That’s the joy of it though. You bang your head against the wall until you learn the mechanic or pattern or counter and then when you’re in you’re 265th battle with Malenia and you fucking nail the dodge on her water fowl dance and stick her in the face, the dopamine rush cascades over you and you die in the opening of her second phase because you missed the dodge on her opening attack 🥹 chefs kiss
You want your Vigor to be at the soft cap (40 if you are Gud, 60 if you don’t like driving nails into your proverbial winky). Grab a tower shield and spec for that and it will carry you to Malenia, Mohg, and Elden Beast. Learn to dodge and you are good all the way up to the final DLC boss. And actually use the spirit ashes (and not just the mimic tear).
While I think some of the endgame bosses are more than a bit much due to their long attack chains with multiple delays in a given combo, pretty much everything else about ER is some of the most accessible Souls’ing ever to be seen. Its just that people think they are hot shit just because they beat Ornstein and Smough back in the day and try to glass cannon it and… don’t do that.
Also probably don’t play it on a potato. Which is the point of the thread.
OH. And don’t be afraid to respec with the gal who likes bad boys. Most of the endgame bosses have MASSIVE weaknesses and Malenia is kind of notorious for how fast she melts against a stagger build or an arcane bleed build.
Or we can actually be mature adults and realize that From (and most of the good souls devs) actually put a LOT of work into gradually ramping up difficulty, teaching mechanics, and adding alternatives so that pretty much anyone can beat any non-DLC boss without a human summon.
Learn the basic attack patterns and how to dodge. Don’t skip bosses. You’ll learn the mechanics and by extension you’ll “git gud”.
People that bitch about people saying “git gud” are the toxic ones. Usually it’s someone who gets angry because they can’t beat a boss. If you’re good you don’t cry if someone says “git gud”.
This is exactly the point! I wish i could have explained it in this way years ago. Git gud means you gotta put in the work to learn the enemies area and bosses. I have beaten all fromsoft soul games besides bloodborne :(, and i am by no means the best player. Yet i git gud and beat every one of them to full completions.
Magic is definitely easy mode against (most) bosses. But the traversal between bonfires needs more effort since, even if you also have a glock spell you fundamentally have limited damage because you need to fuel it with blue estus. So people tend to grab moonveil or some other hybrid melee for those purposes and you quickly realize that a lot of the team that worked on Dark Souls 2 worked on certain areas in ER.
I main staff in one hand and ROB in the other and its worked out well. I’m in the DLC now most of the way through and only got stuck a couple times. I did a shitload of grinding.
I still think Dark Souls 1 is more accessible than Elden Ring. Yes, ER offers more and better tools - like the aforementioned spirit ashes - but the complexity and demands of the boss fights are still much harder I would say.
I think DS1’s very structured first half is pure genius. Asylum and Taurus demons teach you about situational awareness and the value of using movement to manipulate your enemy and make openings. Capra teaches you to carry a god damned shield and that sometimes you have to trade health for progress. Gargoyles are DPS gates that also encourage actually summoning. Iron Giant exists… And O&S are your final exam that makes sure you were paying attention (and also you have Brolaire… if you play offline. Otherwise you just get endlessly invaded). I think it does fall apart in the back half but most of that game does.
ER definitely suffers from the open world nature of the game. Theoretically, Stormveil (?) castle is your first legacy dungeon and it is really good for that… Some of us found the back path and did Raya Lucaria (?) first and dealt with the hell of a bunch of kids with M-16s hosing you down the moment you stick your head out from behind cover. But the various bosses still do a good job of teaching mechanics.
But I really think the secret is the Spirit Ashes. No matter what your build, you can find an ash to complement that. Yeah, they fall off as you near endgame but… you have mimic tear then. And then, if you are smart, you grab Tiche and realize knife mommy is best girl.
All that said? I think the Niohs actually have the better system where you can summon NPCs based on player builds fairly freely. But Nioh also has some of the worst boss progression in the sense that TN seems to think Hino Enma (bird lady who is hard to hit, inflicts status effects, and has a grab that heals her…) is the third boss you should fight…
But yeah. As much fun as “git gud” is, it just really annoys me because people’s need to say they are super hardcore sexy super gamers just ignores all the work that the devs of these games put into teaching mechanics and providing alternatives. And Elden Ring REALLY suffered from that with all the sweaties who insisted you should play with no summons and low vigor… and then got pissy that it was hard.
