Elden ring bosses were bad, DLC's are terrible

[Juanill0]

So, here we are, I finally completed the entire DLC with the final boss included. This said, I think Elden Ring is an incredible game brought down by bad bosses.

These bosses never feel satisfying to beat, neither do they feel like a challenge like those of Sekiro, Bloodborne or DS3. They aren't tests of skill, but rather of how fast you can memorise all their moveset... the cause? Delayed attacks and how unnaturally the bosses move.

This is the single worst thing about Elden Ring for me. Delayed attacks can be a good tool to catch the players off guard when they aren't paying attention, the dancer of the boreal valley is a great example of an incredible boss that uses an irregular rythm and delayed attacks to surprise the player.

But what happens when virtually every single combo of every single boss spams them? That you completely break the rythm of the fight.

Let's take Slave Knight Gael, a true last boss that tests all you have learned through DS3, however, he couldn't be more different from ER bosses. His combos are relatively short (between 3 and 6 attacks), with only one important delayed attack and very little AoE, as well as very telegraphed finishers with big gaps to hit back.

This is what makes a good boss, he has rythm. The entire fight is an epic back and forth, a dance of death where he desperately tries to kill you as you grit your teeth through his phases, dodging as you can and punishing him. Most importantly, you have more than enough time to strategise and heal in between combos, or punishing him with a combo.

Now let's take ER DLC bosses... not a single one has rythm, why? Every single attack is a cheesy delayed attack, every 3 attacks 1 is a crazy AoE, every combo is 20 seconds long so you just sit there with your thumb up your ass waiting for him to finish so you can poke him once. Oh, and let's not forget even after they finish their combos, if you as much as touch the estus button half the time they will instantly turn around halfway through their animation and hit you with another 20 hit combo.

And let's not forget how now every single boss has to zoom across the arena every single time he gets bored, meaning you can spend half the fight chasing a boss around as he spams his ''beyblade of death'' attack on you.

ER bosses (and specially those of the DLC) are clearly meant to be fought by 2 people, a summons and you, this sucks if you prefer to solo them and becomes incredibly obvious when even the most bassic attacks of the easiest DLC bosses have giant reach and cover 210º, hitting you even behind the boss.

This also messes completely with the balance up, with bosses doing ridiculous damage and having ridiculous healthpools (and don't you dare summon someone or it gets even worse).

So in the end these bosses aren't fun and don't feel rewarding. They are so grossly agressive and overpowered that after beating the last DLC boss I felt nothing, in fact I didn't feel anything with none of the DLC bosses, they felt like boring roadblocks rather than engaging fights. This is due to how lacking they are in Rythm.

Weirdly enough, even the DLC bosses were relatively simple to beat, with the last boss being the only one that took more than 10 tries, so I don't think difficulty is the issue. And I think these bosses wouldn't be bad if we had Bloodborne's rally mechanic and mobility.

This is so sad because everything else about the game (except the subpar soundtrack) is almost perfect, and it kinda sucks the bosses are so boring and gnerally bad. God bless.

[Solkin]

experience of summoning cooperator NPC in elden ring DLC : they spend all their time running to get close to ennemis that can move from one corner of the arena to the other in a blink of an eye.
you should watch sir ansbach trying to get to radhan , it's ridiculous, i can spend two minutes in combat without him getting to land a single blow on the boss but getting AOED anyway .....

[EF_Neo1st]

Originally posted by Solkin:

experience of summoning cooperator NPC in elden ring DLC : they spend all their time running to get close to ennemis that can move from one corner of the arena to the other in a blink of an eye.
you should watch sir ansbach trying to get to radhan , it's ridiculous, i can spend two minutes in combat without him getting to land a single blow on the boss but getting AOED anyway .....

