The Shattered Elden Ring Thread: Tarnished Edition - (Shadow of the Erdtree p. 85)

EvilRoy

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The rest points and your bloodstain are surprisingly hard to see. I've spent a fair bit of time running around trying to find my runes while also trying to avoid what killed me only to finally notice that it's obscured by a patch of tall grass. Not nearly as obvious as the big blue swirls of Dark Souls.
I struggled with this as well - I don't know why they picked a colour that blends into the scenery in Limgrave so well - it gets worse when you're in this super snowy area because everything is bright white and you can't see that far, so you just sort of miss stuff a lot. I'm looking for a mod that turns the Grace's and runes into like maybe a blue or a purple with a yellow glow so I can see them easily at a distance day or night in different biomes. The compass for dropped runes is nice, except it disappears in boss fights, so if you're doing a field boss and you died somewhere weird in the landscape it can be its own annoying struggle to get your shit back. I remember this happening in DS1 with the iron giant thanks to the weird boss arena design, but its fairly common for me to fight with this in Elden Ring. I tend to try to pick a good spot to die now if I think the fight is going south so I can find my shit easily.
 

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At risk of spoiling I did, since I’ll most likely forget them again until I see them, but here’s a few that seem every bit as Miyazaki-esque as prior games -

It’s also not counting at least a couple dozen others on the list that appeared neither humanoid or dragon. So it seems maybe you’re already being a bit nostalgic or fatigue from “seeing it all before” is setting in. Which could be understandable. I suppose also even Miyazaki’s imagination has its limits, but on the whole it seems he went all-out here.
Ok so in order to prevent extra spoilers though the game has been out for a month now so i feel we can relax on this a bit. I will respond to the bosses you list here in numerical order.

#1 - is a fairly unique design, I wouldn't argue the game has no unique designs in it but so many of them are just copies of each other or direct copies from other games that they loose that uniqueness. This boss for example in available in game as a boss 5 or 6 times, then they just say "fuck it" and it has 5 more appearances as regular enemies which isn't too uncommon for Souls games but it's not great design work and there is a reason why you don't see bosses in Bloodborne come back as regular enemies iirc, maybe 1?

#2 -This fucking thing is literally a normal enemy all over the game, except exsists as a boss in 1 cave for some reason. I'm not even gonna count this as a boss.

#3 - Literally asylum demon without a head, appears 17 times throughout the game. Next.

#4 and #6 - same dude, dragon-type enemy but admittedly different. These occur i believe 8 times in the game even as regular enemies at one point. But would you say this crawly dragon is particularly interesting in design? Or all that unique when it comes to what dragons typically are like?

#5 - Not really monstery imo. It's a preist type dude and exists in two variations skinny and fat. This boss occurs 3 times and then again a few times as a regular enemy.

#7 and 8 - This is the same fight btw. Phase one and phase two have different names but the fight is the same. This is the coolest enemy in the game and is very much a high point for me.The fight is interesting and one of the few standout memorable fights for me. I'll happily give you this.

#9 - I will also give you this one. Very Bloodborne inspired I think. Not that good of a fight but the enemy is very cool looking. This is one of the exceptions.

#10 - And finally this dude. Very cool fight, but he's just a dragon and doesn't stand out different than the shitloads of other dragons you fight in the game except he has more attacks and is hard because of it. However there is a white version of him you fight twice late game that is literally the same fight but less epic because there is no boss health bar.

I think honestly my problem is let about the design of the fights and more about how they end up playing out. The spammy 10 hit combos make the fights kind of blur, and it ends up causing the fights to blend together which makes them not stand out in my mind as much. There are of course a couple of exceptions of fights that I did enjoy, but there are more fights I remember for being assholes than actually being fun to fight.

I do want to be clear Elden Ring is a very good game. But when I hear some of the praises the game gets especially about the open world and whatnot I feel like people are just blinded by....I don't even know. Fandom? Souls bias? Who knows? This open world is not great, it doesn't do anything different than anything Ubisoft or other open worlds games have done. In fact it has subtantially less shit to do in it than most open worlds in terms of the type of content you will do at each given point of interest. "Oh boy a new cave, I wonder what I'll find in here! oh....another one of the cat statue bosses. yay. Oh there are TWO of them this time!" It's just not that good. And i think almost any other souls game except Demon's Souls is better. Because I believe that the combat and boss challenge built on TOP of great level design to make those games stand out, and all of that is lost here.
 
