Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

Yesss, perfectly happy with how Dark Souls (except with added horse, jump button, wayfinding, stealth, and NPCs moving their mouths) this looks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JldMvQMO_5U

that looks really cool, definite Breath of the Wild things going on with it

Super cool, super glad this is coming out on PS4. Nice to see so much comfortably familiar stuff recycled from Souls/Sekiro games (and borrowed from BotW), plus new stuff.

Witcher RPG structure, Elder Scrolls sprawl, Dark Souls dialogue/lore/design/combat/UI and Breath of the Wild improv/central castle mechanic sounds like just what i'm looking for. just keep the stakes continually high and the procedurally generated shit minimal and you got me.

The summoning spirits thing seems intriguing, as is the absence of health bars and the like in those clips.

Oh the HUD is definitely just turned off for the demo, to make it look more cinematic I'm sure.

Ive never played Dark Souls (the way everyone talks about how hard it is put me off - I dont play games to get MORE stressed out). I love and still play Skyrim and BOTW, would I like this? It looks very nice.

The thing about Dark Souls and all its successors is that they're difficult in a very specific way; it's all about paying careful attention to things like the timing of your own attacks. It's not hard the way a bullet-hell game is hard. It's a slower-paced, almost meditative challenge. I didn't think I liked "hard" games either, but I did get pretty into DS1. I found it frustrating and I did eventually slide off it. A few boss fights aside, I didn't find it "stressful" exactly. YMMV of course.

That having been said, I'd love to see From embrace the recent trend of allowing players a temporary assist if they're stuck, a la God Mode in Hades, or the assist features in Celeste.

I think so? The difficulty of the games is way overstated imo, and this one is sure to be the most user-friendly version so far. It's more that you can't rush through or brute force it, at least not on a first playthrough. And there are so many different ways to approach the game, you can summon helpers and use magic from a distance if you don't want to get deep into the melee combat.

Forks otm...like, I get to enjoy the 'aimlessly riding around on a horse' mechanic of BotW and Red Dead Redemption, except when you get off the horse, it's Dark Souls? Yes please.

xp

Definitely overstated imo.... you mostly just have to pay close attention and remember things, and you're rarely put in a position where you can't take a breath (admittedly the only souls game I've played is demon's on ps3 but they apparently get easier from there)

To expand on X's point, I'd say the "taking a breath" aspect is a huge part of these games, eg. bonfires. The moments of peace and quiet are all the more delicious after having slogged through lugubrious combat

*part of the appeal of these games*

A lot of these games are indeed pretty meditative, in mood and design. They're lonely and emphasize exploration and experimentation. All the dying and setbacks become amusing after a while, with the reward being how easy stuff that once challenged you becomes later on in the game, as if to emphasize, "See? you've come so far!" The only real stress comes with the boss fights, imo, which is where the real challenges lie, with a few specific areas or enemy exceptions here and there. The bosses, on the other hand, both impede progress and are the least forgiving, plus are more or less the only enemies where you can see just how close you are to beating them while still dying. Or, you know dying in just a couple of seconds, which can be frustrating, too. Don't think I found any/many enemies in Dark Souls 1/3 or Bloodborne as annoying or frustrating as many of the enemies in Sekiro, though, but clearly different strokes, etc. Maybe I'm just blocking them out. I'm sure I can find some posts of mine to the contrary.

Also the boss fights are designed to psyche you out with their epic scale and music, but almost all of them are a matter of learning the boss's moves and how to avoid them, and picking your moments.

Yeah, I remember reading a recommendation that sometimes when you hit a wall, just turn off the sound. Though sometimes you miss certain cues when you do that. Regardless of moves or scale or whatever, there will always be some bosses that some people can beat with their bare fists blindfolded the first attempt, but you'll fight 50 times and barely make headway. I tend to get bored after a while more than frustrated, which is another reason to turn down or off the sound.

I definitely turn off the music sometimes (you can do that and leave the sound on).

!

Yeah! Just go into settings and there should be separate volume sliders for music and sound fx.

