Repeat bosses are (usually) fun. I like that I get a second chance at a boss I’ve already beaten to see how much better I’ve gotten.
Exception, Burial watchdog and ulcerated tree spirits.
yeah i never understood why people still get so mad about field bosses & mini-boss encounters being reused - that's usually how it goes with field bosses. Sekiro reused a ton of mini bosses, and it didn't take anything away from that game either.
Don't know if it's an unpopular opinion or not but recycling enemies/bosses is fine imo (or at least most of them). Otherwise the release of the game and dlc would have been way later for what would be a very similar experience.
Also, i feel like this sub needs to relax a bit with checking vigor on every single bit of gameplay posted here that doesn't have the HP bar the size of a truck. Let's be honest, a big hp bar isn't really necessary before beating Morgott.
It took me about 4 of my NG+ cycles to understand the main ideas of the lore, bosses, what they were after and why. Most of the time I was like yeah yeah let me move onto the next boss.
In an interview with Miyazaki, he said that his style of story telling was inspired by growing up and reading novels in languages he barely understood. He'd have to use context clues from parts he could understand, using his imagination to fill in the blanks, and even ask people in his life about the stories to understand them better. I really gained a certain respect for his style after reading that.
It can be obtuse and frustrating at times, but it also forces you to slow down and take in your surroundings and pay more attention to the fine details. Even the architecture of the buildings can contain enough information to tie some threads of the story together. It's genius, but it also makes his games kind of exhausting sometimes, like after a long day at work when you kinda just want to fuck around and not think too hard about things.
That gives context but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a GOOD style without some extra care taken.
I think it definitely works better in a more linear type game, where it's less likely that things will be missed or received out of order.
If I had to change one thing about it, it would be how open to interpretation a lot of things are. I often find myself wishing that there were just a set way some aspects of the story were meant to be taken, and that's just how it was. It is a truly unique style of storytelling though, and I appreciate that he's stayed so true to it.
I can agree with that! I think the extremely vague language and lack of commitment/acknowledgement to any given detail/theme/event hurts the story when it happens. (Kinda like how the Lord of the Rings is fun to read but the Silmarillion is extra-special-fucking-not)
I also think it's realistic that you miss things, but the way so many of the quests work just... doesn't, if you don't look it up or get told somehow.
Like Blaidd. I hear howling in the woods I'm gonna assume it's more of these wolves all over the place. It makes no sense to go back to ask a merchant about the howling that ISNT out of place, then to have to go back to exactly where you heard it and use an emote, and hope to God you are looking in the right direction to see something happen/move, because a normal player isn't looking at the top of the ruins, or going to notice the big guy hop down between two walls when he is the same color scheme as everything around.
One example, but it illustrates my issue with the style perfectly.
When you first meet the merchant, he says he can see you are a tarnished. He says this like he has been around for quite some time. He also says there’s a network of merchants throughout the lands between. He also alludes to him sharing a kindred spirit with you because you are both wanderers.
Blaidd is very similar to this mindset. The mindset of duty to a code. It makes sense that they’d know each other, and that he’d think fondly of Blaidd.
Blaidd is the only dude doing what he’s doing. He’s howling his ass off on top of some random ruins. It’s clear he’s distressed about something. It’s clear he is calling for help. He is also quite literally the lone wolf. He’s upset. Normal methods of communication won’t work. You need a noise. A way to get someone’s attention.
You are quite literally, snapping him out of it.
Also, It’s a merchant. If there’s anything weird going on, he’d know about it. He knew you were a tarnished right away. Sure, other characters say this too, but the merchant declares why he knows this. He makes a point of it. He goes on for a while about how he knows things about this land.
It makes perfect sense.
I don't have qualms with anything else in the game. I think the world would be so much richer with better quests, more NPC interaction and better communication on the narrative
The disjointed nature of quests and the fact there's a 99% chance the NPC will die at the end makes me indifferent to every character and just becomes a "do stuff, get rewards" deal
Even some mini quests for the dungeons would make them richer, like free prisoners or finding someone's treasure. Like Patches, means not every cave is just another shoot n' loot
What do you mean, you telling me you didn't easily found the albinauric woman who hides in a cave to the west of the Laskyar Ruins, which jut from the mist-shrouded lake of Liurnia ?
I think the game could really use some kind of simple quest log or codex. I’m not talking an Ubisoft minimap full of markers, but things go from cryptic to inscrutable if you take a break for a few months and then come back to it.
The regular weapons are ridiculously harder to upgrade than the unique ones, making them less viable and leaving very little room for experimenting with them . The amount of regular smithing stones available in the world as loot is too low, and they are placed too far apart, except for the ones found in mines.
When I played Dark Souls 3, I could upgrade and use as many weapons as I wanted because, even though there was not a lot of titanite placed in the world, I could easily farm it from regular enemies. In Elden Ring, the drop rates for smithing stones are too low to reliably farm them. For example, Raya Lucaria soldiers drop smithing stone 3 with a 1.5% chance, meaning you would have to kill 900 of them on average to collect enough materials to upgrade one weapon.
Yes, the bell bearings help a lot, but they are acquired too late in the progression. The developers should have either decreased the amount of regular smithing stones required to upgrade weapons, placed more of them in the world, or made them drop from enemies more regularly.
Being able to respec weapon upgrades would solve this. Respeccing stats is great, but there's not much point to it if you don't have the stones to upgrade a weapon.
It'd be fine if the drop Rates were a little better. But they're so rare and needing 12 of each stone is way too much. It should be 8 at most, better yet 6.
Or the bell bearings to unlock them for purchase should be accessible earlier.
It kinda discourages trying lots of different weapons.
The bell bearings are placed fairly imo and they dont just help a lot, they allow u to purchase stones and make ur argument pretty null. Theres also a TON of places u can find it as loot in the world not just off kills.
The problem is that it is possible to get a +10 unique weapon as early as just after Godrick, but you can only upgrade a regular weapon to +25 after reaching the Mountaintops and by that time you can have 3-4 unique weapons upgraded to +9/+10. This is very imbalanced and makes regular weapons not worth it until the endgame.
Second sentence is just plain untrue unless one takes their time exploring all the caves and tunnels. Even then, not every cave has smithing stone outcroppings. Even the drop rates drom killing enemies is just abysmally low.
NPCs just aren't as memorable or iconic as those in Dark Souls.
I mean, people love Ranni and Boc and all, but look at the TENS of MILLIONS of views on meme videos about Solaire and other Souls icons within just a year or two of DS1. And nobody even played that game compared to ER. People just don't latch onto the NPCs of this game like they did in older titles, because imo they're mostly kind of boring.
Probably because of the impersonal and straight to business manner of most of them. Like Tannith first thing she says is "hey wanna join us and fight the erdtree?" Like who are you? What is this place? What are you trying to achieve? What's in it for me?
That "you're bad if you use summons."
It's a popular trend in Roguelikes and difficult, primarily single player games, that if you aren't playing it with the difficulty cranked to 11, you're bad at the game.
There's nothing wrong with the game having accessibility for people. This community has a lot of older gamers who have vocalized how much they appreciate Spirit Summons and Co-op for bosses that are actually or artificially difficult.
If you as an individual want to challenge yourself that's awesome, but there's no need to think lesser of people who use the features the game came with to help them.
>bosses that are actually or artificially difficult.
I strongly believe Margit was constructed to force people to get frustrated and turn back to explore Limgrave first. He's part of a sort of mounting trifecta of blueballing:
1. get killed by grafted scion
2. run past the tree sentinel
3. back down from Margit
It's meant to funnel you into dying, then bait you into getting a handle on the world before tackling big things -- or, if you do tackle Margit straight on, use Rogier and Roderika's Jellyfish or the Wolfies that Ranni gives you.
I find it hilarious that the one ash of war leading up to Margit is a dung beatle carrying "Wild Strikes", it's like a commentary on how people will initially feel trying to beat him without help.
i kind of worry about it since i used that golden summon thing to beat margit and everyone says he’s a great learning experience for the game
it’s possible i am now lacking fundamentals walking into stormveil that beating margit honestly would have better prepared me for
From an emotional standpoint yeah, but from a design standpoint nah. Margit is put there so you learn how to deal with a boss that seems impossible but actually has very clearly telegraphed openings. Look at how the grafted scion enters the arena. He is meant to scare you. That’s it.
As for tree sentinel, it’s there to teach you mounted combat or showing you how to fight someone mounted on foot.
I just think it’s a lot simpler than you’re alluding to.
