Elden Ring Wants You to Play Differently

[@ratatoskr6324]

The "you're playing it wrong" is a quote from a reddit post I cover in this video. I know you're not playing it at all. Neither am I.

[@colorpg152]

that is horrible news i hate when developers keep changing the game and then forcing you to stop playing the way you like

[@forkless]

@@colorpg152 ...and it's a good thing they do or we all still be playing Pong. Not to mention that there are plenty developers make games they like to make and not just adding stock value for shareholders.

[@SH19922x]

Elden ring promotes all the gameplay styles from the Souls series and bloodborne, this video was whack

[@Dylan_Thomas1]

@@colorpg152 They changed Elden Ring and forced you to stop playing it the way you like? Come again? There's virtually infinite games for you to play, including all the other soulsborne games. You can play those or move on to Elden Ring.

[@colorpg152]

@@Dylan_Thomas1 excuse me? infinite games? NAME ME 1 SOULS-LIKE GAMES WHERE YOU CAN PLAY A PURE CASTER LIKE DS2? ONE GAME? the only souls-like rpgs where you can play a pure mage i know are the 4 soulsgames that fromsoftware made, you have infinite games with that reflex garbage, you should be the one to leave instead of destroying my niches for your stupid difficulty addiction

[@walter1383]

So heavy attacks actually break bosses poise, opening up for a critical. Good.

[@austinhodyniak8075]

For sure. Very few weapons have ever given much reason to use R2. The more decisions I have to make during combat the better.

[@Razielts1]

Iirc i think you could do it in Bloodborne too if you landed a charged R2

[@DrnMontemayor]

It's not just the heavy charged ones, it's also Heavy Jump attacks and parries. To bosses like Margit, for example you need 2 parries to completely break the posture bar and be able to land a critical. This is a good thing because it opens much more options than previous titles to deal with foes. It is much more like Sekiro.

[@GehrmansWheelchair]

@@DrnMontemayor Does the posture bar fill up by stacking the heavy R2 poise damage along with the poise damage caused by parrying? So instead of two parries you could just do one and a few charged R2s? I didn’t test that out when I played but now I’m curious.

[@KaylaHall-bb2zf]

@@DrnMontemayor Good!!! I was really hoping this was the case especially when fighting bosses.

[@nullpo2478]

I'm glad that they finally make blocking, heavy attack, and jump attack useful. Plus the shield counter feels like a really good mechanic for someone that is more attuned to sekiro parry system than dark souls parry system.

[@Handsomeguy-kj2jg]

Blocking was never that bad. I wish they would of focused on making blocking with a weapon more viable. Much less turtle encouraging

[@DrnMontemayor]

Parrying is still very efficient in breaking posture in ER byw. In fact, I think it's the most efficient. Margit's gets broken in 2 parries.

[@AdumbroDeus]

@@Handsomeguy-kj2jg honestly I think blocking was often too good in the old games. A lot of people got locked into turtle strategies and couldn't handle more complex fights or enjoy the game. Of course a more dynamic blocking system like Sekiro's changes that a lot.

[@alowlytarnished5579]

@@Handsomeguy-kj2jg Yeah I hope there’s something we can do to reduce block damage with weapons maybe with the medallions, its wishful thinking lol

[@nomongosinthaworld]

Yeah, I wish they made it more like Sekiro where a correctly timed L1 could deflect an attack completely. Party timings in Souls always felt off to me and it would’ve made a lot of sense since a lot of these enemies in ER seem to have very long and rapid combos that are too quick to dodge through at close range. Turtling is no fun at all sadly…

[@Discotechque]

I "accidentally" learned that R2 attacks staggered Margit because my R1 with a long sword dealt 32 DMG and a charged R2 dealt 105 so I chose to use RE attacks. Needless to say, I was staggering Margit every 3-4 R2's depending on the frequency. Though I died like 20+ times even with that knowledge, Rogier, and that jellyfish summon.

[@thewaywardgrape3838]

You're using " " wrong. You didn't "accidentally", you accidently did. It wasn't alleged or supposed.

[@xXRustyShacklefordXx]

​​@@thewaywardgrape3838who cares l0 ser

[@trevordillon1921]

By far my favorite aspect of elden ring is the changes made to the poise system. Staggering enemies and bosses feels great and can be a potent strategy, and there’s so many tools to do it. Jumping attacks, R2’s, weapon skills, guard counters, even light attacks from the right weapons (great hammers, but paired hammers can get them fairly quick too.) Combining high poise damage attacks with weak, fast attacks that keep the meter from going down is my latest favorite. Played through with an Omen Cleaver with flaming strike, and somehow my favorite part of that run ended up being bone darts.

[@R1tualistic_]

Don’t use rogier, he deals so little damage for the extra health that Margit gets

[@lordgiblets7585]

Well, even with using R2 attacks, I'm still not staggering him. I hit him six times and it didn't happen.

[@alexadelaide]

The “I was getting my ass kicked so bad I had to experiment with other strategies” is what I love about fromsoft games

[@lorenzofalorni3961]

Yeah it's a game that forces you to not be brain dead

[@am-zm5lz]

"I am so mad that I'm going to spend the next two hours learning every bit of this mother fuckers moveset so I can parry every bitch ass slash

[@LuigiGamesful]

Too bad not a lot of people have that problem solving skill so they decided to whine on the internet about how unfair the game is lmao

[@maxrightgame]

I wish everyone had the novelty of having 2 spare hours a day to waste learning singular enemy patterns but world isn't that kind

[@heavymetalman165]

Playstyle is also a thing. You've specced into something that you find fun shouldn't the game design facilitate all playstyles?

[@josegoatkidd7704]

Ok, I've been thinking about this and after having finished Dark Souls 1 again after 2 years without playing it, now with this new "Elden Ring mentality" I'm starting to suspect that this approach to combat of mixing rolls and blocks might have been the intended way from the very beginning. Something I realized playing Demon's Souls is that counter-attacks after a block were always a thing in these games, but it's a mechanic that has been completely overlooked. Or at least, I've never seen anyone talk about it. Let me explain: when you block an enemy's attack, his weapon will bounce off your shield (if you have enough stamina/stability for that, obviously), and if you attack inmediately after, you will do slightly more damage that if you attack him normally. You can test this very easily: go to Demon's Souls tutorial, and count how many hits you need to kill the first enemy; then go to the second one, block his first attack and counter. With the knight build (the one I usually choose) you will need 3 R1s to kill the first enemy, but only 2 if you block hist attack first. I've tested this and it is true for Dark Souls 1 as well. And funny enough, this mechanic is put to test against Gwyn. I've seen quite some people complaining about how Gwyn has combos that are way too fast for Dark Souls 1 roll animation, that it is not balanced. Well, maybe what you need to do is to block those fast attacks. He also has some slower ones that you can roll through, thus making Gwyn a final test of everything the game's combat offers. Buuuut, we all have got used to parry him to death instead. So, as I see it, FromSoft has always wanted us to weave all the combat mechanics in a dynamic way but have struggled to balance them all properly. In Dark Souls 1 tanking behind a shield was too OP so this became the meta for newcomers: hold the shield and search the backstab. Then BloodBorne came, and with it FromSoft tried to teach us how to properly dodge and be more agressive. This is cannon now, a lot of content creators have said it in their analysis of the game. But the problem is that this turned the table the other way around and created a generation of 2 handing dodge-spammers. If you remember, there is even a couple shields in the game, and in their item description you can read "Shields are nice, but not if they engender passivity". This has no double meaning, no possible interpretation, it is literal: shields are OK but constantly hiding behind them is not the way. But most of us, when reading this, what we actually read was "shields are for scrubs, git gud lol". So then Dark Souls 3 came, and I think this was another chance for FromSoft to test if we had finally learnt the lesson, putting shields back in the menu and giving more complex movesets to a lot of the enemies. But it was too late, we were accustomed to the dodge focused flow of BloodBorne; and that, mixed with the more generous i-frames for the rolls, turned us all into frenzied roll-spaming madmen. BUT THEN Sekiro came, and with it, FromSoft put the focus on force-teach us how to properly use our blocks with the deflect mechanic (that is, tap blocking instead of just holding the L1 button); just as they force-taught us how to properly dodge in BloodBorne by removing shields all together. Considering all of this, I see a really fascinating story of a company swinging back and forth, balancing different mechanics, in order to teach their fanbase how to play their games. All of this while releasing masterpiece after masterpiece. FromSoft is on a(whole)nother level when it comes to player conditioning, man. Now, with Elden Ring, we'll have to see if we have finally learnt the lesson ;)

[@jayblack7495]

That's an underrated comment. Each new From Software title is another rung built into the same developmental ladder. From graphics, to animation, to world-size and scope, to gameplay, and even to the deep overlapping lore itself; From Software has been delivering the ingredients of perfection by achieving each new plateau according to the limitations of the available hardware. Elden Ring isn't just their next game; it's the next rung of the ladder... I look forward to standing upon it, and discovering where it leads...

[@ChromaEquinox]

Really interesting comment, thanks for taking the time to write that out :)

[@yeticrabz]

This is an extremely insightful comment. I wish it were pinned for better visibility. As already expressed above, thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and observations.