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Same. I'm sure it's great for what it is, which is apparently the best version of the same shit everyone else is doing these days with Open Word Action RPGs. I shrug to see past the fact that its Basically the same as an Elder Scrolls game, but with better action mechanics and less lore. There's a certain ominous claustrophobia that's lost in the move to open world. Dark Souls shared a lot in common with Resident evil and I think thats lost here. I keep hearing I'll love the game if I just put 20 hours into it, or maybe that was FFXIII idk. I'm too old to not immediately enjoy a game. Like Spawn my total available heartbeats are always ticking down. I'll get to it eventually, but I just beat an Open world game recently and I can't talk myself into wandering around aimlessly flipping over rocks atm.
I think it gets good pretty fast IMHO but if you're not in the mood for an open world right now definitely wait for a bit because it's not sufficiently different to stave off open world fatigue.

I haven't played an open world game since AC Unity like 6 months ago so this was pretty fresh for me but if you're coming off Horizon or Far Cry that might feel like a bit much. Or maybe it's just me because I get open world fatigue pretty bad if I try to play one after the other. I didn't even bother trying to play Horizon before ER because I knew I'd just burn out trying to do the back to back. I have to stagger open world games with games that are much shorter and more linear to help clear the cache, so to speak.
 
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BrawlMan

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Dark Souls shared a lot in common with Resident evil and I think thats lost here.
And Metroidvanias. A lot of fans consider Dark Souls I-III are great 3D Castlevania games.

haven't played an open world game since AC Unity like 6 months ago so this was pretty fresh for me but if you're coming off Horizon or Far Cry that might feel like a bit much. Or maybe it's just me because I get open world fatigue pretty bad if I try to play one after the other. I didn't even bother trying to play Horizon before ER because I knew I'd just burn out trying to do the back to back. I have to stagger open world games with games that are much shorter and more linear to help clear the cache, so to speak
The last open world game I played was Miles Morales. I won't be playing another open world game for a very long time.
 
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CriticalGaming

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I haven't played an open world game since AC Unity like 6 months ago so this was pretty fresh for me but if you're coming off Horizon or Far Cry that might feel like a bit much. Or maybe it's just me because I get open world fatigue pretty bad if I try to play one after the other. I didn't even bother trying to play Horizon before ER because I knew I'd just burn out trying to do the back to back. I have to stagger open world games with games that are much shorter and more linear to help clear the cache, so to speak.
Final Fantasy Nioh 3 has been a nice following to ER for me. A linear game that is brutal fast paced action combat with short levels is the perfect desert to ER heavy main course. I think the next plan for me to fuck around in that new Dungeons and Dragons Boarderlands game, then double back to Horizon.
 
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Final Fantasy Nioh 3 has been a nice following to ER for me. A linear game that is brutal fast paced action combat with short levels is the perfect desert to ER heavy main course. I think the next plan for me to fuck around in that new Dungeons and Dragons Boarderlands game, then double back to Horizon.
I want to check it out at some point but probably wait till a sale of some sort
 

hanselthecaretaker

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IIRC Bloodborne repeat bosses were mostly in Chalice dungeons carried over from the main game. You’re applying a good bit of sarcasm to some of these numbers though. Like the Erd Tree has five occurrences according to the wiki, not 17 lol. I get it, there’s a lot of copy/ paste that shouldn’t be excusable but when you think that even Dark Souls did it with Taurus Demon in a much smaller game, eh. There are always limits in time, budget, etc.

You’ve made your stance on the world design clear numerous times, but I disagree with it lacking character or value. On the contrary it more fully realizes the earlier games’ world building by giving it a tangible sense of scale, which makes traversal and progression feel more organic and less like you’re making your way through a theme park with each flavor separated by a dark tunnel or long ladder. It’s also perhaps even quicker and easier to get around in ER, so wasted time isn’t an issue unless the initial investment in discovering each location is considered too steep. If that’s the case then chalk it up to a dislike of open map design in general.

If one critical complaint could be made with the expanded size imo it would be that it seems FROM bit off more than they could chew, given the balancing issues, repeat encounters and handful of broken quest lines, although I think some of that’s been patched now too and likely will if there’s any standout issues yet.

