Elden Ring was a disappointment. Anybody else?

[ParabolaWaVe]

While the game has very high production values, I think that Elden Ring has lots of gameplay problems which seriously cripple the game.

My main complaint is stealth being far too powerful compared to how difficult is to fight the normal creatures head on. It often makes the game too easy, boring to travel, and inconsistent in challenge. Adding to that, I think the sight radius of the monsters is by default too short and narrow for wide, open spaces, which further reduces their threat, since most of the battles can be easily avoided... which means, not played. Closed spaces are better in this regard, these areas add a little more game and that old Souls spice to the mix. But if the open areas are wasted... then, what's the point of Elden Ring? Why not play Dark Souls instead?

Combat seems more about arcadey "button mashing" this time, not so much about careful timing or keeping proper distance, because the momentum of a weapon swing was shortened; with some quick weapons momentum is completely inexistent. And the whole "rune" concept never clicked with me compared to the "souls" idea... previous games justified the fact, right at the beginning of the game, that you could revive over and over after being killed because you were an undead too, plus you needed to regain your humanity. The kind of curse of undeath you're suffering in Elden Ring is very contrived, despite that, the game makes little effort to explain the nature of runes and how they connect to your undeath. To the player they're just "souls" with a different name.

By the way, "death" in Elden Ring has very little consequence or penalty. No longer you become "hollow" like in previous games, no longer you dread being killed one more time. You drop the runes to the ground, yes, but that's it.

I don't think the game is a total disaster... it has some good sections, bosses and interesting ideas in the design on some closed areas. From time to time I even want to play it because of these positives. But overall, it left me disappointed, and I'm puzzled because of the very high ratings it got. What about you?

[Lynfinity]

İlk olarak ParabolaWaVe tarafından gönderildi:

By the way, "death" in Elden Ring has very little consequence or penalty. No longer you become "hollow" like in previous games, no longer you dread being killed one more time. You drop the runes to the ground, yes, but that's it.

DS3 is literally the same. You are only penalized if you were Embered, by removing extra HP gained from this state (same as losing the benefits of Great Runes upon death in ER).

In DS1, being Hollow is not that much of a problem. Sure, Humanity offers resistances and increased item drop rate, but it's still manageable.

The only game where dying is actually kinda dreadful is DS2 because of max HP reduction. And even then, Ring of Life Protection - completely nullifies said drawback, prevents your souls from being lost, does not disappear upon death (like Ring of Sacrifice in DS1 and DS3) and costs only 3k souls to repair. You just don't become Hollow, ever.

But to be fair, even without the aforementioned ring max HP reduction is neglectable unless you go all the way down to 50% HP, and Human Effigies are only somewhat rare during early game. By the time I've got my hands on "enchanced" crowns, I had 50+ Effigies sitting comfortably in my inventory, and I definetely used just as much, if not more, over the course of the entire game.

Soooo, yeah.

[ParabolaWaVe]

İlk olarak Lynfinity tarafından gönderildi:

DS3 is literally the same. You are only penalized if you were Embered, by removing extra HP gained from this state (same as losing the benefits of Great Runes upon death in ER).

Not that familiar with DS3 to be honest, because I first got familiar with the Dark Souls series in Xbox 360... the title just wasn't released in that console. But even then, Dark Souls 3 would have the advantage over Elden Ring in having much better pacing and flow thanks to the, more linear, level design.

And well, there's also the issue that in no way we can compare Elder Ring with some of the real open world RPGs gems out there whlle keeping a straight face. These are technical marvels we're talking about, very complex in their own right. Games featuring real quests and dialogue, branching storylines, entire worlds affected by player choice. I do like Elden Ring somewhat, but only because I'm playing Dark Souls through it.

