Souls Veteran here. I'll never play another FromSoft game again.

[P1]

Firstly, let me explain by saying I am a souls veteran. I have been playing since demon souls, and have completed the DS trilogy multiple times under multiple different builds. When Elden Ring came, I enjoyed it even though it had a lot of differences from the mainline souls game. So when the DLC was announced, I couldn't wait to try it. All the 10/10 from media outlets had me hyped. Then I got the DLC upon release and was left disappointed and almost feel swindled by all the media hype.

Firstly, the DLC is a huge let down. And before they come at me saying "git gud", I want to state this is not a complaint about the difficult or DLC being hard, but it being tedious and boring.

Same copy-pasted ghost dragon dude copy-pasted everywhere. Shadow dudes literally spammed everywhere. A New level-up system that copies Zelda BoTW by forcing you to search empty maps for shrines - I mean "scadutree" fragments to be powered up, or you'll get one shot in full bullgoat armor by a shadow dude. The bosses are the worst designs of any Souls game, in fact they don't even belong in a souls game, and should be in some fast-paced action combat game. Having bosses that unleash 50 combos followed by 20 aerial combos followed by 10 arena wide AoE attacks while you control a clunky dark souls character is just a cheap attempt at artifial difficult and tedious. Oh, and most bosses literally instantly attack you before you barely even step through the foggate.

If this is the direction souls games are going now, I will never play another one again. I want a SOULS game, not some ANIME style combat. It seems like now since souls games have gone so mainstream game journalists and die hard fanboys will just pretend from games can not have a single flaw and are always perfect. I really hope miyazakis next game just boots up to nothing but a screen featuring a picture of him taking a massive, stinky dump. Fromsoft die hard fanboys will be praising it and discussing the hidden lore of the sweetcorn hidden in the right corner of miyazakis dump, and telling anybody who complains to "git gud".

[Todd Howard]

Originally posted by Aerieanei:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3283674292

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3283674407

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3283674507

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3283674610

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3283674712

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3283674824

Did you draw these? Neato

[Haru]

Originally posted by Andi:

Originally posted by Aerieanei:

Gwynevere and Gwyndolin aren't even rugged or Realistic. They're beautiful. Thinking Japanese things can't be rugged or realistic doesn't make sense because the Anime 1999 Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade is just that. Anime has always had animes like that. Rugged and Realistic. Not everything is Kawaii overload. Even Berserk isn't too far off from being Realistic and Rugged.

Ocarina of Time is the Speed of Dark Souls 1 with the very similar gameplay and mechanics. Both games have the same Third Person Gameplay with basic Attack Movements and being slow. Ocarina of Time has Jumping attacks, Dark souls has Jumping Attacks. You could argue Ocarina of Time has Better Bow Combat than Dark Souls and it's faster but Breath of the Wild Link and Skyward Sword Link are both dramatically faster with a Bow than Ocarina of Time. Lock On, Block with A Shield, Roll, Attack with a Sword when there's an opening, Drinking Estus, Tears of Denial, Wrath of the Gods, it's all in Ocarina of Time and Dark Souls. Dark Souls isn't doing anything new here dramatically that a Japanese game hasn't already done. Even comparing Twilight Princess with Dark Souls you'll find even more similarities like Parrying, Riposting and using Weapon Arts. Zelda isn't even a Western RPG. I don't recall many Old Western RPGs that are old school that are even similar to playing like Dark Souls with it's Third Person Lock On Shield and Board Gameplay. But I can find many Japanese ones.

If you compare the art style of Shadow Temple and the Well to New Londo, they're basically the same. The Spine of Bongo Bongo in the Concept Art is similar to the Spine of Titanite Demons. Even the Monster Designs are similar. Lizalfos are similar looking to the Snake Men, Stalfos are similar to the Skeletons. Wolnir in Dark Souls 3 is just a Stallord Meme from Twilight Princess. Gaius in Erdtree DLC is literally King Bulblin from Twilight Princess. Radahn in Caelid is just a human version of Ganon from Ocarina of Time's Final Boss. Even a Dark Knight in Dark Souls is pretty much like fighting a Iron Knuckle and a Darknut from Zelda.

Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess was rugged and realistic but it could be considered anime still. Dark Souls just borrows from it.

