Elden Ring

[radiofloyd]

Played an hour, on PC. The game defaulted to High graphical settings, so I left it at that. I chose the Vagabond class. So far, so Dark Souls. Looking forward to losing my life to this game. The opening cinematic is very cool.
 

One of my Steam friends has already played this for 8 hours.:.

[one-armed dwarf]

I made a brief start too, the PC port has some issues but right now it's in the realm of tolerable for me (imo it still seems like the best version of the game, based off videos)

 

I can't remember the name of my class, but it's the prisoner one. The one that looks like Griffith with the iron mask, has a rapier and a delayed cast as its default equip. I don't play magic in these games cause I feel like it can be boring but I'll try it this time cause it seems like the magic is interesting this time.

[radiofloyd]

For what it’s worth, I downloaded the latest Nvidia drivers. But the game is running fine for me. 2 hours in now. The game has been relatively stress free so far, it’s certainly as gentle an introduction as there has been in a Souls game. But I did take down one powerful knight and get his cool helmet. Now I get to prance around wearing a helmet with a feather on top, which is basically what these Souls games are all about…

[OCH]

Zark V The Intelligencer

Near as I could figure that is a Red Mage. Which is a build that suits me. 

An hour or so of playing around and a positive experience overall. Just a couple of bullet points for now:

 

1. Died to Vanguard - Nothing new there.
2. Surprised myself when X was jump (which is new to Souls/me) It isn't very acrobatic, but a step forward for Souls.
3. Stealth Mechanic is my current favourite new feature. 
4. You get rewarded for clearing an area. There was a small outpost very early on. I used stealth and back stabbed my way to victory. 

Maybe it is because my Class starts at level 10. But regular enemies melt from my sword attacks alone. Dogs/wolves, long the bane of Souls, are pitifully weak so far. It's funny, that even though my playthrough of Dark 3 was only a couple of months ago. I feel super rusty here. Evident from encountering ...non-regular enemies. Weirdly enough, no doubt because they are knights in a castle-type area. But enemy placements and tactics are giving me heavy DeS vibes so far. 

I'm on the fence with the weather/Day & Night cycle though. I'm not sure what purpose it serves apart from obscuring your view?

[one-armed dwarf]

Having a rough time with it tbh, because the way the camera moves is making me feel sick. 

 

edit I'm putting this in this comment, to not have a technical discussion pour over people's impressions. The port isn't that bad, but it isn't that great imo. Tho a lot of it might be stuff that all platforms have. I feel like I have a lot of input lag, which in combination with the other issues mentioned make it feel like a nauseous experience. Messed around with mods and thought I got banned just for trying to fix this problem (said 'suspicious activity detected' on login). You need to be offline to run it, which I thought I was. But it seems online works for me again, so maybe it just flagged me for a bit. But imo it isn't anywhere near as polished as Sekiro, which remains the most consistent, performant and best looking of all of these games

[OCH]

Oh yes and I am offline.

The camera is a bit ..fast, I think. But I haven't had any headaches etc from it yet. Although some of the weather effects were making my eyes water, which isn't good.

[radiofloyd]

It’s a hard game to talk about without spoiling things left, right and centre, but there is a lot of stuff that isn’t in Dark Souls. I’ve found a few bosses. I’ve been experimenting with weapons. I’m going to do the game without summons, as I enjoyed doing that with Bloodborne. Very interesting game so far. Breath of the Wild’s dna is definitely running through it.

[one-armed dwarf]

I'm finding that I don't quite see the BOTW-ness in it, at least not yet. I'm not gonna get into discoveries, and names of bosses or anything like that. It's clearly a different kinda game in that sense that it's more interesting to stumble onto things and figure stuff out. You can buy 'notes' off NPCs, and talk to them to find information out, then you open your map and, get this, you actually read the map to figure out where to go rather than having an autogenerated waypoint. Or NPC says 'go south to this keep', you go south, not just follow the dot. In that sense at least it does remind me of BOTW, a good map is one you have to work with a little bit and I think right here it's the best bit of the game.