Like when you get summoned to help a host, you try to take the boss "away" from the host as much as possible, just do the inverse and try to get the boss "close" to the NPC as much as possible, dodge and lurre the boss closer to the NPC and not away, Radahn is the type that is aggressive and most likely goo inot the target and not away so it is not hard to pull off if you keep track of where the NPC is (actually it is easier to pull off than trying to keep a host away from the boss).

[Bankai9212]

Originally posted by Solkin:

experience of summoning cooperator NPC in elden ring DLC : they spend all their time running to get close to ennemis that can move from one corner of the arena to the other in a blink of an eye.
you should watch sir ansbach trying to get to radhan , it's ridiculous, i can spend two minutes in combat without him getting to land a single blow on the boss but getting AOED anyway .....

Also notice for some fights npc summons are in boss rooms, to avoid the damage reduction.

[Bankai9212]

Originally posted by EF_Neo1st:

Originally posted by Solkin:

experience of summoning cooperator NPC in elden ring DLC : they spend all their time running to get close to ennemis that can move from one corner of the arena to the other in a blink of an eye.
you should watch sir ansbach trying to get to radhan , it's ridiculous, i can spend two minutes in combat without him getting to land a single blow on the boss but getting AOED anyway .....

Like when you get summoned to help a host, you try to take the boss "away" from the host as much as possible, just do the inverse and try to get the boss "close" to the NPC as much as possible, dodge and lurre the boss closer to the NPC and not away, Radahn is the type that is aggressive and most likely goo inot the target and not away so it is not hard to pull off if you keep track of where the NPC is (actually it is easier to pull off than trying to keep a host away from the boss).

The issue with the bosses in this dlc is that they’ll get aggro for a second and the second you try to attack they’ll change focus mid combo to hit you.

[EF_Neo1st]

Originally posted by Bankai9212:

Originally posted by EF_Neo1st:

Like when you get summoned to help a host, you try to take the boss "away" from the host as much as possible, just do the inverse and try to get the boss "close" to the NPC as much as possible, dodge and lurre the boss closer to the NPC and not away, Radahn is the type that is aggressive and most likely goo inot the target and not away so it is not hard to pull off if you keep track of where the NPC is (actually it is easier to pull off than trying to keep a host away from the boss).

The issue with the bosses in this dlc is that they’ll get aggro for a second and the second you try to attack they’ll change focus mid combo to hit you.

Honestlly (and I know because after I almost beaten Mesmer a few times I summoned the NPC so I know how it is) .. it is way more balanced than the braindead change in aggro that commpletely break the boss AI.
It took me by surprise but Malenia also sort of did it too as she could change her aggro midcombo, including miway through a waterfowl wave and I helped a lot against Malenia so it is not a new thing to me, also it did take me by surprise the first time but then I was already expecting aggro to change at any point against Mesmer (I think I did not get comboed to death there because I was not paying attention if Mesmer aggroed me or the NPC, I just reacted to it but I noticed Mesmer changed aggro midcombo).
The key is to always dodge like it was for you, if it "turns on you" you are prepared already,

Malenia to not aggro anyone else host (or the other helper) have to be far away on the other side of the arena (and still I already saw instances where she changed aggro away from me when host was doing literally nothing but walking around on the other side of the arena) so I think it is like "host = priority" with a high percentage of chance that boss changes aggro to host even if host does nothing and I think the same apply if you summon a NPC.

[Bankai9212]

The difference is that her moves minus water flow is easy to keep track and don’t have long combo strings like a good chunk of main bosses in the dlc have. The dlc for me is the worst part of from softs balance aka ng+ where damage scaling goes out the window.

[Solkin]

sir ansbach can be in close quarter with radanh and still miss every move with its scythe. no amount of bringing radanh to him will change that.

[Aria Athena]

In my opinion the dlc saw a significant drop in quality when it comes to enemies in general, not just bosses, but that is with regard to ER, not the average game. It's very hard not to recommend it, even if I liked it half as much as the base game.

