As long as there have been FromSoftware games, there have been gatekeepers who are eager to tell you just exactly how you should play the games. There are also the fans who insist on bleating about how EASY the games are and you just need to GIT GUD. I had a running joke that any time you asked a question, any question, in a From forum, the first answer would be GIT GUD NEWB LOL and the second would be how that boss wasn’t hard, anyway, GAWD.
When I played the first Dark Souls game, it was years after it was first released. I got stuck on Kalameet and looked up how to beat him. Not only were those two answers prevalent in the forums, there was an added sprinkle of ‘just change your whole build into the one I prefer, and it’ll be easy’. I’ve done posts about this before, about how toxic the hardcore From fans are. I’m sure there is that subsection in any fandom, but From is the fandom I know best.
For the first several years in which I played the games, I never called myself a fan. I played the hell out of the games, but I never felt welcomed in the fandom for many reasons. One, it has a very bro-y culture. So much testosterone wafting around, you can nearly choke on it. All the ‘git gud’-ing and ‘LOL N00B’ and ‘summoning is for pussies’ really got on my nerves.
In addition, I sucked at the games; I still do. I can’t do a onebro or no-hit or anything like that. I can spend hours on one boss, which makes me a scrub. I’m OK with this in part because, well, it’s just me playing the games. I don’t co-op much, so it’s just me in my solitary journey. I hate the invasion mechanic and am relieved that if you don’t do co-op in Elden Ring, you can’t be invaded–at least not by other players. The NPC invaders can eat a bag of poisoned dirt, to be honest. They are way too hard for the areas they’re in and have infinite skills, stamina, and moves. I become incandescent with rage any time I have to fight them. To be fair, you don’t HAVE to engage with them, but my pride! Plus, they drop some really great loot.
I will say that some of the toxic masculinity that permeated the early From fandom has been mitigated to some degree. As the games have gotten more popular (meaning more kinds of people have been playing them), there isn’t one fandom any longer–not that there ever really was only one. But that whiny part of the fandom seems to be getting smaller and smaller.
Which is good! I don’t want them near my FromSoft games. I don’t even want the ones who are parodying them because hipster misogyny is still toxic as fuck. Same with hipster racism or hipster anything, really. Just throw it all in the dumpster.
However, there is still a part of the community that believes it’s weak to do anything but solo the entire game. It comes out in subtle and not so subtle ways, and it does a disservice to the games. Or rather, to people who might be interested in playing them, but who think they’re too hard. One thing that annoyed the fuck out of me before Elden Ring came out was how games journalists kept saying the games are not as hard as people say they are. You just need patience, blah, blah, blah. That may be true for some people, but for others like me, the games are fucking hard.
It’s not a matter of taking time and puzzling things out–it’s that I have shitty reflexes, bad spatial awareness, and I literally cannot react the way you’re supposed to. It’s one reason Sekiro was such a miserable experience for me–you cannot work around the main way to do combat in that game. If you didn’t learn to deflect with consistency (and I did not), you were in for a miserable time. Which I was.
It’s why I don’t like Blboodborne as much, either. The visceral is really useful–and I just could not do it. Once I discovered the Augur of Ebrietas and was able to shoot tentacles into someone’s face in order to stun them (thus, delivering the same effect as the visceral), I did much better. But there still isn’t as much creativity of builds in that game as there is in Souls games.
That is one reason all three Souls games come before both those games. And I already like Elden Ring more than Sekiro and Bloodborne. There is so much flexibility in build in Elden Ring. Though, I will say it’s only in the last dozen hours or so that I FINALLY feel as if my faith build is working for me. And I’m adding a healthy dose of intelligence as well. Intelligence governs sorceries and faith is behind incantations–basically.
In Dark Souls III, there were 15 total flasks. I carried 10 regular Estus Flasks and 5 Ashen (mana/FP) Flasks. Except for bosses–I sometimes wanted more regular Estus Flasks in a boss fight. My basic mantra was twice as many healing flasks as mana flasks. In Elden Ring, however, I want more mana all the time.
In this game, if you defeat a group of enemies, you get some of your flasks back (seems like it’s one of each). What constitutes a group of enemy is variable, but it’s a nice way of encouraging you to explore rather than to run back to the bonfire every time you run low. As it is, I run around with a 7 (crimson/health) – 5 (cerulean/mana) split for the most part.
Fighting a late-game dragon, I was getting one-shot, two-shot at best. I decided that meant I didn’t need as much health as normal. I needed one flask for my spirit summon because it took HP rather than mana to call forth. Fun fact. I had such low health that I had to grind for two levels so I could use this spirit summon. When I finally got enough health to use it (and it was called the best spirit summon in the game), it got nerfed. Story of my life. It’s still really good, though, even if I have to quaff a health potion immediately after summoning it.
Fortunately, there was a Site of Grace right by the bridge where this dragon was perching. I had three Flasks of Crimson Tears along with one powerful heal/damage negation in my Flask of Wondrous Physick. I got on Torrent, then summoned my spirit summons. I quaffed my Crimson Tears and went into the fight. I used mostly Black Flame, but I threw in a few other incantations and sorceries. Oh, and I used Grant Me Strength, an incantation that strengthens physical and fire attacks. I may have done a few swipes with my sword at his legs, but I mostly used my spells. It took a solid hour or two, but I finally got him. And it felt very much like fighting a Dark Souls boss in which I banged my head against the wall repeatedly, getting better little by little until I mastered the fight.
I got 80,000 runes for that fight. At that point in the game, I was normally getting 30,000 or so runes for a boss fight. I just did one today that netted me 6,000 (with two bosses!). The latter surprised me because it was in a latter area as well, but the former demonstrated to me that he was definitely a later-game boss.
I haven’t done much multiplayer, but it’s not because I’m against it. By the way, when games journalists talk about the summoning aspect of the games, I want them to just shut the fuck up. Why? Because most of them say that THEY would never use it (somewhat understandable that they can’t use it if it’s not available), but it’s certainly fine if other people want to use it. I get the impulse because I have thought the same thing myself, but there is no way to say it without sounding condescending.
I will say, I still like learning a boss fight and slowly getting better at at. I just can’t be stuffed to do it for the gazillion field boss fights that are dotted around the world.