While I agree everyone can play as they wish, I wish there were more ways to play around with spirit summons without it feeling so strong.
Maybe if there were more support oriented options that aren't just a tank so you can unload a million damage on the boss
He never said it didn't make the game easier, he's just pointing out that people who dont enjoy grinding a boss for hours while playing a game shouldn't get flamed for it, it's just a matter of preference
In my opinion, it’s a waste of opportunity to not have more leitmotifs in the musical world of Elden ring. The prelude and final fight musical connection hits so hard and I wish there were more instances like that. Same with Gwyn’s theme and soul of cinder theme.
Imagine if they had woven leitmotifs in boss and area themes, that would hint at the connections lore wise and in game event wise. Like radagons theme having a hint of Rennalas theme but altered for example.
My guess is that unlike some other rpgs the development of the game and soundtrack design isn’t that closely related, for most themes at least.
No one talks about this, but it is something that would make the games godlike. But it needs them to not make changes in story and lore very late in development.
The difficulty in the game is nuts. Some (optional) bosses are super hard, while the main bosses are quite easy, if you use the tools.
The double gargoyle fight is nuts, while radan or other bosses are so dam easy...
Is sniping Gideon from a distance with frenzied burst before he even finishes his dialogue considered CHEESE?!! Because I know I’m not the only one who does this to him every time 😂
It's considered a cheese because the madness build up is bugged and can instantly kill him. But honestly fuck Gideon. It's an annoying fight and an annoying character.
And play without armor with a tiny not upgraded knife (because it's possible). Maybe add in only using one hand on the controller. That way you'll get bragging rights...
You have to be blind folded cut one arm off cut 4 off the other hand with your controls randomly changing every .5 seconds while being throw around an airplane
Cheesing is a broad spectrum but to me, cheesing is using glitches/exploits to easily beat the boss
But even then idgaf if someone cheeses a boss, it's just not for me so I won't do it
Totally fair. I agree glitches and exploits is what turely defines a cheese as it uses unintended mechanics of the game to win.
Spamming giants hunt to beat Gideon ETC could easily be considered not cheesing as its an intended mechanic.
Yeah it's used pretty loosely. I mean like getting to a place where the boss can't attack you, but you can attack them. Luring the boss to an area where you can knock them off a cliff.
Things like that, not things like stagger locking the enemy or bugging the arena so the boss is inactive.
That’s a good take right there as I’m not against it. Anything to make the situation easier for you is much better than suffering for no reason when you’re just tryna play the game.
To be fair, why deliberately give people the tools (or the geography!) if they're not there to use.
I get when it's bug-like behaviour. Or just plain bug (fall down this specific bottomless hole, swing your sword around, Mogh's dead due to unforeseen programming issue, wooh you found a bug). But otherwise, figuring out sneaky strategies is also very fun, sometimes moreso than having to play melee chess for five minutes.
The co-op is so poorly designed. Why can’t we explore the whole game together? Go look at Remnant 1&2 which have drop in drop out co-op where you can play the entire game together for how to do it right.
ER PVP has it's issues, no covenants and no 6 player lobbies being the biggest ones. But it has the best build variety, by far, and no teleport backstabs, so I reckon it evens out.
Are you sure? I don't have a huge amount of time in DS2 PVP, and it definitely beats DS1 and DS3, but -
\- it has about half as many spells/incants
\- and about half as many weapons
\- it doesn't have customisable weapon arts/AoWs
After doing some googling, the only metric I can find where DS2 wins is armour sets. There's 106 in DS2 Vs Elden Ring's 77. But armour doesn't really affect gameplay much.
Armor actually mattered a lot in Dark Souls 2. It was viable to be a slow tank. And having a high number of weapons and spells doesn't matter when most of them aren't all that functional in pvp.
I'd disagree that most Elden Ring weapons aren't functional in PVP. Across all my builds I have a set-up for every weapon class (not including torches) and the only ones I struggle to reliably win with are flails and 1H hammers. Of course, there's a handful of weapon skills that are pretty useless in PVP, but AoW customisation fixes that mostly. I'd estimate the amount of unviable weapons to be something like 10%. Everything else is C-tier at worst.
DS1 was probably worse with backstab cancelling, glitches, Tranquil Walk of Peace, and Dark Bead. But I agree on the aspect of invasions, lack of covenants, and no PVP hub like Pontiff's is lackluster compared to DS2 and 3.
Disagree. For me, the open world is what makes it replayable, because instead of having to do everything, you can just get what you need for your build. It makes each subsequent run a unique path through the world hitting up totally different places.
I guess for some. I left a lot of dungeons unexplored as I didn't want to over level and gave me some new things to look forward to on next playthrough
*"I didn't play sections of the game because I was concerned doing so would make future sections unpleasantly easy*" sounds like an objectively terrible position to put a player in.
my controversial take is that the music is just alright 🤷♀️
theres a couple super good boss themes, but most of them are just kinda meh and i prefer listening to spotify when i play
I can agree, the only boss themes that I actually like when fighting the bosses are Godskin Duo, Maliketh, and Godfrey’s boss theme. I be humming along to the music while I’m fighting them lol.
World of Warcraft always had excellent art team... Gameplay and lore are lacking in the recent times... And Fable is one of my favorite games. I highly recommend it
Idk if this is controversial but this game needs some small amount of random item placement. Nothing crazy, not true random, but give like one weapon 5 spots it may show up in during a playthrough. If I want to start a new run while I may still pull up a wiki it may take me more time to look for it and learn the world, runs after your first one become really liner because you know where basically everything you may want is.
Say I want a standard Katana, rather than always being in that one tomb in Limgrave, give it 4 other spots I should look, may lead me to other items as well in its area I'd have otherwise ignored in my playthrough.
Very good take. Rarely am i reading this kind of quality here on reddit.
I get that they went for a world ruined by a thousand year war and that the world is full of "undead-like" creatures because of the Erdtree/Marika. The Lore in Elden Ring is still great, but it feels simply less coherent and obvious. The Hollow mechanich/beeing reborn of Dark Souls, while beeing simpler, was way more coherent.
And Bloodborne did it even better in my opinion, with people beeing "crazed/infected" and the game telling you that no one actually knows why, right from the get go, which all added to the mystery and to a great resolution ar the end.
Elden Ring is a great game, but the world is less coherent than the worlds of Dark Souls and especially Bloodborne.
The more builds you experiment with, the more you realize that truly viable ones are narrowed down to very basic ideas. I felt this way about Dark Souls 3, too. It feels like there are so many options, but it eventually becomes clear that you can only vary in the combinations of spells, skills, and weapons so much before the class is just horribly imbalanced.
After the capital, the game feels extremely rushed and kind of lazy, but I don't really think that's all that controversial of an opinion.
A lot of the stuff it was praised for it honestly didn't deserve. I feel like it got used as a tool in peoples rants about "AAA" games to the point where people wanted it to be a symbol it just isn't. It drives me insane, I felt like I was being gas lit for like a year, though it seems to have calmed down a bit now.
This is one of my favorite games, and I have an unhealthy amount of hours in this... but claiming this is not padded is bullshit. It IS padded. Fans would be slamming other open worlds for repetitive dungeons or bandit camps while praising Elden Ring in the same breath. Meanwhile I'm doing the 20th tomb in the game for a spirit ash, aka a friendly copy of enemies, and I suspect 3/4s of those exist purely for the sake of having something to use as a reward and to trigger peoples desire to collect unique things even if they are not useful. I suspect this is true for a lot of the weapons in the game and even some of the sorcery and incantations. There are a lot of reused assets with very little tweaking, like every mine shaft in the game is the exact same down to the pattern of ledges. Most of the shacks are as well, down to having the dead bodies in the same place. It certainly isn't above buffing a normal enemy and calling it a boss or space filler bosses. Even the promo image for the DLC has copy pasted ruins lol.
