Tag Archives: dark souls iii

Ok. This is it. This is going to be the final post (for now) about Elden Ring v. Dark Souls III. First of all, I was watching a Let’s Play of Dark Souls III (first time, unknowing), and there are things that I had forgotten happened. In the last post, I listed a few more pros and cons of each game. To start off this post, I want to talk about NPC questlines.

9. NPC questlines. There are tons of NPCs in every From game. In the first game, there were preset conditions that moved them to different places in the game and make them do different things. If you didn’t do certain things at certain times, you cut off their questlines. If you did things in a certain way, you advanced them. In this game, I would say it’s nearly impossible to figure out on your own how to do them precisely right on your first time playthrough. Hell, even now, there are certain steps that I’m never sure when to exactly do them. I only know the hard stops for certain questlines.

In the second game, most of the NPCs don’t move around. Once you find them and get them to go to Majula, they stay put. There are a few exceptions, but even those are fairly shallow and short. They are nowhere nearly as in-depth as the other two games or Elden Ring.

In Dark Souls III, there are some very intricate questlines. There are questlines that entwine. There are also questlines that contradict each other. I’ve included a video by Vaati Vidya about how to start each questline.

I like to do things as naturally as possible the first time I play a From game. Unfortunately, with Dark Souls III, that meant pissing off Yuria of Londor because I had the Fire Keeper heal the Dark Sigil because it wsa a new thing. I did not know what the Dark Sigil was, but why not?

Well, because Yuria refused to talk to me, that’s why not. I was roughly a quarter of the way through the game (which I did not know at the time), but I seriously considered starting over because I had fallen for Yuria the minute I laid eyes on her and was willing to follow her to the ends of the earth. I thought she would be the dark magicks teacher (wrong) and was dismayed that I would not be able to go down that road.

I was furious. I cursed out Miyazaki. but I ultimately decided to continue because I wanted to see the rest of the game. I did not want to do the first quarter all over again. Of course, I followed Yuria’s questline carefully in the second playthrough, making sure to look it up. That’s what htappens when I get burned–I make sure to take all precautions before going into the lava again.

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We’re on part four or five of Elden Ring v. Dark Souls III. In the last part, I started a direct comparison between the two. I didn’t get very far, but I’m going to cntinue slogging through it. Why? Because I can.

In the last post, I ended by describing the first part of the Abyss Watchers boss fight. I am not going to talk about it any longer except to say that it’s such a setpiece. It’s the first Lord of Cinder you’ll probably fight (there is a way to sequence break, but a person going in pure probably won’t figure it out), and it was a tough one for me.

In Elden Ring, I woud say the equivalent would be….well, I can’t make a one-to-one comparison because of the nature of the open world game. I would say the Abyss Watcher is maybe a fourth of the way through Dark Souls III, so maybe Rennala in Elden Ring? Although she’s probably not a fourth of the way through if you do it somewhat chronologically.

I’ll just say in general that there are setpiece bosses in both games. Even removing the DCs from Dark Souls III–by the way, let me talk about that for a second. I finished up The Ringed City DLC last night, and I have gotten human summons for every boss. Same with Sister Friede from the first DLC. I’ve also been invaded and had an invader as the Half-Spear boss. By the way, I hate that boss fight because people have learned that if you just run around as the boss, you can rarely get hit. It’s frustrating as fuck. If you’re going to invade, fucking fight. Don’t be a coward and just run around the room. I hate PvP with a passion and if I can’t summon for that fight, then I go offline and use Patches to fight the NPC boss.

Fortunately, I got a summon (after dying once with two summons) who was really good. We focused down the NPC healing painting guardians before honing in on the human boss. When we got him, I cunsed him out thoroughly before moving on. I even got a summon for Gael, which is rarer. She was a dual-wielding, light-armor-wearing badass who made short work of Gael. I did my part by breathing poison on him and zapping him with my Dorhy’s Gnawing. Hm. At least I think it was Dorhy’s Gnawing?

At any rate, I did not get anywhere near him, and  it was pretty easy-peasy. I did have two sets of summons die on Midir, but fortunately, I was able to use the Coiled Sword Fragment to get the hell out of there after they died. I joked with Ian that I should change to a dex build before going into NG+, but it wouldn’t matter. I would eventually find my way to being a strengthcaster again.

Anyway! Back to bosses in Elden Ring and Dark Souls III. Just to reiterate, I’m only concentrating on main story bosses. No field bosses. No catacomb bosses. No mini-bosses. Just the main bosses with red health bars under them. And disregarding DLCs for Dark Souls III.

Let’s take five big bosses from each game. I would say in Dark Souls III that five important and intriging bosses are Abyss Watchers; The Twin Princes (Lothric & Lorian); Nameless King; Champion Gundyr; and, Soul of Cinder (final boss of the vanilla game). Here are five for Elden Ring: Margit, the Fell Omen; Starscourge Radahn; Malenia, Blade of Miquella; Maliketh, the Black Blade; and, Radagon/Elden Beast (the last boss).

