Some of the talk about Khazan has made me wonder if I might actually be good at video games.

[Talloran]

Boss name spoilers, you've been warned.

I'll keep this part short: Yes, I have played plenty of games with a reputation of being challenging, and I've done some very basic "challenge runs" of some of them. I put that in quotes because I think I've only ever attempted a level 1 run once, and didn't finish it. I'm a fan of tough roguelikes and soulslikes in general.

But I've never done anything crazy like a no-damage run in any game, and frankly I doubt I ever could. I tend to struggle against the same bosses and levels that most people seem to, hit the same roadblocks, and Khazan was no exception. Viper gave me 28 stab wounds. Maluca turned my health bar purple. Rangkus set me on fire in a drive by shooting. Bellerian taught me how Elden Ring bosses must feel when I use spirit summons. So on, so forth.

But... But five hours? On Viper? An entire day to beat Trokka? Calling bosses health sponges? Am I taking crazy pills? I know the steam forums are full of bait, but I see this stuff on Reddit too.

Like... I am the personification of the meme "Damn, I got greedy". I mash buttons like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ape even after I've memorized the moveset of a boss, no matter what, because button mashing gives me dopamine even if it gets me killed. I understand this and do it anyway, because I'm simple like that, and have no self control or discipline. I can dodge adequately, but often can't parry to save my life because my brain is square shaped and the prospect of not dodging confuses me. All of this and more, and I still cruised through this game on normal mode. My biggest roadblock was Elamein, because I'm not smart enough to understand that her shield is good at protecting her.

So... What the heck are y'all doing? Are you okay? You literally just have to dodge and deflect--you can do either based off of your mood--then hit the boss. You can hit them a lot, they tend to let you do long combos on them for free, because the game wants you to feel cool. There are abilities that let you do anime-as-heck combo chains easily for this exact purpose.

Genuinely, I'm struggling to envision what it might look like on your screen. Are you just standing there and getting hit? Do you only use light attacks? Are you waiting for permission from the boss to win? This game has "Berserker" in the title, was that not enough of a hint to play aggressive?

So either I'm better than I thought, or I'm still average and most people genuinely kinda suck. With all the complaining I've been seeing I honestly don't know which it is, and I'm not sure the boost to my ego is worth losing even more of my faith in humanity if its the former.

[电动天使]

Escrito originalmente por Sokurah:

Escrito originalmente por 电动天使:

In comparison, this game is around 30 hours for all main and side missions.

I already passed 30 hours and i'm in the 3rd region :D I got stuck on some bosses tho.

Maybe i could get a better set of armor. I'm still upgrading my hound set. But this is another thing that bores me. The whole gear and stat system. I wasnt too much into it in Nioh either but if you just pick some good gear you are fine there.

I dont even wanna look at all these sets. It bores me. It almost feels like Diablo or something with all these stats. I'm not into that either. So maybe that's another reason why my damage might be not that good.

I didn't look into sets on my first playthrough at all so it's not that. You probably need to look into what moves you're using and how you're utilizing stagger.

[Protek]

Every boss has a certain weakness be it a bodypart, a certain weapon ability, element or set bonus.

For example starting out you get the beast dmg set for the yeti first boss. You get an epic fire resistance set for free for the fire boss (its hidden in the blue area of the city hub).

The spider has several weaknesses. You get the poison resistance set to negate alot of damage. If you balance your damage on all three bodyparts and destroy them at the same time you pretty much instagib the spider. You can also let her fall down and stun her when she climbs up to heal her cut off limbs.

Viper phase 1 destroy horns, insane damage you get super fast into phase 2 takes only a couple of seconds. In phase 2 destroy horns he dies in less than 30 seconds into phase 2. You can repeat that for the upgraded viper versions too.

People also cry about the final boss alot for running away / doing lots of ranged attacks. You can snipe him into a stunned state everytime with a javelin lol.

Maluca has a huge weakness. Everytime he starts an attack for example the spinning sword attack and you stand right next to him with a brink guard you stun him. If you have trouble bring guarding him > use the spear 2 spirit ability for 100% brink guard.

i can go on like this but you see. Every boss in this game is super duper easy.

The "Shield Boss" also has some hardcore weakness which can easily be exploited.

[电动天使]

Yeah everything mentioned here is true.

[kl250d]

Escrito originalmente por Rafterman:

Also, as someone who beat Viper relatively quickly, and thought Trokka was easy, the bosses are 100% health sponges, and later game it gets exhausting fighting them. The "true" ending boss is actually a stupid long fight, like we are playing monster hunter or some ♥♥♥♥.

I get the feeling that you could only call these bosses health sponges is if the only games you've played are souls games.