In my opinion... this game would've been much better, if only From Software had invested more time in developing the game world further, so the adventure, NPCs and exploring aspects got closer to those open world RPGs. The other way to do it, was to strip the open world entirely, and just deliver a more traditional, but more focused Dark Souls game with better game flow, and more polished mechanics. I find Elden Ring underwhelming in both styles of games. It doesn't help that the Dark Souls elements, like enemy sight, aggro or what you want to call it, weren't adapted to work in open spaces, and they seem to have been copy pasted from previous games instead.

[Kalameet]

nah, best 150 hours ever played

[Anime-Profile-Picture]

İlk olarak WhateverWorks tarafından gönderildi:

Personally, I'm experiencing it for the first time this last few days and I can already tell it's something I'm never going to stop coming back to. It's right up there with Oblivion, Mass Effect, and FF9 now for games that I'll probably never put down for very long.

Correct take. Its the most replayable of the fromsoft library.

[Anime-Profile-Picture]

İlk olarak The Real CHIM Shady tarafından gönderildi:

Op getting push-back because people make some games their entire personality and any criticism of the game/s is a personal attack in their eyes

Its not that at all. Saying this game is disappointing is the same exact energy as Peter Griffin saying "I did not care for the Godfather."
"It insists upon itself Lois. It *insists* upon itself."

[Kalameet]

İlk olarak The Real CHIM Shady tarafından gönderildi:

Op getting push-back because people make some games their entire personality and any criticism of the game/s is a personal attack in their eyes

The truest of all truths, especially when it's about Fromsoftware. The fanaticism is so real here

[Ted]

No. It was as close to a perfect game as I have played so far, at least as far as the souls-like genre goes.

It deserves every bit of praise that it got and while you're entitled to have your own opinion, ER is the most successful of all of the From games for a reason (it sold more than all the rest combined). DS3 is my personal next favourite but ER is still way ahead

[vamirez]

No game is "perfect" for everyone. But Elden Ring is def one of the "all time greats". It does a ton of things right and has been rewarded by mainstream gamers for it. Remember before BG3 those Ubi dev types first threw a hissy fit about ER ;) Also consider other "all time greats" - any forum you go, you will find this thread. And we all know it actually only applies to games by CDPR. *ducks and runs* :p

[Amuro]

İlk olarak BenzoSt tarafından gönderildi:

I don't know why the opening poster is getting so much pushback because I agree with some of the grievances listed.

Because his argument is unsound?

İlk olarak OP tarafından gönderildi:

My main complaint is stealth being far too powerful compared to how difficult is to fight the normal creatures head on.

This is optional and the game does not force you to go stealth, it's just one avenue in which players can use to progress in the game. The game is certainly more "rounded off" but in doing so it has been more accessible to the masses. The suits and game designers from Bandai and From probably think you're all a bunch of idiots without statistical data from three Dark Souls games backing up your armchair game dev design choices.

They have over a decade of player data from souls games but you think your uneducated and non-professional opinion is better?

Go ship a GOTY and then talk. Yall a bunch of over-confident silly people with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tier arguments.

OP is just some edgelord with a terrible contrarian opinion. "OHh yeaaahh a massive once in a decade calibre GOTY is actually a disappointment to my high standards because of an optional game mechanic" hahahahahaha. OP needs to let us know what is deserving of a GOTY then, because they must sip wine and dine on gold flakes if Elden ring is a "Disappointment".

Delusional opinions backed up by hilarious "arguments". Its even more funny cause the OP has some trashy steam profile. I guess the game didn't have enough anime trash booba.

[ParabolaWaVe]

İlk olarak Weeb Myers tarafından gönderildi:

OP is just some edgelord with a terrible contrarian opinion. "OHh yeaaahh a massive once in a decade calibre GOTY is actually a disappointment to my high standards because of an optional game mechanic" hahahahahaha. OP needs to let us know what is deserving of a GOTY then, because they must sip wine and dine on gold flakes if Elden ring is a "Disappointment".

There's something called the "bandwagon effect", its an actual thing in human psychology. That's why game or movie companies pay for reviews and post positive comments on the internet. When people get the feeling an overwhelming majority have an opinion on something, and they haven't strong opinions on their own, they just tend to hop into the wagon regardless of what they truly believed before.