I never had a PS3 so it was interesting to come to the Demon's Souls remake after playing all the other games. Some of the levels, one bonfire and all, seem monstrously punishing compared to later stuff, but the bosses don't really have any capacity to surprise when you've been through all the more developed, multi-stage/gimmicky ones from later games

I beat most of them in one try so far

Didn't get a network test code :(

Tons of info & videos out there today from people who have early access. I'm trying to avoid spoilers for the most part, except for stuff about the mechanics.

Standing poise (instead of Dark Souls 3-style hyperarmor) = in (not sure how I feel about this)
Powerstancing (ie you can equip two weapons of the same type and get a different dual-wielding moveset) = in
Mixing your own combo potions that can make you explode = sure why not
Solo hosts can't be invaded unless they use a few items = ok, fine
Invaders get a compass to see what direction the host is = sick
Invaders also get an item to quickly vanish from the host's world and reappear nearby = oh my god

It really does seem like a blend of all their games plus a bunch of new stuff, can't wait.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzFR5HsPcng

all sounds cool. I have no problem with spoilers, because not only will I forget by the time I get it, I can't play any of these games without walkthrough help anyway lol.

i have the same problem/gift with forgetting everything! really comes in handy on very rare occasions

Just finished that video and have some thoughts. One, I've never played Dark Souls II because I've ... well, I guess I just skipped it, but I've heard mixed things (and there are essentially two versions of it, for that matter). But it is interesting that some of its elements have made their way to other games, despite its reputation as a disappointment. For example, as I understand it your health can be halved in DS2, and a similar mechanic was brought into Sekiro. And according to this video, power stances from DS2 have made their way to this one, too. Second, I've never used magic in any of these games, because choosing magic is like choosing an entirely different, novel way to play the game, and if you're only going to play it once I'm not sure magic is the way to do it. But maybe it is in this game, because magic looks super cool. Third, I really hope this plays well on PS4 (and other last generation systems), but I have a bad feeling between it being open world and generally newer than the past several From games it might really benefit from the speed and power of newer systems. That's one advantage of (as this video points out) From never being on the tech vanguard, because it means the games generally don't *need* next gen tech to run. (I know Demon's Souls is PS5 exclusive, but those that have played it, do you think it could run on a PS4?)

Anyway, I can already tell there are going to be a lot of funny videos generated by this game.

Oh, also, looks like you don't take fall damage when you jump, which would have been a very perverse thing for From to do, so I'm glad they didn't do it! Or at least, maybe there are height restrictions/allowances? And I like how there is environmental damage that can be done by at least bosses, which I know was in "Sekiro," though I can't recall if it was introduced there.

Demon's Souls is quite a tech showcase, it wouldn't have been able to run at that framerate on ps4, and some of the lighting/particle effects look like they would have been a big stretch too

I like Dark Souls 2 to some degree, some dispiritingly shit world design like the infamous Earthen Peak Elevator Jaunt travesty aside. It's like a difficult 3rd album that isn't among the classics but fits a certain mood when you happen to want it. I found the DLC far too much of a grim slog though

Elden Ring looks unreasonably good, can't wait

This game looks fun, and by early accounts the open world design is supposed to be good, but I can't help but wonder whether the openness actually adds much to the Souls formula. The main draw of the world design in DS1 (admittedly the only one of these I've played) was for me, its labyrinthine density. Eldenringland just looks kinda vast and drab to me.

i was moderately interested in this game, but after watching some of those videos posted above i am now EAGERLY ANTICIPATING. my only problem is i don't have a system for it, and i was leaning toward getting a steam deck rather than a ps5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9DWTt37khU

Fwiw, both videos note the difficulty of the first mandatory boss.

i showed the game a friend of mine who really likes dark souls, and he seemed to be a bit disappointed at first. i think he was thinking of it as a souls-like game, which, it is in some ways of course, very much so. but just being open world and adding jumping completely changes it. it reminds me of GTAIII or breath of the wild in terms of how those games were a departure from the games they built on

Souls-like.

And something else I was thinking about, given From's propensity for hidden walls/loot/enemies/NPCs/entire levels and/or alternate endgames, I wonder what that portends for an open world game? Gonna be a lot of OCD dudes slashing at every bush, rock or piece of foliage, looking for secret stuff, a la the first Zelda.