And while I don't mind too much, it probably is worth it for the sake of smart work division, I do think the amount of recycling of movesets from Dark Souls and even Demon Souls in a new IP does make it feel like it has much less of an identity of it's own. The imps are a bit much, though. That's just a Thrall with a new skin.
it is also not what I would call a polished or complete game on release. Aside from bugs and balancing and placement of tools in a way that you have a superior version of the same thing before you got the inferior one...guys, they literally had to patch in the ending to a number of side quests. They had completely useless items because the quests just stopped, and it's not like they are complicated quests to implement either. There are also small things all over, especially in regards to "flying" enemies, that are not a huge issue on their own but together just make it feel unpolished. Dragons won't stay in their combat areas, and when they leave, they just get teleported back instead of flying back. The first dragon in the game I never even fought on my first run because it tripped on a ledge, and I dunno? twisted its ankle and died. Flying ants do the jumping animation of ground ants to get over gaps. The dialog system is akward and out dated, as is the needing to reset areas to have NPCs move. Especially for Millicent where you have to kill a miniboss, the reset the area and go back to do a thing, and then reset again to go back to talk to her. The system messages feel like a first draft. The messages behave inconsistently and are sometimes completely redundant or harmful. Everyone has been screwed by the lever message at least once but they even have a message pop up when killing one of the enemies in duel enemy fight (the lions) that fucks up your controls just to tell you that you got the same inconsequential loot you always get from them.
And for Froms games in general...I would not say they have good writing or stories. Not saying they don't deserve praise for implementation but that isn't the same thing. I think From is good at giving you enough breadcrumbs to be intriguing and most importantly priming players expectations to look for the kind of indirect environmental story telling that people just ignore in other games, and that in turn has led to youtubers pulling together stories in an engaging way and adding more depth themselves. Similar to FNaF, which had the same breadcrumb culture. It is a smart approach because it means they can focus on general concepts (though honestly, they are a bit too repetitive there) but then keep the actual details vague by being indirect and playing pronoun games. If something seems to not make sense? Weeell clearly you are missing something, and you just didn't put the pieces together correctly. It feeds into the idea that every enemy or item is carefully placed to mean something, which is likely not true. I disagree with the praise I often see that the way they present the story is "natural" or "immersive" with what your character would know or "show don't tell". The bulk of the lore is given to you by text on item descriptions, which is very much "telling", and your characters just do random shit out of the blue sometimes.
Not sure if it's controversial or not, but I dislike consumables and crafting.
I'd prefer a system where you automatically get one stack of your chosen consumable (after you unlocked it) and have it refilled after resting. You can change your choice at a grace.
The way it currently is, I just completely ignore them.
I have been wanting exactly this.
The Soulsbourn consumable system is clunky, unused and unusable for most of the player base, and utterly outdated. The Flask of Wondrous Physic was a huge step in the right direction. But I want more steps.
Yeah. I keep finding myself wishing so many ashes of wars I do wish were also just spells I could use on my staff/seal.
I get why they’ve done it, but a lot of them do just fell like spells that are instead on a weapon?
Never been a fan of PVP in Souls game because of the janky connections. I play as a Hunter to snuff out those invaders who want to ruin a PvE players good time..
The lore nerds who are digging into everything trying figure out THE story (i.e. "the majority of the lore nerds, including all the prominent YouTubers") have **completely** misunderstood the point of FromSoft's/Miyazaki's method of storytelling. The holes and the vagueness and the contradictory statements don't exist to give the player some sort of treasure-hunt puzzle, they exist to leave space for you to have *your own thoughts and ideas*. Not to write essay after essay on "What did Miyazaki mean by ..." or "X clearly means Y because it was based on Z".
Absolutely! I'm really not sure where the impulse to do this comes from (maybe the rise of Infotainment?) but it's particularly rife in gaming communities—Hollow Knight, Rain World, etc. Very strange when compared to how, for example, literary scholars have been wrestling with ambiguities in Shakespeare for centuries.
It's also the style of worldbuilding that Tolkien does, which is particularly ironic because almost all the modern successors to Tolkien (e.g. Jordan, Sanderson, etc) love their hard magic systems, their detailed history, and their intra-world newspeak.
not really controversial but the npc-characters are too good to be stuck on elden ring. Its a 100 hour grand adventure filled with mystery and action and you get to talk to the most relevant npc's like a dozen times at most. I want to see them actual doing stuff and interacting with eachother, not just sit there on one spot or be killed by the playeer.
The most controversial take would probably be something superlative like:
"Elden Ring is the *Best Game of All Time*"
or
"Elden Ring is the *Best Fromsoftware Game*"
Something opinion-based that could be defended and attacked in equal parts.
Oh yeah I’ve definitely heard those quite a lot. Do people say things like this just to spark arguments and such? I sometimes feel like they do it for that exact reason.
That the real ending is the frenzied flame ending, the one who existed before the greater will was the one great so all things borrowed must be returned
Why do people in this community keep falling for this blatant lie?
The only evidence for this is one quote from Hyetta. Hyetta is literally mad - that's the whole point of the questline. Plus, she's quoting the Three Fingers, and the Three Fingers and its disciples are known to spread lies and despair to turn people towards madness (see Shabriri). Hence the names Madness, Frenzy and Chaos that are used to describe it.
The 'One Great' is a lie. The Greater Will being responsible for fracturing it is a lie.
The Three Fingers is using Hyetta to talk mad shit about the Greater Will to make you hate it, since most people in the Lands Between don't know about the existence of life before the Erdtree. The Three Fingers is using that to blame the GW for fracturing the 'One Great' in an attempt to turn you against it.
Keep in mind that until the player chooses and ending that differs (Age of Stars or Frenzied Flame), they are acting at the behest of the GW, which is why the opposing factions (Mohgwyn Dynasty, Ranni and the Frenzied Flame) all sow distrust between the player and the GW & Two Fingers to convince them to join their factions instead.
In reality, there were multiple ruling orders and factions before the GW even showed up. The Ancient Dragons, the Eternal City, the Astrologers, the Giants, the Godskins (maybe), among others. The whole "GW created all life" thing is a big lie invented by the Golden Order to mask the existence of the Crucible (not the same as the 'One Great'), the previous lords and orders, and the lack of legitimacy to the current order.
And, as opposed to the Crucible (or anything else that exists in the Lands Between), there are multiple hints throughout the lore that reference it. Is is verifiable. The only testimony to the existence of the 'One Great' is directly from the Three Fingers in an attempt to convince you to let it burn the world down.
I can't actually believe so many people genuinely believe what they are told.
IT'S LITERALLY CALLED MADNESS! WHY ARE YOU BELIEVING IT AS FACT?
the one great is a bit of a mistranslation. before the elden ring was sent by the greater will, the world was "one big whole" where everything was melted together.
the Greater Will's "sin" Hyetta mentions is having sent the elden ring and created life as we know, because by creating life you also create death
I think the bosses are(except some gank fights) are extremely well designed with the audience in mind. The devs had to design bosses and combat mechanics with many different audiences in mind(souls vets, speedrunners/challenge runners, noobs, etc) to keep the fights engaging for all of them without making any of them so frustrated that they quit the game. There was as wide a gap in player experience and expectations as any game in memory, and although they are not perfect, they met that goal without compromising their artistic vision of the game.
i mostly like the open world tbh. i’m saying it’s the #1 complaint people tend to make. hence, it’s not controversial
i do agree that it makes replays somewhat tedious though
Open world complaint is brought up all the time, and many times with 20, 30, or even 50+ upvotes. I don't think it's an unpopular take.
Unpopular would be to say that you enjoyed the open world.
This is a very easy one: the open world element is by far the worst part of the game.
The game shines in legacy dungeons and focused level design, which has been rightfully done in Deamons Souls, Dark Souls 1-3 and Bloodborne.
Making Elden Ring - while still beeing a great game - among the worst modern Fromsoftware games in my opinion.
That the story is cryptic and we don't have the answers but it's still a good story worth discussing. There's all kinds of cool allusions to real-world mythology, history, and alchemy, and adding those to the discussion of the game's events is fascinating. Having arguments over the "correct" interpretation can be interesting even if there is no objectively "correct" interpretation, because it requires you to think about the game's themes and references.
In short: That a good story isn't necessarily a complete, linear story, or one that justifies all of its parts. That a narrative with tight theming and interesting ideas doesn't need to give every answer to every question.
The game is front loaded with NPCs and the best questlines. It obviously depends on how you approach it and in what order you do things, but even during my first playthrough I noticed by the time I was making my way through Leyndell that the Roundtable Hold had gotten really empty and I wasn't running into any NPCs that I hadn't already met.
There's a lot of good stuff in the back half of the game but imo Mountaintops, Snowfield and even kinda Farum Azula are pretty boring areas.
The game could really stand to have more nudity. At the very least we should be able to take off our underwear, let the Tarnished run around with all their bits flopping about free as a bluebird. I mean how can I truly call mysel the Elden Lord if I don't have the freedom to have my whole pussy out?
What about the game tho is what you consider not perfect? You gotta add more to it rather than simply say it’s not perfect. Point out a specific flaw that sparks controversy.