Slime boi was the best prenerf, then still the best post in my opinion. I used radahns swords and he used to spam the shit outta of the gravity weapon arts. Stupid good. But even after nerf he still did it in clutch moments and the times we both use it together was just glorious.
I mean there was nothing like two fat santa clause turtles running around with 2 big ass swords fucking things up.
As soon as you understand that traversing the level is the real boss… christ on a cracker, the amount of times I’ve fallen to my death. (I’m on crystal cave, I should know better by now)
Oh yes, for sure! That’s what I tend to tell people whose first Soulslike is Elden Ring: Dark Souls 1’s bosses will feel very underwhelming in comparison but the areas themselves will be equally or more challenging.
Though the DLC does have a couple of fun bosses. Make sure you look up how to enter it, it’s not something you’d stumble on naturally. Also you have to do it before the final boss, unlike later games NG+ starts automatically upon defeating the final boss.
Using a tower shield and poke weapon was the easiest playthrough of the game I’ve done. Easiest of all the from soft games I’ve played, even. The final boss went down in 4 minutes and I barely had to heal.
I think a problem some people get with these games is they have a sort of tunnel vision. They’ll have a scimitar and lose to the boss lose to the boss lose to the boss, and they don’t really consider trying something else.
Back when game design was an actual artform, having a boss who’s easy with one build but terrible against another up-to-then valid build indicates BAD GAME DESIGN, but suddenly when it’s Fromsoft making the amateur failures, it’s Perfectly As Designed™.
Yes, for example, famously pokemon with the elemental gyms was bad design. You should totally be able to use your fire pokemon to fight the fire gym. /s
And certainly no other game has something like a fire elemental boss that you can’t use fire on.
There’s just such a contingent of people who get off on hating from soft. It’s tedious as heck
Your post was nonsense. “You can’t have a boss that is strong against something else that used to work” is a stupid design “rule” you made up. Like every game that has meaningfully different builds is going to have parts that are easier or harder for a build.
Easier and harder are not the goal posts being discussed.
You yourself say the boss battle was EASY with a shield and pokey build. That is a whole different discussion than, “some builds do better against certain enemies”.
Easier and harder are not the goal posts being discussed.
Back when game design was an actual artform, having a boss who’s easy with one build but terrible against another up-to-then valid build indicates BAD GAME DESIGN
He said easiest playthrough. Because towershield plus pokey thing means you take no damage and can poke everything to death, slowly. Veeeeerrrry slowly. You must not do soul like games.
My gripe with the game besides getting my ass handed to me on the regular is that it’s way too massive yet still quite empty. Having to wander around exploring and finding nothing but some plant material is quite boring. I think my favorite layout has been DS Remastered where the Firelink Shrine is the hub with many spokes leading out into different areas that you definitely shouldn’t go until later.
I wound up losing interest jn the game and buying Demons Souls which has been fun and more like the Dark Souls and Bloodborne that I’m used to.
Yeah. ER’s overworld is really not one you are meant to explore*. It is a lot closer to the Ubisoft design philosophy where the idea is you are going from point A to point B and find POIs (caves, mines, etc) along the way. So it is more that you should always more or less be walking in the direction of the grace sparkles and just do caves as you find them.
Outside of the good shit that you read about online to get more bell bearings or special weapons.
That said: I will always argue that Nioh 2 is the true best Souls. And that is a lot closer to Demon Souls in that there is no interconnected metroidvania world and it is all discrete (often repeated) levels. But the combat is without parallel and, after the initial horrible bosses (fuck Hino Enma. Although she is more Nioh 1), they are REAL good. Reminiscent of Dark Souls 2 in that it often feels like a duel between two knights (well, samurai) but actually done well.
Staying vague since they are one of the big bads but: Nioh 2 has a recurring enemy. Eventually you fight them when they are truly at the peak of their power and it is a BRUTAL fight. But it works so well because you have mastered the game by then so you are constantly rushing forward to counter their perilous attacks, getting in quick swipes, dodging all of their attacks, etc. And the narrative build up is SO good. It honestly feels like a Yakuza/LAD boss in that “In a different world we could be friends. In this world you have slaughtered countless innocents. But I like your vibes and that attack you just did is so fucking sick”. Yes, Team Ninja actually made Pursuer/Forlorn/Aldea WORK.