There’s been no shortage of commentaries detailing why ER’s world works more favorably to others. Hell even Escapist’s own Nick wrote one. Although there are still other stellar examples. For instance RDR2 has an exceptional amount of world building, but also like ER you have to search for most of it. It’s partly what keeps people discussing this type of game design whereas others making everything too obvious to miss are forgotten about just as easily.

I get the criticism that more could’ve been done to incorporate new gameplay aspects or have more variety of things to do, but FROM stated from the beginning they had to limit themselves to what they excel at given it’s by far their most ambitious effort as it is. According to Miyazaki that increased scale was also always the intent.
 

CriticalGaming

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Like the Erd Tree has five occurrences according to the wiki, not 17 lol.
Five is wrong. The wiki doesn't count the times they appear as regular ass enemies. It must only be counting bosses of which there are 5 "boss" versions 1 for each minor tree.

I get it, there’s a lot of copy/ paste that shouldn’t be excusable but when you think that even Dark Souls did it with Taurus Demon in a much smaller game, eh. There are always limits in time, budget, etc.
Yes Dark Souls was pinched by time and budget. But Elden Ring was not and the reason why the copy and paste is a problem for me is because there was no reason this game's world had to be so buttfucking big. The map could have been brought down a little bit and some of the copy paste removed. OR like I've said, instead of yet another cat statue boss, put a puzzle at the end instead or a trap chest that warps you around whatever.

Big for the sake of big, is just bad game design.

FROM stated from the beginning they had to limit themselves to what they excel at given it’s by far their most ambitious effort as it is.
Then why with the open world? Open worlds don't mean the scale was increased. If you look at all the levels you get in previous From games, I'd argue that Elden Ring has far less actual scale than previous titles. Because expanded a giant map, doesn't mean anything. One person indie devs can plot down a big ass map. Ubisoft shits out a huge open world map every year. Big maps are not special.

Elden ring has a lot of surface area but since so much of it is empty, how is that scale? Since so many of the caves, and catacombs are the fucking same, how is that scale? Previous games might not have had giant open worlds, but their levels were dense and tight when it came to the gameplay, which also helps the combat and the game over all from getting stale.

Now I'm going to quote Nick from the article because he looses me almost instantly.

" In recent years, many open-world games have gone for quantity over quality — big open worlds that are of course beautiful, but not really central to the gameplay itself. You run around, see pretty landmarks, fight some bad guys, collect some items, and then eventually get back to the main story path."

And in what way is Elden Ring not this exact thing?

" No space is unused in this world. If you see a point of interest, whether it’s ruins, a giant glowing tree, a cave, a castle, or even just a graveyard, it’s worth visiting — because literally everything ties back to the primary loop of becoming more powerful to take on the game’s hardest bosses and legacy dungeons."

And this is different from Assassin's Creed Odyssey how?

" It makes the act of exploring both fun and worth the player’s time, and it genuinely feels like I’m exploring. "

Basically the game is different and better because the map markers are invisible. Essentially the arument boils down to "even though Elden Ring does the same fucking shit that every other open world in history does, Elden Ring is better because there are no map markers. No map markers make it feel like you are actually exploring instead of following a checklist" That's it. That's literally the only difference. And okay fair enough you enjoy the element of discovery not having markers brings to the table.That's great.

My problem is that the lack of map markers doesn't change the fact that everything within Elden Ring is the same shit. Look Nick even says this:

" lden Ring is a masterclass of design for an open world. It’s not full of icons or waypoint markers telling you where to go next " Yes it does Nick! Look at your map when you finish the game. look at all the graces that point you in the direction you need to go. The only difference is that these markers are hidden until you find them. That's it, and the problem with not having guidence with anything is that you generally aren't finding anything, you are STUMBLING into stuff. A treasure hunt requires you to have knowledge of what you are hunting, otherwise you are just happening upon things which is a very different type of discovery.

