these games are about a bunch of helpless dying people transgressing fading norms that you help along by silently murdering everything
9 Likes
I think the sparse plot stuff in most From games works well because itās just general atmosphere and they only have like ten people in the game who matter, max. Elden Ring is basically just epic fantasy as a Dark Souls game and Iām not sure having 30,000 similarly named guys all going āheh heh hehā and not telling you where to go next actually works. I did some wiki-ing after reading some of the posts here and Iāve missed like 60% of the quests. I didnāt even know most of these guys had quests. The Ranni quest is pretty much the only one I finished and thatās because aside from the fact that it actively lies to you about where to go in the middle it is actually sort of straight forward and easily completed by going to new areas in the order you find them.
Iām with the consensus that I donāt know how to review this game. Itās a mess. Iām really glad I played it and that it exists but thereās just so much thatās absolutely mind bogglingly great mixed in with some of Fromās worst, most boring and frustrating content.
As for my own play through, I got to Blood Castle and Other Big Tree and was getting instantly one-shotted by enemies so I just put a podcast on and grinded out 25 levels. Iām now viable again and having fun. I killed the Blood Guy. I donāt know what his lore is about or why he has a Big Egg Husband. Iām not doing any more trash dungeons because I have 80 hours in this game and I just want to see whatever cool stuff is left and finish it. In conclusion, Elden Ring is a land of contrasts.
Edit: I only found Blood Castle because I donāt want to miss any huge cool areas so I looked it up. Itās outrageously missable even by From standards. A whole blight town sized area randomly accessed from a teleporter at the edge of a map area down a little path with no lore or context. Feels like they just forgot to work it into the game proper
6 Likes
Umbasa how many fucking gargoyles do I have to fucking fight this is idiotic.
3 Likes
you can get there by following a quest as well, a fact that i overlooked entirely and had to look up and even then the reward for the quest seems like it would unlock a door but instead you have to use it from your inventory to be teleported there
gameās fucking weird
As one of the resident Open World Enjoyers I really do appreciate that this game makes many of the same mistakes that every Open World game does but proves that you can make a pretty good game anyway just by likeā¦making cool shit?
Like, there are too many things to do in the world, much of it is irrelevant, it gets repetitive after a while, there is definitely a huge amount of fatigue to just thinking about how big this game is, etc. etc. But the fact is that thereās lots of Cool Stuff to look at, and that is enough for me to say I got what I wanted to out of this game
I guess what Iām saying is that instead of trying to design a āgoodā open world game, I think people should be trying to fit as many cool ideas into their open world game because open world games inherently kinda suck, so at least fill it with really cool shit. Use the opportunity to make dumb shit that you like.
7 Likes
yeah i feel this game transgresses even Banjo-Tooie with the obscure arbitrary backdoor entrances to sub-areas that you could see but not physically reach
i think iād be ok with it (it would be imaginatively spurring) if there were a consistent rule, such as the inaccessible areas always being higher elevation. but when it can be anywhere just feels like a designer making me jump through hoops
would like to strongly encourage folks to skip areas they arenāt interested in and Go With The Flow quest wise for your first run. trying to play this as a completionist right off the bat sounds agonizing. go ahead and miss a quest, itās fine
also re: one hits and armor being meaningless i would again encourage stacking more vigor and using a shield for your first run because you are learning the bosses and having the ability to make mistakes against bosses without losing your progress is great! fortification miracles also help turn big hits into survivable hits and only require 10 faith!
11 Likes
also i found crafting really valuable as a strength melee fighter, i didnāt have to go out of my way to find ingredients and was able to keep myself stocked with throwables and greases (i try to keep one weapon set to pure physical so i can grease my way thru surprises)
the various liver and cured meat items are also great for bolstering your defenses! i prefer using the fortification incantations since i put a couple points into faith for utility but these items are almost as good!
6 Likes
Iām in that late game people are complaining about. Barring the fact that itās bigger and longer, is it really any different from the Dark Souls series?
Hereās the B material, returns are beyond diminished, itās still better than other games, nothing will wrap up when I want it to, Iāll persevere if only through a sense of obligation, there will be a couple more cool things.
4 Likes
my problem is i keep running into walls where iām like āokay what the fuckā, like the Three Sisters area being completely abandoned because one guy randomly got mad at me in the woods like 45 miles away, and there being no indication that this is related at all?