When I look at them side by side, there is little between them when it comes to quality. I will say that in Elden Ring, From got a bit up their own ass with maknig the bosses HARD, but that actually started at the end of Dark Souls III. Or rather, the DLC. I got tired of the two-phase bosses in the end game of Elden Ring, though. Or rather, the two-boss bosses. Starting with the Godskin Duo who were very much like Ornstein and Smough in that you had to fight them simultaneously. Then, Clergy Beastman/Maliketh, the Black Blade, which was one after the other. Then, it was Godfrey, the First Elden Lord who turns into his other form, Hoarax Loux. Finally, it’s Radagon and then Elden Beast.

I will admit by the time I reached this part of Elden Ring, I was exhausted by the game. I just wanted it to be over, frankly. Oh, and Dragonlord Placidusax was also in this part of the game. I could not be fucked. For the Godskin Duo, I summoned the NPC and my spirit summon. Mimic Tear. Best spirit summon. On Placidusax, I summoned two humans because I couldn’t be stuffed to learn the boss at that point. For the last three ‘duos’, I used Mimic Tear only. But, for the final boss, I used the cheese for Radagon because I just couldn’t deal with fighting him for ten minutes and then fighting the massively frustrating Elden Beast before dying halfway through.

I think the Elden Beast is a bullshit boss for several reasons. One, because you don’t hear barely anything about it before fighting it. Two, the arena is vast and cavernous, but you can’t use Torrent. The boss strikes at you once, then fucks off waaaaaaaaaay over there. You have to run after it, maybe get a hit or two in, and then repeat. As a magicks user, it was a bit better because I could hit it further away, but you still had to be close enough to target. In addition, it does horrific holy damage. I had many ways to mitigate it, but it was still a lot. Add to that that I was having difficulty because I have spatial issues.

The bosses in each game are epic. I would give a slight edge to Dark Souls III because they weren’t out of control the way they are in Elden Ring. But, that’s a subjective thing, I think. Many people think Malenia is the best boss ever as well as the hardest one. I only fought her fifteen or so times before beating her, but that was because I never had to get anywhere near her. I just used Swarm of Flies and walked backwards (and Mimic Tear). When she busted out her anime move (a kajillion combo move), I simply ran away and waited for her to stop. I never engaged with it because I saw no reason to do so. I have only fought her once. I’m sure she would own me if I tried again. But I don’t have the tales about her that other people do. It’s funny which bosses people have difficulty with.

I give the slightest, hair-thin edge to Dark Souls III in this category because I think Elden Ring went too far into the ‘make the boss hard by giving it more health/making it two bosses’ mentality. I’m curious to see what they’ll do for the DLC because they can’t really make the bosses much harder without making them blatantly unfair. But they are well-known for making the DLC markedly harder than the vanilla game, so we’ll have to see what they do with it. I will play it eagerly, of course.

That’s it for this post. I’ll actually move onto a new point in the next post.

In the last two posts, I have been nattering on and on about Elden Ring and Dark Souls III. I could go on for days–and will–because they are both amazing games. I have been playing both of them in the last week, and I have been enjoying them equally. I will say that it’s not easy to jump back and forth because of the differences, but it only takes a minute or so to adjust, as opposed to when I play a From game and a non-From game at the same time.

I went up against two difficult bosses in Dark Souls III. The Nameless King, widely considered the hardest boss in the vanilla game (optional, thankfully), and Sister Friede, the final boss of the first DLC. She was the first time there was a three-phase boss, and I did not do her solo on my first playthrough. I just could not get her, and by the time I was done with the DLC, I was tired.

This was Wednesday or Thursday night that I decided to fight these two bosses. Around seven at night or so. I’m giving the time because it wasn’t the weekend, so I wsan’t expecting any summons. I was so surprised when there were more than one for each boss. I was grateful to get them because it made both boss fights easy as pie. I stood back and did my magicks while my summons got up in the faces of the respective bosses.

I’m going to be doing the second DLC today, probably (Friday), and we’ll see if I can still get summons. At this point, I don’t want to fight certain bosses solo. I don’t have the patience for it and my skills are not as good as they were before my medical crisis. In other words, I would have skipped the bosses if I couldn’t get summons.

This is one point to Elden Ring. they have NPC summons for many of the bosses. And, of course, there are still people playing the game, more than are playing Dark Souls III. Plus, you have your spirit summon, which means you never have to truly solo a boss.

In terms of design, I acually have to give thenod to Dark Souls III. I know this is heresy because of the open world design of Elden Ring, but that is not my favorite aspect of the game. I mean, I loved riding around on Torrent and finding secrets and such. There were so many cool things to find. But, at the same time, it did suffer a bit from the ‘too much to see’ syndrome. One of the best things about Miyazaki is his level design. Both the first and third game feel like they are crafted experiences just for me. They’re not, obviously, but that’s how it felt.

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