To be honest the open world part isn't particularly compelling to me. I do like the idea of all the new handcrafted zones that are the equivalent of large Dark souls areas, and a whole bunch of new build options and mechanics (and invasions, of course).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEypd23I0pQ

here's footage of the PS4 version - it seems like it runs without any serious issues or significant visual downgrades. i got into the network test on PS4 so i'll see how it is in a few hours from now.

i'm not at all concerned about the open world, all the footage of the network test has made it very clear that it's avoiding all the common open world pitfalls (repetitive content, big for the sake of being big, etc.) & is very dense with unique content. there are at least 10 bosses in the network test area alone (which is estimated to be around 1/12 of the full game's map). it's a big change, sure, but i don't think anywhere near as radical a shift as say GTA3 or BOTW were - the core gameplay is still very much the same despite the change in environmental scale.

For example, as I understand it your health can be halved in DS2, and a similar mechanic was brought into Sekiro.

DS2's max health decreasing on death (in increments down to a min of 50%) was more of an iteration on Demon's Souls' mechanic where you lost half your max health when you were in 'soul form' opposed to 'human form', which happened upon dying while human. in both cases, the game was generally balanced around the halved max health, with more than that being a bonus, but it was still kinda presented as a punishment. i think both were intended to give the player another incentive to go into human form, which enabled being invaded as well as summoning other players as well as removing the max health penalty. DS3 improved upon this by having embers, which worked the same way in enabling multiplayer, provide a bonus to your max health instead.

there wasn't any sort of max health restriction upon death mechanic in Sekiro though, and there doesn't seem to be in Elden Ring either.

DS2 is one of the weaker souls games but it's still worth playing. the issues with it are largely that the encounter design isn't quite as tight, the world design is clumsier & it rarely reaches the same sorts of high-point boss fights as the best of the series. i'd still put it above Demon's Souls at least.

i may be a minority opinion here, but i don't worry at all about whether something can run well enough on a certain machine. i can count the number of times i have been bothered by the framerate/slowdown of a game on one hand. i think part of it is that i came to gaming age playing games like LIFE FORCE. the slowdown was part of the game. the bug became the feature. aiming for this perfect-smooth framerate ideal is understandable but also kind of disappointing. it's just different, i guess

blighttown was pretty miserable at times in the original console versions of ds1 due to all the slowdown. it's certainly something to be concerned about & can make experiences much worse. with cross-gen games like this, it does happen sometimes that the last-gen versions are significantly inferior due to cutting corners trying to get the game to run on hardware they weren't focusing on, but that thankfully doesn't seem to be the case here at all.

IDK I think having a smooth frame rate is critical for a game like this where you have to time movements precisely. And while 60 is nice, 30 is perfectly good as long as it stays consistent. I played DS1 on Switch and it runs great!

As a relatively recent returner to games, I've learned my lesson the hard way. When I got "Doom" for the Switch it kinda ran like shit, even after a few updates. The slowdowns definitely affected game play in such a fast paced game, and even things like jumping were impacted. Like, you would run at a couple of spots (even with no enemies) and suddenly things would slow down, right before you pressed jump, and you would fall to your death. But tbf, "Doom" is almost uniquely busy and fast paced, and yeah, I can't think of another game off the top of my head with issues like that.

That said, I sort of suspect at least some of my problems with "Sekiro" were related to the frame rate. Usually I don't notice/care, but that game was all about timing, and while it could have been me (I mean, for sure it was me), it's also possible it was just that much trickier for me at 30fps than it would have been at 60.

there wasn't any sort of max health restriction upon death mechanic in Sekiro though

Oh, I just meant the mechanic that makes you lose half your souls or whatever. And gives everybody dragonrot. There's a cost of dying, which I found irritating since these games are built around dying over and over again. DS1 and DS3 don't have that cost, and Bloodborne gives you a shot to get some echoes back, too.

I never minded slow downs either, it's like slo mo at a dramatic moment.

Glad the PS4 version runs well, I never cared about graphics but had to admit that 60fps is really nice after playing the DS1 remaster and now DS3 on PS5. But I played all of the other games at 30fps for hundreds of hours and had a great time, so it's definitely not essential.

very positive impressions

https://kotaku.com/elden-ring-may-just-reinvent-the-open-world-genre-1848093261

I look forward to suddenly earning souls from some NPC that dies fighting enemies on the other side of the map.

