Is Elden Ring you're Favourite Souls Game?

[Dylan]

Is Eden Ring you're Favourite Souls Game? why or why not?

[CourtesyFlush09]

No, mainly because of the open world and the inevitable side effect of so much recycled content (which, in turn, detracted from many of the encounters).

Previous Souls games also had recycled enemies, but nowhere near to this extent.

[zero]

yes, its by far one of the most enjoyable experinces i have had in a souls game, and the open world does it wonders.

between some of the new combat mechanics, the exploration, and the tons of content i can do in multiple ways i got a lot out of this game.

[River]

Bloodborne is my favorite game that Fromsoft has made.

Really hope that Sony stops screwing around and gives it the PC release it deserves.

[Heater]

Its not a Souls game its a Runes game.

[alumlovescake]

I prefer Dark Souls 3. Its more digestible if that makes sense. I prefer the characters there. Ranni, Melinia Mailcent and the Jar are all cool but I just prefer Andre Greirat and Siegward. I defend open worlds with my life but I prefer the level design of Dark Souls 3. I prefer the bosses Soul of Cinder Gale Nameless King Gundyr Midir. ER is a decent game but it doesn't fix anything that has been present since Demon Souls and even makes some issues worse. DS3 compared directly to its predecessors feels better. DS2 was janky as hell. BB was janky though not that bad and also had no spells or mircles no the tools do not count (also downgraded on ds1 and ds2 no renewable heals no warping from lamps no respawning enemies weird as hell "ring" replacement what requires killing a trash opinonal boss. DS1 has good bosses but not as good as 3 and feels smaller and less intresting. Demon Souls just feels like a first entry cause that what it is. Elden Ring feels like DS3 in mechanics but with a questionable open world.




I am sorry this feels like a rant.

[vamirez]

Yes, only Souls game I played back to back twice in a row, and I explored everything again the second time around with a new char/build - and that is telling me something. It's the most polished incarnation of Souls yet, and it has so much content that it just doesn't end.

[Sauron]

No.
I started with Demon's Souls when it was first released on playstation. No soulsgame after could bring back the sense of being lost, the feeling of awe for the combat and the feeling of an unsurmountable challenge the game as a whole seemed to constitute.

The next soulsgame that had a similar effect on me but this time for the sheer size of the gameworld was dark souls 2.

I played all others after Demon's souls (except BloodBorne), but it was more out of comfort because i was, especially after DS1, very used to souls games' gameplay.

I would be surprised if any souls/soulslike would be able to captivate me again the way my first experience with DS did.

fak ye

[Burger]

I'd say yes. It's everything I want in a game - large scale, replayable. Perfectly refined souls game taking the best parts of what came before.

[Ant Ra]

Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3 have the same value for me. Each in its own way gives me that typical feeling of a good game that I want to play again and again. I've been playing DS 3 for years and it just doesn't get boring. Elden Rimg follows suit.

[Greenegg]

No, too much reused content and personally not a fan of open worlds.

it is however, exceptionally good at introducing the genre to new players, extremely accessible and easy to approach compared to older entries in the fromsoft library. For that reason alone I imagine many will consider it the best soulsborn game.

[ressenmacher]

No.

BB has astronomically better PvE replayability and I prefer the setting.

Originally posted by warriorx:

elden ring would be so much better were not for certein things that does not belong in a 'open world' like this.. but they put here anyway because Miyazaki must have his "poisoned swamp" (aka Miyazaki pride). note that im not complaining about difficulty.
for example: new game plus mentality - you must play new game plus if you want another copy of a weapon.. you must play new game plus if you want more larval tear. they forget that elden ring, unlike dark souls - has such a big world that a new game plus is not feasible for the majority of people, unless you rush trought the story but then whats the point of a open world?
another thing: no quest log.. yeah..
also: lack of ball bearings before mountaintop of giants.. so you cant experiment with new weapons.

Well said.

FROM is outstanding in general, but they seem to have this bad habit where they ossify and include mechanics out of tradition irrespective of both whether those mechanics were any good to begin with and whether they fit into the changed world of the latest release.

[Slum Dog]

No. it is a great game and i had a lot of good memory but i dont find that there is as much replayability as the other soul game because of how big it is. On that i would say that Drs2 is my love one for it is the one with who i star my travel in this lovely hellhole of a game serie.

[Yakumo Yomi]

No, Bloodborne is my favorite.

My biggest issue with Elden Ring is the approach to "difficulty". I feel the game is reasonably well-balanced up until Leyndell. Beyond that, I feel it leans too hard into "extremely high damage from enemies = challenge" school of thought. And even though I realize it's technically "optional" content, I feel that places like Ordina (with the invisible Black Knife Assassins and "machine gun" albanauric archers) are more "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" than "challenging".

Essentially, I feel the balance of difficulty goes from "challenging but fair" to "hard for the sake of being hard" in the latter portions of the game. Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne were much better in that regard, in my opinion.