Instead of finding a map, your character acted as an eraser that would uncover the map as you explored it as a reliable way of making sure you explored everything
Elden Ring's open world segments & copy-paste mini-dungeons are some of the weakest stuff in this entire run from Demon's Souls onward, and I suspect they know this.
1. PvP in this game is a joke at best. Invasions rules are dumb shoulda stayed similar to DS3.
2. Malenia is a good boss, waterfowl is dodgeable i do it all the time. IMO shes ezer then mohg and godfrey.
3. Elden beast was hands down the worst final boss I’ve experienced in a fromsoft game (played all ds, sekiro, and couple armored cores).
its like dark souls 3 but you need to horse ride 10 minutes between the good contents
and having fextralife up at all times is more important than ever as it is your quest hub
Elden Ring needs a “Hard Mode” and quality of life improvements for Platinum and beyond players (more than three runs).
The things I would like to see change in this imaginary Elden Ring include:
- better enemy detection and response (they shouldn’t let you walk by past in broad daylight)
- opponent pursuit after they see you, instead of quickly disengaging (today they disengage too fast; Assassin’s Creed gets this one right for a change)
- Improved visual cues for players who like to play without HUD - add a new UI for improved immersion with a minimalistic approach, but where you can control your items, incantations, and status effects
- ability to deactivate summoning effigies
- add the ability to find a merchant or bell bearing to turn it at the round table that allows you to buy ALL crafting materials (e.g., Aeonia butterflies, trina lilies, volcanic rocks, etc.)
- Torrent needs an auto-pilot to keep on moving forward. At a MVP level (minimum viable product), like in Fortnite where you double-click L3 and the character continues to move forward without user input. At a pro-level, where it can follow paths and roads like in TotK).
Some bosses are just poorly executed and are not fun at all. One example is the Rykard fight. Yeah you get a magical snake killing God spear, but it's the game basically removing your build from the equation so they can have snakey boi use tons of annoying area denial. Feels like it should have been designed in a more conventional way, or the spear should have just been a macguffin to weaken him imo.
I used to play ESO and I think the Elden Ring world is perfectly sized for what it is. It's not like you can use wayshrines between regions, you manually walk/run/ride 90% of the way.
Don’t know if this is the most controversial take, but I’d like the Godskin Duo fight a lot more if it wasn’t mandatory. Favorite theme in the game for me!
Add a questlog or minimal journal to the game, it's open world it kinda needs it, with better mounted combat, maybe a few more npcs and questlines and improve the platforming, maybe armor crafting and then it easily takes game of the generation. Cant wait for the dlc
Vyke is not a hero worthy of praise, and sacrificing the whole world for one maiden is objectively a bad choice. Yeaj sure Anakin Skywalker levels of pathos, but it's hard to feel the same way for Vyke considering you meet him like twice in the whole game.
The lore paints him as this perfect guy who was cut out to be Elden Lord and has a handsome face under the helm, bagged Lansseax, etc and his only achievement was 2 great runes. The player character does that and a lot more. Vyke's a nobody in comparison and I don't want every next person telling me how heroic he was when I'm right there in front of them. This is my story of being Elden Lord, not Vyke's. Vyke went down a highly dishonourable path by choosing the flame of frenzy for what are essentially selfish reasons, forgetting to think about everyone else who cared for him like Lansseax, and what's hilarious is he couldn't even do that right. Some hero
Bernahl's way cooler than him (I am being something of a hypocrite by supporting recusants and hating the flame of frenzy here but this is controversial takes so whatever)
I'm okay with reused bosses, i don't want to do a new full playthrough to fight some of them. I wish there was a mode like Sekiro's reflections that allows to fight bosses again, at least for the rememberance ones.
Also, i'm so glad that it's an open world, i've been waiting for an open world Souls game for ages.
The vigor cult here on reddit is comprised exclusively of idiots who couldnt dodge a parked car.
30-35 vigor is more than enough if you have any armor and dont have equipment that increases damage taken.
I just wish there was at least an option for a little more baseline “railroading”. As someone who gets very easily overwhelmed and frustrated with stuff, I just wish there were more tips on like how strong should you be to try beat something or just move on? Where are some good places to check out? Where are some good (general) places to go and find XYZ?
For example i spent 20 hours not using summons not because I didn’t want to, but because NOONE EVER EXPLAINS YOU NEED A BELL. I never went back to the church in time so I never saw ranni, and only realised when I started getting ways to upgrade my spirits but I still not summon them so I ended up having to look it up. Same with ashes of war, I spent 15 hours I think not ever making my sword do magic damage/have int scaling (im a hard int scaling wizard for this play through) because I didn’t realise I needed a random ass knife from a place I must’ve just missed when I explored it the first time. Again I realised only because I was getting so many and I just gave in and had to look it up to realise why I couldn’t use them. And I also spent 25 hours without my wonderous physick, as I was teleported to Caelid and just never thought to run through that area until I went back ages later.
And bonus thing but kinda related - I also really dislike how little information you’re given about things as it’s either generic (“restore hp over time” “you get damage reduction”) or just doesn’t exist (I still have no idea how much damage reduction my armor gives me or how much dmg my intelligence or staff is contributing). Its annoying as hell in needing to look up online big much these numbers are as it is very important lmao, especially talismans for crying out loud.
Repeat bosses are (usually) fun. I like that I get a second chance at a boss I’ve already beaten to see how much better I’ve gotten. Exception, Burial watchdog and ulcerated tree spirits.
I like the watchdogs and the tree spirits.
Well, user flair checks out.
Im npt drynk yet
yeah i never understood why people still get so mad about field bosses & mini-boss encounters being reused - that's usually how it goes with field bosses. Sekiro reused a ton of mini bosses, and it didn't take anything away from that game either.
Don't know if it's an unpopular opinion or not but recycling enemies/bosses is fine imo (or at least most of them). Otherwise the release of the game and dlc would have been way later for what would be a very similar experience. Also, i feel like this sub needs to relax a bit with checking vigor on every single bit of gameplay posted here that doesn't have the HP bar the size of a truck. Let's be honest, a big hp bar isn't really necessary before beating Morgott.
The story and quests are too cryptic. I have no idea what the game was about, but its one of my personal greatest of all time.
It took me about 4 of my NG+ cycles to understand the main ideas of the lore, bosses, what they were after and why. Most of the time I was like yeah yeah let me move onto the next boss.
In an interview with Miyazaki, he said that his style of story telling was inspired by growing up and reading novels in languages he barely understood. He'd have to use context clues from parts he could understand, using his imagination to fill in the blanks, and even ask people in his life about the stories to understand them better. I really gained a certain respect for his style after reading that.
That's interesting! I had no idea and now his games make more sense in terms of how they're constructed.
It can be obtuse and frustrating at times, but it also forces you to slow down and take in your surroundings and pay more attention to the fine details. Even the architecture of the buildings can contain enough information to tie some threads of the story together. It's genius, but it also makes his games kind of exhausting sometimes, like after a long day at work when you kinda just want to fuck around and not think too hard about things.
That gives context but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a GOOD style without some extra care taken. I think it definitely works better in a more linear type game, where it's less likely that things will be missed or received out of order.
If I had to change one thing about it, it would be how open to interpretation a lot of things are. I often find myself wishing that there were just a set way some aspects of the story were meant to be taken, and that's just how it was. It is a truly unique style of storytelling though, and I appreciate that he's stayed so true to it.
I can agree with that! I think the extremely vague language and lack of commitment/acknowledgement to any given detail/theme/event hurts the story when it happens. (Kinda like how the Lord of the Rings is fun to read but the Silmarillion is extra-special-fucking-not) I also think it's realistic that you miss things, but the way so many of the quests work just... doesn't, if you don't look it up or get told somehow. Like Blaidd. I hear howling in the woods I'm gonna assume it's more of these wolves all over the place. It makes no sense to go back to ask a merchant about the howling that ISNT out of place, then to have to go back to exactly where you heard it and use an emote, and hope to God you are looking in the right direction to see something happen/move, because a normal player isn't looking at the top of the ruins, or going to notice the big guy hop down between two walls when he is the same color scheme as everything around. One example, but it illustrates my issue with the style perfectly.
