they’re unbelievably dense people that plague steam forums, I don’t even know why I act surprised.

[Ashbringer]

The sad thing is there is a mod called ELDEN RING: Reforged that fixes 90% of the game and makes fights fun and actually difficult example would be soldier of Godrick what used to be a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ tutorial boss is now a decent challenge for new players.

[CourtesyFlush09]

Orion Invictus님이 먼저 게시:

*heh* you got owned님이 먼저 게시:

Godfrey and Maliketh weren't even annoying or bad fights. Malenia was probably the "hardest" fight in the game but only because she gets to constantly cancel animations and recover in a split second.

The bad bosses in this game are the ones that waste your time like the Astels, Crystalians and Elden Beast. It doesn't help that some of them are also clearly meant to be killed with specific builds or weapons.

Agreed, the Elden Beast is terrible. Unless you put a ton of points into stamina, by the time you actually reach it after it moves around, you'll barely have any stamina left to attack with. Even then, you get a couple of attacks in and it just teleports away again.

My main issue with the Astels is the teleport attack that leads to being eaten (an insta-kill, in my experience). You lose the lock-on, have no idea where it's coming from, but you're expected to dodge anyway.

I THINK Astel teleports in the direction your character is facing for that grab move. I could be wrong though.

[Morton Koopa Jr.]

CourtesyFlush90님이 먼저 게시:

Orion Invictus님이 먼저 게시:

Agreed, the Elden Beast is terrible. Unless you put a ton of points into stamina, by the time you actually reach it after it moves around, you'll barely have any stamina left to attack with. Even then, you get a couple of attacks in and it just teleports away again.

My main issue with the Astels is the teleport attack that leads to being eaten (an insta-kill, in my experience). You lose the lock-on, have no idea where it's coming from, but you're expected to dodge anyway.

I THINK Astel teleports in the direction your character is facing for that grab move. I could be wrong though.

The teleport grab only happens when he teleports directly above you.

When he teleports, he either teleports somewhere else on the ground, or he teleports somewhere above you.

Basically, the moment he teleports, the player has to confirm whether he's teleported into the air above you; if he did, then he's gonna grab you. So it's certainly dodgeable but the player has to be aware of this.

[CourtesyFlush09]

NarielV님이 먼저 게시:

The sad thing is there is a mod called ELDEN RING: Reforged that fixes 90% of the game

I'm gonna create a mod called "Recycled Ring" where most of the enemies are heavily recycled throughout the entire and oh it's gonna have dungeons that pretty much have the same layouts and assets and enemies too.

Oh, wait....

[Sonnenbank]

tbh only bosses i really had fun fighting were

Godrick, Malenia, Radagon (God i wish he had 2 phases)
those were fights with a nice flow and rythm.

besides that i was kinda dissapointed with many other bossfights.
i had more fun with many bosses in DS3 and Sekiro

ER overall was a good game and 196h worth my money ;)
insanely overhyped though
and bossdesign is one of the things that is "okayish good " but very far from great

[Ashbringer]

CourtesyFlush90님이 먼저 게시:

NarielV님이 먼저 게시:

The sad thing is there is a mod called ELDEN RING: Reforged that fixes 90% of the game

I'm gonna create a mod called "Recycled Ring" where most of the enemies are heavily recycled throughout the entire and oh it's gonna have dungeons that pretty much have the same layouts and assets and enemies too.

Oh, wait....

What was the point of this reply?

[John Titor]

NarielV님이 먼저 게시:

CourtesyFlush90님이 먼저 게시:

I'm gonna create a mod called "Recycled Ring" where most of the enemies are heavily recycled throughout the entire and oh it's gonna have dungeons that pretty much have the same layouts and assets and enemies too.

Oh, wait....

What was the point of this reply?

To cure cancer through the magic of laughter.

[Ashbringer]

John Titor님이 먼저 게시:

NarielV님이 먼저 게시:

What was the point of this reply?

To cure cancer through the magic of laughter.

So you dislike the game, the mod or what I am saying?

[John Titor]

NarielV님이 먼저 게시:

John Titor님이 먼저 게시:

To cure cancer through the magic of laughter.

So you dislike the game, the mod or what I am saying?