"it's anime because there's an anime of such theme". at the end of the day there is such a large variety of anime that it kinda cancels out calling anything 'anime' at all. because by your definition, ANYTHING can be anime as long as there are some vague references you can use to make a connection. using the same arguments you use, i can say ocarina of time is inspired by DND and Tolkien, which makes it more western than japanese. and since darksouls takes inspiration from ocarina of time, it has western DND themes rooted in it, which by the way, isn't anime.

To be honest, there are very, very specific tropes that are specific to 'anime', 'manga', and Japanese fiction in general, that're distinctive from other cultures.

I wouldn't say the references between Dark Souls and Berserk are vague. They're extremely explicit. Berserk has influenced a lot of things in the dark fantasy genre.

[Rhaegar]

Lies of P is just better. Nuff said.

[Todd Howard]

Originally posted by Rhaegar:

Lies of P is just better. Nuff said.

Some aspects yes, some aspects no. I like Lies of P, but bloodborne is definitely still the GOAT

[Andi]

Originally posted by Haru:

Originally posted by Andi:

"it's anime because there's an anime of such theme". at the end of the day there is such a large variety of anime that it kinda cancels out calling anything 'anime' at all. because by your definition, ANYTHING can be anime as long as there are some vague references you can use to make a connection. using the same arguments you use, i can say ocarina of time is inspired by DND and Tolkien, which makes it more western than japanese. and since darksouls takes inspiration from ocarina of time, it has western DND themes rooted in it, which by the way, isn't anime.

To be honest, there are very, very specific tropes that are specific to 'anime', 'manga', and Japanese fiction in general, that're distinctive from other cultures.

I wouldn't say the references between Dark Souls and Berserk are vague. They're extremely explicit. Berserk has influenced a lot of things in the dark fantasy genre.

Even in that sense berserk is not your traditional anime. when you call something "very anime" you're usually referring to the anime tropes. Berserk is an anime that broke anime tropes. to call it an anime trope itself is very disingenous.

[Haru]

Originally posted by Andi:

Originally posted by Haru:

To be honest, there are very, very specific tropes that are specific to 'anime', 'manga', and Japanese fiction in general, that're distinctive from other cultures.

I wouldn't say the references between Dark Souls and Berserk are vague. They're extremely explicit. Berserk has influenced a lot of things in the dark fantasy genre.

Even in that sense berserk is not your traditional anime. when you call something "very anime" you're usually referring to the anime tropes. Berserk is an anime that broke anime tropes. to call it an anime trope itself is very disingenous.

I mean, I can probably find a few tropes that apply specifically to Berserk, or at minimum, artistic choices utilised in Berserk that are common with other seinen manga, or creations within that genre. I don't know if I'd refer to Berserk as 'not a traditional anime'. I mean, what is a 'traditional' anime? OG Dororo?

[Todd Howard]

Originally posted by Andi:

Originally posted by Haru:

To be honest, there are very, very specific tropes that are specific to 'anime', 'manga', and Japanese fiction in general, that're distinctive from other cultures.

I wouldn't say the references between Dark Souls and Berserk are vague. They're extremely explicit. Berserk has influenced a lot of things in the dark fantasy genre.

Even in that sense berserk is not your traditional anime. when you call something "very anime" you're usually referring to the anime tropes. Berserk is an anime that broke anime tropes. to call it an anime trope itself is very disingenous.

I would disagree, there were a ton of anime in the 80s like Berserk. Ninja Scrolls was violent and had a very mature plot. There were a ton of Manga in the 80s that started brooding on dark and mature. Devilman as well. I'm sure there are others

[Haru]

Originally posted by Porcelain:

Originally posted by Andi:

Even in that sense berserk is not your traditional anime. when you call something "very anime" you're usually referring to the anime tropes. Berserk is an anime that broke anime tropes. to call it an anime trope itself is very disingenous.

I would disagree, there were a ton of anime in the 80s like Berserk. Ninja Scrolls was violent and had a very mature plot. There were a ton of Manga in the 80s that started brooding on dark and mature. Devilman as well. I'm sure there are others

There's absolutely loads if you delve into manga of the time. A lot of it wasn't popular enough to warrant adaptation.