[Bankai9212]

Originally posted by Aria Athena:

In my opinion the dlc saw a significant drop in quality when it comes to enemies in general, not just bosses, but that is with regard to ER, not the average game. It's very hard not to recommend it, even if I liked it half as much as the base game.

You get your monies worth just don’t do what I did and play everything on a first playthrough at this point I’m just exhausted.

[EF_Neo1st]

Originally posted by Bankai9212:

Originally posted by Aria Athena:

In my opinion the dlc saw a significant drop in quality when it comes to enemies in general, not just bosses, but that is with regard to ER, not the average game. It's very hard not to recommend it, even if I liked it half as much as the base game.

You get your monies worth just don’t do what I did and play everything on a first playthrough at this point I’m just exhausted.

So you are exhausted because you did not do everything on a first playthrough? Like you did some stuff then you did another full playthrough to do more stuff then yet another playthrough to do yet more stuff and so on?

[Morton Koopa Jr.]

Stopped reading at "They aren't tests of skill, but rather of how fast you can memorise all their moveset...", because that's basically a description of the souls games, and video games in general that are even remotely challenging. That's how I would describe most games from the 80s/90s even.

[Brma]

Originally posted by Morton Koopa Jr.:

Stopped reading at "They aren't tests of skill, but rather of how fast you can memorise all their moveset...", because that's basically a description of the souls games, and video games in general that are even remotely challenging. That's how I would describe most games from the 80s/90s even.

Idk what people are expecting. The AI to be fully sentient and never use coded move sets? It's ridiculous.

[Bankai9212]

Originally posted by EF_Neo1st:

Originally posted by Bankai9212:

You get your monies worth just don’t do what I did and play everything on a first playthrough at this point I’m just exhausted.

So you are exhausted because you did not do everything on a first playthrough? Like you did some stuff then you did another full playthrough to do more stuff then yet another playthrough to do yet more stuff and so on?

No, it’s exhausting because instead getting most base game stuff, put the game down then play the dlc im doing what I can in the base game along with the dlc. For a first time player the base game easily takes 80+ hours the dlc adds even more and the fights aren’t all that fun at this point. It’s not a matter of doing everything never 100% previous games but they don’t take 80 hours to finish.

[Bankai9212]

Originally posted by Morton Koopa Jr.:

Stopped reading at "They aren't tests of skill, but rather of how fast you can memorise all their moveset...", because that's basically a description of the souls games, and video games in general that are even remotely challenging. That's how I would describe most games from the 80s/90s even.

The issue is how the dlc bosses are balanced in general. Most bosses are pretty straight forward most in the dlc just have long combos before you can even do anything.

[EF_Neo1st]

Originally posted by Bankai9212:

Originally posted by EF_Neo1st:

So you are exhausted because you did not do everything on a first playthrough? Like you did some stuff then you did another full playthrough to do more stuff then yet another playthrough to do yet more stuff and so on?

No, it’s exhausting because instead getting most base game stuff, put the game down then play the dlc im doing what I can in the base game along with the dlc. For a first time player the base game easily takes 80+ hours the dlc adds even more and the fights aren’t all that fun at this point. It’s not a matter of doing everything never 100% previous games but they don’t take 80 hours to finish.

The game "easily takes 80h" for a first timer if this first timer "dont really explore the world" and "knows exactly where to go and what to do", then I would say 80h may even be a bit too much even if this first timer is also a first timer to souls games

I myself took around 90h (or 100h) to finish the game, got lost at places (as usual to me, I managed to get lost for 15h at Sekiro so I would say "just that time" at Elden Ring was sort of fast to my Roronoa Zoro standards given how big the map is) and some 130h or 140h to finish the remaining optional areas after beating the main game.
DLC now I dont know but probably, excluding the time I left the game open not playing, I think some 30h to 40h but still have optional content to see at the DLC (the main path I think I got to Radahn within some 10h or less even exploring surrounding areas but that is about 40% of the DLC area)