Is Malenia Badly Designed? (a rant)

[Flying Lemming Soup]

Finished Elden Ring for the first time not long ago. Unlike the previous FromSoft games I've played (DS1, DS3, Sekiro) I didn't feel inspired to immediately go again. I made an abortive attempt at a new character with a new build, but just lost interest and moved on to other stuff. I feel like some of my ambivalence is tied to my experience with Malenia, as one of the last bosses I took on. When I finished Sekiro, the battle with Isshin had taken many attempts but I was THRILLED at the end of it. Isshin has since become possibly my favorite boss ever, and I look forward to fighting him every time. Malenia... doesn't have that same feel for me.

Much has been said about Waterfowl Dance, but I think it IS a problem, and it can be summed up as: You shouldn't need a guide to have a chance of being able to survive one single attack out a boss's moveset. Any single attack in Sekiro, even from the toughest bosses, can be understood after seeing it once or twice; and learning how to counter each individual move is relatively intuitive, even if it takes a few attempts. Most of Malenia's moveset fits into this category; where after seeing it a couple times you have a solid chance of being able to dodge it. But even if you know exactly how Waterfowl Dance works and how to counter it (which, again, you'll probably need outside help on), you need to practice against it as if it was a boss in its own right. It makes her fight feel... lopsided. Do you think this is a fair assessment?

Her other problem is her ability to heal from hitting you; not damaging you, hitting you. This means that any build configured around trading or tanking is worthless. A solid shield build hard counters the damage from Waterfowl Dance, but by the time the attack is through, she's recovered most of her health. Pretty much the only build and playstyle that's effective against her is 'high damage, avoid being hit'. This is fine in Sekiro, where the game gives you one set of tools and expects you to get good with them; but Elden Ring is something like an RPG. You have a wide variety of builds to choose from; but Malenia demands that you either face her with one specific style (or else cheese), and if you don't play by her rules, you're out of luck. Do you think this is a fair assessment; and is it a problem even if it is? Do you think it's bad game design to have bosses that force you into a specific build in a game where multiple build options are available?

Overall, to me, Malenia feels a bit like a gimmick boss. She has exactly two mechanics that make her anything other than another 'challenging but fair' boss fight in the series. Without Waterfowl Dance and her healing, I suspect I would have beaten her solo within half a dozen attempts; and that... doesn't feel great.

[Persona Au Gratin]

To be honest, I think this idea that "these games are supposed to be challenging" isn't some range or sliding scale in terms of criticism. It's clear that these games are comfortable being unfair, and the ways they choose to do so can be really annoying or tolerable. And the irony is that because Malenia is learnable and her fight isn't a complete "wait" fest, I absolutely do not agree with you. If anything, there are things I appreciate about the main game relative to how she works. I think when people say "You shouldn't need a guide", a lot of them never really HAVE to engage the thing Malenia is testing. It's just that difficulty and the discussion of it is poisoned, so good luck talking about it.

[Morton Koopa Jr.]

Publicado originalmente por Flying Lemming Soup:

Much has been said about Waterfowl Dance, but I think it IS a problem, and it can be summed up as: You shouldn't need a guide to have a chance of being able to survive one single attack out a boss's moveset. Any single attack in Sekiro, even from the toughest bosses, can be understood after seeing it once or twice; and learning how to counter each individual move is relatively intuitive, even if it takes a few attempts. Most of Malenia's moveset fits into this category; where after seeing it a couple times you have a solid chance of being able to dodge it. But even if you know exactly how Waterfowl Dance works and how to counter it (which, again, you'll probably need outside help on), you need to practice against it as if it was a boss in its own right. It makes her fight feel... lopsided. Do you think this is a fair assessment?

I really don't think it's a fair assessment. Waterfowl Dance is learnable without a guide, and I felt like it was as frustrating to learn as some of the stuff that happened in Sekiro.

(I played elden ring blind, and I got to the last dungeon in Sekiro I think. So yeah, I Can speak on both).