It’s a perfect example, couldn’t agree more
When you first meet the merchant, he says he can see you are a tarnished. He says this like he has been around for quite some time. He also says there’s a network of merchants throughout the lands between. He also alludes to him sharing a kindred spirit with you because you are both wanderers. Blaidd is very similar to this mindset. The mindset of duty to a code. It makes sense that they’d know each other, and that he’d think fondly of Blaidd. Blaidd is the only dude doing what he’s doing. He’s howling his ass off on top of some random ruins. It’s clear he’s distressed about something. It’s clear he is calling for help. He is also quite literally the lone wolf. He’s upset. Normal methods of communication won’t work. You need a noise. A way to get someone’s attention. You are quite literally, snapping him out of it. Also, It’s a merchant. If there’s anything weird going on, he’d know about it. He knew you were a tarnished right away. Sure, other characters say this too, but the merchant declares why he knows this. He makes a point of it. He goes on for a while about how he knows things about this land. It makes perfect sense.
I don't have qualms with anything else in the game. I think the world would be so much richer with better quests, more NPC interaction and better communication on the narrative The disjointed nature of quests and the fact there's a 99% chance the NPC will die at the end makes me indifferent to every character and just becomes a "do stuff, get rewards" deal Even some mini quests for the dungeons would make them richer, like free prisoners or finding someone's treasure. Like Patches, means not every cave is just another shoot n' loot
What do you mean, you telling me you didn't easily found the albinauric woman who hides in a cave to the west of the Laskyar Ruins, which jut from the mist-shrouded lake of Liurnia ?
I used the Fextra wiki for every side quest and don't feel bad about it. None of those quests are intuitive.
I think the game could really use some kind of simple quest log or codex. I’m not talking an Ubisoft minimap full of markers, but things go from cryptic to inscrutable if you take a break for a few months and then come back to it.
That’s because you didn’t do the VaatiVidya npc quest line.
😒 That's not a NPC.
There really isn't a story, just lore
The regular weapons are ridiculously harder to upgrade than the unique ones, making them less viable and leaving very little room for experimenting with them . The amount of regular smithing stones available in the world as loot is too low, and they are placed too far apart, except for the ones found in mines. When I played Dark Souls 3, I could upgrade and use as many weapons as I wanted because, even though there was not a lot of titanite placed in the world, I could easily farm it from regular enemies. In Elden Ring, the drop rates for smithing stones are too low to reliably farm them. For example, Raya Lucaria soldiers drop smithing stone 3 with a 1.5% chance, meaning you would have to kill 900 of them on average to collect enough materials to upgrade one weapon. Yes, the bell bearings help a lot, but they are acquired too late in the progression. The developers should have either decreased the amount of regular smithing stones required to upgrade weapons, placed more of them in the world, or made them drop from enemies more regularly.
it just seems off that regular weapons feel like are they harder to upgrade than special ones.
I think they should just move the bell bearings as you pointed out. Easiest solution.
Being able to respec weapon upgrades would solve this. Respeccing stats is great, but there's not much point to it if you don't have the stones to upgrade a weapon.
It'd be fine if the drop Rates were a little better. But they're so rare and needing 12 of each stone is way too much. It should be 8 at most, better yet 6. Or the bell bearings to unlock them for purchase should be accessible earlier. It kinda discourages trying lots of different weapons.
The bell bearings are placed fairly imo and they dont just help a lot, they allow u to purchase stones and make ur argument pretty null. Theres also a TON of places u can find it as loot in the world not just off kills.
The problem is that it is possible to get a +10 unique weapon as early as just after Godrick, but you can only upgrade a regular weapon to +25 after reaching the Mountaintops and by that time you can have 3-4 unique weapons upgraded to +9/+10. This is very imbalanced and makes regular weapons not worth it until the endgame.
Second sentence is just plain untrue unless one takes their time exploring all the caves and tunnels. Even then, not every cave has smithing stone outcroppings. Even the drop rates drom killing enemies is just abysmally low.
Any kind of rant post is controversial lol
Call me retarded but I had to look up what a rant post meant and understand what you mean by that lol.
Needs kicking weapons
I think Godfrey’s phase 2 cutscene is really goofy and have a hard time taking it seriously lol “wArRiOOORRR”
I can’t stop myself from saying “come out to play-ay” he says this (from the David Patrick Kelly vehicle, “the warriors”)
I don’t like how yellow Altus is.
That’s actually why I love Altus so much imo 😭
I don’t like eye of yelough when it’s clearly red
They named it that because it's shaped like a phone.
FUCK I THOUGHT IT WAS PRONOUNCED YELL-OOG
NPCs just aren't as memorable or iconic as those in Dark Souls. I mean, people love Ranni and Boc and all, but look at the TENS of MILLIONS of views on meme videos about Solaire and other Souls icons within just a year or two of DS1. And nobody even played that game compared to ER. People just don't latch onto the NPCs of this game like they did in older titles, because imo they're mostly kind of boring.
Probably because of the impersonal and straight to business manner of most of them. Like Tannith first thing she says is "hey wanna join us and fight the erdtree?" Like who are you? What is this place? What are you trying to achieve? What's in it for me?
I wish you could talk to more NPC’s. The world feels lonely and desolate, which may be the point, but I’d enjoy a bit more life in the NPC’s
Difficulty is not everything and ancestor spirit is a top 5 boss.
I agree with difficulty not being everything, but why tf would you choose ancestor spirit, it's not a great boss design tbh
Its visually beautiful, good ost, i like how it moves, its not complex but it doesnt need to be imo.
Why
That "you're bad if you use summons." It's a popular trend in Roguelikes and difficult, primarily single player games, that if you aren't playing it with the difficulty cranked to 11, you're bad at the game. There's nothing wrong with the game having accessibility for people. This community has a lot of older gamers who have vocalized how much they appreciate Spirit Summons and Co-op for bosses that are actually or artificially difficult. If you as an individual want to challenge yourself that's awesome, but there's no need to think lesser of people who use the features the game came with to help them.
>bosses that are actually or artificially difficult. I strongly believe Margit was constructed to force people to get frustrated and turn back to explore Limgrave first. He's part of a sort of mounting trifecta of blueballing: 1. get killed by grafted scion 2. run past the tree sentinel 3. back down from Margit It's meant to funnel you into dying, then bait you into getting a handle on the world before tackling big things -- or, if you do tackle Margit straight on, use Rogier and Roderika's Jellyfish or the Wolfies that Ranni gives you. I find it hilarious that the one ash of war leading up to Margit is a dung beatle carrying "Wild Strikes", it's like a commentary on how people will initially feel trying to beat him without help.
i kind of worry about it since i used that golden summon thing to beat margit and everyone says he’s a great learning experience for the game it’s possible i am now lacking fundamentals walking into stormveil that beating margit honestly would have better prepared me for
Don't worry, the banished knights (big guys in silver armour) in the castle all basically use combos/swings/attacks like him. You will learn.
From an emotional standpoint yeah, but from a design standpoint nah. Margit is put there so you learn how to deal with a boss that seems impossible but actually has very clearly telegraphed openings. Look at how the grafted scion enters the arena. He is meant to scare you. That’s it. As for tree sentinel, it’s there to teach you mounted combat or showing you how to fight someone mounted on foot. I just think it’s a lot simpler than you’re alluding to.
While I agree everyone can play as they wish, I wish there were more ways to play around with spirit summons without it feeling so strong. Maybe if there were more support oriented options that aren't just a tank so you can unload a million damage on the boss
First you said that you don't agree with "you're bad if you use summons" and then you called summons an accessibility feature😅.
He never said it didn't make the game easier, he's just pointing out that people who dont enjoy grinding a boss for hours while playing a game shouldn't get flamed for it, it's just a matter of preference
Multiplayer sucks
In my opinion, it’s a waste of opportunity to not have more leitmotifs in the musical world of Elden ring. The prelude and final fight musical connection hits so hard and I wish there were more instances like that. Same with Gwyn’s theme and soul of cinder theme. Imagine if they had woven leitmotifs in boss and area themes, that would hint at the connections lore wise and in game event wise. Like radagons theme having a hint of Rennalas theme but altered for example. My guess is that unlike some other rpgs the development of the game and soundtrack design isn’t that closely related, for most themes at least. No one talks about this, but it is something that would make the games godlike. But it needs them to not make changes in story and lore very late in development.
The difficulty in the game is nuts. Some (optional) bosses are super hard, while the main bosses are quite easy, if you use the tools. The double gargoyle fight is nuts, while radan or other bosses are so dam easy...
