Lore (Boss) Is honestly too difficult with this games janky controlls (Demo Feedback)

[Ven]

First and foremost i gotta say ive only every played a single Soulslike game before, that being Code Vein.
The first boss in that game is massive, and slow. In fact from what ive seen of the first dark souls, thats exactly what the first boss of that game is like.
Despite never having played a soulslike game when i did that boss in code vein, i beat it in 3 attempts and it felt rewarding and made me want to continue, even if by the time i came back to the boss in a new playthrough it was childsplay.

...But Lore is honestly too fast, especially for this games janky controls. He is also not a very good first boss AT ALL. Case in point, both code vein and dark souls having slow and very fat and easy to hit first bosses that do not require any kind of target lock.
Lore is the kind of boss you would expect to see a bit further in to the game, maybe the second or third boss. But the first? Hes just way too overtuned to be a first boss.

That big robot in the tunnel that shoots lasers at you? I genuinely thought that would be the first boss.
Considering you see it twice beforehand, i thought that was appropriate foreshadowing. I was actually getting pumped to fight it. And then we just...dont.
That would have been a perfect first boss. Big, slow, but hard hitting and you can get it out of your way. Instead you get Lore, which while well telegraphed in his first phase (Most of his attacks are anyway, even if they hit you when you were very obviously shouldn't have) which especially in his second phase, is waaay too fast, not to mention horribly telegraphed.
He jumps up in the air and then he seemingly bends the laws of physics but changing his trajectory mid-air, coming down like a glider which then does an attack that knocks you down and suddenly he follows that up and 2 shots you while you're on the ground

Why can i not dodge roll if im locked on? Why is it only a side step? Fighting in this game basically requires you to be locked on because otherwise you miss charged power attacks or ranged attacks, and yet for some reason the devs decided that when you're locked on to an enemy, you get a terrible side step instead of a full on dodge roll which i would much rather have.
The dodge also feels hilariously unresponsive for some reason and i cant really put my finger on why. I can certainly say that Code Vein wasn't this unresponsive with its dodge roll/dodge.

This game also has consumable items which im not used to as i dont remember code Vein having something similar...but i gotta ask...why dont you get the items back when you die? Or at least be able to recover them from where you died?
I only got Lore to his second phase because of consumable items, namely weapon buffs and mud balls (heals) but you dont get back any items you use and so later attempts of the boss i suddenly only had three measly heals and that's it, basically soft-locking me because i simply did not have enough healing to beat the fight.
In a few attempts, i did not get hit a single time in his first phase and got him low in his second phase but i simply just ran out of heals....again....and again....and again....

The arena you fight him in is also pretty terrible as its easy to get stuck on the rubble around the outside and he can trap you in little crevices which is impossible to get out of because, again, no dodge roll.

Again im gonna say that this is only the second soulslike game i've played, so im not too experienced with the genre.....but come on, its obvious that Lore would have been a better second/third boss than first boss.
It just makes no sense.

Oh, also, it's stupid that there is like a full on 2 second delay when swapping between parry and shield modes, not to mention that doing so forces your character to slow to walking speed while switching, even if you're not actively doing anything.

After a good 15 attempts at the boss, i gave up, and i dont see myself buying the full game if (as mentioned above) the rest of the game shows such poor game design decisions.

[Nutt_lemmings]

I think this is one of those games that only wants you to parry, both of the games bosses are piss easy if you just run away from them and wait for them to do an easy to parry move. Problem is, playing like that isnt really fun.

[zefferss]

One thing I will say in response is that there is plenty of valid criticism here, but I want to put a few things into perspective. No, this is not gonna be some toxic, "git gud" response either, so don't worry about that.

Firstly, let's talk about Lore, honestly the original iteration from the first version of the demo was far worse. His hit box would linger for too long at the end of his attacks and they would catch you outside the normal window that didn't make any lick of sense whatsoever. People vocalized the issues to the devs, and they corrected it seemingly. I remember, because I went back and fought Lore again and the lingering hit box was seemingly gone, (btw this was mostly phase 1 issues with his weapon) so then the fight felt more fair and reasonable after.

Lot of people tried to gatekeep in the forums with toxic, "git gud" replies, but it fell on deaf ears from the devs, which imo was good. People are just toxic.

One thing I'll say on Lore is, if you just play to the right of him most of the time his attacks are relatively easy to dodge consistently and some just outright whiff based on your positioning. After several runs you can basically no hit phase 1 or limit your hits to like one or two at worst. Phase 2, yeah it's kind of a hot mess, the hit box is janky, he moves in the same manner as Oceiros from DS3 with the super fast charge that has little to no telegraph, etc. You can be outside the range of it however, so once you kinda get used to it, it's workable.