[@ericbeal7284]

I became more and more convinced of what you wrote the more i read.

[@thatotherdan9984]

Well when I was in Japan I noticed how late alot of the people worked. Some just slept at their desks. So it doesn't surprise me from soft is one of the only reputable developers left.

[@NaughtMax]

I’ve never been big into guides or following anyone else’s builds so I’ve always just found a big ass heavy sword and find my opportunity to do my stupid strong but slow swings, playing Elden ring has been very rewarding in that sense because I can pretty quickly stagger bosses for a critical if I can find the right window. In past games my very dummy straightforward play style has worked, but it feels this time I’m actually rewarded for my glass canon play style. I think it’s cool that this game has broadened what they player can do and there are entire incredible well developed systems that the player can ignore (i.e. magic, shield mechanics, etc) if they so choose. Giving the players the option on how they play, and how hard the game is for them is super fulfilling as a player and it starts to feel like nearly every play style is catered to.

[@CatManDoom84]

Gives and takes.

[@aidanmccracken890]

I'm running a heavy greatsword with lions claw it feels so great walking up to strong enemies, pancaking them, and then just beating on them till they die, staggering with every hit

[@benjaminthibieroz4155]

That, and the absurd amounts of bleed and frost you can inflict that also do big stance damages.

[@NaughtMax]

@@benjaminthibieroz4155 I do a power stanced bleed attuned greatswords with cragwhatever weapon art and it absolutely melts

[@Entertainment-ev6ob]

I’m usually against the “your doing it wrong and this is why your not having fun” thing but in this case I think it’s true. One example is thinking you can run through a souls game like any other game. Sometimes you need to take a step back and realize why specific stuff is done.

[@AdumbroDeus]

This is very much in line with what Hboomerguy talks about in his "bloodborne is genius" video with "play conditioning", the idea that a game subtly teaches you how to relate to its mechanics, which can either be done in bad ways (fallout 3 teaching you to ignore hacking) or good ones like bloodborne's encouragement of more offensive souls play. This seems to be an iteration of how From tries to teach players that certain mechanics are important.

[@TheBaca219]

Most good games reward you for using its mechanics in intended ways. In terraria for example, all cool loot is in the world so you are driven to explore, thus experiencing one of the game's strengths.

[@Psiberzerker]

To a degree, but it looks like (From the CNT) they're making a major effort to give you several possible ways to approach a fight. For one thing, it's not a railroad story run any more. Sure, there were branches in Dark Souls III, but those usually just led to the doll you needed to get into Irithyll Valley (For example.) I'm not talking about "Balance" here (Fromsoft never cared about Balance, you wake up in a grave... Feel free to die in a ditch somewhere) I'm just talking about the flexibility to Guard-Counter, instead of Parrying. Dual Wield a Spell, and a Weapon Art (With a shield out) Hybrids. If you'll notice, most of the teaser classes are a hybrid of melee and magic, or at least come with Thunderbolt. I seriously doubt that Barbarian is going to start with Faith, and Dragon Breath, but I'm definitely picking up a "Try a hybrid" hint there.

[@shrekfanboy5446]

kinda like how areas like Huntsman's Copse or Iron Keep will punish you for trying to sprint past them

[@24News-t5i]

*you are = you're .

[@yewtewbstew547]

Quite a lot of the larger bosses in Bloodborne had something similar to this mechanic too, where if you hit them with heavy attacks (usually in a specific body part, but not always) they would stagger and become vulnerable to a visceral attack or at least be weakened in some other way (such as Darkbeast losing his lightning).

[@rileybazan9747]

it wasn't heavy attacks, it was doing enough damage to that body part in general. That's why I love the Threaded Cane, it can usually hit any part of a boss with a light attack in its whip form, letting me get easy viscerals. Plus once a limb is damaged, it will take way more damage.

[@OD91MJ]

DS3 if you get giants in the head or Aldrich. It has been in the game for awhile. You notice more on multiple runs. I am so stoked for Elden Ring because I started with Sekiro for Fromsoftware journey.

[@TKM20XX]

Exactly! Reminds me a hell lot of Bloodborne playstyle, just with shorter dodges and shields!

[@DrnMontemayor]

That's the Limb Break System and the Weak Point system, which was even present in DS1. BB uses the weak spot particularly in bosses like Amygdala and Ebrietas. Amy can also have their limbs broken by you. And her head remains vulnerable to bonus damage after the critical stagger. DS3 also had an inconsistent version of it that worked with a few bosses and mini bosses. ER's works like Sekiro's and DS3's combined. Because it is based on Posture, not damage type or weak spot. Although some enemies showed to also use the weak spot mechanic like the Giant Crabs and Land Octopus, and other larger enemies.

[@AdumbroDeus]

@@DrnMontemayor in DS1 it just increased damage or killed the body part, Bloodborne created much more dynamic push and pulls where they could have a variety of effects.

[@chia1jon]

Fun fact: You can charge many spells too. They do more damage (about 10% I believe) and can stagger more too I think.

[@nhall129]

If this remains a mechanic in the full game, im really excited for it. Its felt like heavy attacks have lacked much purpose outside of knocking down small enemies If we now have incentive to use R2 attacks, we’ll have far more decisions to make in combat. Do i get the easy damage out, or do i risk the R2 for the chance at a posture break. I love the potential of this change.

[@WeinerTouchy]

Didn't Bloodborned implement this a bit already? I'm not talking about how you have to do backstabs, but I was playing a new game last night and was fighting Amelia and was having a bit of a rough run on my build, used R2 attacks a bit more and started staggering her which allowed a few extra hits and getting through the fight. It might not be entirely the same thing, but even back in Bloodborne R2s were a bit more "Do I do this and risk getting a stagger, but if I don't I have a longer recover time and will most likely take some damage"

[@DrnMontemayor]

@@WeinerTouchy In BB R1 spam is still much more favourable to you as a player. Amelia for example: it's better to hit her a lot on her arms to break them than it is to land big attacks. Since you'll do bonus damage after breaking. Transformationñ attacks also are better. Although that varies from weapon to weapon. DS3 also had a rudimentary implementation of the posture system you see in Sekiro and now in Elden Ring, but mainly on bosses and special enemies like the Giant Crabs, Monstrosities, and Corvian Knights. Bosses and Giant crabs, if you hit them enough, especially on a weakspot (Gundyr, Lorian, Midir) will collapse and be open for a critical or instability damage. In Elden Ring, we see the Giant Crabs again, and the Land Octopus enemies that have a special weakspot you have to hit to earn an instant critical. In Giant Crabs the opening is the same as in DS3 were you just had to press R1 in the middle of their slam to critical them, but now, similar to the Corvian Knights or Monstrosities, you must hit them at the right moment you posture break them. In Elden Ring they extended these systems to even regular enemies and bosses fully. So posture works more consistently like in Sekiro, and not situationally like in DS3. Also consider that in BB damage types were more prominent than in the Trilogy. I recently used a HMS build, and against Ebrietas I exclusively used Untransformed R2 because Thrust is simply better. Ofc if you're using LHB or Kirkhammer a charged R2 is a risk worth taking if you time it right. But that still doesn't change the fact that limb breaking and R1 spam is better for DPS and safety.

[@AdumbroDeus]

@@WeinerTouchy bloodborne more did it for regular enemies with it's encouragement to fully charge an R2 on an enemy's back BUT, bosses often had weak points that sometimes could be better hit with heavies, causing staggers. I would definitely say this system is iterating on both BB and Sekiro.

[@diss-chargemaker]

@@WeinerTouchy Bloodborne has a Limb breaking system on some bosses

[@Kn1ghtborne]

Theres literally nothing different dude I've been fighting like that for all the souls games It works on players and Npc's alike Congratulations you learned you can do different things

[@manab787]

I started with the warrior class and was dual wielding the scimitars for the entire first run of the demo. I played as if I was playing ds3 with the twin blades, primarily using L1 for attacking. Marget was very tough for me, he was relentless and had very few safe openings. It took me a while to beat him because I was playing as if it was ds3, I didn’t even jump the whole time, not because I didn’t want to, I just completely forgot I could.

[@dramalexi]

Now that I have 80 hours in Sekiro I can't imagine to go back to a Souls game with no jumping at all. It's such a great feeling.

[@akiraigarashi2874]

@@dramalexi Now only if there was a grappling hook too.

[@dramalexi]

@@akiraigarashi2874 That's true. But at least we get a Yakul to ride and fight on.

[@tiberseptim7644]

@@dramalexi Beating final boss felt soooo satisfying, did it couple of days ago. I literally thought this was impossible for me, because I've never been stuck on a boss for 3 days! Glad I was wrong

[@dramalexi]

@@tiberseptim7644 Sekiro teached me that there are no bosses which are impossible. The negative side of it is that you'll have to learn all of their patterns and all possible ways you can die. Yesterday it took me 4 hours to beat Inner Father with hard mode on. It took another 2 hours to safely beat him on most attempts. I think in Sekiro it all amounts to 10% strategy, 30% skill and 60% of rinse and repeat.