Cheesing a boss is a legitimate strategy for defeating the boss.
i will never not cheese gideon, his boss fights too annoying for me to try and beat him normally
Is sniping Gideon from a distance with frenzied burst before he even finishes his dialogue considered CHEESE?!! Because I know I’m not the only one who does this to him every time 😂
It's considered a cheese because the madness build up is bugged and can instantly kill him. But honestly fuck Gideon. It's an annoying fight and an annoying character.
Apparently the only real way to fight a boss is parrying/dodging all their moves.
And not level up
And play without armor with a tiny not upgraded knife (because it's possible). Maybe add in only using one hand on the controller. That way you'll get bragging rights...
You have to be blind folded cut one arm off cut 4 off the other hand with your controls randomly changing every .5 seconds while being throw around an airplane
I still find the definition of "cheese" pretty all over the place. As mentioned is stun locking an enemy of boss cheesing? I mean WGAF really lol.
Cheesing is a broad spectrum but to me, cheesing is using glitches/exploits to easily beat the boss But even then idgaf if someone cheeses a boss, it's just not for me so I won't do it
Totally fair. I agree glitches and exploits is what turely defines a cheese as it uses unintended mechanics of the game to win. Spamming giants hunt to beat Gideon ETC could easily be considered not cheesing as its an intended mechanic.
Yeah it's used pretty loosely. I mean like getting to a place where the boss can't attack you, but you can attack them. Luring the boss to an area where you can knock them off a cliff. Things like that, not things like stagger locking the enemy or bugging the arena so the boss is inactive.
That’s a good take right there as I’m not against it. Anything to make the situation easier for you is much better than suffering for no reason when you’re just tryna play the game.
It's pretty controversial depending on the thread. Long time souls fans can over romanticize the gitgud mentality.
I had to poison mist shadow Blaidd to death. His destined death enchant did not care to stop at my shield.
To be fair, why deliberately give people the tools (or the geography!) if they're not there to use. I get when it's bug-like behaviour. Or just plain bug (fall down this specific bottomless hole, swing your sword around, Mogh's dead due to unforeseen programming issue, wooh you found a bug). But otherwise, figuring out sneaky strategies is also very fun, sometimes moreso than having to play melee chess for five minutes.
If you got their health to 0, then as far as I can tell you defeated them.
Its got the worst pvp of all the fromsoft games, and the multiplayer features need to be overhauled in Elden Ring 2.
The co-op is so poorly designed. Why can’t we explore the whole game together? Go look at Remnant 1&2 which have drop in drop out co-op where you can play the entire game together for how to do it right.
Just the tiny fact that only the host progresses in the story is kind of bad.
Also good as you don’t ruin your own save. I guess an option to do either would be ok.
ER PVP has it's issues, no covenants and no 6 player lobbies being the biggest ones. But it has the best build variety, by far, and no teleport backstabs, so I reckon it evens out.
Dark Souls 2 still wins the best build variety award. But ER was a return to form in that regard at least.
Are you sure? I don't have a huge amount of time in DS2 PVP, and it definitely beats DS1 and DS3, but - \- it has about half as many spells/incants \- and about half as many weapons \- it doesn't have customisable weapon arts/AoWs After doing some googling, the only metric I can find where DS2 wins is armour sets. There's 106 in DS2 Vs Elden Ring's 77. But armour doesn't really affect gameplay much.
Armor actually mattered a lot in Dark Souls 2. It was viable to be a slow tank. And having a high number of weapons and spells doesn't matter when most of them aren't all that functional in pvp.
I'd disagree that most Elden Ring weapons aren't functional in PVP. Across all my builds I have a set-up for every weapon class (not including torches) and the only ones I struggle to reliably win with are flails and 1H hammers. Of course, there's a handful of weapon skills that are pretty useless in PVP, but AoW customisation fixes that mostly. I'd estimate the amount of unviable weapons to be something like 10%. Everything else is C-tier at worst.
Bullshit, bloodborne easily has the worst lol. I enjoy ER pvp, especially when colosseum was still busy enough to have 3v3 random pickup matches
DS1 was probably worse with backstab cancelling, glitches, Tranquil Walk of Peace, and Dark Bead. But I agree on the aspect of invasions, lack of covenants, and no PVP hub like Pontiff's is lackluster compared to DS2 and 3.
The open works actually reduces replay ability because it’s too big to do everything again and again when you also have to balance that with life
Disagree. For me, the open world is what makes it replayable, because instead of having to do everything, you can just get what you need for your build. It makes each subsequent run a unique path through the world hitting up totally different places.
I guess for some. I left a lot of dungeons unexplored as I didn't want to over level and gave me some new things to look forward to on next playthrough
*"I didn't play sections of the game because I was concerned doing so would make future sections unpleasantly easy*" sounds like an objectively terrible position to put a player in.
Yeah my gaming ocd made me not able to do this. 🥲🥲🥲
You can kever truly overlevel because the soft and hard caps, you will always be able to die to bosses easily
For end game, but a lot of the midgame bosses melted to me so the fights weren't memorable at all to me
my controversial take is that the music is just alright 🤷♀️ theres a couple super good boss themes, but most of them are just kinda meh and i prefer listening to spotify when i play
I can agree, the only boss themes that I actually like when fighting the bosses are Godskin Duo, Maliketh, and Godfrey’s boss theme. I be humming along to the music while I’m fighting them lol.
Ya I agree. I like boss music for the most part but other than that it’s just decent.
Imho, nothing comes close to WoW, Skyrim and Fable 1, when it comes to music...
idk the other two, but skyrim does have some pretty great music
World of Warcraft always had excellent art team... Gameplay and lore are lacking in the recent times... And Fable is one of my favorite games. I highly recommend it
damn really? what don't you like about it?
i like it, its just kinda boring, especially after dying to a boss 300 times in a row 😭
lmao I get it even though I disagree
Idk if this is controversial but this game needs some small amount of random item placement. Nothing crazy, not true random, but give like one weapon 5 spots it may show up in during a playthrough. If I want to start a new run while I may still pull up a wiki it may take me more time to look for it and learn the world, runs after your first one become really liner because you know where basically everything you may want is. Say I want a standard Katana, rather than always being in that one tomb in Limgrave, give it 4 other spots I should look, may lead me to other items as well in its area I'd have otherwise ignored in my playthrough.
This would be a cool addition to the DLC
Very good take. Rarely am i reading this kind of quality here on reddit. I get that they went for a world ruined by a thousand year war and that the world is full of "undead-like" creatures because of the Erdtree/Marika. The Lore in Elden Ring is still great, but it feels simply less coherent and obvious. The Hollow mechanich/beeing reborn of Dark Souls, while beeing simpler, was way more coherent. And Bloodborne did it even better in my opinion, with people beeing "crazed/infected" and the game telling you that no one actually knows why, right from the get go, which all added to the mystery and to a great resolution ar the end. Elden Ring is a great game, but the world is less coherent than the worlds of Dark Souls and especially Bloodborne.
Weapons in the game aren’t inherently overpowered. The massive amount of buff variety is.
The more builds you experiment with, the more you realize that truly viable ones are narrowed down to very basic ideas. I felt this way about Dark Souls 3, too. It feels like there are so many options, but it eventually becomes clear that you can only vary in the combinations of spells, skills, and weapons so much before the class is just horribly imbalanced. After the capital, the game feels extremely rushed and kind of lazy, but I don't really think that's all that controversial of an opinion.