I keep wondering if I should give the other From games a shot? I just got incredibly fed up with BB but maybe having a shield would make me feel better? (Probably not.)

On the one hand having experience in one of these games helps with all of them since they have some basics in common, but on the other hand, ER looks to be the most user-friendly of them all (from little things like the menus and upgrade systems, to how the combat system seems to align with what you see onscreen in a more intuitive way, rather than having to look up online how combos/poise/parries/etc work...that's mostly for pvp though).

Generally speaking though Dark Souls 1 and 2 are slower paced, while the combat in Bloodborne is faster (and DS3 is somewhere in-between).

Shields in these games are mostly there to taunt you and weigh you down.

i have played defense heavy builds to some advantage in these games on occasion; it's a preferred method. it makes me shit at pvp tho!

I haven't used a shield in DS3 since my first playthrough, but I might use one for ER! For one thing, there's a shield weapon art (or "ash of war" I guess) that acts as both a normal parry AND can parry spells (and turn them into little magic swords you send back):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BBLmt_DI50

In the pvp world, there's been a lot of talk of the big changes from Dark Souls 3, particularly:

-No guaranteed combos, ie hitting someone once doesn't necessarily mean you can hit them again if they decide to roll out of it. In DS3, most small and medium weapons had a guaranteed 2-hit combo on normal attacks, with a shorter stun window after that so the other person could get away.

-Backstabs are de-emphasized, and no one's sure if they're "working as intended" or not. Basically the backstab doesn't work if the other person isn't perfectly aligned with your character, or possibly if they're in any kind of animation. In DS3, it would work as long as the other person wasn't moving away from you, meaning that you could sneakily backstab someone if they were in a long animation (like after swinging a large weapon, or casting a healing spell). I enjoyed that system, but it makes sense that From is trying to smooth over elements that looked or felt weird to anyone not super versed in the mechanics.

I'm all for the changes if they make the pvp more intuitive and appealing to people. Although I hope there are some good unparryable attacks to use when someone keeps throwing out parries, since that still seems strong, and in DS3 you could run around behind them, use a kick, etc.

my intentions to do sorcery/INT builds always die after a few hours of play through. wd consider re-speccing a post renala STR/DEX/FAI build tho.

Ha, same. Even if I tell myself I'm going to do more spells or archery, ranged combat is not that satisfying for me, and I'm too much of a simpleton to worry about blue flasks or crafting arrows. A straight dex or str build with a few different weapons/ashes is as much as I can concentrate on. Too busy dodging.

Same really - I always end up thinking ‘f it why I don’t just hit the little shit with a sword’ when I try magic classes - but I might as well try it and I’d rather keep Mr Level 255 as an OP beast who hits things and they die.

I have about three RL 150 characters that have “done it all” except burn the Erdtree, I prepped them for dueling, but also with the purpose of entering the DLC. I hope you don’t need to start a new game for DLC to be accessible!

All three characters were also like “me figuring out which character’s playstyle I most enjoyed” and it is, absolutely, a greatshield dude— my preference is for the Haligtree gs

A turtle! Do you use a poke-y weapon with that?

Dear Ratboy sounds like Boc to me.

― feed me with your chips (zchyrs), Tuesday, February 27, 2024 3:32 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Correct! Going to head to the coastal cave to help him out...

Can't you do just it on one of your end-game characters? That's my plan. Or did you go to ng+, and want to do the DLC in new game?

You can get to Radahn & Mogh pretty early, but beating Mogh at a low level is another thing entirely, and I think the DLC will be tuned for end game stats.

― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Tuesday, February 27, 2024 4:06 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

When you start a new game it uses the same save file you previously had, so you lose all your grace sites but keep all your weapons etc. It shouldn't be too much of a hassle

I picked up the game again for the first time in several months (link if anyone's really interested in watching 3 hours of me going "where's the steed whistle again?" and dying to low-level mooks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0q32xC0NRs).

I had previously started a brand new game as a Wretch, playing it as closely to the intended order as I could, and gotten through about half of it up to Altus Plateau.

Something I don't remember having to do in previous playthroughs was the Yura quest in order to get the Purifying Crystal Tear from Bloody Finger Eleanora.