Bosses taking 5 minutes (or more) to kill is pretty normal for a lot of games over different genres.

Killing malenia or dlc radhan is just stupidly quick compared to normal games

[kozmik]

You're just an idiot with low self-esteem that doesn't comprehend his own skillset -- you got that one correct from the title. That's your own problem, but going on to insult people because of it means you'll always be an idiot.

[Hormesis]

i think it's primarily people getting titled. this generation seems particularly afflicted by an overabundance of emotion. also denial if some of these "it's a complete coincidence that i hate this boss who kicked my ass" posts are anything to go by

also the people making these complaint threads are clearly seeking validation. they want other people to affirm their struggle was the result of poor boss design. in doing so they hope to redeem what little self confidence they have remaining. what a silly thing to be so invested into. you think whether or not you're good at a single player game has any impact whatsoever in the real world? grow the ♥♥♥♥ up

[Sokurah]

Escrito originalmente por Hormesis:

i think it's primarily people getting titled. this generation seems particularly afflicted by an overabundance of emotion. also denial if some of these "it's a complete coincidence that i hate this boss who kicked my ass" posts are anything to go by

also the people making these complaint threads are clearly seeking validation. they want other people to affirm their struggle was the result of poor boss design. in doing so they hope to redeem what little self confidence they have remaining. what a silly thing to be so invested into. you think whether or not you're good at a single player game has any impact whatsoever in the real world? grow the ♥♥♥♥ up

But would your argument of lack of self confidence not automatically apply to the people that beat the boss without problem. Why would they bother to complain about other people complaining about boss design? "oh i am such a great player that i dont need to complain about the boss".

It also begs the question where bad boss design is to be discussed, if at all i is allowed to be discussed. You can't just brush aside any kind of criticism as a skill issue.

I get your point but you can not just generalise in this way. People might argue that "bed of Chaos" is a well designed boss fight. If that fight had no checkpoints, nobody would have beat DS1, that's how crap that design is. XD

There needs to be some kinde of middle ground between, "all bosses are great and you need to git gud" and "all bosses are bad, they need to change the design".

[电动天使]

Escrito originalmente por Sokurah:

Escrito originalmente por Hormesis:

i think it's primarily people getting titled. this generation seems particularly afflicted by an overabundance of emotion. also denial if some of these "it's a complete coincidence that i hate this boss who kicked my ass" posts are anything to go by

also the people making these complaint threads are clearly seeking validation. they want other people to affirm their struggle was the result of poor boss design. in doing so they hope to redeem what little self confidence they have remaining. what a silly thing to be so invested into. you think whether or not you're good at a single player game has any impact whatsoever in the real world? grow the ♥♥♥♥ up

But would your argument of lack of self confidence not automatically apply to the people that beat the boss without problem. Why would they bother to complain about other people complaining about boss design? "oh i am such a great player that i dont need to complain about the boss".

It also begs the question where bad boss design is to be discussed, if at all i is allowed to be discussed. You can't just brush aside any kind of criticism as a skill issue.

I get your point but you can not just generalise in this way. People might argue that "bed of Chaos" is a well designed boss fight. If that fight had no checkpoints, nobody would have beat DS1, that's how crap that design is. XD

There needs to be some kinde of middle ground between, "all bosses are great and you need to git gud" and "all bosses are bad, they need to change the design".

An enormous amount of complaints I've seen about this game are just not real and boil down to skill issues because of that. "Bosses have too much HP!!" is the most common completely false complaint, but you can see others such as "unfair attack!" and so on.

[Sokurah]

Well too much HP might be a weapon choice problem. With spear, if you are not super aggressive, which somtimes can be hard to pull off, some bosses can feel like a chore. But that does not really ramp up the difficulty.

As for unfair attacks, i think only Macula so far has an unfair attack. I'm not saying his quick draw is impossible but it feels unreasonably hard to defelct. But you can fell free to disagree.

I'm not saying that some complaints are just whining. But you can' brush aside any kind of criticism as such.

[电动天使]

Escrito originalmente por Sokurah:

Well too much HP might be a weapon choice problem. With spear, if you are not super aggressive, which somtimes can be hard to pull off, some bosses can feel like a chore. But that does not really ramp up the difficulty.

As for unfair attacks, i think only Macula so far has an unfair attack. I'm not saying his quick draw is impossible but it feels unreasonably hard to defelct. But you can fell free to disagree.

I'm not saying that some complaints are just whining. But you can' brush aside any kind of criticism as such.

I'm almost done with my Greatsword playthrough. I've already completed Spear and Dual Wield and I can confidently say there are NO bosses where I suffered from weapon choice. Sure, this might change on the last few bosses, but I seriously doubt it. The time to kill seems to be pretty much the same, assuming you've figured out how your weapon works. It's most definitely not a weapon choice problem, but a user problem.