*: Until the DLC… where exploring too soon breaks every single NPC quest the moment you cross a bridge
I have bounced off Nioh 2 like a dozen times, the combat system utterly overwhelms me every time I jump in. I have beaten every Souls game outside of Sekiro, but the stances and absorbtion mechanic thing around parrying (forget the exact details) just does me head in.
And every time I bounce off I am sad, cus otherwise it looks amazing. I want to get to the end game and grind out stuff, but getting off the ground is a slog.
You can basically ignore stances (Rise of the Ronin was TN experimenting with making that not an option). Just pick the stance you like (usually medium) and MAYBE swap to heavy against oni if you feel like you need to. Conceptually it is basically one handing or two handing (or… half handing?) a weapon in a Souls game. You aren’t swapping mid fight and are more deciding as you approach an encounter. That said… Nioh 3 by all indications is gonna make that integral.
Burst counters are all about figuring out what moveset you want. I personally love yellow (?) yokai because I rush forward. Which is baller as fuck but ALSO means that even if I parry too soon I have good odds of intercepting the attack and getting the punish. Whereas other people prefer blue for blocking or red for attacking.
But yeah. The Niohs are HORRIBLE for tutorialization even beyond the boss design. TN have gotten a lot better with integrating tutorials into gameplay (especially in Stranger of Paradise and Rise of the Ronin) but they ALSO still insist on having a mandatory void mission that then just dumps all that info and more into you and mostly undoes the “Hey, that guy hasn’t seen you. Sneak up on him” training.
It took me up until the penultimate core boss in Nioh 1 to realize that I was an idiot for not using the special attacks. What went from hit and run with a katana became just holding r1+square to melt enemy HP with dual swords or doing massive ki damage with a katana or flying across the room with the kunai wit chain and so forth.
But once you figure out what parts of the game you can ignore and what matters? Oh there is nothing like that.
A console in 2025 “runs at a stable 30” fps and that’s good news? Of course this is slightly faster than a mobile chip from 10 years ago, but that’s an incredibly low bar to set.
We know it's faster, but allegedly Switch 1 games run through a compatibility layer so there was some worry it wouldn't boost performance on old titles. The video confirms it does.
YT performance videos show Witcher 3 running at 60FPS on Steamdeck and Arkham Knight averages around 53-55FPS on Steamdeck. Side by side comparison videos of Witcher 3 show Steamdeck has higher graphical fidelity over Switch 2 as well.
Switch 2 can probably reach those numbers if the games were updated, currently it's just running the Switch 1 versions of those games which are capped at 30FPS and a lower resolution.
Well damn I know it’s just footage of a tech demo so there is a lot that can happen still and Ciri was definitely not controlled live (as they tried to make us believe if you watched the full event. Like seriously, who’s going to believe you when you slice up a horse and voxelize trees? Holding the controller on stage was just corny, sorry guys) BUT it looks amazing! I especially loved how they showcased some of the technical details. I really didn’t think it would impress me this much because they showed way more about a game that’s probably years away from release than I ever anticipated. And again, a lot can still happen and go wrong but I would lie if I said I wasn’t hyped already. Mission accomplished I guess.
That’s not unbelievable. If the trees voxelization thing is just a visualisation mode in the engine, it’s stupidly easy to “ship” it into a dev build and activate it with a shortcut. Hell the nanite visualisation thing they showed on foliage before that one is exactly that, and iirc enabled by default in dev, you just need to toggle a cvar to see it.
The presentation looks too fluid. I don‘t see any room or reason to use a controller live on stage there other than to pretend. The entire thing looks scripted through and through so why would you even make Ciri controlled live there? Feel free to send me time codes where the camera itself actually looks like it‘s controlled by the guy behind the pult, though. I can‘t see anything. It looks like a normal tech demo with preselected inputs to me and I see no reason why they would give the guy control over anything.
I’ve never regretted a GTA purchase (admittedly I didn’t get the remasters so that might be why…) so I’m cautiously looking forward to this one. Started up 5 again recently with the Enhanced version dropping on PC and man its still stupid fun.
The aesthetic is impeccable, but I can’t even begin to see anything from the trailer that makes this stand out as an MP shooter? I was already not interested in the slightest because I’m just not down for any sort of GaaS these days, I want single player experiences, but WTF was that?