Look the game's combat and difficulty are obviously engaging for people, myself included, it gets it's hooks into you even while it pisses you off. But with all the items that are broken, Npc's broken, builds that are broken, it feels to me that the scale was clearly too much for FromSoft and the big world was more than they could really chew.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Five is wrong. The wiki doesn't count the times they appear as regular ass enemies. It must only be counting bosses of which there are 5 "boss" versions 1 for each minor tree.
There’s nothing in the enemies wiki that show this tree being a common enemy. Google searches only show it under the boss locations. Something similar would be the Miranda Flower and the Blighted Bloom boss, but they’re not the same. It’s like comparing the random dog beasts with Blood Starved Beast in Bloodborne and saying they’re the same.

I get it…the aimlessness of exploring and repeated stuff is annoying to those who like to go through games more systematically. But at the same time, it’s all optional. Nothing is forcing the player to fight an Erd Tree five times. It along with a shitton of other stuff is there for people who enjoy more of that kinda thing as they build their characters with all the unique shit the game actually does have. Which is still a hell of a lot more than any before it for $60.

The difference between this and an Ubi game or whatever is mosty the little things that add up; it’s completely up to the player to make their way. The freedom of approach without being pestered about x or having y amount of random z tasks thrown at you out of nowhere is where the main praise has been doled out, as a kind of return to old school design again, kinda like the earlier Souls games did with their progression.

Some might find the new stuff like crafting pointless, but that’s also been streamlined to be as easy as tapping triangle while running/riding across stuff wherever you’re going anyways, and then using it in the menu whenever you discover the appropriate cookbook. No more need to grind specifically for overpriced consumables from obscure vendors.

Landmarkers and grace sites are added only as things are discovered and of course they stay there for convenience afterwards. Should the player need to draw their own map for fast travel points to keep it clutter-free? That would be steep even for FROM.


I’ll admit right along side anyone that they didn’t have to go this big, but for whatever reason they started with the goal of doing so and it went beyond what most ever anticipated, including FROM apparently which was why it was last delayed.


That kinda says it all regarding scale in a nutshell. They wanted to give the player enough space to make it feel like more of an adventure without feeling overwhelmed at the same time, by tucking away the vast majority of content as optional. Their games have always been about having the player figure most of this stuff out on their own or via crowd sourced findings. That shared sense of discovery has always been their intended version of a “treasure map”, and it’s here in droves now.
 
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Terminal Blue

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Some might find the new stuff like crafting pointless, but that’s also been streamlined to be as easy as tapping triangle while running/riding across stuff wherever you’re going anyways, and then using it in the menu whenever you discover the appropriate cookbook. No more need to grind specifically for overpriced consumables from obscure vendors.
I think the main impact it has is getting over the psychological barrier to using consumables. I find I'm much more willing to use consumables knowing I'll be able to replace them later with stuff I randomly find, rather than needing to go and farm souls/runes to buy replacements. It might technically not be any easier to replace things, but having that psychological barrier be lower is huge.

And this is different from Assassin's Creed Odyssey how?
That's not a good comparison, frankly. Elden Ring's open world has far more in common with a subscription MMO than it does with any annualized Ubisoft sequel.

A subscription MMO has to keep you interested for a really long time, so its open world is split up into distinct regions and biomes with their own enemies, terrain and visual elements. You might fight the same enemies in different areas of the overall map, but you will never be fighting the same thing continuously over and over again. There's variation within each area.

Look at Skyrim. For all its flaws and the fact it's been milked dry over the years, Skyrim is a well thought out open world. Each area of the map is visually distinct and while some enemies are found in all of them, many areas have their own unique enemies too. There's variation wherever you go. Even more importantly, there's a logic to the way everything is placed in Skyrim which denotes good environmental storytelling.

The problem with a lot of modern open world games, particularly the annualized Ubisoft games, is that they're designed to be churned out quickly to meet an annualized release schedule. These games have big maps, but there's no variety to them. You are repeating the same tasks and fighting the same enemies over and over again without any break or variation. Go anywhere on the map and things will be basically the same. There will be a handful of distinct landmarks surrounded by interchangeable wilderness populated haphazardly with the same stuff. That's why these games need to emphasize collectibles, because there's nothing unique or interesting to find save for the sense of completionism which comes from collecting things. There's no environmental storytelling, there's no clever enemy placement to create an interesting challenge or unique experience, it's just busywork.