[BenzoSt]

Malenia's Waterfowl Dance and her Phantom Duplicates attack in phase-2 are indeed lopsided compared to her standard sword attacks. I think she would have been better if the Waterfowl Dance were re-animated to be more intuitive to defend against. I do indeed suspect most players either get lucky or get so exasperated they look up a guide to learn about the three solutions to Waterfowl. As for he life gain, it would be fine if only she didn't gain life upon striking your shield. However, if you get staggered while blocking a non-Waterfowl Dance attack, I would grant her a critical attack where she chops your head clean off.

[r1ver]

After going through all the DLC BS, I would say she is somewhat fair. The only issue is her Waterfowl Dance, which is very hard to dodge

[Anthreris]

Publicado originalmente por Morton Koopa Jr.:

Publicado originalmente por Flying Lemming Soup:

Much has been said about Waterfowl Dance, but I think it IS a problem, and it can be summed up as: You shouldn't need a guide to have a chance of being able to survive one single attack out a boss's moveset. Any single attack in Sekiro, even from the toughest bosses, can be understood after seeing it once or twice; and learning how to counter each individual move is relatively intuitive, even if it takes a few attempts. Most of Malenia's moveset fits into this category; where after seeing it a couple times you have a solid chance of being able to dodge it. But even if you know exactly how Waterfowl Dance works and how to counter it (which, again, you'll probably need outside help on), you need to practice against it as if it was a boss in its own right. It makes her fight feel... lopsided. Do you think this is a fair assessment?

I really don't think it's a fair assessment. Waterfowl Dance is learnable without a guide, and I felt like it was as frustrating to learn as some of the stuff that happened in Sekiro.

(I played elden ring blind, and I got to the last dungeon in Sekiro I think. So yeah, I Can speak on both).

I couldn't figure out how to reliably dodge Waterfowl without a guide, I still don't know how to dodge Waterfowl Dance perfectly and I've beaten her 5 times. Maybe if your a god gamer you can figure it out after hours upon hours of playtime. But to say that it is learnable without a guide completely skews the sample away from Fromsoft's average player.

Albeit my experience is subjective but Waterfowl isn't learnable without a guide it is only cheesable without a guide, or avoidable upon significant research. It is telling that many people relied upon Fingerprint Greatshield to beat her then and Promised Consort now. The best way to handle certain peak challenges of Elden Ring is to reduce how much interaction you have with said boss by tanking or destroying it as soon as possible. These don't equal learnable for your average Fromsoft player.

Also Deflecting Hardtear against Malenia feels so good, I highly recommend dueling her with a two-handed LightGreatsword or something. So much more fun than only dodging.

[Persona Au Gratin]

Publicado originalmente por Gman:

Waterfowl isn't learnable without a guide

Who do you think is making the guides and how do you think they learned then?

[Anthreris]

Publicado originalmente por Persona Au Gratin:

Publicado originalmente por Gman:

Waterfowl isn't learnable without a guide

Who do you think is making the guides and how do you think they learned then?

Fine I'll correct myself. Reasonably learnable, without hours upon hours. Which for a single move should be a point of contention. I would personally prefer if her entire moveset was closer to the difficulty of that one move rather than the vast inequality of difficulty that she has.

Also the first person to actually reliably learn the move probably relied on upon outside resources or mods to see the hitboxes. This is without Bloodhounds Step of course, which is a viable solution but again increases your distance massively. And whenever I have it equipped I end up wanting to spam it decreasing my own personal interactivity with said bosses.


Also immediately after the cited snippet from my post I wrote "without a guide it is only cheesable without a guide, or avoidable upon significant research" Leaving this out does focus more on a certain part of my point rather than what I was trying to convey.


I also want to add I've been learning programming with the hope of becoming an indie game designer. So I've been trying to figure out my own philosophy on difficulty for what is cool, and reasonable for a player so I might by biasing slightly based upon my limited experience.

[Persona Au Gratin]

Publicado originalmente por Gman:

Publicado originalmente por Persona Au Gratin:

Who do you think is making the guides and how do you think they learned then?

Fine I'll correct myself. Reasonably learnable, without hours upon hours. Which for a single move should be a point of contention. I would personally prefer if her entire moveset was closer to the difficulty of that one move rather than the vast inequality of difficulty that she has.

Also the first person to actually reliably learn the move probably relied on upon outside resources or mods to see the hitboxes. This is without Bloodhounds Step of course, which is a viable solution but again increases your distance massively. And whenever I have it equipped I end up wanting to spam it decreasing my own personal interactivity with said bosses.