I know I must have used it to fight Mogh, but I've no memory of the sections at 2:19 where you help Yura fight an assassin, and 2:41 at the Second Church of Marika where you find him dying and then have to fight Eleanora. Was that all patched in later?

looks like Eleanora invades even if you're not doing the Yura quest - see final bullet of the questline on fextra

I've never done a thing with INT so maybe fun to be a sorcerer for a bit.

Quite like my current character having 60/50/60/60 VIG/END/STR/FAI and 9 INT. So, so thick.

I picked up the game again for the first time in several months (link if anyone's really interested in watching 3 hours of me going "where's the steed whistle again?" and dying to low-level mooks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0q32xC0NRs).

DL I am not going to watch all of this but you successfully have me yelling at the screen to try and tell you where Torrent's whistle is. Tense-making!

hahaha, no I wouldn't expect anyone to watch 3 hours of me trying to summon back the muscle memory I lost while playing Dark Souls, Demon's Souls and Baldur's Gate.

It's very strange, even playing the other FromSoft games, there are small mechanical variables that make a huge difference

looks like Eleanora invades even if you're not doing the Yura quest - see final bullet of the questline on fextra

― woof, Wednesday, February 28, 2024 10:47 AM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well I'd have thought so, but she didn't appear until I did that Yura quest. But maybe I was doing something wrong

hmmm now I look her fextralife page has a lot of confusing comments about the actual spawn conditions - maybe have the nagakiba, maybe visit the grand lift of roid…

I think you get the nagakiba when Yura dies, which I'd also never had before

So maybe it is just the 'ever visited the grand lift of roid?' condition. I did Yura pretty carefully first time around iirc, so can't really give any first-hand info.

Oh - I've never played FromSoft DLC before. Does the weapon upgrade system stay roughly the same? I'm hoarding ancient dragon stones/sombers on this NG+ amble (wouldn't call it a run) in the expectation that they will be useful in June if I take this character in & there are fun new weapons.

Apparently the DLC will have its own unique levelling-up system similar to Sekiro so that it still presents a challenge to people who've overpowered themselves in the main game

@ Jordan, yes, a lance typically

I’m a big time lance enjoyer, my best duelist was a light rolling 2h lance user with a silly cleaver as my second weapon

But like in the depths of my Elden Ring obsession I had 15 copies of every ash, maxed ingredients and consumables, 10 to 20 of every weapon, I helped people out over Reddit a lot

I had a go at rolling a halberd last night but it was quite slow to swing. I generally just go for the weapon with the most attack power that won't take me over medium load - that's what we all do, right?

My big fun was to wield several copies of the same weapon (cleanrot rapier for example) with different complimentary ashes applied. I’d swap my right hand so the opponent never knew which ash was coming next

But for PvP, yes, lance and haligtree great shield with a misericorde offhand, parry and crit all comers. I’d swap to something more powerful like a great sword for bosses

I find the halberd r1 poke to be quite fast and good at interrupting people's attacks (good poise damage I guess), but I need other options for horizontal/unlocked attacks against multiple targets.

Upgraded the dragon halberd and dual halberds definitely has some potential! With pvp I'm remembering that it's often not enough to have a vanilla build and ignore all the talismans/buffs/ashes/etc. In DS3 you could sort of do that if you were good at the fighting mechanics, but in ER you just need that big damage sometimes.

I tried the Great Jar Challenge last night (at lvl 50) and failed miserably, it was hilarious though. It uses real player builds, and now every npc is a ridiculous fextra/youtube build, relentlessly spamming ashes with infinite mana and buffed hp.

Apparently the DLC will have its own unique levelling-up system similar to Sekiro so that it still presents a challenge to people who've overpowered themselves in the main game

Yeah this is interesting, it sounds like they're trying something new so that there's still a challenge for people's overpowered level 300 builds. But I assume things like the weapon upgrade system will stay exactly the same, if past games are anything to go by.

@ Jordan yes, the Great Jar Challenge became impossible around the arena update. I think I was trying to get a RL 80 character going, and I had to re-spec to a cheese build just so I take on those Jar challengers. Awful!