Elden Ring is full of actual stuff to find. Even areas that have nothing useful in them can be interesting to stumble upon because they might, and because they are visually and mechanically distinct from the areas around them. That's what makes them "worth visiting". Elden Ring's world was designed by people with a lot of time and energy to do it. Ubisoft doesn't do that any more, if they ever did, because they need to maintain a quantity of releases that makes that kind of actual work impossible.
 
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Catfood220

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I struggled with this as well - I don't know why they picked a colour that blends into the scenery in Limgrave so well - it gets worse when you're in this super snowy area because everything is bright white and you can't see that far, so you just sort of miss stuff a lot. I'm looking for a mod that turns the Grace's and runes into like maybe a blue or a purple with a yellow glow so I can see them easily at a distance day or night in different biomes. The compass for dropped runes is nice, except it disappears in boss fights, so if you're doing a field boss and you died somewhere weird in the landscape it can be its own annoying struggle to get your shit back. I remember this happening in DS1 with the iron giant thanks to the weird boss arena design, but its fairly common for me to fight with this in Elden Ring. I tend to try to pick a good spot to die now if I think the fight is going south so I can find my shit easily.
I've had no problems finding Sites of Grace, there are big swirling lights that surround them when you get near them. They are pretty easy to spot. Dropped runes on the other hand can be harder to spot especially when trying to snatch them back from whatever just stomped you into the ground.

Anyway, to answer my own question as to whether I was getting good or just over powered. I beat Margit, The Fell Omen in one go, I'm going to go with over powered. My plan is working.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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I've had no problems finding Sites of Grace, there are big swirling lights that surround them when you get near them. They are pretty easy to spot. Dropped runes on the other hand can be harder to spot especially when trying to snatch them back from whatever just stomped you into the ground.

Anyway, to answer my own question as to whether I was getting good or just over powered. I beat Margit, The Fell Omen in one go, I'm going to go with over powered. My plan is working.
You might’ve already realized it, but when you die your runes are marked on the map. Then if needed you can place a beacon to make them easier to get back to.
 

CriticalGaming

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That kinda says it all regarding scale in a nutshell. They wanted to give the player enough space to make it feel like more of an adventure without feeling overwhelmed at the same time, by tucking away the vast majority of content as optional. Their games have always been about having the player figure most of this stuff out on their own or via crowd sourced findings. That shared sense of discovery has always been their intended version of a “treasure map”, and it’s here in droves now.
And my argument is that this is a worse design choice than previous Souls games. Those games had optional areas but also most of the content was presented to the player in somehow straightforward fashion, boss A to B to C then maybe you can pick D or E before going to F,G,H, etc etc. It also allowed players more chances to engage with quests, as even though they were obscure you were bound to run into NPC's on your journey.

With Elden Ring (which is designed as a Souls game even if it isn't called a Souls game) you can say all this open world stuff is optional but then the player runs into the problem of hitting a wall like Margit. If Margit was a in Dark Souls 3, you dying to him would mean you just gotta learn his pattern better, play better, whatever. However in ER, the player has to ask themselves, "do i suck? Is this too hard? Am I not supposed to be here yet? Do they want me to go grind? Is there something I needed to find in the world?" These questions alone automatically dismiss any claim that the open world is optional. Because now the answer to a hard boss is to go do more "optional" content until you have a better weapon, upgraded, leveled, new talisman, new summon, new whatever.

And yes that's great you can go find tons of options when preparing to deal with a boss, but it also ruins any argument that the open world is optional. I mean hell if you wanted to just beat the game you actually only need to fight like nine or ten real bosses. My NG+ playthrough was only 144 minutes because i just sprinted right through the required stuff to get a new ending for trophy's And i'm not a speed runner. Of that 144 minutes only about 20 of it was actually fighting things, most of that time was running through the vast expanse of nothing that is the map.

Look I wanna stress again, my problem is strictly the open world. I feel like it's bloated, empty and comes at a huge sacrifice of engaging and enjoyable level designs that the FromSoft team is know for. There are stand out moments in the game for sure. Stormveil castle is great, the captial city is great, but these moments just highlight how bland the open world is for me. And if maybe they cut about 30% of the map down it would be a lot more enjoyable imo. Especially since the biggest highlights to the world are under ground anyway.