Iām just fully looking up Whatās Up now because I have no idea what Iām supposed to be doing. Without that, I would have the following edges to press on:
- An abandoned tower that I have no idea why itās empty
- An elevator I need half a key for that I have no idea where to start looking
- An underground area that is completely kicking my ass so I assume is endgame content
- I could try and fight some tree guys I guess? They keep killing me right away though
- Uhhhhhh
So yeah I dunno, Iām glad this game is a little bit opaque because being dragged by the nose through an open world sucks but it does seem like there are some real weird decisions in the midgame. Am I even in the midgame? I have no idea.
5 Likes
Anyway this is me complaining about a game Iāve spent 50+ hours playing which is like those steam reviews that say āDONāT BUY THIS GAME THE DEVELOPERS DONāT CAREā from someone with 380 hours in it, i.e. very silly. Iām enjoying this game, I will have fond memories of it, I just am kinda fed up with it as well. I wish it was over, I guess?
2 Likes
oh for sure the quest trigger bugs like that are absolutely frustrating and i hope they fix them soon.
when i said ājust vibe with itā i meant more like the ones where youāre just supposed to run into an npc in 6 specific places and you just never happen to walk by them in place #2
4 Likes
Thanks I also looked up so I donāt miss this blood castle as I travel towards the end.
1 Like
I got absolution and 1 of the 3 people in Ranniās tower wasnāt there and I guess doesnāt exist cool.
Yeah what this game really gets right is itās just full of weird little ideas. Even if the big story stuff doesnāt really gel, I still enjoy rounding a corner and finding a weird camp of specific guys all crowding around a weird stone or whatever whose item description says āprecious to some kind of weird guy.ā Because itās at least a little story, you know? And I think that open world stuff works really well here through the entire game, and it beats the pants off meeting an NPC with 24 minutes of cinematic VO who tells you that heās going to mark your map with the locations of 127 weird stones you can find and exchange for unique armour pieces at his store or you can buy them with real American dollars.
But thereās no reason a game canāt extend to you some freedom and also put a bit more thought into its puzzle and quest design. After looking up the answer to the hereticās rise puzzle and realizing the problem was that A. the start of the puzzle is an arbitrary location far away and B. the indicator of where to go is invisible at night due to some FX rendering issues, I had a revelation that what often seems to be intentional laconic flavour in FromSoftās quest and puzzle setups actually might just be that this is something they donāt do very wellāa place where more or less they just havenāt moved on from the 90s and realized players arenāt just going to instantly know to go back to places they havenāt seen in 30 hours at exactly the right time with zero prompting.
Before this game I was playing Horizon: FWāa game that has moved as far as possible in the opposite open world direction as it is possible to goāand let me tell you there is no comparison in how much better Elden Ring is, warts and all.
If I were going to change some things about this game, honestly a log indicating characters Iād met and what theyād told me would be a good, more hands-off substitute for a ton of quest markers and checklists. Tighter design around puzzles and quests to the point where they were basically solvable without a wiki. Rebalancing the game with the expectation players arenāt going to be doing quite as much of the side content so it doesnāt suddenly spike in difficulty at arbitrary points. Also armour and items should be noticeably useful instead of having effectively subliminal effects. None of this stuff is game-breaking, but it could honestly have been better and when thereās so MUCH game it tends to pile up after a while.
5 Likes
I played this game past 3:00 a.m. on a work night yet again.
It seems like every time I revisit a place in the game I find a lot of things Iād missed before. And there are still some pretty large areas on the existing map I havenāt yet been able to reach.
Apparently Patches is supposed to become a merchant if you let him live. I have checked back several times and that never happened for me. But he did show up briefly in the Radahn fight, which is kind of funny. (I did not win the Radahn fight, or even come close.)
I did VarrĆ©ās quest (the guy by the Rose Church), which means I actually tried invading other players a few times. I still wish Iād get invaded at least occasionally, but I never play co-op except to get past some bosses.
4 Likes
i have appreciated having a space to discuss this game without being attacked by āITS THE BEST GAME EVERā people countered by āNO ITS NOTā people
thanks everyone
6 Likes
invading is weirdly fun, i did it like 7 times in a specific mine and half the time i got disconnected and the other half the time i died, except for the 1 remainder where the host died offscreen within 2 minutes of me invading
he probably moved to a different location by then
you can get invaded solo if you get the taunterās tongue, by jumping off the balcony at roundtable hold and fighting the guy down there
3 Likes
i invaded three times for varre and i managed to hit one person once for about a tenth of their hp bar