 

What frustrates me tho is it's still the Souls structure and so you have literal gatekeepers preventing you from seeing other locations and biomes. BOTW had that liberating freedom of being able to go anywhere. But at some point in Elden you have to commit to hit your head against the wall for a while and learn a boss's attack patterns, and put up with the input queue messing up your roll timing from time to time. I don't really know what they are thinking with the first boss, it's got these lengthy attack strings with lots of feints and delays which is a bit much for the first mainline boss. Also tho, they don't necessarily want you to fight him too soon. If you mainpath to the boss you are missing out on 95 percent of the first biome's discoveries. Still tho, at some point you want to see something different and doing the necessary homework to achieve that by fighting these guys can be grating

 

I'm gonna give it benefit of the doubt tho as it's the opening area. In terms of other things that are good, I like the satchel system. You hold down Y, or triangle, and press a dpad input to use an item. That's in conjunction with your regular item swapping system that all these games have. You can make pots of fire and other elements and throw them being you (if you're on a horse youll want that maybe) or fling them ahead. Gameplay wise tho it's mostly an iteration on where they were going with Dark Souls III, which isn't a bad thing but at least in the first 6 hours there's nothing too unusual

[OCH]

1 hour ago, one-armed dwarf said:

I don't really know what they are thinking with the first boss, it's got these lengthy attack strings with lots of feints and delays which is a bit much for the first mainline boss.

I've encountered said brick wall. It is actually putting me off. I've had numerous attempts and can't do better than 1/2 life. I even somehow managed to stagger him, but not a clue what I did? In the meantime, I went elsewhere and I did some exploring. Got myself to level 15, a +3 Broadsword and bumped my Strength upto 17 (it was 12/13). Went back and still can't do more than 1/2 life. Phase two, when he gets extra weapons and gets faster...🤷‍♂️

It is ridiculous for Boss One.

Phalanx, Taurus Demon, the Last Giant, Cleric Beast, Iudex Gundyr - These are first bosses.

This one fights like a mid to late game boss. With a command list on par with Manus. I'm thinking I'll leave the first biome and continue exploring before attempting this boss again.

[one-armed dwarf]

Stagger is from Bloodborne, I think it's if you do a lot of DPS in a short time. Same sound and effect here, when you get it wait a bit and walk in and you can do a critical attack

 

I did a sidequest to get away from that dude and ran into another boss that seems easier but still requires learning of attack strings and their timing. I'm finding it frustrating tbh. It's probably too late to put this warning out, looking at the purchases thread, but it's still a Souls game so you should know up front what to expect

 

1 minute ago, OCH said:

I thought the stagger came from hitting him in the head? I wondered if this new jump button might add some verticality to boss fights? 

Considering this is supposed to be the game to attract new players. I don't think this was the best choice for the first boss. Especially as those critical hits only show off how obnoxiously large this bosses HP pool is.

 

And yeah, imo the first mainline boss is a kind of Father Gascoigne level brick wall. Who was the 2nd boss in BB, so still early on, but his attack strings are far more ambigious than Gazza. His attacks track too, so it will be a massive filter I think for people who are new to this stuff, unless they grind and fully explore the surrounding area (which could take 15 hours just looking at what's in it, there's more there to see than you think)

 

The jump mechanic is being recommended in some of the msgs I've seen, it could perform similar to Sekiro but without the prompt to do it but I dunno yet

[OCH]

I thought the stagger came from hitting him in the head? I wondered if this new jump button might add some verticality to boss fights? 

Considering this is supposed to be the game to attract new players. I don't think this was the best choice for the first boss. Especially as those critical hits only show off how obnoxiously large this bosses HP pool is.

[OCH]

8 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

His attacks track too, so it will be a massive filter I think for people who are new to this stuff, unless they grind and fully explore the surrounding area (which could take 15 hours just looking at what's in it, there's more there to see than you think)

I think I beat Gazza before I had to stop playing Bloodborne. But I could "get" Gazza (and ultimately succeed). I foresee some rage quitting with this guy. I found a mine which brought me immediately back to DeS. Also had a surprise Dragon encounter which I couldn't have run faster from if I tried😂 I know I'm far too early game to fight a Dragon.

[one-armed dwarf]

Tbh, I find this game too hard.