I do disagree with Maluca, considering the timing for the sheath is the same every single time and he visibly moves his shoulder before teleporting to your face (there is no variable timing because of this).

[Sokurah]

Escrito originalmente por 电动天使:

Escrito originalmente por Sokurah:

Well too much HP might be a weapon choice problem. With spear, if you are not super aggressive, which somtimes can be hard to pull off, some bosses can feel like a chore. But that does not really ramp up the difficulty.

As for unfair attacks, i think only Macula so far has an unfair attack. I'm not saying his quick draw is impossible but it feels unreasonably hard to defelct. But you can fell free to disagree.

I'm not saying that some complaints are just whining. But you can' brush aside any kind of criticism as such.

I'm almost done with my Greatsword playthrough. I've already completed Spear and Dual Wield and I can confidently say there are NO bosses where I suffered from weapon choice. Sure, this might change on the last few bosses, but I seriously doubt it. The time to kill seems to be pretty much the same, assuming you've figured out how your weapon works. It's most definitely not a weapon choice problem, but a user problem.

I do disagree with Maluca, considering the timing for the sheath is the same every single time and he visibly moves his shoulder before teleporting to your face (there is no variable timing because of this).

I'm not saying his quick draw is not deflectable. It ist tricky to get down tho and it basically instakills you with A agility. So it's annoying to learn it :D

That's all i'm saying. So i took the easy way out by using auto defelct but i'm sure it's possible. I also never said that the timing would change.

The more bosses i fight the less i think the HP is an issue. Because you get better with your playstyle. I think it's mostly a problem with early bosses because you are still learing the game and the way you wanna approach bosses.

I think the game would not be worse off, if the early bosses had a bit less HP tbh, even tho it's not a huge issue.

[电动天使]

Escrito originalmente por Sokurah:

I dont say hi quick draw is not deflectable. It ist tricky to get down tho and it basically instakills you with A agility. So it's annoying to learn it :D

That's all i'm saying. So i took the easy way out by using auto defelct but i'm sure it's possible. I also never said that the tioming would change.

I wasn't claiming you said that, just tried to illustrate how the attack could have been much worse if it had variable timing or some other element to it.

Escrito originalmente por Sokurah:

The more bosses i fight the less i think the HP is an issue in fact because you get better with your playstyle. I think it's mostly a problem with early bosses because you are still learing the game and the way you wanna approach bosses.

Yeah, this is true. I remember DW not seeming that strong early on, but as I figured out my optimal damage combos and stagger combos, the game became easier and easier. I'm sure if I go back, I'll steamroll anything I had issues with using my newfound sequences.

Escrito originalmente por Sokurah:

I think the game would not be worse off, iff the early bosses had a bit less HP tbh, even tho it's not a huge issue.

It seems to be fine now. By the time players beat Viper, they've probably figured out some things about their moveset. Enough to give them a good chance against the rest of the game.

[Sokurah]

Escrito originalmente por 电动天使:

Escrito originalmente por Sokurah:

I dont say hi quick draw is not deflectable. It ist tricky to get down tho and it basically instakills you with A agility. So it's annoying to learn it :D

That's all i'm saying. So i took the easy way out by using auto defelct but i'm sure it's possible. I also never said that the tioming would change.

I wasn't claiming you said that, just tried to illustrate how the attack could have been much worse if it had variable timing or some other element to it.

Ah okay. I got you now. Well that would be highly unusual tbh. Attack timings usually don't change in most boss fights.

[电动天使]

Escrito originalmente por Sokurah:

Escrito originalmente por 电动天使:

I wasn't claiming you said that, just tried to illustrate how the attack could have been much worse if it had variable timing or some other element to it.

Ah okay. I got you now. Well that would be highly unusual tbh. Attack timings usually don't change in most boss fights.

The obvious example is projectiles connecting later if you're farther away and earlier if you're closer. For other attacks, it seems the developers have normalized the timings. I suppose Skalpel's charging attack could also be an example.

[blackclouds]

The problem with Viper is the move where you only get a split second to avoid where he picks you up and throws you to the ground. Also your phantom helpers are useless as once he does his spinning move, the idiots don't get out of the way to avoid it but get sucked into it. Try hopping back, you morons. Then there's the second phase. At first he's easy but then he does that fricking spinning thing again and all of a sudden his powerful moves are dashing at you like he has unlimited stamina and you can't lock onto him until the lights are back on. . You can't even block half the time as you run out of stamina before he does. He's a very cheap boss and needs to be nerfed by the developers or else I may have to move on.