[@healersinbound]

Why after 200+ hours do I watch this..

[@towermoss]

Education is never completed.

[@batatinhacomics]

What's funny is that as someone who's not a Souls player, I've been playing like this from launch and it was super intuitive to play like this. I have no muscle memory from the other games or anything like that, so that might've helped.

[@trabbit9379]

I'm so used to the muscle memory I forget to even jump 😅

[@willgarrison4959]

I've fucking HATED every FromSoft game I've played, to the point where I won't/can't play past the second boss. DS1-3, Bloodborne, nothing clicked. This game though...I love this game. It's so weird seeing so many DS fans complain about the difficulty of this game. I've taken out at least a dozen different bosses so far, and I haven't felt trapped yet

[@miz7126]

@@willgarrison4959 The main complaints are about the late game. A few of the bosses around that point tend to get spammy with their combos and rely on a bunch of memorization stuff rather than too much skill. It feels less fun than a normal souls game in aspects

[@mysteretsym]

@@miz7126 imo all souls game bosses are just muscle memory, you can have bad reaction time and still destroy bosses thats why it might take you 20 attempts just to get through one boss. But with elden ring, the dynamic combos force you to think more instead of just putting 2 and 2 together. Its not really bad or good but it makes it more difficult and kinda annoying. In dark souls none of the bosses would literally sit there and spam unpredictable combos that would last forever. this really suck when the bosses kill you in one to two hits and have a crapload if health.

[@TheZahirNT2]

lol, I just left a similar comment. Really interesting, and I think indicative of good game design.

[@John-uw2je]

From what I can see the "rules" for avoiding damage are as follows: Counter slow attacks with dodging Counter fast attacks with shield Counter area of effect attacks (like a slam) with jumping

[@zyfryth]

That is generally true, but you have to take into account combos. Very often bosses engage in a combo of movements with mixed attacks. FOr example 4 swift attacks, finishing with one or two heavy attacks. And if you haven't done enough posture damage before that, you can't parry the first hits. I mean you can, but the boss is gonna keep doing the flurry, so if you decide to guard counter after the second fast hit, his third fast hit will hit you before your guard counter does. Also about regular parry of attacks, it is worth mentioning that if you press the parry button a split second before you get hit, the game rewards you with very little endurance damage, as opposed to just holding the parry button waiting for the hit :) Much like in Sekiro. However unlike in Sekiro regular parry (not parry ash of war) but regular parry doesn't seem to damage posture bar as far as I can tell, although there is a chance of keeping it from regenerating

[@qwormuli77]

@@zyfryth That means you can block those fast initial hits, dodge the last heavy ones and either distance yourself to recover or go close to punish the large whiff from those heavy attacks. You can also get your guard blown by the last attack, but if the enemy's wad is already blown, they can't punish it and it doesn't matter. I'm also confused at what you mean by parrying here. If you parry a parryable hit, the combo gets interrupted and you get the same riposte punish immediately. You seem to use the word "parry" for blocking, guard countering and parrying at the same time, which make reading this a tad difficult.

[@zyfryth]

@@qwormuli77 I see what you are saying, but in this case it is the same. Parry ash of war doesn't always brake enemy posture. It depends, how much was their posture bar damaged beforehand. In most cases parry will just negate damage, but if their posture bar was low it will brake it. It always brakes posture for trash mobs though. Now I am not 100% sure if you ash of war parry with perfect timing, will that brake the posture of the boss no matter what, or will it count as regular block on tougher bosses.

[@qwormuli77]

@@zyfryth I still think that you might be calling a guard counter a parry. When you guard counter, you attack an enemy that hit your block, dealing heavy damage, posture and regular alike. When you parry, you actively parry their attack. A parry has never been about reducing damage in earlier souls games, but about actively intercepting it and landing a riposte. That's what parry does, lands into a riposte, no posture breaking needed. A parry also isn't landed with a differing degree: Either you'll land a parry and take no damage at all and then riposte, or you'll whiff it and take a part of the hit. A parry pretty much always lands the enemy into a riposte state, but in a few select cases lands them into a heavy stagger you can punish with a loaded heavy. To my knowledge the state or even the existence of their posture has nothing to do with this. I'm also not sure how ashes of war mix into this, as to my knowledge they don't change the way the underlying mechanic of parrying works in comparison to natural parry tools. That is, if you don't count the auxiliary effects some of them have. So, you can break an enemy's posture to lead them into a riposte, or you can parry an enemy to lead them into a riposte. If you are talking about guard counters (the one you do after holding "light attack" with a shield and then heavy attack with your weapon), you do damage to their posture, yes. It's heavy damage and very recommended to do whenever safe, even if it doesn't instantly break their posture. You can repeat it with many enemies to break their posture eventually and then riposte them. The game is new and there are things I don't yet know of, but parrying seems to work like it has worked before the entire concepts of posture or guard counters ever existed.

[@zyfryth]

@@qwormuli77 I am not confused about the difference between block and parry. You can block with any shield and any two-hander. Parry ash of war is a skill, you assign to a shield dagger rapier and it is about 0.1 sec active movement that stops damage and has a chance to stagger for reposte. This chance is 100% on trash mobs, but it is not 100% on bosses, as far as I can tell, although it does it sometimes. However it always stops damage if it connects, its just it doesnt always brakes their initiative.

[@Modie]

What I don't get is that people seem to forget that the system already existed in Dark Souls 3. The main difference is that Elden Ring gives you a jump which means it's easier to do R2 instead of R1 while also increasing posture damage.

[@franknfurterlover]

Margit really impressed me for the reasons you mentioned. He felt intentionally designed to be a wall to players stuck in the mindset of previous Souls titles. Designed to make you switch things up in a very clever way. He reminds me of Gascoigne and Genichiro in that he tried to force you to play the game you're playing, not Dark Souls.

[@elvispiss]

But he is super easy to dodge though

[@mysteretsym]

I just beat him like how I approach orher souls games by attempting him 40 times, dodging, and dying a lot. Eventually you’ll learn his moveset. But margit in my opinion is not the boss that will force you to adapt. You can even just level your character up and beat him with not much effort. Some of the bodses in this game are extremely unforgiving and harder to fight than margit. Now that I think about it using a shield against some of these bosses could seriously cut the difficulty.

[@doihavetobeg]

@@mysteretsym I just don't get how THIS is the boss people struggle with. You can block, parry, stagger, spam, roll. You can summon a minnion and they even left an npc summon right next to the fog gate. And if that wasn't enough you can simply go around the castle to unlock the round table and continue exploring the rest of the game without being crippled by low tier weapons and upgrades.

[@tmitsurugi7777]

@@doihavetobeg I have soloed Midir and he gave me trouble. Guarding pre-patch was not worth it especially with a short range weapon and his aggression is far higher than almost all souls bosses in melee.

[@collinfox5088]

Mmmm i think your misspelled godrick that old man was a walk

[@Derthertnerdergler]

I'm glad to see Fromsoftware bringing Sekiro's posture mechanic into this game and I hope it's not the only aspect they bring. I'm still holding out hope that one of the "Great Runes" will enable us to swim.

[@solomon9655]

Ooooh that would be fascinating! I’ve interpreted the Elden Ring as the rule set and physics of this universe, in other words, the source code. Gaining powers through meddling with the “source code” would be sick as hell.

[@yiangaruga4928]

That's one of my biggest wishes too cause it'd add so much to the exploration and some extra potential for different encounters. Another idea could be an eventual DLC tied to the waters of Lands Between which would turn all bodies of water explorable through swimming and have some kind of story tied to it all

[@Sketch2805Studios]

They also added the stealth from sekiro I know u probably know this but it means that isn't all they carried over

[@sablemae8853]

There's definitely some no combat sekiro in the game with stealth,jump,verticality in level traversal,music in the background and hopefully more than just the posture bar in combat

[@Frostblast7]

From: adds swimming mechanics Players: swims through the texture and skips half of the game.

[@TheSealMayor]

Margitt is absolutely supposed to be your first wall, your first test. Both mechanically, thematically, and narratively. Your waifu even says that she wanted to see if you can handle the journey

[@unoriginalname9556]

Margitt is a wall yes, it's a wall that teaches you that it's okay to not beat him right now and tells you to explore, get stronger and come back later until you can beat him.

[@dontbothertoreply9755]

There is no such thing as a waifu there, a bunch of autistic cunts and harlots.

[@TylerRamos-h2o]

He’s the first “skill check” if you can’t beat him you know you aren’t ready to progress yet.

[@JigglypuffTutorials]

@@unoriginalname9556or bang your head against the wall and git gud. Which I enjoy, you can beat him at a pretty low level if you memorize the pattern

[@leonake4194]

My First wall was the tree sentinel. I did banged my head against the wall till It broke, over 50 atempts in a single day 💀

[@Omnibus4Everyone]

To whom this may be useful: A friend and I tested each weapon on the “”dragon”” and Margit specifically, as well as on each other in different circumstances through PvP. As far as the Network Test was concerned, Jumping R2’s beat out all other moves in term of staggering (or whatever you wanna call it). Even more than the charged R2 attacks. I’m generally just happy to have the posture bar back, albeit an abridged version, and options instead of just pressing circle and R1. The carian magic sword stab was also godly at staggering btw. I do wish that blocking with a weapon only could negate damage if timed within a specific window, but we can’t have everything. But yeah, the souls combat needed new options to account for the continuing changes in enemy design throughout the series. Elden Ring appears to do just that. Can’t wait to play the full game.