They threw in some kinda line about death not being the end … in 2025? Death and rebirth is not a new thing. Go play Deathloop instead, I think it’s tragically underrated and the MP can be totally ignored if you like, although its asymmetric design is also interesting if you want to engage with it.
Pirate Software has a lot of haters because he acts like a know it all and gets into arguments with people. I’m sensing people are just downvoting this video because it’s him and don’t care that in it he says pricing games at $80+ is pure greed from corporate studios that will likely tank the games industry.
He got mad at me and much of his community over concerns about decisions he was making for “block game”. We stated our concerns kindly and politely, and he got mad and deleted an entire discord channel because we didn’t agree with him and made good points that he couldn’t refute. I lost all respect for him after that.
Oh I dunno, I avoid a lot of drama and just watch his takes on YouTube. Didn’t realize Lemmy really hated this guy (deserved or not).
It’s a shame he reacted that way to you, not cool just deleting the discussion.
[edit] to the downvoters *to this current comment *… on the original post it’s fine but for this specific one go fuck yourself, have a horrible day [/edit]
I don’t really have it in me to hold enough of a grudge against a YouTuber to be one of their “haters”, but even I’m not a fan of Pirate Software due to the Stop Killing Games mess he put out. Still, the comment I responded to seemed completely disconnected from the video linked here.
Just look at the hate filled messages in this thread. He shares his opinion on video games but people act like he spreads bigotry and prejudice. He doesn’t want to sign a petition to regulate video games. He’s allowed to have an opinion.
It’s not some fucking witch hunt. He’s a pretentious asshole, who thinks he is better than everyone else.
And yes people can have their own opinions, but he misrepresented the goals of the petition on purpose. Then he refused to debate it with someone (who knows what the petition was actually about) on live when called out.
On top of that he deleted ross’s comment, rebuking his shit opinions. How much more of dickhead can you get?
He’s a pretentious asshole, who thinks he is better than everyone else.
Right, but there are people who are openly Nazis. I get that he’s got an ego but he doesn’t seem to have hateful views. I just find the amount of hate he attracts just for being a know it all seems way out of proportion.
I just find the amount of hate he attracts just for being a know it all seems way out of proportion.
He is also a grifter. Why would you be surprised that content from a fraudster (irrespective of whether a “know it all persona” is used in marketing or not) gets downvoted?
And generally, there is reason to be skeptical of content from gaming content creators that does not directly concern games (pricing and inflation is a much broader topic). There are much better sources for such discussions.
“hes’ got an ego but there’s NAZIS” is literal whataboutism. he’s still part of the problems out there. he is not a net positive on society, just like nazis.
I was attempting to compare and contrast. How should I do that without “whataboutism”?
he is not a net positive on society, just like nazis.
Clearly being narcissistic is not as bad as spreading hate and bigotry. Calling this guy all kinds of names and saying he’s the same as a Nazi because he thinks he’s the smartest guy ever is overkill.
His views aren’t offensive, they’re just different. It’s like a guy saying pineapple on pizza is terrible and anyone who likes it has terrible taste and then deletes and bans people who say they like pineapple on pizza. It’s weird behaviour but to say they’re not a net positive to society is crazy.
This guy runs an animal rescue shelter and pays for his (American) chat moderators’ healthcare. He helps people with no experience get into game development.
One of the top comments in this thread is:
I couldn’t give less of a shit what this dumbfuck thinks about anything.
Why all the hate? Because he argues about World of Warcraft strategies? There are definitely people who are negatives to society, but I do not think Pirate Software is one of those people. I do think he has an attitude, but that doesn’t make him the equivalent of a Nazi.
Can’t believe someone actually downvoted you for being excited; I swear, heaven forbid you like something that others don’t.
I’m skeptical as to whether the open world aspect will add to (or detract from) the experience, but I’ll probably end up grabbing it few years down the line once my kid is old enough to appreciate it.
I think it’s for being excited about the Switch 2 and MKW despite it being sOoOOoo expensive. People are butthurt games are more money. Like, yeah it sucks that game prices are increasing but that’s what entertainment does, it increases in price. Movie tickets have gone up. Concerts. Dining. I regularly have dates with my partner that cost what buying me and her MKW would cost and those last a few hours at best.
If you can’t afford it then you can’t. That sucks. Learn to save your money over time and buy it once you have it. If you can’t then that means you probably shouldn’t be spending the little you have on video games anyways.
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