- Think my Rivers of Blood bleed build + maxed out Mimic Tear is cheating? Okay. Don’t care. Think using the IGN walkthrough is lazy? That’s cool. Don’t care. And because we’re playing the same game, on the same difficulty, watching the same credits when we finally triumph, I don’t have to care. Because we’re the same, you and me. Except I’m not on Reddit.
Or, counterpoint, it's not what you want to do for fun. I'm not going to say Elden Ring is "too hard" or anything negative about it, actually - just that the style of gameplay it favors (trial and error followed by rigid adherence to precisely-executed attack styles) is the style of gameplay I will go out of my way to avoid. There's a certain segment of people who love to play "guess what number I'm thinking of" where the only way to move ahead is to be wrong over and over and over again until eventually you stumble on the solution. There's a release to successfully stumbling on success for some people and there's nothing wrong with that because it clearly dumps some people's endorphins. I will put up with a game where it trains me how to win. Where the strategies for success are suggested by prior conflicts, where there's a logical progression between "thing you do to beat this guy" and "thing you do to beat that guy." "Gamers" tend to hate these games and call the players thereof "filthy casuals" etc. That's okay with me, too, because if there's a group of humans I will proudly bear the scorn of, it's these fuckers. Yup, you're right. I cheesed the boss in Crota's End. Know why? Because I play on the couch with two fingers of bourbon and a hot girl next to me, ignoring everything that isn't pretty and then when I get bored with it, I get laid. So the average scrote-neck without (1) couch (2) bourbon (3) sex is not a part of my self-selected peer group and I wish them all the Dark Souls they can handle. This so much.Of course, there are scolds who think looking it up is cheating.
Think my Rivers of Blood bleed build + maxed out Mimic Tear is cheating? Okay. Don’t care. Think using the IGN walkthrough is lazy? That’s cool. Don’t care. And because we’re playing the same game, on the same difficulty, watching the same credits when we finally triumph, I don’t have to care. Because we’re the same, you and me. Except I’m not on Reddit.
I wholeheartedly support all forms of gamer hate, but I will say your description of the gameplay style doesn't match my experience with the game after getting past the tutorial. It does to some extent match my (limited) experience with previous Souls games. The difference this time around was that when I came across a boss or area that was giving a hard time, I could simply decide to fuck off and go do something somewhere else, come back later and have a better time with new gear, new spells or just some more attribute points. Which I think is the intended approach for most players since they decided to put this guy between your starting location and the first checkpoint: The game highly rewards non-linear exploration of it's open world in a way I haven't seen other games manage to do this well before. There's still a Souls game in there, the legacy dungeons are maze-like ant hills and the some of the final bosses felt like what you describe. But then, the game has the summon mechanic for a reason, and like the article says, who gives a shit what the Gamers™ think. I haven't finished a Souls game before, but this one gave me enough flexibility with the gameplay to actually enjoy it while experiencing the beautiful world design and cryptic storytelling.
Yeah, that guy. That's when I realized that 1) You are wandering around actual hell 2) Everyone wants to kill you 3) Your best-case scenario is wandering around killing everyone in order to level up so that you're killed less often. Some people enjoy that, and good on 'em. I am not one of them. And again, no shade? but dude. Elden Ring looks like Skyrim with the Zack Snyder filter on. That's maybe a little harsh? But I want you to imagine transitioning directly from this to this.the beautiful world design
Characters are ass and I say that having played through Cyberpunk 2 1/2 times. I made it far enough to go "huh that glowy tree over there is kinda cool looking" but my experience was entirely "this is an uglier game than HZD, Cyberpunk, Witcher3 or Destiny and reminds me way too much of Fallout." You can like it? But we're straying real close to arguing that I'm not allowed to not like it. I did after all, link to myself getting dunked on for hating the ever-loving shit out of one of the most beloved video games of all time. I'ma keep doin' it.
I mostly play indie games, so this had a nice ambience to it Nitpicks: For me the melee wasn't fun enough to be playable until I hit level 100 and looked up how to stagger and tank everything, and it wasn't much better after that. The game encouraged me to cheese everything to avoid dying to use checkpoints, instead of embracing them as I expected. And if you get lost in a demigod base, the time commitment feels like a shift of work
Yeah, as soon as I started to dabble in magic and incantations I found it a much more fun play style, requiring less sprinting past enemies to get to the next checkpoint. The only legacy dungeon that really frustrated me was the Leyndell catacombs. That place, and the area below it, was a nightmare. Thankfully it's highly optional, so if I ever come back to the game at least I know not to bother with it again.
And if you get lost in a demigod base, the time commitment feels like a shift of work The point, you see, is to get frustrated almost enough to give up so that once you crest that point you discover you're part of a community that also played a game they hated to the point of exhaustion only to discover we're all one big community. No thank you.