I think in that regard... I dunno, I agree with the notion that most people won't be able to learn just by engaging the game in the way most do, but you can put me in the example of someone who learned it albeit 300 hours in when I decided to test a theory about how it works. I hadn't looked up a guide, and the method I always saw used was NOT how I dodged the move. I didn't even dodge the move by running away from the first two sequences of the dance.

The way it worked was just, this isn't advice, I noticed that a lot of enemies have moves that are designed to make you get the ♥♥♥♥ away from them. And that was how I treated Waterfowl Dance, I dodged the same way I would handle Putrid Avatar's stomp where it spits out the poison gas and liquid. From there, it was, relatively, easy for me to put together the rest of the sequence.

But I also feel like, again, this is a game where if you can't do this it is willing to just go "Here's these bonkers options." Like, the way I dealt with Waterfowl Dance initially, because I wasn't someone who could just dedicate entire days worth of time to gaming, was I used Bloodhound Step. It was really good.

Again, I am conflicted about Malenia, but I agree with you on the principle that this idea of using a Weapon Ash? That doesn't even go into the "Well just use summons/Mimic Tear." It's a sort of meme to me, because that's not necessarily the problem some players have. Acting like you should get tossed in the bin of "Used the assist" is patronizing, and I think Elden Ring is a patronizing game.

And with the DLC there are absolutely times where I feel like Elden Ring is just too heavily reliant on call and response with some obtuse sucker punching, but Malenia to me isn't the outlier here. In fact, I really find her fun to fight, but it's because I feel like I agree with the spirit of what you're saying that I feel this well is poisoned so to speak. I do think most people are going to be shredded by Waterfowl Dance. It is possible to learn it; however, and Malenia is a SUPER BOSS. I feel like it's fair, but that happens in a very specific context, and the rest of the game has stuff that I just don't really agree with.

I do not think Waterfowl Dance is necessarily the problem people make it out to be, if anything the rest of the game makes me feel like Malenia isn't even doing anything particularly special. Many enemies have dynamic patterns where you need to understand whether an attack has real or "fake" potential for retaliation. Malenia should feel exceptional, in my opinion, and she just kind of... isn't. And for bad reasons.

[Tao314zdin]

She is a good challenge for a change IMO.

She is also nicely placed into a dead-end with minimal amount of content behind her, so if someone does not like her they can just take her out of the way by summoning help and do not have to fight her again.

[Gone Oh!™]

Dang, I just beat her on the third try.
First try died to what I assume is waterfowl dance, idk I took the incantation.
Second try realized her attacks heal, died to her phase 2 opener.
Third try W

She's really squishy. Just keep the pressure up so she can't heal.

[Draknalor]

My shield poke kill of malenia if you need some advice, It works great no need to lie.

https://youtu.be/58rbhNYoS7s?si=6v8EXcMB-00dAWgL

[Anthreris]

Publicado originalmente por Persona Au Gratin:

Publicado originalmente por Gman:

Fine I'll correct myself. Reasonably learnable, without hours upon hours. Which for a single move should be a point of contention. I would personally prefer if her entire moveset was closer to the difficulty of that one move rather than the vast inequality of difficulty that she has.

Also the first person to actually reliably learn the move probably relied on upon outside resources or mods to see the hitboxes. This is without Bloodhounds Step of course, which is a viable solution but again increases your distance massively. And whenever I have it equipped I end up wanting to spam it decreasing my own personal interactivity with said bosses.

The way it worked was just, this isn't advice, I noticed that a lot of enemies have moves that are designed to make you get the ♥♥♥♥ away from them. And that was how I treated Waterfowl Dance, I dodged the same way I would handle Putrid Avatar's stomp where it spits out the poison gas and liquid. From there, it was, relatively, easy for me to put together the rest of the sequence.

Again, I am conflicted about Malenia, but I agree with you on the principle that this idea of using a Weapon Ash? That doesn't even go into the "Well just use summons/Mimic Tear." It's a sort of meme to me, because that's not necessarily the problem some players have. Acting like you should get tossed in the bin of "Used the assist" is patronizing, and I think Elden Ring is a patronizing game.