[The Everlasting Stillness ☯]

Nope, not even close. Bloodorne by a mile. Bloodborne is also plagued by some isues, objectively, and also suffers from some crappy boss design, but the overall experience doesn't leave me disappointed. All the dungeon repetitiveness that's actually more intelligently solved with the random dungeons is locked behind optional ritual chalices, and the story chalices are unique. Completing random chalices is also worthwhile because you can get really good gems. Not so for ER dungeons.
Elden Ring is great in many aspects and has some of the best things in the FROM catalogue, but also some of the absolute worst things in the FROM catalogue. They took pages from the worst aspects of several of the games for some areas and decisions, and the mind-numbing reuse of enemies and bosses is just absurd. The game should have had 2x fewer bosses at least, with little to no repeats, and several of the zones are just empty space with nothing of note. They wanted to make it big, but they didn't bother making most of the side content meaningful. There's no reason to ever complete any side dungeon more than once unless you need an item from it, like a talisman, and if you know what you're doing, pretty much every single side area is pointless to do, since you can get levels and gear far, far faster just going to a later game zone.
There is also too much backpedaling on issues that were already resolved before (spells cost more than 1 slot but you STILL HAVE a mana system???, no poise casting for miracles, bows are just terrible and have terible scaling, crossbows are more useless than ever, other than pulley crossbow, there are far too few unique movesets for such a massive catalogue of weapons, there are far too many gank boss fights, there are far too many enemies that ignore the rules of the game e.g. they can activate infinite poise when they want/stagger cancel, etc., NPC enemies are absurdly unbalanced and have the dark souls 2 "spin in place while locked onto you as they're using an estus" as well as input reading so blatant and insulting that it's wild they okayed it to be in the game (also applies to bosses), there are far too many flailing enemies and bosses with absudly long combos, there are far too few normal upgrade stones compared to the sombers, there is a lack of meaningful differentiation between "difficult" and "obnoxious", there are far too many enemies and bosses that just run away or can chain like 10 charge attacks in a row (magma wyrm are absolute garbage in that respect), there is a silly reliance on one-shots or cheap hits (deathbirds, Farum Azula dragon miniboss), and those are all just off the top of my head.
ER makes me sad, because I can see that they had really great ideas, and Leyndell is probably the best overall area they have ever made, plus all the legacy dungeons are fantastically-crafted and have a wonderful atmosphere, and I truly adore the music, lore and the world itself, but somewhere along the way they lost their direction.
Look at Haligtree. One of the most stunning, gorgeous areas in any of their games, one of the most somber and hard-hitting atmospheres, supremely striking visuals and design... but it's all in service of so much tedium, cheap BS and lazy rehashing that it brings it down so much. Adding 3x more enemies that are awful to fight in combination isn't difficulty, it's just annoyance and lame. There isn't a single unique enemy there, or even a weapon that's all that different or special.
There are also legitimate huge issues with the bosses that the better you get at the game, the more you notice (Malenia is just straight up broken in many aspects (3 stagger cancels, infinite chainable hyper armour, lifesteal when blocking, absurd tracking, etc.) to the point of obnoxiousness, even though I regularly no-hit her with pretty much any weapon class and Waterfowl isn't a problem (have an offline char just for refighting bosses; Elden Beast is an insult that should not have existed, Radagon should have had 2 phases, etc.)
It's like for every thing I want to praise them for, there's an equally ♥♥♥♥ thing they did to negate that. They brought back Frigid Outskirts, and for what? There's zero good items in there, and there's no reason to ever bother completing it.
They added in more elemental types, but then made casting much more complicated if you want to build around an element, and some schools have so few spells it's sad.
They removed dedicated pyromancy and gave it to faith builds, but split it in two different schools that different talismans buff.. Why.
They added many new spells, but a massive percentage of them are just a waste of mana compared to your Slicer, Pebble and Night Comet. If you're at endgame with 40 mind, it matters less, sure, but up until then? DEX builds that also add arcane are pretty much the objectively best way to play the game, because both DEX/ARC scaling and status effects are absurdly powerful. UGS type weapons can do insane damage, but realistically in most boss fights, you're delegated to either jump or poke attacks, or at the very most a charge attack after a long boss chain. Your character is too sluggish compared to the enemies, so they had to make the roll absurdly overpowered to compensate for that.
Etc. I could go on for a long time.
I wish they had taken more time and reduced the scope a bit and removed most of the tedium, it would be a truly marvelous game.

[1100011]

Bloodborne still the best Soulsborne, but of all DS games Elden Ring, definitely.
Boss fights have more interesting mechanics*,
ashes of war allow for more weapon customization, also allowing ranged options for melee characters,
Torrent of course,
repetitiveness also depends on the player: as you progress through the game more options become available to you to handle the same situations, therefore keeping the experience fresh.

*evaluation excludes a certain Blade and her fowl.