[@xvnz]

It was pretty funny to me when he said they want you to block with a sword and as proof showed that the blocking was buffed from god awful to just terrible. At 85 I would consider calling it intentional but I still wouldn't like to use it.

[@dinohunter6450]

@@xvnz its more likely to be useful on STR builds with large weapons like UGS and whatnot. I imagine UGS will have 90-95 physical reduction on the best ones. Assuming they're in the full game, of course. The game definitely incentives shields over blocking with weapons, though, and if the smaller weapons like longswords or scimitars had 85 physical reduction then shields would be pointless. The increase in damage reduction is definitely incentive for guard counters, its just not good on the smaller weapons for balancing reasons. Id also imagine that the smaller weapons have insane posture damage on jumping L1s when powerstancing. If not, then powerstancing mag not be as good as we thought it would be.

[@Omnibus4Everyone]

@@xvnz the block into the special counter is still really good for posture damage,and depending on what’s going on, it might be preferable to getting out of the way. You can use a shield to do it as well. You don’t have to two-hand. Though, yes, I agree. Just blocking with your weapon is still incredibly underwhelming. And I don’t think NG+ is taken into consideration, when I see those numbers.

[@bobdkdmeneme5746]

It’s also interesting that blocking the dragon with a straight sword in the gameplay trailer meant you rolled backward, instead of getting knocked to the ground. This seems to further emphasise the value of blocking regardless of the weapon.

[@BoneWalker]

I wonder how large a role stability will play in the ability to actually block. In ds1, some attacks would flatten you regardless of blocking if your shield had less than 61 stability. The moment you went from 60 stability to 61 stability your shield could suddenly tank black knight gs overhead, capra overhead, and quite a few other attacks that seem unblockable at first.

[@noahbuster4333]

Melee combat is brutal in Eldenring: delayed attacks, every mob/boss has aoes, hard to break poise. Mage was so much smoother

[@バナナお爺さん]

Which also makes clearing the game using melee so much more staisfying I do intend to do a astrologer run but the things you can do with these mechanics are insanely wide if you incorporate ashes of war

[@バナナお爺さん]

@palehorse mage builds also come with demerits as most bosses tend to punish you for keeping too much distance and rolling away This game implemented input reading, you get greedy and you will die real fast

[@pianospawn1]

I’m doing fine so far almost exclusively with a Lordsworn Greatsword. Just dodge.

[@kenshinhimura9387]

@@pianospawn1 that sword won't take you very far in the game. I used that sword into it started to suck. Using uchigatana now and I bleed out every boss

[@joemency2242]

@@kenshinhimura9387 in some youtubers video i found out where uchigatana is. I'm glad i watched it because otherwise i wouldn't have explored that mini dungeon until after i had a way to defeat its enemies (which i hope does exist)

[@meriotroid]

Man, I chose the BEST time to become a Souls fan (I played DS3 a couple months ago, I just beat DS1 yesterday, and I loved em both) this game is going to be legendary

[@StrikeNoir105E]

Same actually: in preparation for Elden Ring bought Dark Souls Remastered near the end of November, bought Dark Souls 2: SotFS and Dark Souls 3 a couple of weeks later after finishing DSR, and now I'm on my second DS3 playthrough as a Pyromancer.

[@obviouslykaleb7998]

@@StrikeNoir105E idk if ur inclined, but i heavily suggest looking up the locations of the pyromancy tomes if you're going as a pyromancer. you'll probably find hidden areas you had no idea about if you do

[@hisholiness4537]

Not to shit on your parade but if you've only played them once, you've barely scratched the surface.

[@meriotroid]

@@hisholiness4537 I mean, yeah. I'm definitely gonna play em all several times down the line

[@ronthorn3]

I got into soulsborne games about 4 months ago, platinumed every one including sekiro. I can’t Fucking WAIT for Elden Ring!!!!!!’

[@thirteen8582]

Goddammit! I didn't play the network test, I avoided every publicity and spoiler possible in order to have a totally blind playthrough when the game finally is released and I am already playing it wrong. What's wrong with me.

[@ratatoskr6324]

🤣🤣🤣

[@arthurdurham]

It feels a bit similar to the purpose of the health regen system in Bloodbourne, incentivizing aggression more than the Souls games. A no shield str/end build in Souls was always my go to but now it's especially viable as getting that extra hit quickly can cause a stagger. You could spend your time being patient and wait for openings, but now you're more rewarded for an all out assault on an enemy and perfect dodging to break their posture. And ashes of war can cause big posture damage, which has made them much more useful than weapon arts were in DS3. This is definitely the most robust Souls (specifically that series, not all From games) combat we've had so far. Though my only issue is that it feels like some enemies aren't meant to be staggered even though you can, as getting to the critical strike hit box can be hard (like the birds in Caelid start glitching around a bit or the giant's limbs can block you from getting to their spot in enough time).

[@All_Mighty672]

I like running the same type of build, but I keep finding myself fighting bosses and now even some regular enemies that have insane AoE attacks or are hyper aggressive, so being patient is still rewarded. One example is a boss far up north who does this big sweeping attack, and it looks like he’s open afterwards, but then he lets out a massive AoE attack with little warning, destroying you if you went for any big hit.

[@tgs5725]

big bonker does big stagger

[@centuronstar8688]

I appreciate Phendrana Drifts ost from Metroid Prime in the background. I just recently got through the Souls Trilogy for the first time. I played through with strength builds that had Greatsword or ultra greatsword. And I did notice that pretty much throughout whether or not I was one-handing or two-handing in battles I'd more or less just use R1/RB attacks. R2 attacks ultimately took up too much stamina that I could use to roll away or block an attack. Adding more reward to the risk of using heavier attacks sounds like a pretty great idea.

[@thewretch4081]

Yeah, after watching this video I say with conviction that this game is not dark souls 4

[@yiangaruga4928]

That's right, "iT's dArK sOuLs 3.5"

[@Tallrikskant]

For me my fromsoftware game journey started with Sekiro. So my play style I guess Was different from the beginning. Intuitively I started to fight with R2 and avoid ground attacks with jumps instead of rolls. I barely use R1 but quickly learned how to avoid normal attacks with rolling forward instead of rolling backwards. Elden ring i think is a mixture of all the games they made so far. And btw I love the fact that the fight system is so good and diverse that we can actually have deep conversions about that 😂

[@cathallynch1]

I inadvertently discovered this with guard counters, but rarely got to apply it with bosses due to them using combos, so this is very valuable. Thank you.

[@anoniemuss824]

This kinda makes me want to start a new “no summons or spirit ashes” character because I’ve learned to rely too heavily on them. I need to get back to basics. I did beat Margit the first time without npc summons because I didn’t even see Rogier’s summon sign on my first character, but I did make use of the spirit wolves. So I guess I’ve never actually beaten him, or perhaps any boss (except those that don’t allow summons), purely alone. Dang lol

[@mishmashed3842]

Same. It didn't feel like i really earned the wins

[@ruairidonaghy9768]

When I was fighting the bloodhound knight I had to use all of these combat mechanics and it not only went better than r1 spamming but also looked really cool It actually looked like two fighters having a duel

[@cheese4746]

man i just backpedaled and hit him with fireballs 😭😭😭

[@cloudsteele1989]

@@cheese4746 When you don't have a big weapon or heavy shield, what else are you going to do?

[@GoodolKev]

Really? I just held L1

[@Rob-lv3rj]

I tried playing fair against Bloodhound… I gave up trying to play honorably, uneqipped all my armor and clapped him with my long sword armament. Spammed it the moment he spawned in and didn’t give him any opportunity. Boy was staggered into the afterlife.

[@バナナお爺さん]

Bloodhound poise was incredibly low, I spammed greatsword's L2 and he just went flying and I did it again and again until he died, poor boi.

[@quintonhoffert6526]

I agree completely, and I posted my agreement on the reddit post Ratatoskr quoted. In addition, I think it is very relevant that jumping now has i-frames. I think that as in Sekiro, players are intended to jump over sweeping attacks such as Margit's tail swipe and then do jumping attacks to deal damage and break posture, much as in Sekiro you did the same by stomping on an enemy and/or using the Senpou ultimate technique. We've now seen several sweep attacks that can be jumped over (Margit's tail swipe and the sword drag from the Burial Tree Watchdog) and all of them have a delay after the attack finishes, a delay just big enough for you to do an aerial attack, land, and then get ready for the enemy's next attack. I don't know that this will be as necessary as it was in Sekiro but I think that it will be integral to fully mastering combat.

[@FireGiantFoot]

Becareful tho jumps have i-frames only when you start jumping. But when in the air or falling you'll be very vanurable.