[cheetah1546]

Isn't saying you're quitting off topic? We're here to talk about playing the game and the things we're going to do.

[RtG.Nifaxizzi]

The boss fights have shifted from unfair to balanced and healthy. If you play DS1 to Elden Ring, you would understand that the boss battles in DS1 were beyond fair and some of them gave you a lot less chance to succeed than they do now. Ceaseless Discharge, BoC, are beyond "unfair" boss battles, but they still give you opportunities to win in cryptic ways. Fortunately fromsoft stepped away from that design and started pushing the bosses to be challenging and still fair. All it takes is to memorize boss patterns, that is entirely fair gameplay.

I feel the complete and absolute opposite of everything you said, so much its almost uncanny.
I feel like Ds bosses were very very veeeery much way more fair than anything this dlc provides. Lets take the famously harder DS bosses to compare, first roadblock i would say is capra demon, which can be "git guded" if you wish to learn the patterns but is hard because of the arena and the 2 dogs, you can use the terrain tho to kill him if you are smart about it. Then Smough and ornstein is the next real threat and while fighting both is very tense they can either be "git gudded" so you dodge everything or you can again use the terrain in your favor and hide behind pillars, kiting smough who is sluggish and focusing on ornstein. Then lets take artorias who i believe is the hardest DS boss. It has a lot of combos and is the most technical one in the whole game but his combos are mostly overhead, which means positioning matters, dodging to one side over the other makes a difference.

Now this dlc tho, how many of the bosses DON'T have either sweeping attacks, or just humongous hitboxes? I don't remember being able to roll under an attack to hit a boss from behind at all, most of them either do a 180 in the air and hit you or land in a massive AOE.
Also most of them are placed in completely empty circular arenas, so no terrain advantage for you.

You know in DS you were able to really dodge attacks, in the sense that even without rolling you could position yourself in a way that the attack would not hit you, in elden ring you can't. Dodging a boss in ER means using the i-frames on the roll to avoid damage.
They are completely different design philosophies but i do really feel like in DS/borne you had a lot of gameplay options while in ER while you do have more equipment and build variety the gameplay loop can't be anything other than i-frame dodge into quick punish, which, yes, is better than it ever was in any prior game and might feel awesome for people who played soulsborne like that already, but not everyone did. And that's what i think most people aren't realizing, This WASN'T at all the only viable way to play, now it is.

[mpcgannon]

Originally posted by P1:

Firstly, let me explain by saying I am a souls veteran. I have been playing since demon souls, and have completed the DS trilogy multiple times under multiple different builds. When Elden Ring came, I enjoyed it even though it had a lot of differences from the mainline souls game. So when the DLC was announced, I couldn't wait to try it. All the 10/10 from media outlets had me hyped. Then I got the DLC upon release and was left disappointed and almost feel swindled by all the media hype.

Firstly, the DLC is a huge let down. And before they come at me saying "git gud", I want to state this is not a complaint about the difficult or DLC being hard, but it being tedious and boring.

Same copy-pasted ghost dragon dude copy-pasted everywhere. Shadow dudes literally spammed everywhere. A New level-up system that copies Zelda BoTW by forcing you to search empty maps for shrines - I mean "scadutree" fragments to be powered up, or you'll get one shot in full bullgoat armor by a shadow dude. The bosses are the worst designs of any Souls game, in fact they don't even belong in a souls game, and should be in some fast-paced action combat game. Having bosses that unleash 50 combos followed by 20 aerial combos followed by 10 arena wide AoE attacks while you control a clunky dark souls character is just a cheap attempt at artifial difficult and tedious. Oh, and most bosses literally instantly attack you before you barely even step through the foggate.

If this is the direction souls games are going now, I will never play another one again. I want a SOULS game, not some ANIME style combat. It seems like now since souls games have gone so mainstream game journalists and die hard fanboys will just pretend from games can not have a single flaw and are always perfect. I really hope miyazakis next game just boots up to nothing but a screen featuring a picture of him taking a massive, stinky dump. Fromsoft die hard fanboys will be praising it and discussing the hidden lore of the sweetcorn hidden in the right corner of miyazakis dump, and telling anybody who complains to "git gud".

Wrong.

