I’ve watched a bunch of stuff about Elden Ring (FromSoft, natch) since I finished it. I’m on my fourth playthrough, trying to do a dex character with a healthy amount of Intelligence. I’m in the first third, but I’ve ventured into a later area. I did a mad dash into a fort in Caelid to get a good talisman, and I got ganked so many times. Even just running through, it was difficult to make it past the several nasty enemies.
Here’s the thing. I am so OP with my other characters. I can merrily skip through this area with no problem. I always forget how fragile you are at the beginning of any of these games. I went up against a field boss who can kill me in one hit. Yeah, no. I am never a fan of that, and I feel especially fragile right now.
When did I start feeling less fragile in my other playthroughs? Honestly, not until I was at the very end of the game. And, it’s only when I run through the game with my OP characters, fighting lesser enemies.
Here’s the thing. I’m keeping my first character in NG for the DLC. My second character is in NG+ because I needed the other two endings for the plat. I did NG+ in roughly a dozen hours to race for the third ending, then I went back and did more of the content. I could go into NG++, which I probably will do at some point. I’m just deciding if I want to do the extra-hard optional boss or not. I did her in my first playthrough, but not my second. I could have, but I just didn’t feel like it. Then, on my third, I was just racing to got to the end.
Here’s the thing.
I have watched and read the discourse about whether Elden Ring is the GOTY, not to mention the GOAT. I have heard the pros and the cons, and I agree with–most of them. On both sides. It’s a really interesting place to be. I am a huge FromSoft fan, and have been since…well, the end of the second Dark Souls. I hated the first game by the time I finished it and never wanted to hear another thing about FromSoft again. But, I played the original game in order to prep for the second one, and by the time I finished the second game, I was more pro than con. So much so in fact, Ian bought me Dark Souls III plus the season’s pass when it released because he knew how much I loved the Souls games. It was the first time I’ve played a From game while it was au courant, and it’s my favorite. Is that a coincidence? Maybe.
I remember going into the first game. I knew a little about it, including that it’s nails hard. I knew about certain bosses, and I knew about an infamous swamp area. I’ll say the boss–Ornstein & Smough. I knew about the Bell Gargs, too. But that was it as far as bosses.
I’ve said it several times, but I hated the game by the time I finished my first playthrough. It was brutal, and it nearly broke me. It was on of the first hardcore games I had ever played, which is not the way to jump in from casual games.
To be fair, I played a few other hardcore games before Dark Souls. Diablo III (Blizzard, ugh), Torchlight (Runic Games), and the first two Borderlands (Gearbox Software), to name a few. But they in no way prepared me for the game that was Dark Souls.
Ian’s brother told him about the game. Said it was something different and that Ian had to play it. I decided to try it out, and it was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, let alone played. This was much later when the Prepare to Die edition came out (that included the DLC), and I was interested to see how hard it could be.
So fucking hard, as it turned out. I went the wrong way after I finally made it to Firelink Shrine. I went where there were skeletons, and there was only sad times that way. Then, I went down to where the ghosts were, and that was an even sadder time. I finally stumbled on the right way to go (left), which was still sad, but not as sad as the other two ways.
By the way, one of the persistent beliefs is that this was genius on the part of Miyazaki. “Oh, he made those two ways really hard so you would go the third way!” That’s rectonning what actually happens, though, because what is the one thing everyone knows about the games even if they don’t play them? That they are brutally hard. I mean, the screen says ‘You Died’ when you die, which is a lot. That’s the thing that is pummeled in your brain–these game is hard. If you’ve never played it, you’re not going to know regular hard from super hard. I’ve heard this from several people who went the wrong way–“I knew it was supposed to be hard. I just assumed it was nails on purpose.”
Here’s the thing.
Miyazaki is brilliant. We all know this. He has given us so many games to enjoy and explore. However, he is not infallible, and he would admit it himself. There is an area in the first game, Lost Izalith, that is appalling. It’s in the second half of the game, and it’s just copy-and-paste bosses as regular enemies from earlier in the game, and vast expanses of nothing. There is a boss in the area that is a boss from an earlier area with a palette swap. The final boss is just terrible; many consider her the worst boss in any From game. Miyazaki himself apologized for this area.
Elden Ring is not a 10 out of 10. It’s a fucking good game and most definitely the GOTY. But, many of the frustrations of the previous games are still there, including wonky hit boxes, mob enemies, and copy-and-paste enemies/bosses. I understand that the world is immense. It is VAST. Seriously. I put in 225+ hours in my first playthrough and still did not see everything (I did see almost everything, though). I loved most of the content, but there were a few areas that could have been trimmed or cut entirely.
The most difficult boss, the optional one, is in her own separate area. People have pointed out that there are no new enemies in the are. In addition, they are all just kind of thrown together in a weird mish-mash/soup. There is also a room (area, really, as it’s outside) in which there are two of the hard soldiers, three or four foot soldiers, and an Erdtree Avatar in a very small area. That actually made me put down my controller and wonder if I wanted to do that area. I think there may have been a perfumer, too. The hard soldiers could kill me in nearly one hit. It was just not fun at all. And the only reason I was doing it was to get to the boss. Well, that and I had the need to do everything I could. But, honestly, they could have cut out that whole area and the game would not have been worse for it. If they wanted to keep the boss, they could have put her elsewhere.
Speaking of the Erdtree Avatar. it’s the worst of the copy-paste bosses. It guards the Erdtree, obviously, and the first one was intimidating and awesome. It was quite the fight, and exhilarating when I finally beat it. The next time, hm. Ok. It’s fine and has an added thing to it (like one is putrid with Scarlet Rot), but it got annoying. By the fifth one (which clones itself), I was done. That doesn’t count the Erdtree Avatars that weren’t even bosses. Funnily enough, the Putrid Endtree Avatar had a glitch that it gave you Runes based on when you beat it. It’s supposed to be worth something like 9,000 Runes. Because I didn’t fight it until much later (it’s ridiculously hard for where it’s at), I got 90,000 Runes.
There was someone complaining that it was basically open world Dark Souls IV. That’s exactly what I love about it! Funnily enough, they were swooning about the open world bits, which I had more issues with.
Running long as usual. Will cut it off now and continue in the next post.