My Final Thoughts on Elden Ring Pre-DLC

Yo, I just wanted to mention that discussions around this game can get extremely heated extremely fast. While it’s obviously totally cool to disagree with me or other commenters, let’s just to try to keep things somewhat civil.

Your first playthrough of Elden Ring is so magical. The exploration, the fights, the reveal of the underworld. So many moments.

I think Elden Ring revived that sense of wonder that videogames used to give a lot of people before. When I started my second playthrough I started noticing the parts of the game that weren’t as good. Still an incredible game. I’ll remember my first playthrough very fondly. This is why I’m so hyped for the DLC. Discovering everything for the first time will be lots of fun. Great video!

There's a shit ton of openings. It's just there's 5 types of openings and only one of which is turn by turns openings/obvious openings/dark souls openings. Jump heavy openings. Jump over the attack and do a jump hravy Delayed openings: Attack during windup and dodge. Superdelayed/position based: Walk/Run into the attack safe zone during windup, you can use windup time + recovery time as openings duration. They are the longest openings by far. Obvious openings/Turned based. Created openings: Using the enemies stagger and attacking faster then them from specific positioning at a very specific time of their animation where they don't have hyper armor. or animation whiffing, where you attack at a specific moment from a specific place so that the enemies attack whiff you by a few mm due to the exact animation. The 5th one is the hardest type, only seen consistently in the most insane types of challenge run, like malenia no hit fist only. It's usually a mix of all the other 4 openings + some special sauce. It's not really a distinct category. So 4.5 types of openings. And yes, recognising attacks super early so you can do the setup takes good reaction time but mostly you need to know the animation increadibly well. Some Ultra instinct martial artist future sight type shit. You need to be able to see the whole animation setup in your head clearly and have really good muscle memory. And other souls games don't have it as much. Their delayed attacks aren't slow enough to let you attack during windup (or at least its much rarer), and their super delayed attacks tracks more so there's less consistent safe spot. Also, other souls games have obvious openings be frequent enough that you don't need the other unless you are doing a super challenge run. You can bsat the game with a shit weapon and minimal healing and play aggressively and gets hit in very often and relies on obvious opening 80% of the times. Also, r1 spam is just the brdt thing due to a lack of formal posture system. So yeah, elden ring is really fucking hard to learn to get good at. (If you haven't beaten the game underleveled with lighload, and a no bleed/cold longsworrd, with minimal healing, you haven't leanred the games mechanic). And it's not a from soft elitist message. The boss are just really fucking hard and their ai is a massive puzzle. Without doing the challenge I named above, you can beat a boss with only understanding a very small part of their AI. Most people beat boss by doing a mix of using obvious openings and damage trading. And you won't know hoe much you tely on damage trading until you've done such a challenge. Sometimes, attacking right now can force you to take damage 3 move down the line. The Boss moveset has so much depth and optimal plays require you to recognise much faster then before, as you need to do something different then reacting and pressing circle. Waterfowl is the ultimate "you need to react quickly and do a complex setup to activate it." On a hardcore/reset run, it would be bullshit, but sometimes you'll just have to die to it and accept the bad rng. Because dodging it needs setup. There's a death range where you can't do the point blank dodge, and can't run away either. If there's walls, you might not be able to move to the correct space, or she might not whiff far enough and she'l kill you. I always play souls game light load longsword. And I try to beat the second run underleveled and using less healings. But on ER, you can't do that on a first run even with tips unless you are willing to die 500+ times to every boss. It's a challenge runs that makes you actually learn how to play the game well. It's something I recommend on a 3rd/4th playthrough. And it's not even that challenging a run. No heals is harder. No vigor is much harder. And lvl 1 is twice as hard as no heals. No heals had me dedicate 12-20 hours per boss. (Not godrick lol) And rl1 club made me need to do the same again. Draconic Tree sentinel, Radahn, Radagon... BTW, I recommend doing radagon with a single weak daggers on a squishy character (4 vig no damage resist). Learn to min max the damage you can do on each of his glowing yellow attacks before doddging. It's so much harder then you think, but god does it make you good at delayed openings. There's like 4 attacks, 2 of which are 2 parters. And So that's 6 attack, with each a different number of attack you can get in before you need to roll. And then there's also his recovery from these attacks. So that's 10 windows you need to learn and experiment to find the optimal numbers of hits you can get in. It also melts him. He's so fucking great.

Hell yeah man. Love this long form stuff keep going, your thoughts are really interesting and engaging

Maliketh is my favorite boss, not just in souls games but of all time. Morgott is a top 5 also. ER absolutely dropped the ball on gank fights. However, for me personally, as someone who's never really been a fan of these types of fights, it doesn't really bother me. Even the really good ones like Demon Princes are much lower for me than others. I've always said that with bosses like Pontiff I would have preferred a P2 1v1 with an expanded moveset rather than a simplified 2v1. All that to say that I agree with your take that ER excels at 1v1 encounters. Honestly, with the way the combat system works with weaving in attacks during boss combos to keep pressure on and maintain posture I'm not sure how well you can even make a duo fight. Fromsoft always finds a way to surprise us though so maybe in the DLC...🤷‍♂️

Most of the things you want from the DLC are things Miyasaki said will be there. The Shadow Lands will be more dense, Legacy Dungeons better interwoven with the overworld; we will learn of Marika's history, too.

I’m glad to see how your thoughts on the bosses have changed as the community has gotten more and more used to the bosses. They are hard to learn at first but I love fighting them in repeated pkaythroughs and is the main reason I replay the game

you just summarized all of my thoughts i had in the last two years regarding elden ring lol. great job man! really looking forward to the DLC!

I think it's cool Elden Ring tried out the open world format, and I wouldn't mind seeing it in another one of the souls games, but I don't want it to become a regular feature of the games.

My first playthrough of ER was the most amazing experience I’ve ever had with any form of media. I dreamed about it every waking and sleeping moment for 2 weeks straight.

I loved the first playthrough. Now i completed and finished ER 6 times and getting better at bosses and trying new weapons is still fun. Great game. 😁

For me, the replayability issue is not that the game is meaningless or redundant due to its size. It's just so big that restarting new character after new character is daunting. I love making cosplay builds, but the effort it takes to get one completed is enormous in this game. Especially if you need late game or end of quest items.

good video, voice and input on things, couldnt agree more! subbed

I beat this game 3 times and it was a magical experience every time, 200+ hours and my favorite game ever. Really hope the DLC has the same level of quality

7 weeks now. Can't wait.

Another banger video man

Great video, I think you made a very even-handed evaluation of the games strengths and weaknesses. In particular, I think you made the best review of the open world I've seen. My only real criticism is that I wished you talked about the stance break system. It's a big deal because it makes going for your most committal and stamina-consumimg attacks give the highest DPS possible without using spells or skills. But it also enables stunlocking certain boss with high stance-damage setups, so it's not a completely positive addition. In any case, great video, and I hope to see your videos on Shadow of the Erdtree when it comes out, as well as any other future videos you have planned.

you're my favorite fromsoftware reviewer. please keep making content. i got your notif bell turned on

I'm so grateful Elden Ring was my first FS game. I've been able to fall into it and absolutely fall in love, with nothing but thoughts about how cool this game is. It doesn't matter if anything said about the others is true. What matters is if it ruins your ability to enjoy an amazing game because you're stuck in making comparisons. You could argue that ignorance is bliss, but, I'd immediately pose the question, what was that last word? Bliss? Right, yeah, I'll take that one.