[Andi]

Originally posted by Porcelain:

Originally posted by Andi:

Even in that sense berserk is not your traditional anime. when you call something "very anime" you're usually referring to the anime tropes. Berserk is an anime that broke anime tropes. to call it an anime trope itself is very disingenous.

I would disagree, there were a ton of anime in the 80s like Berserk. Ninja Scrolls was violent and had a very mature plot. There were a ton of Manga in the 80s that started brooding on dark and mature. Devilman as well. I'm sure there are others

i'm sure there are more that don't share that dark and violent theme. Anime has always been for teens since the beginning so naturally those themes weren't prominent early on. when evangelion came out everyone praised it for breaking the mold. that's because it DID break the mold for introducing darker themes. you would go on to say "what about serial experiments lain or x anime or y anime", but at the end of the day, anime is such a vast genre. there's an anime for any subgenre you can think of.

Not to mention why do you lump all the 'dark' shows together as if they are all of the same genre sharing the same tropes. All the shows you mentioned are completely distinct from one another, the only thing they might have in common is the target audience.

And in the grandscheme of things these shows with dark themes you're talking about don't make up a fraction of all the anime produced back then. Anyway, why do you think taking inspiration from an anime means you have to present your inspired work in an anime-like fashion? If a souls game dropped today and berserk didn't exist, would you still call it an anime game?

[Rhaegar]

Originally posted by Porcelain:

Originally posted by Rhaegar:

Lies of P is just better. Nuff said.

Some aspects yes, some aspects no. I like Lies of P, but bloodborne is definitely still the GOAT

Slander. I'm close to reporting your comment. Better edit it and submit to Lies of P supremacy, before it is too late.

[John Titor]

Originally posted by mpcgannon:

Wrong.

Let me give it a shot.

Originally posted by P1:

Firstly, let me explain by saying I am a souls veteran. In "1942" I got the high score at my local Dave & Busters. Then I played Souls and took an Asylum Demon to the knee and I was never the same. Mom would tell me dindin was done, and I would literally roll down the stairs and break my neck every time, My neck is the size of a redwood, which is why I needed to buy an Ultrawide monitor.

Firstly, the DLC is so hard i cri evrytiem. And before they come at me saying "git gud", I can't git gud because of my large neck, so shut about git gud because I'll never git the gud gitting gud never got gud git got gud gud. Gud gud git, no got. Got gud no git gud no got can't got won't git no gud in the hood gud.

Firstly, different bosses but same can't git gud. No guds to be got and git to be gud because it's git to be gud square. Git git got gud no gud got git gud gud gud gud gud git? No, no gud git. No gud, no git.

Firstly, If this is the gud to git, then I ain't got it. Can't git won't git, no gud got. Guds will never be gotten here, because there's no guds to git. Fromsoft die hard fanboys will be praising it and discussing the hidden lore of the sweetcorn hidden in the right corner of miyazakis dump, and telling anybody who complains to "git gud".

Firstly, they probably have a point.

[Asmodia]

Honestly after Rahdann I lost complete interest in playing the game the way it was intended. The vast empty open world with a ridiculous grind system completely ruined the experience. I tried to play it “legit” i.e blowing through questlines to enter mohg’s dynasty at SL 50 to do the cliff rune glitch—only to find out they patched it a day before.

At that point I didn’t even care. I downloaded a cheat engine and proceeded to spawned in enough hero runes to bring America’s GDP in the positive. The game is way too big with too many items locked behind quest lines or areas you won’t see until endgame.

Sure, I might have ruined the experience by going from level 50 to 160 with everything I needed; but what’s the alternative? I work full time and don’t view grinding 6 hours just to beat one boss is fun. This isn’t “get gud” rant—this game’s progression system is just genuinely horrible. It worked with previous souls games because it was designed linearly, they didn’t drop 100 km of nothing between POIs and expect you to follow the same logic as their previous titles. I walked around the dlc area for a bit before completely losing interest of exploring another empty space with content scattered throughout the map and quit once I killed the Elden lord

Honestly I feel bad for the creative design team because their visually beautifully world gets overshadowed by the sheer amount of nothingness in some areas. It’s so bad that I had to rely on fast travel more than any game I’ve played. Maybe I’m getting old, but I want to play a game, not a second job. It’s a shame because I genuinely wanted to enjoy an open world souls game, just not this one.