The only things I dislike are cancer and kids running around on my lawn.

[Kobi Blade]

Disable the Steam Input API, gratz, you just got yourself back to normal input latency.

This what happens when you put an API on top of another working API (xinput), only lazy developers enforce the Steam Input API.

In this case FromSoftware does not enforce Steam Input API thankfully, and the game fully supports xinput.

Is actually steam fault that enables the API by default on every game (with no option to turn it OFF globally, you need to disable by game on game properties).

[Crimzarkin]

KoKoKo님이 먼저 게시:

Best bosses, nice challenge to fight them solo. You are just a low skill player.

XD. Second tried Malenia kid. Step up

[Crimzarkin]

Koro님이 먼저 게시:

Noctis님이 먼저 게시:

Copy pasted content is not subjective specially when you compare ER to the quality of Bloodborne or Sekiro

Man, you talk to me about quality in Sekiro when 4 of the 11 main bosses have been copied, and if we add mini-bosses to the matter, the figure reaches 15 bosses that are repeated between 2 and 4 times (of a total of 25 bosses). That in a linear game like Sekiro tastes like ♥♥♥♥, but if you're going to complain about seeing two identical dragons in an open world then I hope you never go outside and see two dogs of the same breed, two sparrows flying together or two people from the same ethnic group because you will not have anyone to complain to about the "copypaste"

Out of over a 100 bosses only 9 are main and unique. Idk what game you were playing but Sekiro did not have that many reskin bosses. If it did, then they had additional attacks and or had additional terrain advantage. If you are including the mini bosses then get help

[Crimzarkin]

Scorch님이 먼저 게시:

A lot of where DeModcracy's problems come from the flaws of it being an open world Souls game, and I don't think it could've been pulled off in many better ways. A lot of the difficulty lies in how thoroughly you're exploring and utilising all those tools to overcome the challenge (consumables, grave ashes, etc) to make the fight easier as opposed to getting to particular portion and all you have to do is actively learn how the boss works to win. I think this is reasonable and doable, otherwise you're going to have to account for several more possibilities than reasonable for game development.

For example, DS1 has Pinwheel. I think he's intended to be a difficult option if you decide you want him to be your second boss. He's pretty challenging with the catacombs being the first route, but after exploring Lordran, Pinwheel becomes the joke we know and love. Without what makes these bosses flawed (i.e. artificial difficulty), it would make ER an overall easy game in comparison. Judging by the criticisms of default DS2, we don't like easy experiences.

This is all more or less trying to justify why the bosses are how they are. If that's not how you like them, then I am very curious on how you'd balance them while maintaining a fulfilling open world. I can't say I personally like them much either, and they definitely took a DS2 approach to their design. Some very good ones like Rykard or Radahn, but many stinkers. Like DS2. ER excels in many areas, but bosses aren't it.

Sekiro still has the best bosses in From Soft's catalogue in the last decade, but it's also the most linear of the games while having the least amount of "builds", so there's definitely correlation.

No, Bloodborne has the best bosses. Yea the openworld idea was really bad, and Sekiro wasn't linear idk what you are talking about it was semi open world exactly what works in a soulsborne game

[Tentacle of Ozric]

Kobi Blade님이 먼저 게시:

Disable the Steam Input API, gratz, you just got yourself back to normal input latency.

This what happens when you put an API on top of another working API (xinput), only lazy developers enforce the Steam Input API.

In this case FromSoftware does not enforce Steam Input API thankfully, and the game fully supports xinput.

In this case is actually steam fault that enables the API by default on every game (with no option to turn it OFF globally, you need to disable by game on game properties).

Creating APIs on top of another APIs and then integrating with some other 3rd party API is what 99.9% SW developers do for living. Please don't tell anyone that it's mostly redundant work. The remaining 0.01% is rust developers. They are basically Chads.

[Giganx]

The most egregious thing about this game is the input lag combined with the insane input queue. Basically hit dodge; nothing happens; enemies attack lands; input queue is so long your dodge comes out AFTER you recover from being hit; enemies next attack is perfectly timed to punish you for dodging there.

This game basically has Bloodbornes fast, aggressive enemies with DS1's garbage controls.