That's cool if there's a new levelling system. Just going to keep getting OP while staying remorselessly stupid.

fgti how did you get parry on a greatshield? I was mucking about trying to learn parry the other day and could only get the parry-ish ashes onto my mediums. Thought it would be fun to have it on a stupid big shield but failed.

Oh I'm likely misremembering, I think you're correct. It's been well over a year since I've Eldened a Ring. In PvP I think I relied on the ridiculous poise reduction of the lances and poise absorption of the greatshield to stagger, for example, those beastly knights in Elphail and Farum Azula, at which point I'd crit with a dagger. One day I'll re-connect my PS5 and revisit my builds but not today!

ELDEN RING!

Okay, well now I've remembered the controls, I spent a lot of time just prattling about again last night in spaces I thought I was familiar. It's amazing how much time one can spend doing this, in fact, just saying "I'm just going to follow this wall or this cliff edge and see where I end up". In fact I'm sure I happened upon a part of Limgrave I couldn't quite remember seeing before with all these abandoned decrepit flame chariots dotted around a field with a rune bear in the middle of them.

This is partly because I can't quite recall where I tapped out of the game almost a year ago. Until now I've been trying to go through the game in the "intended" order, but now I've hit Altus Plateau, it's not obvious where to go next.

Totally. My build is coming together, can confirm that the Dragon Halberd is pretty ridiculous (I happened upon it and only later found the videos about how it's been buffed and the weapon skill now true combos) and the dual halberds are working for pvp. Just goes to show that planning out a build rarely works out for me, better to play through the game and experiment with what feels good. At this rate I'll definitely have two characters for the dlc.

I've always wondered about From games and the like, what is the lexicon used in the original Japanese? Do the weapons and classes and bosses and whatnot have different, Japanese names, or are some of the nouns (proper or otherwise) still some variation of Medieval English?

there seems to be a whole cottage industry of lore hunters going through the various translations and versions of the item descriptions to dig up potentially missed content or alternate meanings to the flavour text

I just washed a fraction of that Rusty guy go through his two and a half hour YouTube video about best weapons in Elden Ring, and man ... From the clips to his selections, it's like I have never played this game before, I can barely recall so little. Utter madness, given the amount of time I spent on my playthrough.

Yeah I just watched it (at 2x speed) and felt similarly. Happy my beloved lance made the top 10. Wtf are Raptor's Talons? I mean I had them but never thought to use them

Continuing to enjoy my second real playthrough, even though I'm back in the sewers and still don't remember my way around (eventually I caved and looked on youtube, and they sure do a good job of hiding the correct tunnel, it's dastardly).

Doing better at invasions too. Most people just spam their crazy damage move (whether that's a weapon art, spell, or bleed weapon), so my current philosophy is not to rush in, get a few pokes in so they're not at full health (but not yet compelled to heal), and wait for the right moment to unleash my crazy damage move. It's not as fun as DS3 where I could just get in there and react on the fly, that gets you killed instantly in ER (or at least you're rolling the dice on whether your poise + crazy damage move beats theirs).

nobody knows their way around those sewers

i don’t think i ever properly got to the bottom on my first play through. i’m on a second now and will give it a go.

Well, I beat Mohg on my new character after nearly a week of re-learning all the timings, so vanilla strength halberd guy is ready for the dlc. At first phase 2 once again felt impossible, and now I'll almost miss fighting him over and over again. Stockholm syndrome for boss movesets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD1saF3RCxU

Noice. I'm trying to think, if I have my end-game OP guy still sitting in virtual purgatory, where I left him (her?), where should I go first to remind myself how to play this game and ready myself for the DLC?

Running through Elphael would be a proper endgame training course.

@ Jordan, a thrilling video. A message appraisal saved your life! I think I was always kinda over-powered by the time I made it to Mohg and so I never really basked in the beauty of his moveset. What a sublimely designed boss he is

Ha, that message appraisal was when I knew it was the run (although I was pretty high health already - but ended at zero flasks, so who knows). It's more exciting to be just good enough, I mean it would be boring to never take a hit.

Watching some other videos I realized that the one explosion move that got me more than any other -- you just cannot roll into it, seemingly, you need to run around him or get a lot of distance (which maybe is not possible if you're right in his face).