[@tpotshax8703]

@@FireGiantFoot which is perfect if you're trying to jump over a distinct sweep attack

[@jordsimon4606]

Agree 100%, i personally dislike blocking in from games because i think it slows down the pace of a fight. I’m definitely gonna enjoy playing a quick jump dodging twinblade build.

[@hiimhunter7649]

tbh in sekiro I felt jumping was a little op I don't recall ever really using standard dodge, because jumping back, side, or forward was just always more effective so really happy it won't be like that this time

[@applejhon8308]

I think the issue is that the majority of bosses or boss type enemies really don't allow a lot of "experimentation" on the fly. They can be incredibly fast with high poise and long combos that force you into either trading hits or playing the waiting game for what feels like minutes at a time. Furthermore the posture bar, for whatever reason, is both invisible and recharges rather quickly when you stop attacking making it difficult to tell when exactly you should commit to an r2 or jumping attack especially with low poise /vigor. It's pretty apparent that there's some kind of issue when you notice the massive disparity between magic, and WA spam, compared to trying to fight things in a more "traditional" way with more conventional weapons.

[@aryabratsahoo7474]

Margit is the boss that shows the REAL intended way, the roll catch knife attack is meant to be blocked and guard countered. Hammer slam attack opens up for Jump attacks. The later bosses become more complicated movesets and do more damage, making rolls the only most safest way that everyone would use it instead.

[@basketbomberslackingson4417]

@@aryabratsahoo7474 too bad his knife hits through block, meaning you inevitably would have to dodge it.

[@flamingmanure]

"It's pretty apparent that there's some kind of issue when you notice the massive disparity between magic, and WA spam, compared to trying to fight things in a more "traditional" way with more conventional weapons." thats because playing this game just the "traditional" way is wrong, you gota mix and match, something alot of souls vets still havent figured out and blame the game for it, fromsoft are bored of designing all their games with just R1s and backwards dodging waiting for enemies and bosses to finish their combos.

[@applejhon8308]

@@flamingmanure The issue is there's nothing to mix and match. All signs point to these changes being made to encourage multiplayer/spirit ash use, not actual combat variety.

[@HeyTarnished]

@@applejhon8308 it’s the same as me saying you’re encouraged to use the most powerful weapon that clears all bosses in 2-3 hits depending on how difficult they are, spirit ashes are a way for you to get assistance without having to go through using Co-op, and that’s a neat feature, Elden Ring offers that option to its players, you using them to beat bosses is you admitting you can’t beat them alone, you don’t want to learn their mechanics and move sets, YOU are supposed to look for their punish windows since the bosses will attack relentlessly, so instead of “waiting”, look for those openings, they really become much easier. When past Souls games’ bosses had summons right near their fog walls, does that mean you’re encouraged to use em? No lol, they’re optional.

[@seanchan4478]

I've always liked the weapons with varied movesets like the claymore or the long sword. Being able to go from slash to thrust based on the situation is so important to me

[@ratatoskr6324]

Since I keep seeing it mentioned: Yes other games had moments when bosses would get staggered, but only some bosses would give you the chance to critical strike and that stagger would happen regardless of whether your using R1's or R2's. The stagger had no significant relationship to R2's it's just something that would happen over the course of a boss fight.

[@ZeusTheGodSoA]

These videos are so quality. I had watched a few videos of yours and realized i wasn't subbed. Changed that quick. I hope that long dark playthrough comes back too.

[@lordanonimmo7699]

There were enemies that would only stagger and open to critical attacks with a fully charged R2 on some specific member,like the sulyvhan beasts.

[@DreamskyDance]

Yup, as far as i know that stagger would depend on certain number of hits on the head most oftenly ( Midir, Demon Prince ) or generally certain number of hits ( Gael..at third hit is staggered )...

[@jonathonsmith6831]

So is elden ring sentient and has the thought process of wanting me to play different or is it the game designers who do?

[@ethanabramov6345]

I might be wrong but I think r2s were better at staggering because they do more damage to a boss' poise

[@thrithree]

Thanks so much for this video. Elden ring is my first Fromsoft game and it has been an EXTREEM eye opening experience. I really had to work out the combat system for myself, all the while thinking that maybe I was missing something important. I didn’t know that timing was such an important aspect of the game as it is in ER. And once I learned that I knew there had to be something more. I didn’t have the habit of spamming R1 because I had not played any of the other souls games but I didn’t realize how deep the complexity of battle was until I watched your video and how you fought that boss. It took me forever to beat him. I didn’t even know how summoning worked or spirit ashes for that matter at the time and when I finally beat him I chalked it up to repetition and a little bit of luck. But I still felt I wasn’t “playing right” and your video confirmed my suspicions and will help me correct my approach. Thanks again. Cheers.

[@iamamish]

Great points, I never really thought about how you're incentivized to only use R1s in boss fights, but you're so right. I'd love to see buffed R2s.

[@robroskey6515]

I'm glad to hear this, I like when im forced out of my comfort zone now after having to do it in sekiro. In sekiro I refused to learn the blocking and parrying for a while and struggled big time with my dark souls gameplay style until I got to later bosses and just couldn't beat them. I then watched fighting cowboys gameplay videos and saw how badass he was with the proper moves which inspired me to learn it. The game went from good to absolutely amazing after that and it was much more fun than trying to cheese my way through it. It waa much more enjoyable the way the devs intended, hopefully people who want an easy mode will realize this so they can see what they've been missing. Can't wait to dive into elden ring next month.

[@eddieb1995]

Once the combat clicks you feel like a Jedi samurai ninja Jesus.

[@fabioviti7384]

The problem is that sekiro is a total different game, here is just dark soul with a twist; as in sekiro you had to totally change the way you play here you just have to R2 when u block, not R1 Use bleeding weapons Abuse jump attack againts npc Not a real difference, but since there's a lil twist it feels!

[@Andres33AU]

I knew it! I was just experimenting in playing the game, and noticed that certain attacks like block counters and heavy attacks did more staggering effects on bosses. I also watched some videos of people parrying against Margit, as well as doing heavy attacks, and noticed a large blood splatter which kinda indicated the next attack would be a stun. Thank you for covering this and confirming it, I'll definitely mix up my playstyle, and I really love the updated mechanics in this game, and am happy to see that there is a bit of Sekiro in this game after all, haha.

[@jakemeyers9426]

Great video. I agree wholeheartedly. I kind of accidently stumbled into this farming giants from horseback with greatswords. You want to really focus on one leg because each body part has separate poise for you to break. Jumping attacks have served me very well, as well as those delicious charged up r2 attacks. Difficult bosses have been made look silly because of timely staggering. I've been fighting differently without even realizing it, but when I saw the title of your video, I actually suspected that this might be the subject.

[@patches1090]

Darksouls is a rythm game confirmed

[@mitochondriatrashgoblin3316]

THIS IS SUCH A MOOD!!! I’m currently getting my butt kicked by the draconic tree sentinal, so I’ve been experimenting with charged attacks while riding in on horseback. If I time my charged attacks right, I can land a fully charged r2 attack right as Torrent is passing his horse, and then be out of range for his obligatory retaliatory attack. I also equip the charged attack boosting talisman. I’ve been losing less horribly. Maybe I’ll beat him today?

[@thedarkgenious7967]

Bloodborne was all about extreme aggression when openings presented themselves, leading us away from the passive approach that worked so well during the mainline souls games. Sekiro was about using that extreme aggression to create our own openings. Now we're bringing back shields and defense, to the point of "Aggressively Defending," to create and capitalize on openings.

[@AWanderingSwordsman]

Kind of reminds me of Nioh 2 with it's focus on not just whiff punishing with normal attacks but instead getting in big powerful attacks and combos for much much greater reward. Turns a 5 minute battle into a 30 second one instead.

[@doriangray1935]

Oh man, after playing Nioh 2 almost 1000 hours I am afraid I cant go back to playing traditional soulsborne games:)

[@asiamatron]

Yeah I prefer that way of doing things.

[@BaggaB0nez]

Also using crouches and jumps is a viable option other than dodge rolling all the time. It makes the combat a lot more diverse and it looks friggin awesome!

[@Handsomeguy-kj2jg]

I think a good way to balance blocking and rolling is encouraging the player to use both in combat. Such as allowing the first roll or block to be significantly more effective in single use but drops effectiveness if used in succession. Like 1st roll is longer with more I frames than rolls immediately after. Same for blocking the first couple blocks have great stamina use but repeated hits will start hitting your stamina much worse. Instead of players relying on one method too much the use switch from one to the other. I think this would be great.

[@slothful2039]

Elden Ring encourages variety more so than past titles. Weapon types across the board appear to be more viable, including previously "poor" options like bows. I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few players branch off from the ever-popular straight swords and greatswords. Lastly, the improved magic seems to be adopting attributes from the adaptive melee combat as well. A lot of spells can be charged seamlessly and are better structured around the moment-to-moment gameplay. Gone are the days of magic builds playing rather drab. Every day I just get more and more hyped to experience what this game has to offer.