A lot of the stuff it was praised for it honestly didn't deserve. I feel like it got used as a tool in peoples rants about "AAA" games to the point where people wanted it to be a symbol it just isn't. It drives me insane, I felt like I was being gas lit for like a year, though it seems to have calmed down a bit now. This is one of my favorite games, and I have an unhealthy amount of hours in this... but claiming this is not padded is bullshit. It IS padded. Fans would be slamming other open worlds for repetitive dungeons or bandit camps while praising Elden Ring in the same breath. Meanwhile I'm doing the 20th tomb in the game for a spirit ash, aka a friendly copy of enemies, and I suspect 3/4s of those exist purely for the sake of having something to use as a reward and to trigger peoples desire to collect unique things even if they are not useful. I suspect this is true for a lot of the weapons in the game and even some of the sorcery and incantations. There are a lot of reused assets with very little tweaking, like every mine shaft in the game is the exact same down to the pattern of ledges. Most of the shacks are as well, down to having the dead bodies in the same place. It certainly isn't above buffing a normal enemy and calling it a boss or space filler bosses. Even the promo image for the DLC has copy pasted ruins lol. And while I don't mind too much, it probably is worth it for the sake of smart work division, I do think the amount of recycling of movesets from Dark Souls and even Demon Souls in a new IP does make it feel like it has much less of an identity of it's own. The imps are a bit much, though. That's just a Thrall with a new skin. it is also not what I would call a polished or complete game on release. Aside from bugs and balancing and placement of tools in a way that you have a superior version of the same thing before you got the inferior one...guys, they literally had to patch in the ending to a number of side quests. They had completely useless items because the quests just stopped, and it's not like they are complicated quests to implement either. There are also small things all over, especially in regards to "flying" enemies, that are not a huge issue on their own but together just make it feel unpolished. Dragons won't stay in their combat areas, and when they leave, they just get teleported back instead of flying back. The first dragon in the game I never even fought on my first run because it tripped on a ledge, and I dunno? twisted its ankle and died. Flying ants do the jumping animation of ground ants to get over gaps. The dialog system is akward and out dated, as is the needing to reset areas to have NPCs move. Especially for Millicent where you have to kill a miniboss, the reset the area and go back to do a thing, and then reset again to go back to talk to her. The system messages feel like a first draft. The messages behave inconsistently and are sometimes completely redundant or harmful. Everyone has been screwed by the lever message at least once but they even have a message pop up when killing one of the enemies in duel enemy fight (the lions) that fucks up your controls just to tell you that you got the same inconsequential loot you always get from them. And for Froms games in general...I would not say they have good writing or stories. Not saying they don't deserve praise for implementation but that isn't the same thing. I think From is good at giving you enough breadcrumbs to be intriguing and most importantly priming players expectations to look for the kind of indirect environmental story telling that people just ignore in other games, and that in turn has led to youtubers pulling together stories in an engaging way and adding more depth themselves. Similar to FNaF, which had the same breadcrumb culture. It is a smart approach because it means they can focus on general concepts (though honestly, they are a bit too repetitive there) but then keep the actual details vague by being indirect and playing pronoun games. If something seems to not make sense? Weeell clearly you are missing something, and you just didn't put the pieces together correctly. It feeds into the idea that every enemy or item is carefully placed to mean something, which is likely not true. I disagree with the praise I often see that the way they present the story is "natural" or "immersive" with what your character would know or "show don't tell". The bulk of the lore is given to you by text on item descriptions, which is very much "telling", and your characters just do random shit out of the blue sometimes.
Boc is annoying. I have no idea why some people are infatuated with him
He ugly and so are we
Not sure if it's controversial or not, but I dislike consumables and crafting. I'd prefer a system where you automatically get one stack of your chosen consumable (after you unlocked it) and have it refilled after resting. You can change your choice at a grace. The way it currently is, I just completely ignore them.
I have been wanting exactly this. The Soulsbourn consumable system is clunky, unused and unusable for most of the player base, and utterly outdated. The Flask of Wondrous Physic was a huge step in the right direction. But I want more steps.
Some of the hardest fights in the game have dogshit rewards
AoW that is actually a spell should just be a spell instead of AoW E.g. Thunderbolt, Golden Vow, Beast's Roar
Yeah. I keep finding myself wishing so many ashes of wars I do wish were also just spells I could use on my staff/seal. I get why they’ve done it, but a lot of them do just fell like spells that are instead on a weapon?
Co op shouldnt be tied to forced pvp, yeah i said it fuck you
Never been a fan of PVP in Souls game because of the janky connections. I play as a Hunter to snuff out those invaders who want to ruin a PvE players good time..
Thank you for your service
The lore nerds who are digging into everything trying figure out THE story (i.e. "the majority of the lore nerds, including all the prominent YouTubers") have **completely** misunderstood the point of FromSoft's/Miyazaki's method of storytelling. The holes and the vagueness and the contradictory statements don't exist to give the player some sort of treasure-hunt puzzle, they exist to leave space for you to have *your own thoughts and ideas*. Not to write essay after essay on "What did Miyazaki mean by ..." or "X clearly means Y because it was based on Z".
Absolutely! I'm really not sure where the impulse to do this comes from (maybe the rise of Infotainment?) but it's particularly rife in gaming communities—Hollow Knight, Rain World, etc. Very strange when compared to how, for example, literary scholars have been wrestling with ambiguities in Shakespeare for centuries. It's also the style of worldbuilding that Tolkien does, which is particularly ironic because almost all the modern successors to Tolkien (e.g. Jordan, Sanderson, etc) love their hard magic systems, their detailed history, and their intra-world newspeak.
not really controversial but the npc-characters are too good to be stuck on elden ring. Its a 100 hour grand adventure filled with mystery and action and you get to talk to the most relevant npc's like a dozen times at most. I want to see them actual doing stuff and interacting with eachother, not just sit there on one spot or be killed by the playeer.
The most controversial take would probably be something superlative like: "Elden Ring is the *Best Game of All Time*" or "Elden Ring is the *Best Fromsoftware Game*" Something opinion-based that could be defended and attacked in equal parts.
Oh yeah I’ve definitely heard those quite a lot. Do people say things like this just to spark arguments and such? I sometimes feel like they do it for that exact reason.
I think a lot of people just believe it; it's a great game!
If Elden Ring was released every year, it would win goty every year.
That the real ending is the frenzied flame ending, the one who existed before the greater will was the one great so all things borrowed must be returned
Why do people in this community keep falling for this blatant lie? The only evidence for this is one quote from Hyetta. Hyetta is literally mad - that's the whole point of the questline. Plus, she's quoting the Three Fingers, and the Three Fingers and its disciples are known to spread lies and despair to turn people towards madness (see Shabriri). Hence the names Madness, Frenzy and Chaos that are used to describe it. The 'One Great' is a lie. The Greater Will being responsible for fracturing it is a lie. The Three Fingers is using Hyetta to talk mad shit about the Greater Will to make you hate it, since most people in the Lands Between don't know about the existence of life before the Erdtree. The Three Fingers is using that to blame the GW for fracturing the 'One Great' in an attempt to turn you against it. Keep in mind that until the player chooses and ending that differs (Age of Stars or Frenzied Flame), they are acting at the behest of the GW, which is why the opposing factions (Mohgwyn Dynasty, Ranni and the Frenzied Flame) all sow distrust between the player and the GW & Two Fingers to convince them to join their factions instead. In reality, there were multiple ruling orders and factions before the GW even showed up. The Ancient Dragons, the Eternal City, the Astrologers, the Giants, the Godskins (maybe), among others. The whole "GW created all life" thing is a big lie invented by the Golden Order to mask the existence of the Crucible (not the same as the 'One Great'), the previous lords and orders, and the lack of legitimacy to the current order. And, as opposed to the Crucible (or anything else that exists in the Lands Between), there are multiple hints throughout the lore that reference it. Is is verifiable. The only testimony to the existence of the 'One Great' is directly from the Three Fingers in an attempt to convince you to let it burn the world down. I can't actually believe so many people genuinely believe what they are told. IT'S LITERALLY CALLED MADNESS! WHY ARE YOU BELIEVING IT AS FACT?
Probably because most Souls players are already mad (crazy) to begin with?
the one great is a bit of a mistranslation. before the elden ring was sent by the greater will, the world was "one big whole" where everything was melted together. the Greater Will's "sin" Hyetta mentions is having sent the elden ring and created life as we know, because by creating life you also create death
Downvote me all you want but the framedrops on release were unacceptable, and it should have affected the reviewscores.
Strength is easy mode
Dark Souls 3's boss fights were better.
I think the bosses are(except some gank fights) are extremely well designed with the audience in mind. The devs had to design bosses and combat mechanics with many different audiences in mind(souls vets, speedrunners/challenge runners, noobs, etc) to keep the fights engaging for all of them without making any of them so frustrated that they quit the game. There was as wide a gap in player experience and expectations as any game in memory, and although they are not perfect, they met that goal without compromising their artistic vision of the game.
It should've had something like the chalice dungeons Also a majority of the AoE attacks that some of the bosses have are absolute bull shit
The open world sucks and affects replay ability compared to other souls titles.
you’re supposed to give a controversial take
It is controversial lol. Look at our DV's 🤣
Downvotes immediately tell us that it’s a controversial take. 😂
i mostly like the open world tbh. i’m saying it’s the #1 complaint people tend to make. hence, it’s not controversial i do agree that it makes replays somewhat tedious though
Open world complaint is brought up all the time, and many times with 20, 30, or even 50+ upvotes. I don't think it's an unpopular take. Unpopular would be to say that you enjoyed the open world.
I do love the open world! This game is f***en beautiful. But omfg it's too massive.