And with the DLC there are absolutely times where I feel like Elden Ring is just too heavily reliant on call and response with some obtuse sucker punching, but Malenia to me isn't the outlier here. In fact, I really find her fun to fight, but it's because I feel like I agree with the spirit of what you're saying that I feel this well is poisoned so to speak. I do think most people are going to be shredded by Waterfowl Dance. It is possible to learn it; however, and Malenia is a SUPER BOSS. I feel like it's fair, but that happens in a very specific context, and the rest of the game has stuff that I just don't really agree with.

I disliked Putrid Tree Avatar's stomp until I figured out that I could just sprint around it's back to avoid the AOE (as long as it hadn't done it twice in a row). So I guess I could see how some could derive the locked on quick sprinting around an enemy to avoid an attack and hence notice Malenia's funky Waterfowl AI.

Yeah I dislike Waterfowl Dance because that is the first and often only thing I think about her from her fight. I don't even care about her healing since it turns her into a one trick poney much like a player who only uses their Ash of War. Also while we are on the topic of Ashes of War I think "their" current implementation isn't that good, what would be far more interesting is if an Ash of War changed the animations or fighting style of a weapon. Furthermore what if you could slot Ashes of Wars into your base abilities changing your dodges so instead of Miriam's Vanishing being a regular spell it would be bound to your basic dodge, Bloodhound Step as well. Ash of Wars are kinda gimmicky despite being a really interesting idea.

If by "Elden Ring is just too heavily reliant on call and response with some obtuse sucker punching" you mean the delayed attacks with ridiculous tracking then I agree. It certainly makes the game more challenging, but makes less play-styles or methods viable, which seems at odds with a game that stresses freedom of customization. Granted not every build should be shredding enemies, but still. Certain enemies also feel weird, but then normal with Quickstep for example, it makes it hard because it feels like certain enemies were designed for certain style of dodges while others are unreasonable with others.

Also kind of off topic but are the Royal Revenants just a Reskined Scourge Beast from Bloodborne except after their initial charge attack they go into an extended combo? When typing the dodge section I was thinking about Quickstep vs Royal Revenants and has sudden mental comparison between the two monster types.

[Enderspoons]

Funny coincidence seeing this pop up today after I just finished killing off Malenia for my 6th time or so. It was only just today that I noticed that her collision box — the thing that stops you from being able to stand in the same spot as another entity — doesn't actually follow her vertical position.
If you try to walk under Malenia while she's doing a move that makes her fly around like Waterfowl Dance, Scarlet Aeonia, or that one butterfly clone attack, then you will just get stopped dead by her collision box which is still on the floor below her... tbh I'm not exactly sure what else I was expecting, since basically all the other "flying" enemies across the series (except maybe Maneater from Demon's Souls) works in the same manner with their collision being landbound as the model is flying around.

It is still pretty darn jarring with Malenia's case though, because the way Waterfowl Dance and Scarlet Aeonia work encourage you to try and evade them by running under them, which is made artificially difficult by an invisible wall placed inconveniently in the way, with the threat of instant death bearing down on you should you fail to maneuver around an obstacle you can't see.

[Flying Lemming Soup]

Publicado originalmente por Draknalor:

My shield poke kill of malenia if you need some advice, It works great no need to lie.

https://youtu.be/58rbhNYoS7s?si=6v8EXcMB-00dAWgL

Question: What level were you, and how did you structure your build to do so much damage? I was on my first playthrough, and I couldn't get any of the weapons in my inventory to do anything close to that amount of damage. If I tried that with my build, I would simply be unable to outpace her healing.

[Draknalor]

Publicado originalmente por Flying Lemming Soup:

Publicado originalmente por Draknalor:

My shield poke kill of malenia if you need some advice, It works great no need to lie.

https://youtu.be/58rbhNYoS7s?si=6v8EXcMB-00dAWgL

Question: What level were you, and how did you structure your build to do so much damage? I was on my first playthrough, and I couldn't get any of the weapons in my inventory to do anything close to that amount of damage. If I tried that with my build, I would simply be unable to outpace her healing.

Well, Yeah i can admit i have gotten a few runes from the reddit giveaways so i might be a tad overlevled.