[@deepism]

This video is very interesting to come back to for me. In the lead-up to Elden Ring's release, we saw and were encouraged by the network test's gameplay and from the trailers to use guard counters. Now that the game has been out for two years, guard counters have been shown to be one of the least desirable mechanics to utilize during gameplay, at least from my experience. This is especially true in Player versus Player combat. It's true that after release they updated guard counters to have faster completion speed and that the guard boosts of all weapons were increased, but still guard counters are hardly ever seen in both PvP and PvE. There are even talismans which encourage using guard counters such as the Curved Sword talisman and the Greatshield talisman, but they still don't seem to make players want to use guard counters. I am honestly wondering if there will be more incentives to use guard counters in the DLC, or if guard counters will return in whatever future games come out.

[@esaualfaro3447]

I always knew Sekiro was a big experiment to test and create many fun mechanics to implement in future games. Sekiro has great combat elements, and my favorite one was definitely the critical strikes. The traditional "boss has 500HP, reduce it to 0HP to win" is not as fun and engaging as "boss has 2HP, fight for an opening and crit strike them twice to win".

[@tylerbrush2314]

I would say the combat in sekiro is sooo much better then any of the souls games but that’s coming from a sekiro fan boy

[@esaualfaro3447]

@@tylerbrush2314 Sekiro has better combat, but less variety. Souls games have great combat and more variety so I think it depends on preference.

[@tylerbrush2314]

@@esaualfaro3447 i would agree they do re use a lot of bosses but the variety in combat is just so dang fun always good to see sekiro get at least a hat tipped to it

[@Epiousios18]

Sucks that they nerfed the physical damage negation of the longswords at launch.

[@Eyes0fArs0n]

Elden Ring is hands down one of the most addicting games I've played in a very long time. Better than Dark Souls, by a long shot. The exploring, and the endless styles have brought so many more people to this style of game. You can endlessly immerse yourself in this game and hours go by. It's a problem. I can't just sit down for a bit, its a commitment.

[@TheSolarium18]

Its not better than Darksouls1

[@djimma5080]

I had to stop playing souls series because they consumed me ....I bought this today and oh boy goodbye the next 3 + years

[@hohrhamikaiolaf464]

Im my opinion they reused all the mechanical parts of dark souls added the tricks of sekiro to it including stealth and a jump! And made a giant map full whit al the mean traps they coud ad in it. So to say they actualy learned from older games they made and asked themselfs... how can we improof it all?

[@codyv308]

i havent felt the way about a game that i do about elden ring since i first got into skyrim

[@djimma5080]

You know what the best bit is - whatever FS make next its gonna be even better

[@somemf6134]

Ive always been using r2s in all souls games seeing big damage numbers is fun so this makes me even more happy to get my hands on this game

[@TylerRamos-h2o]

Same here I always play souls games like 2 handed heavy weapon and all heavy attacks. So naturally in Elden ring I power stance 2 great swords

[@Nagram_]

There is something else I would like to add but before some context to my reasoning. To compensate for all the new tools, moves and playstyles that we as players will get in ER, they needed to tweak how the enemies work (or at the very least the bosses) to keep presenting a decent challenge, and I noticed is that they maked them more relentless, their combos are way more varied and last longer wich brings what I want to point out. Margit was so utterly savage in his combos and how he mix them, than you HAVE to study them to know when it was safe to do a guard counter, like it is shown in the video. The player especifically GC Margit after a specific swing in the same combo. I was getting frustrated when I tried this new mechanic but was not able to pull it off without getting interrupted, becuase of the established Souls veteran mindset, the same thing as when playing Sekiro for the first time, when you constantly rolled attacks instead of deflecting. Until I died a few times to Margit and was able to memorized his moves, I did a near perfect fight against him and stating getting the hand of the guard counter and jumping R2s and just like Sekiro once I got used to deflecting and enjoyed the combat of Elden Ring way more. The depth of just this couple of new mechaincs is so rich, and that is not taking into account timing of different weapons when guard countering.

[@ziga226]

Its all about finding an opening "attacks once" boss sudenly has a new move with a quadruple combo straight to the dome miyazaki is a evil bastard is all i can say

[@Fullmetalnyuu0]

So it seems like Margit is a "wall" in Elden Ring in the exact same way Gascoigne was a "wall" in Bloodborne - putting to the test everything you've learned up to that point and introducing you to what the rest of the game will require of you if you hope to get to the end. I honestly really, really love that - bosses that function as a test and a tutorial both without you even realizing it at first.

[@100_pesos]

Yeah, Genichiro in Sekiro as well.

[@hiimhunter7649]

it's a great part of their game design they understand if they add new features they should have a boss take advantage of those features and aim to force the players to get used to them or adapt. Many games overlook this I feel but from soft seems to do this well every time

[@YourOnlyHero]

"You be able to do anything to the attack completes and the animation is over" Bosses attacks in first split second: ↩⤴↪⤵⬇⬅↘↖↕↗⬆↔↙⬇

[@g1998k]

I started using R2 at around level 40 and it works greatly as mentioned. Especially when using spears you can stagger from a relatively safe distance and keep yourself light for a quick roll and repeat.

[@apathyne]

i've always enjoyed using the full the full move set on weapons despite R1s still feeling like the more effective attack especially in dark souls 3. and the fact that this game needs you to play that way is amazing. it also just makes the game feel so much more cool not just using the same attack animation every time.

[@Bringingmoneyback]

This was my first video I've seen of ratatoskr ever since I've loved watching this content

[@Bringingmoneyback]

If he had audiobooks I'd listen

[@carrot708]

I did my *entire* first playthrough of Elden ring only using R1 like you would in Dark Souls. It wasn't until other players had to *tell* me to start using R2 and jumping R2 that I'd use them going forward

[@carrot708]

I think a big part of it was that instead of trying a boss over and over again and experimenting, I'd just go somewhere else if I couldn't beat them with R1 in five attempts. And then when I came back I'd likely be overlevelled

[@Sergei_Ivanovich_Mosin]

I completely forgot there even was a jump button outside of exploration, I fully reverted to roll + r1 for nearly every boss battle. Funny how instinctual that's become to us.

[@76l24]

Exploiting staggers was important in ds3 too. for example gael staggers after 3 fully charged UGS r2's allowing another attack. staggers often allowed me to put full confidence in my charged r2's allowing me to stagger an enemy before they would hit me. this lead to my most used attack being a r2, especially after rolling through an enemies attack.

[@dontbothertoreply9755]

So basically this video is useless, yeah I found it kind of lame, sidestep makes more sense and actually looks better.

[@cantrip7]

​​@@dontbothertoreply9755Not necessarily. In Elden Ring, R2s are generically useful for their stagger. In Dark Souls 3, the utility of R2s on the majority of weapons is terrible. UGS is more like an exception that proves the rule.

[@redache467]

As someone who finished Sekiro, I automatically assumed that there is a hidden bar for some reason

[@themasquerader101]

Seems like they should've made the enemy posture bar visible. It wouldve made it easier in a way, but also wouldve made some players overly hasty as well, technically making it more difficult.

[@wizaard7]

I like that term you use near the beginning: "High commitment". It's an excellent description of Souls combat mechanics in just two words.

[@googlevideos6770]

still dumb since some casting animations take like 8 seconds

[@NoThoughtAllFeels]

Two words… Jump Button

[@Raziel6523]

what you're saying is true. instead of spamming R1 I now spam jump attack with R2... or L2, L2, L2

[@jacoballan1714]

Been churning on the idea of "perfect blocks", maybe something like a parry-timed block that if successful will effectively increase your damage absorption when blocking with a weapon. Example 2h greatsword maybe has 50 physical absorption, increased to 75 or 100 with a perfect block and can then follow with guard counter, adding some skill beyond block then retaliate. Just a tiny "what if" that I think was cool

[@CousinChal]

I wonder if that's what the "Guard Boost" stat is at 6:15, if you add it to the physical absorption it does come to 100% guard so you might be on to something.

[@Frostblast7]

@@CousinChal That"s probably just a new name for Stability.

[@mrtyphoon8923]

God, I wish. Playing Elden Ring like Sekiro without Kuro's charm would be absolutely amazing. I wonder if that is something that could be relatively easy to mod into the game...

[@jacoballan1714]

@@mrtyphoon8923 no idea but I think it would be an awesome feature and way to play

[@martinsch]

I always loved using R2 moves in Dark Souls, but they weren't really worth the risk. Glad to hear that they might be stronger in Elden Ring.

[@dbzdave06smith38]

I know I'm very late to this video but I'd like to talk about an experience I had in elden ring when it first came out. I got to commander nial with a the sword of night and flame and a shield (this was literally a day after they nerfed the wepon) and commander nial kicked my ass soo bad and soo many times it really made me reconsider my entire build and playstyle. So I switched my wepon to the banished knight greatsword and decided to two hand it, use jump attacks and guard counter. I beat him first try and it made me look at every boss in a different way and it honestly made the game even more fun

[@connorgaskill7653]

I still feel we need some sort of visual representation for how much posture damage we're doing so that we can prioritize different attacks when fighting different enemies.

[@aluminumbeluga]

You will get a feel for it if you put in the attempts. They dont want to hold your hand in this gamd

[@connorgaskill7653]

@@aluminumbeluga Was Sekiro "holding your hand?" Should enemies just not have health bars either? As a player, I like having access to this kind of info so I can formulate better strategies and make more meaningful choices.