You are repeating the same tasks and fighting the same enemies over and over again without any break or variation. Go anywhere on the map and things will be basically the same. There will be a handful of distinct landmarks surrounded by interchangeable wilderness populated haphazardly with the same stuff.
This describes Elden Ring as well, you know that right? Every cave has the same miners and bug monsters in it. Every catacomb has the same gargoyles in it. Every castle has the same guard enemies in it. With also the same tile sets, so that they all look the same. I don't see the difference.

Elden Ring is full of actual stuff to find. Even areas that have nothing useful in them can be interesting to stumble upon because they might, and because they are visually and mechanically distinct from the areas around them
This is debatable because no matter what build you are going, there is going to be a lot of "junk" you find in Elden Ring. I will agree that what you find in ER is POTENTIALLY more interesting, there is going to be a large % of it that will be useless to your current set up. If you are a spell caster for example, everytime you find a new spell in one of these caves or maybe a new septer then you'll be excited, but what about the 90 other weapons you'll find, or the spells that use the other spell casting stat you aren't invested in? In those cases you've wasted your time, especially since what you fought in that cave or catacomb wasn't interesting because you've likely already fought it before.

For all the unusable shit you find it might as well be the same gibberish you find in a Ubisoft game. And I'm not saying that Ubisoft worlds are great either. The crux of my whole argument is that Elden Ring is not doing anything different. It's open world is not unqiue, it is not a Breath of the Wild (which is pretty diverse in it's open world in terms of what you do and how you travel through it). If someone said BotW has the best open world ever made, I'd not object because I can see that even though I hate that game. Elden Ring is no Breath of the Wild.
 

EvilRoy

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I've had no problems finding Sites of Grace, there are big swirling lights that surround them when you get near them. They are pretty easy to spot. Dropped runes on the other hand can be harder to spot especially when trying to snatch them back from whatever just stomped you into the ground.

Anyway, to answer my own question as to whether I was getting good or just over powered. I beat Margit, The Fell Omen in one go, I'm going to go with over powered. My plan is working.
Not always, honestly - the importance of the grace (ie does it have a direction marker or not) seems to effect how big the glowy. Even then I have really low brightness on my computer thanks to lifelong eye fatigue from computer work so its still hard to see with the big explosion of light. Its the yellow on green, I just can't see it. In Caelid I don't have any trouble, and in the underverse its way easier because the blue/yellow contrast helps a lot, but Limgrave and then the Mountaintops are a problem for me.
 

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This is debatable because no matter what build you are going, there is going to be a lot of "junk" you find in Elden Ring. I will agree that what you find in ER is POTENTIALLY more interesting, there is going to be a large % of it that will be useless to your current set up. If you are a spell caster for example, everytime you find a new spell in one of these caves or maybe a new septer then you'll be excited, but what about the 90 other weapons you'll find, or the spells that use the other spell casting stat you aren't invested in? In those cases you've wasted your time, especially since what you fought in that cave or catacomb wasn't interesting because you've likely already fought it before.
That's what larval tears and/or new playthroughs are for.
 
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This is debatable because no matter what build you are going, there is going to be a lot of "junk" you find in Elden Ring. I will agree that what you find in ER is POTENTIALLY more interesting, there is going to be a large % of it that will be useless to your current set up. If you are a spell caster for example, everytime you find a new spell in one of these caves or maybe a new septer then you'll be excited, but what about the 90 other weapons you'll find, or the spells that use the other spell casting stat you aren't invested in? In those cases you've wasted your time, especially since what you fought in that cave or catacomb wasn't interesting because you've likely already fought it before.
I mean, that's how Dark Souls has always been. There's the items you've been upgrading and then there's all of the other items that you aren't going to use because your current weapon is +10 and the cool looking scythe you just picked up isn't. Most loot in these games are worthless because your starting equipment can carry you through the entire game.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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And my argument is that this is a worse design choice than previous Souls games. Those games had optional areas but also most of the content was presented to the player in somehow straightforward fashion, boss A to B to C then maybe you can pick D or E before going to F,G,H, etc etc. It also allowed players more chances to engage with quests, as even though they were obscure you were bound to run into NPC's on your journey.