While parry is heavily encouraged on this game, it certainly provides a means to do other standard methods like dodging only, etc.

Consumables are fairly common in several souls-like games, it's not really anything new honestly. Your standard healing item, estus flask refreshes which is the typical norm, nothing else does.

Yeah I mean again, with the dodge, some games do full on dodge rolls, some do a side-step type deal. NioH also had like a very fast sidestep which was reaction based due to the fast combat in that game. Bloodborne also has a sidestep, and this game borrows a bit from Bloodborne.

As far as responsiveness and issues, could be performance related, bad optimization of the demo, and/or it just doesn't cater to your pc specs that well. Maybe the full release will do it better, not much I can say here really. Maybe just check your ms connection with your controller to make sure there isn't an issue on your end possibly. But I'm not really defending if the game runs poorly or bad, just throwing some options out there.

Personally I liked Code Vein and we haven't really had an anime souls-like follow up so this looks fun, just from a thematic point of view.

[It is my CAT]

How long you played CV, actually? If you don't even remember you can use healing items or not?

Every souls-like is different, so you need to adapt to delays e t.c. And you can't just run and mash boss to death, like in DMC. You need to respect boss's attacks and decide, when you can strike. Where is your turn.
Also CV has a companion, so it makes game more easy by default.

[Laughing kookaburra]

bro... the current bosses has already been nerf'd to the ground, they are brain smooth fight now, Demo ver.1 bosses was just about right but they listened to cry babies like you and nerf'd everything, now it's a joke, bosses don't even try to hit or track you anymore after the nerf

https://streamable.com/e6qpgi

if you think this is hard, it's time to play dynasty warriors, i just hope the dev don't listen to babies and nerf the enemies AGAIN

[Fresh]

Originally posted by Laughing kookaburra:

bro... the current bosses has already been nerf'd to the ground, they are brain smooth fight now, Demo ver.1 bosses was just about right but they listened to cry babies like you and nerf'd everything, now it's a joke, bosses don't even try to hit or track you anymore after the nerf

https://streamable.com/e6qpgi

if you think this is hard, it's time to play dynasty warriors, i just hope the dev don't listen to babies and nerf the enemies AGAIN

pls relax, there's nothing wrong with the game being enjoyable the first time around, and perhaps a bit more challenging on the ng+ once you've had time to get used to the mechanics. some of the npcs feel dumb, then others go hard and i feel like that only helps the survival horror aesthetic. i don't know which ones are gonna bite. it's exciting.
no weigh the devs didn't save skins or playable characters or something for the end so we have mega replay ability.
Dynasty warriors goes hard man don't mock dynasty warriors they might make a souls-like and show yall how its done.

Code vein start may have been more forgiving because you had the co-op partner doing a lot of heavy-lifting.

[Generous_bna]

Git gut

[GoldenDove20]

Felt fine to me, I think it takes a minute to get used too but none of the bosses are hard imo

If you have played a souls games before, they have a lot of "Big Hallway Blocking Enemies" so that giant robot I knew was gonna be apart of the environment and not some fight

[jhm]

I don't know man, I cruised through the demo and beat Lore on my first attempt. I wasn't even parrying, just using my shield to block his attacks. If anything I found him a bit easier than I expected. The difficulty of the game feels fine to me and is feels similar to Lies of P based off the demo. Controls also felt just fine (on a controller, can't speak for M+KB) and what I would expect from a Souls-like like this.

[amyoto]

i beat him the first try and i think i only healed twice. tbh i thought that was too easy

[Nocturno]

The issue I have is that parry and rolling feel very laggy. I feel I have to press them way before an attack lands

[Domii]

Boss wasn't too hard for me. Didn't block or parry, just dodged and beat him in a few tries. Dodging doesn't feel that laggy for me either.

[Ayino]

I not pro soulike. but I can beat them in 12 round.

[Shazbot!]

It's not difficult at all, game's combat is too jank and simple for such fights especially on second phase, you can just stunlock him with certain weapons and circlestrafe, given how devs proceeded to counter this later in game by making enemies teleport all over the arena and have insane tracking on all their attacks it's completly ass, won't even pirate/10. Overall they did terrible job ripping off elden ring and sekiro in some aspects gamplaywise, yep, not even dark souls.

[icantsee]

Imo its very easy same for blader hunter, our dodge has huge and loooong iframe its insane literally op asf.

[Zesicion]

I kinda feel like its too early to judge. If the boss stays 1:1 in the game like in the demo then I would say first phase is too easy because of his terrible tracking and second phase is a little too fast to react too but dies fast if you get an lucky parry off and don't let him escape