[@aluminumbeluga]

@@connorgaskill7653 I never played Sekiro, didn't know they put that in there :) I do know that they broke the formula a bit with Sekiro, and the difficulty was presented in different ways, but you evidently had different tools to deal with it. I don't think that not having a poise bar is an unreasonable decision. It's intuitive enough, and sometimes you just have to brute force knowledge out of the bosses in Elden Ring. Good luck on your adventure fellow tarnished :)

[@keskeyy]

Elden ring is actually my first souls game, so its really interesting to see how it differs from its predecessors Elden ring feels like every move in your Arsenal is perfect for a different situation, as long as you can dodge the unreal combos of the later game bosses

[@forwardmoving8252]

It's the best game fromsoft has made but the loser hipsters who played souls first will always find stupid complaints

[@iUseDemFrapz]

@@forwardmoving8252there are things to criticize elden ring about for sure, but whenever I see a souls fan complaining that the game functions in some way that is different to dark souls it just ends up feeling so disconnected to my own experience. For example, having a decent background in rhythm games that require a lot of trial and error/memorization, it always irks me when I see people complaining that they need to memorize things bosses do (like delayed attacks) and use trial and error. Like yeah? That’s part of fun and satisfaction of the fight? I sat there and fought the tree sentinel at the very start like 60 times till I beat it and it felt infinitely more rewarding than the random evergaol bosses I would just beat without needing to learn or memorize anything.

[@magikazam8430]

@@iUseDemFrapz That a gross misrepresentation of the complain Dark souls fans have, let me correct you here. We don't complain that we need to learn boss pattern. We complain that there a tons of delayed attack and most of them don't really feel natural Mostly the one where they go from a fast combo to an extremly delayed heavy swing where it feel like they are in slowmo/low gravity all of a suden. Add to that the tendency boss have to just dash away right after their last hit while your still in the dodging animation and it just make it feel like half the time, dodging a combo ain't rewarding. Delay itself it not a bad thing, Most boss also got small delay between their fast attack so it punish roll spam, and that a big upgrade from DS3 where dodge was imo, op due to being spammable. And in the end all of that don't even matter since you can just slowly walk back and spam spell to beat most boss or just spamm jump attack or bleed to stagger boss all while dealing 1/5 of their hp bar per hit. Like the game feel like it balanced like piss and the gap between a meta build and a mid tier build feel abysmal, where as in previous tittle even trash tier weapon would be good in some part of the game. Elden ring just feel like I modded my dark souls to turn boss and myself into an modern anime char where we just spam some bullshit and we kill eachother in 6 hits.

[@iUseDemFrapz]

@@magikazam8430 i never said anything about boss patterns. I think the way you describe your complaints about delayed attacks is exactly what i was describing. I personally don’t see them as an issue and enjoyed memorizing how to counter them. I see lots of people complain about how the delayed attacks are unintuitive and rely on memorization, but I personally think that it makes it more rewarding to overcome. You can’t just beat something in one attempt without much challenge. I also think the wide variety in builds and strengths of different things makes some of the more unfair things of bosses more tolerable, but a lot of dark soul fans seem so caught in needing to play the game the exact way that they played dark souls so they will intentionally avoid anything else the game introduced which makes the game unnecessarily hard. I’m not even really talking about magic or summons, but rather basic things like taking advantage of the stance mechanics or ashes of war. I understand that people will still complain that they can play the game the way they want like this, but that still just ties back to my idea that people just want the game to be another dark souls rather than it’s own thing. I mean even if you want to just light attack and dodge roll and nothing more there are plenty of ways you can do that viably. But of course the complaint would then be that they had to look things up and couldn’t play the game blindly even though they could if they didn’t limit themselves so much in the first place. Obviously though much of this is the fault of the game not communicating some of these new mechanics that well like not showing a bosses stance bar for example, but I still think many of the complaints often just come across as “why is this not dark souls”.

[@magikazam8430]

@@iUseDemFrapz so to awnser to your point in order. 1, Memorisation and delayed attack has alway been part of the souls series, the difference here is that it feel unatural and just like if boss magically became slower for 3 sec then proceeded to change speed and acellerate themselve for the 3 next hit, whatever weapon or general mvoeset they use. Boss in previous games that did that usually had some reason in their design to do it. Think Potiff sulivan who got two sword and usually switch what weapon he will hit you around the 2 last hit. It make sense compared to let say, Crucible knight with sword and shield who just randomly slow down mid spin, only then to accelerate. It just feel like artificial difficulty to punish panic rolling, where other fix like making roll cost more stamina or just slowing down role speed and adding parry base/ move that can only be dodged by jumping. 2.The variety of build don't really matter due to what is ''Meta'' in the end, I'l explain it later one, but due to the stagger what make build good or not is just burst damage most of the time. It has the nasty effect where the best way to negate boss Bs is to cheese them and that a poor way of balancing the game? What the next step? Will they make dlc boss 10 time faster and stronger than Milenia but balance it out by giving player a spell/ashes of war that quadruple their stats and damage, all while giving live steal? To me it just seem that thew solution against boss being anoying to fight is to make them... less anoying? not making the player stronger to the point that they can easily stun lock every single boss in the game effortlessly if they want so. 3. Elden ring only added Ashes of war and the spirit npc summon things. Ashes of war have the same problem than weapon art, because well, they are weapon art. Issues being that in Elden ring, they just solve EVERY PROBLEM in a fight. it almost alway the best option in almost every situation. They either boost and add to the bonus stacking issues of the game or they give you move that deal tons of damage, faster than m1, and therefore Stagger boss. Even when you don't do a meta build they still are the best option of your kit when going melee. Monster is using a shield? Use weapon art to try and guardbreak them, Monster is attacking? Use weapon art to stagger them, Monster doing nothing? Use weapon art for top damage and bigger likeliness to stagger them. The spirit summon are fine as a concept and are a good alternative to summoning a player. Only issue is even after nerf some of the npc are just straight up op in term of stats, Mimic tear + 10 could and can still solo lots of boss for a low low price of hp. Like some of them are 3x time better than any player you could get. Magic as always been part of the series since demon souls and has the same issues as in Dark souls 2. Aka it deal to much damage on top of giving tons of utility, all while being far from the boss. On top of that lots of enemy, even boss have AI that simply don't know how to fight a mage. Godfrey first phase will simply walk slowly in your direction while you spam spell on him from afar. It even worst on any world map boss like Dragon where you can just stack poison/rot/freeze aoe on them then run away while they just sit in there and slowly walk back to their zone. The issues with the new stuff is not that they exist, is that it seems they just ain't balanced well. 4. I have a big issues with looking stuff online to just folow quests and find out sutff... in a game about exploration where these things should be natural. The quest system is VERY similar to the darks souls, except in those it acctualy work cause the game is relatively linear and zone are small so it fast to explore them and find npc. In Elden ring it don't really work since the map is big and it easy to miss or skip npc, especially while the game encourage you to forget some place and go back there later. In the dark souls game, npc questline often just, folowed part of the linear ''path'' in the map. with the map being an open world this concept don't work here either. It just feel like they got 2 clashing idea that just work well on their own but not together.

[@ion1984]

DUDE. Elden ring tips and mechanics that are ACTUALLY GAMEPLAY. I'd give you 100 upvotes if I could. Every time I try to find a "tips" video - its a list of where 10 items are in the game. Dude I dont want spoilers. I don't want to just go to the best weapons, but I DO want to know how the game works. How to fight well. THANK YOU. Excellent video.

[@tigrovica8417]

"Rolls have less i-frames then we used to" Me, a DS2 player who only rarely levels ADP: "I don't have such weaknesses!"

[@KitsuneShapeShifter]

Me, a DS1 player who has strictly followed the teachings of 'just roll through it': ''why hast thou forsaken me?''

[@comradecatbug5289]

I dislike when people call this mechanic "posture" since it's not the same. This staggering mechanic was introduced in Bloodborne and it differs from posture in several ways: 1. Blocking or parrying don't have anything to do with staggering an enemy. 2. Though this mechanic hasn't been researched much, it's fairly clear that it's not a bar that fills up and decreases steadily. It's probably a deal similar to poise, where you have poise health that fully recovers if you don't get hit for x seconds. 3. HP doesn't affect the recovery speed. As I said, this mechanic has been around for several games and has only been tweaked for Elden Ring. Now strong attacks deal much more "poise damage" or "stagger damage" to make enemies more easily staggerable, and to better reward the risk of charging up slower moves. It's a minimal change to an old mechanic.

[@GeekTalkwithMerg]

The irony of showing an on the ground fight against the battlement demon in a video where you talk about alternative strategies is not lost on me.

[@CoolaKai]

You can "posture break" a lot of bosses (and other big enemies) in Dark Souls 3 already by hitting them from the front/in the face. It has the exact same effect has you describe in Elden Ring. Letting you do a "riposte style" animation attack. Personally I believe (not having played the test) that jumping will be what changes combat.