 

It has a thing that sorta came in with DSIII I think where more and more enemies have this sort of Artorius vibe, and hit you with a flurry of ambiguously telegraphed combos that are difficult to escape from or iframe through and you die very fast from them. I've taken breaks to explore and do easier stuff, but eventually having to rote learn the animations for boss encounters feels exhausting. I don't really have it in me to practice tons of fights like this for another game

 

The game is great, but I don't like it I think. I dunno, just feels very standard to me so far. Not a 10/10 for me I think and I haven't been taken by the design of the open world either. It's not bad, but it's a standard open world IMO. It's not revelatory like BOTW was to me, where exploration was intrinsically interesting and exciting. I think it's cause it doesn't use vertical space in it as well as that game, and is mostly still very much focused on the same bread and butter stuff as Souls always is. Dungeons and combat, but the dungeons themselves are less substantial also. I'm left wondering what's improved by the open world, more freedom to do things in a different order I suppose. But Skyrim has that as well

 

A bit salty writing this, but it's wot I think of it. I guess I feel misled by the reviews, I thought it was supposed to be more of a break from the formula but it is more or less a sequel (not inherently bad, but I thought it would be more different). FROM stuff is trending in a direction that doesn't appeal to me as much anymore. Bloodborne was the last of theirs I liked. FWIW I've beaten two optional bosses, one was very easy and the other less so. No main story bosses, because I find the first one too difficult.

edit beaten 3 side bosses now, 2 of them are chalice dungeon tier. 

[OCH]

11 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

I guess I feel misled by the reviews, I thought it was supposed to be more of a break from the formula

I don't find 10/10 reviews out of the gate encouraging. Dark 2 initially received glowing reviews, before the rabid fanboy hype died down and more honest appraisal kicked in. As soon as I saw this was being built off of the DS3 engine, I knew this wasn't going to be the new direction I personally would have liked. Including leaning heavier into more aggressive and combo heavy enemies.

 

An arty-farty way of looking at Elden Ring: The same painting, on a wider canvas.

[mfnick]

Made a start last night, beat the first major boss and progressing through the castle. Yea… I’m not feeling it. 
 

The open world so far has added nothing. All it means is that I can waste time running in the wrong direction in a empty space for a significant amount of time just to get my arse handed to me by enemies that I’m way too underlevelled for without warning. Or beat a boss which gives me a weapon or magic thing that is completely useless for my character. What a waste of time. 
 

All reviews and podcasts are saying it’s a new way of doing open worlds again. How? Im still running around empty fields, collecting plants (nobody told me this type of fucking looting was in it 😡) and going into copy and pasted caves. The usual open world busy work crap. There’s just not a ton of icons that’s all. & I die more often making it more frustrating to explore. 
 

However I can run forever when not in combat so it’s already better than BotW. The fast travel system is good too.

 

I have enjoyed all the bosses I’ve come across so far too. Some great boss design going on. I love how acrobatic a lot are in a flashy Sekiro way. But talking of Sekiro, the combat is just nowhere near as good & that along with the open world are my sticking points. I just don’t enjoy the combat as much in these souls style ones. Its just slow and nowhere near as satisfying. I much prefered the setting of Sekiro too. Although this is a very beautiful world where some vistas have wowed me even though the graphics are a bit shit. But I’m just not as interested in it. 
 

Anyone made any real progress yet? Does anything change as you progress or should I just stop & accept it’s not for me? 

[OCH]

I've clocked in about four and a half hours. Technically two play sessions. Which has equated to about a dozen attempts at the first boss and lots of map wandering.

Unlike other games I've played recently, I wasn't itching to get back into it. I have interest in that it is a new Souls game. Not the massive departure it could/should have been.

 

The open world (alongside all the tiresome crafting) really isn't anything new. New for Souls, but not in general. I did say at the time, leaning into the Souls mechanics over Sekiro, this does feel like a step backwards. Definitely in terms of character mobility. That first boss, tons of mobility. Player character.. not so much. You are now a brick that can jump.

 

 

[mfnick]

5 minutes ago, OCH said:

Sekiro, this does feel like a step backwards. Definitely in terms of character mobility. That first boss, tons of mobility. Player character.. not so much. You are now a brick that can jump

100% 👍

[one-armed dwarf]

re crafting, I find it good in this game and not just a checklist item if you play any sort of class with an ammo or resource dependency. In previous games you had to farm souls for arrows and you never used firebombs. Here you get them from bones and butterflys. It's needed in a game like this, an RPG with lots of player expression

 

Another thing about useless weapons, it appears you can redirect weapons to scale with other stats with the ash system, or whatever it's called. Like take a weapon that scales with strength and give it some different stats to scale with. Probably cant turn a magic weapon into STR tho

[OCH]

RE arrows. I haven't got the whatever it is that enables the crafting yet. But I've had a ton of arrow (and bolt) drops from regular enemies. No bow yet. But plenty of arrows.

[mfnick]

I’ve got a bow but keep getting bolts. Frustrating. I don’t like using the bow anyway so guess it doesn’t really matter.