With Elden Ring (which is designed as a Souls game even if it isn't called a Souls game) you can say all this open world stuff is optional but then the player runs into the problem of hitting a wall like Margit. If Margit was a in Dark Souls 3, you dying to him would mean you just gotta learn his pattern better, play better, whatever. However in ER, the player has to ask themselves, "do i suck? Is this too hard? Am I not supposed to be here yet? Do they want me to go grind? Is there something I needed to find in the world?" These questions alone automatically dismiss any claim that the open world is optional. Because now the answer to a hard boss is to go do more "optional" content until you have a better weapon, upgraded, leveled, new talisman, new summon, new whatever.

And yes that's great you can go find tons of options when preparing to deal with a boss, but it also ruins any argument that the open world is optional. I mean hell if you wanted to just beat the game you actually only need to fight like nine or ten real bosses. My NG+ playthrough was only 144 minutes because i just sprinted right through the required stuff to get a new ending for trophy's And i'm not a speed runner. Of that 144 minutes only about 20 of it was actually fighting things, most of that time was running through the vast expanse of nothing that is the map.

Look I wanna stress again, my problem is strictly the open world. I feel like it's bloated, empty and comes at a huge sacrifice of engaging and enjoyable level designs that the FromSoft team is know for. There are stand out moments in the game for sure. Stormveil castle is great, the captial city is great, but these moments just highlight how bland the open world is for me. And if maybe they cut about 30% of the map down it would be a lot more enjoyable imo. Especially since the biggest highlights to the world are under ground anyway.



This describes Elden Ring as well, you know that right? Every cave has the same miners and bug monsters in it. Every catacomb has the same gargoyles in it. Every castle has the same guard enemies in it. With also the same tile sets, so that they all look the same. I don't see the difference.



This is debatable because no matter what build you are going, there is going to be a lot of "junk" you find in Elden Ring. I will agree that what you find in ER is POTENTIALLY more interesting, there is going to be a large % of it that will be useless to your current set up. If you are a spell caster for example, everytime you find a new spell in one of these caves or maybe a new septer then you'll be excited, but what about the 90 other weapons you'll find, or the spells that use the other spell casting stat you aren't invested in? In those cases you've wasted your time, especially since what you fought in that cave or catacomb wasn't interesting because you've likely already fought it before.

For all the unusable shit you find it might as well be the same gibberish you find in a Ubisoft game. And I'm not saying that Ubisoft worlds are great either. The crux of my whole argument is that Elden Ring is not doing anything different. It's open world is not unqiue, it is not a Breath of the Wild (which is pretty diverse in it's open world in terms of what you do and how you travel through it). If someone said BotW has the best open world ever made, I'd not object because I can see that even though I hate that game. Elden Ring is no Breath of the Wild.
On one hand yes it’s not accurate to compare ER and Zelda: BotW, as PC Gamer even aptly points out here -

On the other, the main reason they’re both seen as favorable exceptions is through the same emphasis on freedom of approach. If there is something about the current path that isn’t working for you, then you have the freedom to find another and go back to it later after gaining something useful. They don’t tell you how or where to go or what to do, but allowing the player to decide for themselves without bombarding them with random bs in the meantime is what sets them apart from other games.


Both games emphasize a massive amount of optional content. They don’t tell the player this though and what separates the dozens of hours spent on a first playgthrough to each game being speed-run is what people have to figure out if they’re into that sort of thing. Perhaps the common thread for not enjoying either of these games’ worlds is because they each require more patience than is typically expected.
 

EvilRoy

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I mean, that's how Dark Souls has always been. There's the items you've been upgrading and then there's all of the other items that you aren't going to use because your current weapon is +10 and the cool looking scythe you just picked up isn't. Most loot in these games are worthless because your starting equipment can carry you through the entire game.
You gotta collect it all though. That sentence of lore per item is critical. Gotta get all the set pieces too, just in case the helm talks about the insignia that isn't present on the rest of the set.
 
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Terminal Blue

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This describes Elden Ring as well, you know that right? Every cave has the same miners and bug monsters in it. Every catacomb has the same gargoyles in it. Every castle has the same guard enemies in it. With also the same tile sets, so that they all look the same. I don't see the difference.
Beyond the fact this is literally untrue (so far, every castle I've encountered has had a unique enemy selection). You're also pointing out the fact that Elden Ring has caves, catacombs and castles. If it were an Ubisoft game, it would only have castles. There would be a castle every hundred meters or so to ensure you had meaningless content. Clearing castles would be a core gameplay loop and every time you did it you'd get a big message and a percentage modifier would go up to show what percentage of castles you'd cleared. Of course, there'd be no loot or actual content in the castles because that would require effort, so instead some of the guard NPCs would be replaced by friendly guard NPCs to give a sense of accomplishment to the meaningless, repetitive task of clearing castles..