[@khajiitimanus7432]

"They don't do enough damage to compensate the risk." Excuse me, as a strength build player, I am obligated to protest, haha! Except for DS1 strong attacks. Those were admittedly too slow on greathammers and greataxes. Anyway, that aside... this was an awesome video, and you've successfully hyped me even further for Elden Ring! Somehow....

[@Callmehazy509]

I use colossal swords and most of the things you pointed out in this video are why i use them

[@seanbean3070]

The problem for me is that I didn’t WANT to play that radically different. If they needed to tune things differently to challenge what we were used to, great. But they went overboard to an absurd degree. Outright punishing gamers who enjoy playing more instinctively, and have naturally good reaction time was a horrible move in my opinion. The hyper-aggressive bosses with absurdly bloated movesets loaded with incredibly manipulative gotchas (an over-reliance in unnatural looking, immersion-breaking delayed attacks, and combos that switch up based on instant input reads) meant to force you into taking hits is just unfun, and bad design. It goes WAY too hard into forcing you to boringly memorize the entire movesets, and punishes you for having good reflexes, and game sense.

[@zeromythosver.]

My thoughts exactly. Elden Ring doesn’t need defended on matters like this when we all know by many merits it’s a good or even great game. It can be a great game and still have worse combat than its predecessors, and deserve criticism for that.

[@facundovera3227]

Don't listen to 'gamer critics' is just what I say. You absolutely can dodge the attacks if you have a good reaction time and roll through the actual strike and not the wind-up, with exceptions like some of Morgott's attacks and Magma Wyrms' as well, there's some more that I don't remember. Heal input read attacks aren't common at all, not all bosses are Crucible Knights, or Malenia, and Godskin's black flame fire balls aren't fast at all, in fact they're a huge attack window. Edit: Elden Ring bosses > Bloodborne bosses.

[@michaelmiguelicutti2829]

This is exactly what I hate about this game. Honestly Elden Ring is only slightly better than DS2 and it’s because of the atrocious enemy design that you have perfectly described here.

[@v0ldy54]

I think the biggest issue with the stance breaking system is that you don't have a stance bar to see how effective you are at damaging it, because the way it's coded it's somehow unintuitive (for example if you're two handing weapons it barely matters despite the extra hits).

[@YRO.]

Try playing ds1. You'll realize how easy ER is in comparison. Dodge i-frames literally make ER so much easier.

[@HoiPolloiNtertains]

This is something the souls series has desperately needed. The heavy attacks have been woefully useless as a whole. Slower, extra cost to stamina, longer recoveries; the usual benefit is a different move set from the light attacks, so they were more useful in certain situations but not as a whole. Making them do much more to break poise is fantastic, though the Sekiro reference seems odd. Dark Souls 1 (can’t recall the full mechanics of 2 and 3) has a poise system for the player and enemies. I think Illusory Wall might have done the video on this? Essentially an enemy has so much poise and as you do damage your attack chips away at their poise. Their poise recovers if you don’t attack fast enough and breaks if you bring their poise to 0. One handed, two handed, light, and heavy attacks could have different poise damage values. I’m eager to see how magic and dual wielding work out with this new system as well. It definitely looks like they’re adding a lot of variety in the magic system which is super excited since I prefer magic builds.

[@ouraywind1208]

I always thought that dark souls 1 had different poise values for different types of attacks (light and heavy). I'm surprised that's not the case unless I misread something

[@Eclipsed_Embers]

the magic certainly looks cool so far (no big changes that I've seen but still cool) for duel weilding it looks like powerstancing is back, even people that seem to utterly hate DS2 seem to at least like powerstancing

[@HoiPolloiNtertains]

@@ouraywind1208 it is but I don’t think it always is. I remember there were some very weird exceptions. For example the torch hollow does 5 poise damage but his attacks are considered falling damage so they stagger 100% of the time.

[@HoiPolloiNtertains]

@@Eclipsed_Embers miracles now include pyromancy, which I’m not sure how I feel about that. From what we’ve seen it looks like sorcery will have more variety and utility. Spell swords made be completely viable with no weapon besides a staff, which would be awesome. Miracles seem way more powerful than sorceries for once, but by a ridiculous margin. Dragon, pyro, and miracles are all from one attribute? But we don’t have the finished product so it may play out differently than the open beta. I’m eager to try everything out though.

[@minespatch]

Guard counter: So basically what I've done as Patches in DS1 and DS2. 😆

[@anduinwrynn1516]

Man ds3 has this aswell

[@coasterthekid8867]

I really like that they implemented a guard breaking mechanic and it kind of reminds me of For Honor because when you guard break somebody it really does make them vulnerable for a long period of time which is especially powerful in a game like dark souls where timing is key. The only thing I really want them to improve is the enemy lock-on feature. As of now, it feels very clunky and my opinion needs to be tweaked when it comes to switching between targets. It seems to prioritize wildlife/enemies that are closer to you, rather than which one you are more directly looking at. I died at least a couple dozen times because I was trying to lock-on to a charging enemy to parry their attack and instead I walked on to a fucking rodent running towards me. There’s 1 million ways to fix this but the worst way to go about it is to not do anything and say “ it’s dark souls bud its supposed to be hard”. Difficulty and sloppy game design are two different things, and I’m surprised at how many people are fans of dark souls, but say they like it because it’s an unfair game. The whole point of dark souls is that it’s fun because it’s hard but it’s fair. Unfair games are solved by trial and error, fair games are beating through experience. Does trial and error involve experience and does experience involve trial and error? Yes, but they are two different things. While trial and error looks for direct answers to problems and obstacles, experience looks for patterns and advantages that can lead to beating anyone standing in your path.

[@damianduncan511]

You literally have to point you switcher directly to the enemy you want to. Not a sloppy direction like you're doing. Get better and be more precise.

[@coasterthekid8867]

@@damianduncan511 Did you even read my comment? I literally said I was looking directly at them but it prioritized the animal that was closer to me. You can’t act like the game is perfect just because you like it.

[@sleazyfox8937]

That background fight was really cool to watch mixing blocks, dodges and jump attacks.

[@AdumbroDeus]

This seems like a combination of iterations on things done with Bloodborne (finding a good opportunity to sneak charged r2s in is important) and Sekiro (progressively breaking posture). I'll be interested to see how it turns out.

[@kyledaugherty1609]

Pretty frustrated at how long I had to scroll through the comments before I found one that mentioned Bloodborne mechanics (though I would add that weapon transform attacks are another way Bloodborne kept the player from needing to rely on R1 spam). Cheers, mate.

[@AdumbroDeus]

@@kyledaugherty1609 it's amazing how people just seem to forget about it and how it contributed to other games in the series. I was rather surprised that the video didn't mentioned it tbh, but I'm glad a fellow hunter appreciated it!

[@gediminasmorkys3589]

@@AdumbroDeus bah, a PS exclusive - I was interested once, but it seems it is gone now, as newer games with good frame rates take its place. Good riddance!

[@mirrorblade6268]

R2s in dark souls can be very useful and quick attacks in boss battles. Like sweihanders overhead r2 slash which is just savage. Moonlight sword beam plus slash combo is great too. Also the dragon weapons. Elden ring does however make the option of using r2 even more enticing. It was always there.

[@CamSquamch]

I just dont see how you throw patient charge attacks when enemies are so fast and brutally strong.

[@GuiDaFunkyMan]

Hi, a very good analysis. Actually, Elden Ring could reunite all the best mechanics of the Soulsborne and Sekiro. It smells good.

[@josephwetmore8904]

It seems like there is an almost priority attack system. "If enemy light attack -> then block and counter" "If enemy heavy attack -> then dodge roll"

[@pranavkulkarni1414]

Try Malenia and say this again.

[@Leghar]

@@pranavkulkarni1414 my mimic and I just had to go to town on her. The less time she had to do anything the better off we were.

[@josephwetmore8904]

@@pranavkulkarni1414 okay. Challenge accepted…when I get there.

[@jtube3878]

I have played this game for 150 hours and never thought about using r2’s…

[@cardmossdn8058]

It’s crazy how over a year later people still don’t understand the concept in this video. People still complain about the bosses in Elden ring without even bothering to attempt to learn the new mechanics introduced in the game.

[@mysteriousman4966]

lets just all agree that from software has no fucking clue how to explain things, since demon souls.

[@rafael357]

Nice vid. I just started playing Elden Ring and wanted to try things on my own. I was in shock when a jumping heavy attack outright broke the Goodrich's posture in one hit.

[@Justjustinp]

First with Sekiro and now with Elden Ring, I’m so happy that FromSoft is making their combat more complex each game.

[@williamsaling9648]

Jump R2 attack ftw

[@brafya]

.... well at least i got this info for the dlc, i cant believe i played the game so inefficient when i didnt have to for 2 years

[@tubeo94]

Who’s here because you forgot how to play when the dlc was out.

[@Tearial311]

what i hate most about Elden Ring is the button que. The fact that i cant change my mind and dodge because i already hit R1 infuriates me.

[@chrisn3819]

i dont think i could ever go back to not having a proper jump again. Jump attacks (r2 specifically) have by far become my favorite way to open an engagement with an enemy.

[@arcxcc]

i definitely fell in love with souls games through the rhythmic combat of sekiro