I don't like when these kind of discussions become personal attacks, which is why I waited for a long time before writing some criticisms on this game. Besides, I wasn't clear myself that the game was disappointing. Had to let the experience mature first.

Rather than thinking about just thrashing the game, I'm thinkng about the game we lost and never got made. There's a DLC coming soon... but there's so much lack of criticism from the fan base, that its very likely that nothing important will get changed or improved. After all, if ain't broken, don't fix it. The DLC will probably add some new areas, monsters and weapons, but little else.

[Fineous🔥]

İlk olarak ParabolaWaVe tarafından gönderildi:

Rather than thinking about just thrashing the game, I'm thinkng about the game we lost and never got made. There's a DLC coming soon... but there's so much lack of criticism from the fan base, that its very likely that nothing important will get changed or improved. After all, if ain't broken, don't fix it. The DLC will probably add some new areas, monsters and weapons, but little else.

"WE"? Who are "WE" OP? please, speak only for yourself.

And lack of criticism? No, this mountain of bafflegab we are climbing post after post is made by the same hot-takes posted here during the last two years.

Also you just played 32 hours, what are you talking about OP? Is this your real opinion or just a epiphany? Whatever it is im still extremly thankful you decided to share it.

[Krypto]

Disappointment? No. Was it far too long despite being very good most of the time? Yes, I would say so.

[Irot Noot]

İlk olarak ParabolaWaVe tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Weeb Myers tarafından gönderildi:

OP is just some edgelord with a terrible contrarian opinion. "OHh yeaaahh a massive once in a decade calibre GOTY is actually a disappointment to my high standards because of an optional game mechanic" hahahahahaha. OP needs to let us know what is deserving of a GOTY then, because they must sip wine and dine on gold flakes if Elden ring is a "Disappointment".

There's something called the "bandwagon effect", its an actual thing in human psychology. That's why game or movie companies pay for reviews and post positive comments on the internet. When people get the feeling an overwhelming majority have an opinion on something, and they haven't strong opinions on their own, they just tend to hop into the wagon regardless of what they truly believed before.

I don't like when these kind of discussions become personal attacks, which is why I waited for a long time before writing some criticisms on this game. Besides, I wasn't clear myself that the game was disappointing. Had to let the experience mature first.

Rather than thinking about just thrashing the game, I'm thinkng about the game we lost and never got made. There's a DLC coming soon... but there's so much lack of criticism from the fan base, that its very likely that nothing important will get changed or improved. After all, if ain't broken, don't fix it. The DLC will probably add some new areas, monsters and weapons, but little else.

The issue is, the game that never got made, didnt get made for a reason. You didnt lose anything. FROM made the game they wanted to make backed up by what they know their customers want from their own internal user data.

You throw out some bandwagon effect to explain its popularity, but that is a cop out giving Elden Ring (FROM) zero credit for its own success... Nah, it couldnt be its one of the best games to come out in the last ten years and you are just wrong... /sigh.. Its not a bandwagon effect that has people playing it years after release for hundreds of hours on repeated play throughs. Its not a bandwagon effect that pushes its sales to be FROMs all time biggest selling game, by a mile.

Elden Ring is closing in on outselling all all other FROM games combined.. I respect your opinion to not like the game, but not to poke at it and claim we are all blind. Every game is not for everyone, that is plain. Just play something else if you dont like it, typing up a full essay on the failings of one of the most popular game to come out in years is a silly huge waste of time, yours for writing it and ours for reading it. FROM wont see it, FROM wont care, they are shoveling in money with bucket loaders.

[biesoid]

I don't know, I haven't bought the game yet.

[Ted]

I just cant take anyone seriously when they actually consider a game this incredible as a "disappointment"

It seems like a personal issue with expectations rather than just enjoying the game for the incredible experience it is. Sure, it may not be perfect but as said already, it is damn near close imo