Ian and I were talking about Elden Ring (as you do). He’s about 50 hours in and it’s really cool to hear about his experiences after I’ve had them myself. Every experience is different, and he is much more observant than I. He saw things that I only got from wikis or from going back again. I asked what he would give the game now that he was a good chunk of the way in (after I had listed a few of my problems with it). He said within the system of where he works, he’d give it a 10. I was surprised because while it’s a fantastic game, definitely GOTY and possibly GOAT, I don’t think it’s perfect. Turns out, he doesn’t either, but their rating is mostly whole numbers, one through ten. He said if he could give decimals (because I give it a 9.5 right now), he’d give it a 9.5, too.
Then, we talked about ratings in general and what did they actually mean. I believe that it doesn’t matter what system you use, be it 1-5, 10, stars, numbers, whatever. Like if you have a 10 scale and give it a nine, it’s the same as 4.5 stars. Then, we hopped over to talking about a game being perfect. It’s funny. I’m the From fan, but he’s been much more unilaterally positive about Elden Ring than have I. In part it’s because I AM such a huge fan that I feel I can nitpick away.
So many reviewers gave it a perfect score. I understand why, but there are too many things that annoy the fuck out of me for me to give it a perfect score. The thing is, I don’t think I would give a perfect to any game. My favorite game of all time is currently Dark Souls III, which I would give a 9.6 or so. In other words, a tenth of a point ahead of Elden Ring.
It’s funny because I was talking about the ranking of the From games in the RKG group on Facebook. Sekiro was in last place, and I would rank that a 9. In other words, they are all really fucking good games. The upper echelon of Dark Souls III and Elden Ring are as close to perfection as I would give a game, and yet, there are issues with both games (the same issues, mostly) that keep me from giving them a 10.
The biggest ones with Elden Ring are copy-and-paste bosses, platforming, horseback combat, and too much open world. FromSoft has always liked to put bosses as world enemies later in the game. They went wild with it in the last areas of Elden Ring, especially one optional area. Which is a shame because it’s a beautiful area and did not need the beefing up.
Side Note: As usual, since this is talk about the end game, there will be spoilers from here until the end of the post. Consider this your spoiler warning.
The Minor Erdtree Avatar boss was boring and dull the first time I faced it. A tree that is slow and hits hard, usually with lightning AoE? Wow. That’s original. It could one-hit me at any time, which meant that the way I dealt with it was to summon my spirit summon, then race around the Minor Tree Avatar on Torrent, whacking it once before sprinting away. There was one that was extra difficult (and gave me 86,000 Runes when I finally beat it! Which seems to be a bug–it scaling how many Runes you got from beating it with when you fought it), next to a spirit spring. So, I would hit the MTA once, then use the spirit spring to bound out of it’s purview. Lather, rinse, repeat until it was dead. Was it a fun and engaging way to play the game? Hell, no! Did it work? Hell, yes!
I fought countless of this fucker in the field. To have it become a regular enemy in the late-game optional area (there were at least three of them) just made me sigh and roll my eyes. I cannot underscore how unnecessary it was. The area was plenty hard without them and they just added to the frustration.
Now, let’s talk about the two bosses I fought yesterday, both which were needed for the plat. One was optional and one was mandatory. Big spoilers, obviously. The optional boss was Dragonlord Placidusax, but he was anything but placid. Getting to him was a chore, but I have to admit that he was a magnificent beast. He had four wings and two heads (at least. Didn’t get a good look at him). He’s hanging like a bat, curled up, when you enter. You have to lay down in a coffin to get to his arena. And then he sprays lightning and fire all over the place (including something that looks like lightning fire). I admit it. I was not up for this fight because you have to look at where he hits the ground with his lightning sizzles before they actually pop. And he can one-shot you, of course, but that’s par the course for the late-game bosses.
I just didn’t have it in me to continually bash my head against the wall for this boss fight. My spatial issues meant I would always misjudge the lightning and get hit by it. Even with my Mimic Tear Spirit Summon, I could just barely get it to the second phase. So I summoned a human. First time, the human summon noped out a quarter of the way through the fight. Thanks, dude. But a few times later, I got an absolute beast of a summon (shoutout to Solomon!) who did WORK. Placidusax crumbled into dust; I got my achievement; and I felt relief that one more optional boss was done.
Then, I knew what was coming up next. The Beast Clergyman/Maliketh, the Black Blade. I don’t know why my friendly Gurunq (Beast Clergyman) turns into a boss, but does not disappear from his sanctum or as a seller, and I sure as hell do not know who the fuck Maliketh is as he has not been mentioned hardly at all during my 200-hour journey. I also don’t know why there needs to be a Draconic Tree Sentinel (again, do not need a boss as a field enemy, especially not one who’s sole goal is to block a boss door) right in front of the door or a narrow pathway that you can fall off of as soon as you enter the arena, but that’s just FromSoft.
I will say for my build, this fight was harder than the Malenia fight for me. It shouldn’t have been that hard, and I knew that. But it was. Not the first half as long as I didn’t fall off the edge or get sliced up by the Beast Clergyman as I tried to slither by him. I HATE arenas in which you can fall to your death. Or I was killed trying to heal up after summoning my Mimic Tear. That was always cool, too. Plus, there’s a bug that if you die in the second phase of the fight after Maliketh does his ‘whittle away your max health capacity’ move, you spawn at the last Site of Grace with a chunk of your health missing. Yes, you can get it back by resting, but it’s just an added annoyance.
I will say that Rotten Breath was my boss slayer for this boss fight. I just kept hitting the Beast Clergyman with it, and he was done in three or four hits. Then, the cool-as-shit cutscene in which Maliketh emerges from his body. Maliketh is a…wolfman? Pantherman? Cool-as-fuck man is what he is. I love his design. It’s SICK. His moveset? I did not love that as much, but only because I was bad at combating it. I also did not love that if he hit you with his black flame, he slowly chipped away at your maximum health. I didn’t have much to begin with, so I could ill-afford losing any.
One time, he killed me, then just as the screen faded to black, he died from the Rotten Breath I had inflicted on him. It did not count, though, so I had to do it again. I could have summoned a human to help me fight him. I thought about it briefly, but I did not. Why? Because I was so close. And this fight felt much more doable than the Placidusax one, for whatever reason. By the way, I just realized it’s PlacidUsax and not just Placidsax, which is what I used to Google the boss for cheese yesterday. No wonder I couldn’t find much!
Anyway, I could get Beast Clergyman done in less than a minute if he didn’t just straight-up kill me from the start. And if my Mimic Tear lived until Maliketh, then I had a fighting chance. The time I beat this boss, my Mimic Tear healed itself twice (because, yes, of course, I have a heal incantation in one of my Memory Stone slots), which is the only reason it lived through the entire fight.
I got a cutscene for my trouble, plus being transported to a new–and the last–area of the game. Well, not entirely new. It’s an old area, but it’s been wrecked. The capital city. I’m coming to the end of the game, which I don’t know how to deal with. I’ve been immersed in this game for the past two months. 225+ hours. It’s all I think about when I’m not playing it. For all my frustrations with the game, they’re negligible compared to how incredible the experience has been.