Then every time you'd cleared a certain percentage of castles you'd get to do a set piece story mission that might actually offer a constructed experience or some content, but ONLY ONE, because we don't want to raise your expectations or else you might demand more gameplay besides just clearing identical castles over and over.

If you cannot see the difference, then I think that's very sad.

This is debatable because no matter what build you are going, there is going to be a lot of "junk" you find in Elden Ring. I will agree that what you find in ER is POTENTIALLY more interesting, there is going to be a large % of it that will be useless to your current set up. If you are a spell caster for example, everytime you find a new spell in one of these caves or maybe a new septer then you'll be excited, but what about the 90 other weapons you'll find, or the spells that use the other spell casting stat you aren't invested in? In those cases you've wasted your time, especially since what you fought in that cave or catacomb wasn't interesting because you've likely already fought it before.
Most of those 90 other weapons can be easily adapted to suit your playstyle by using ashes of war. Heck, there are going to be multiple options for how to adapt those weapons to suit your playstyle, with more unlocking as you play and find more stuff.

And if you get bored, you can respec your character once you reach a certain point in the game.

These games are not about crafting the perfect build. I know some people play that way, but it's not the most efficient way to play. The souls games are always about surviving and making it through with the tools available to you. If you commit to a certain playstyle, then some bosses or areas will be obnoxiously difficult. The best way to play is always to be flexible, and to have multiple options available to deal with whatever the game throws at you, and just because you're playing a spellcasting character doesn't mean you should disregard weapons or shields.

It is not difficult to get enough smithing stones to level up multiple weapons. In fact, because smithing stones come in tiers you kind of have to do this because otherwise you'll end up with a ton of unused low-tier stones. You certainly can't make every weapon useful, but it's certainly not difficult to have a selection of favourites which can expand as and when you need it.

As a player, I very much fall into the "try to master a preferred weapon or playstyle" camp. I will do some silly fist weapons only character and die 40 times to the same boss if I need to, but I know that I'm doing things wrong. I have a friend who is probably less skilled than me when it comes to things like figuring out timings, but who powers through these games barely dying to bosses. It's because he adapts his playstyle and figures out the correct way to approach each challenge using all the tools available, rather than being fixated on doing things a certain way.
 
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CriticalGaming

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That's what larval tears and/or new playthroughs are for.
Larval Tears, make what you've already discovered useless. And on new playthroughs the same thing occurs. All this does is make a different set of items useless to you.

I mean, that's how Dark Souls has always been. There's the items you've been upgrading and then there's all of the other items that you aren't going to use because your current weapon is +10 and the cool looking scythe you just picked up isn't. Most loot in these games are worthless because your starting equipment can carry you through the entire game.
The difference in previous games is that you don't explore copy/pastes areas for these items and most of them are not out of the way as you move through the very good level design by default.

Perhaps the common thread for not enjoying either of these games’ worlds is because they each require more patience than is typically expected.
I think I've been pretty clear about why I hated BotW. It was strictly the garbage durability system, and the constant nonsense that got in the players way. Freedom to move around is all well and good, but if you limit my freedom by raining while i'm climbing or zap me with lightning out of nowhere because i happen to have the wrong weapons equiped at the wrong time, then you can fuck right off with your bullshit. Maybe this is patience, but I just call it dicking the player around for no reason other than to slow them down.

I also think that "optional" content is also kind of a lie. Because say you are just a god at the games, if you ran the main path, you could beat either BotW or ER in...30 minutes? So how optionial can the content be if that content is the bulk of your game? That doesn't sounds very optional, and the fact the most people will require this "optional" content in order to reasonably progress, means that "optional" is bullshit. It's not optional, it's the content of the game. If all of this massive world is optional then what is actually the game?

Say what you want about your standard open world games we see everywhere, but at least there side stuff is truly just side stuff. There is a full story, and campaign, etc and skipping the side content doesn't hamper your experience in any major way.