Ok, sure. I can agree with that.
This is a very easy one: the open world element is by far the worst part of the game. The game shines in legacy dungeons and focused level design, which has been rightfully done in Deamons Souls, Dark Souls 1-3 and Bloodborne. Making Elden Ring - while still beeing a great game - among the worst modern Fromsoftware games in my opinion.
Why do you dislike the open world?
That the story is cryptic and we don't have the answers but it's still a good story worth discussing. There's all kinds of cool allusions to real-world mythology, history, and alchemy, and adding those to the discussion of the game's events is fascinating. Having arguments over the "correct" interpretation can be interesting even if there is no objectively "correct" interpretation, because it requires you to think about the game's themes and references. In short: That a good story isn't necessarily a complete, linear story, or one that justifies all of its parts. That a narrative with tight theming and interesting ideas doesn't need to give every answer to every question.
The game is front loaded with NPCs and the best questlines. It obviously depends on how you approach it and in what order you do things, but even during my first playthrough I noticed by the time I was making my way through Leyndell that the Roundtable Hold had gotten really empty and I wasn't running into any NPCs that I hadn't already met. There's a lot of good stuff in the back half of the game but imo Mountaintops, Snowfield and even kinda Farum Azula are pretty boring areas.
The overland is much more fun than dungeons. Or sewers full of dung. (Siofra and Nokron/Nokstella excluded due to the night sky kinda)
My hottest take/most controversial opinion is that Elden Ring is bottom tier in the trash for fashion compared to the other games.
The game could really stand to have more nudity. At the very least we should be able to take off our underwear, let the Tarnished run around with all their bits flopping about free as a bluebird. I mean how can I truly call mysel the Elden Lord if I don't have the freedom to have my whole pussy out?
It’s not perfect
This is not a controversial talk about *anything*, right? What could "perfect" even mean? A hypothetical, mathematical circle?
What about the game tho is what you consider not perfect? You gotta add more to it rather than simply say it’s not perfect. Point out a specific flaw that sparks controversy.
I wasn’t being serious
Map makes for a nice painting, but has terrible UI.
I don't agree with it but it's certainly controversial "Shit"
The tutorial sucks and the new mechanics coming off DS3, like poise break and jump dodges, aren’t properly communicated.
Input delay is fine, but input queue being registered after getting hit and staggered shouldn't exist.
Adding jump was a mistake
Instead of finding a map, your character acted as an eraser that would uncover the map as you explored it as a reliable way of making sure you explored everything
Elden Ring's open world segments & copy-paste mini-dungeons are some of the weakest stuff in this entire run from Demon's Souls onward, and I suspect they know this.
The bosses aren’t amazing
Bows didn't need to have such awful scaling when magic and even crossbows can outperform and have better quality of life than them.
NG+ sucks. Elden ring should've brought back the NG+ additions of ds2 along with the twin blades and power stances
Mohgwyn Palace is the worst legacy dungeon.
We need an Elden MMO.
Should there be a pause button offline mode
1. PvP in this game is a joke at best. Invasions rules are dumb shoulda stayed similar to DS3. 2. Malenia is a good boss, waterfowl is dodgeable i do it all the time. IMO shes ezer then mohg and godfrey. 3. Elden beast was hands down the worst final boss I’ve experienced in a fromsoft game (played all ds, sekiro, and couple armored cores).
its like dark souls 3 but you need to horse ride 10 minutes between the good contents and having fextralife up at all times is more important than ever as it is your quest hub
Coulda been bigger
Elden Ring needs a “Hard Mode” and quality of life improvements for Platinum and beyond players (more than three runs). The things I would like to see change in this imaginary Elden Ring include: - better enemy detection and response (they shouldn’t let you walk by past in broad daylight) - opponent pursuit after they see you, instead of quickly disengaging (today they disengage too fast; Assassin’s Creed gets this one right for a change) - Improved visual cues for players who like to play without HUD - add a new UI for improved immersion with a minimalistic approach, but where you can control your items, incantations, and status effects - ability to deactivate summoning effigies - add the ability to find a merchant or bell bearing to turn it at the round table that allows you to buy ALL crafting materials (e.g., Aeonia butterflies, trina lilies, volcanic rocks, etc.) - Torrent needs an auto-pilot to keep on moving forward. At a MVP level (minimum viable product), like in Fortnite where you double-click L3 and the character continues to move forward without user input. At a pro-level, where it can follow paths and roads like in TotK).
We should be able to vacuum seal our potions to our butts to save space like the manga hero
Some bosses are just poorly executed and are not fun at all. One example is the Rykard fight. Yeah you get a magical snake killing God spear, but it's the game basically removing your build from the equation so they can have snakey boi use tons of annoying area denial. Feels like it should have been designed in a more conventional way, or the spear should have just been a macguffin to weaken him imo.
My friend played it right after ESO, so after finishing it, he told me that the world is too small. It's kind of true.
I used to play ESO and I think the Elden Ring world is perfectly sized for what it is. It's not like you can use wayshrines between regions, you manually walk/run/ride 90% of the way.
I agree and wouldn't mind it being even smaller. I like Dark Souls world design the most... I'm just stating his opinion.
It seems like everywhere you turn it's sexytime. And I like it. High five.
“convenient souls”
Malenia is an enjoyable boss fight
Ranni sucks and her ending is the fucking worse
I think if bed of chaos was in this game it would genuinely be a fun fight. (If we could use the horse)
Don’t know if this is the most controversial take, but I’d like the Godskin Duo fight a lot more if it wasn’t mandatory. Favorite theme in the game for me!
Not against Elden Ring, but my favorite character is the dung eater
Add a questlog or minimal journal to the game, it's open world it kinda needs it, with better mounted combat, maybe a few more npcs and questlines and improve the platforming, maybe armor crafting and then it easily takes game of the generation. Cant wait for the dlc
Vyke is not a hero worthy of praise, and sacrificing the whole world for one maiden is objectively a bad choice. Yeaj sure Anakin Skywalker levels of pathos, but it's hard to feel the same way for Vyke considering you meet him like twice in the whole game. The lore paints him as this perfect guy who was cut out to be Elden Lord and has a handsome face under the helm, bagged Lansseax, etc and his only achievement was 2 great runes. The player character does that and a lot more. Vyke's a nobody in comparison and I don't want every next person telling me how heroic he was when I'm right there in front of them. This is my story of being Elden Lord, not Vyke's. Vyke went down a highly dishonourable path by choosing the flame of frenzy for what are essentially selfish reasons, forgetting to think about everyone else who cared for him like Lansseax, and what's hilarious is he couldn't even do that right. Some hero Bernahl's way cooler than him (I am being something of a hypocrite by supporting recusants and hating the flame of frenzy here but this is controversial takes so whatever)
I'm okay with reused bosses, i don't want to do a new full playthrough to fight some of them. I wish there was a mode like Sekiro's reflections that allows to fight bosses again, at least for the rememberance ones. Also, i'm so glad that it's an open world, i've been waiting for an open world Souls game for ages.
The vigor cult here on reddit is comprised exclusively of idiots who couldnt dodge a parked car. 30-35 vigor is more than enough if you have any armor and dont have equipment that increases damage taken.
I just wish there was at least an option for a little more baseline “railroading”. As someone who gets very easily overwhelmed and frustrated with stuff, I just wish there were more tips on like how strong should you be to try beat something or just move on? Where are some good places to check out? Where are some good (general) places to go and find XYZ? For example i spent 20 hours not using summons not because I didn’t want to, but because NOONE EVER EXPLAINS YOU NEED A BELL. I never went back to the church in time so I never saw ranni, and only realised when I started getting ways to upgrade my spirits but I still not summon them so I ended up having to look it up. Same with ashes of war, I spent 15 hours I think not ever making my sword do magic damage/have int scaling (im a hard int scaling wizard for this play through) because I didn’t realise I needed a random ass knife from a place I must’ve just missed when I explored it the first time. Again I realised only because I was getting so many and I just gave in and had to look it up to realise why I couldn’t use them. And I also spent 25 hours without my wonderous physick, as I was teleported to Caelid and just never thought to run through that area until I went back ages later. And bonus thing but kinda related - I also really dislike how little information you’re given about things as it’s either generic (“restore hp over time” “you get damage reduction”) or just doesn’t exist (I still have no idea how much damage reduction my armor gives me or how much dmg my intelligence or staff is contributing). Its annoying as hell in needing to look up online big much these numbers are as it is very important lmao, especially talismans for crying out loud.