In Defense of Elden Ring Boss Design (RE: Joseph Anderson & LupineOs)

[@feebleking21]

I have one final message to Joe and Lupine that I will leave in this very long comment. Also, a quick correction to the video. I say that over 90 percent of players did not understand boss mechanics, and while I still believe that to be true it was unfair of me to say since most of the player base are casuals who aren't trying to learn boss mechanics. A better thing to have said is that a very large amount of players who enjoy learning boss mechanics were not able to enjoy bosses in Elden Ring. ---------------------------------- First I’m going to write a message to Joe. Joe says that there are two types of attack warnings in Dark Souls, but this is wrong. There are three. The two types of attack warnings Joe identifies are reactable attacks where you dodge intuitively and delayed attacks where the damage comes out so fast it’s beyond human reaction time so you have to memorize when to dodge after the animation begins. The third type of attack warning are combo extenders. As shown in the video a boss like pontiff will do two specific fire sword swings, and if you are in front of him he will do a quick dagger stab about 100 percent of the time, so when you see him do two reactable fire sword swings you must preemptively roll in anticipation of the dagger stab. Many Elden Ring bosses have similar attacks where you memorize dodge rolls and openings based on the attack pattern. Joe said that Mohg had an unfair flaming claw explosion attack and showed gameplay of phase 2 Mohg jumping into the air, landing, and then using the attack. The thing is, Mohg ALWAYS does an attack after landing if you are close to him, so you must dodge whatever combo/attack he begins after landing to get your opening. Another example that I got wrong in the footage was with phase 2 Morgott's long spinning combo. Morgott spins around midair with both his weapons which is very hard to dodge, but he only does this after his delayed overhead hammer strike, so I should have probably circled left during the hammer strike to get a positioning opening on the Morgott’s spinning attack. If this doesn't work I could also just run away after the overhead hammer strike in anticipation of the spinning attack, and then I can punish that with a jumping heavy. If Joe thinks that this level of memorization is stupid or too hard that is fine, but it’s worth noting that this third type of attack warning exists and is very important in Elden Ring as most bosses will have some combo extenders that you need to memorize. ---------------------------------- The second part of this comment will be directed towards Lupine because I think I already know what his main issue will be with part 1 of the video. If I’m wrong I’m sorry. I say that if you don’t understand how to “solve” a boss’s moveset the only way to significantly alter boss difficulty is by not interacting with most of the boss mechanics. One counter argument to this could be Bloodhound’s step. Of course Bloodhound’s step is so overpowered that it makes the game way too easy just like with magic and hit trading, so you’d have to artificially limit yourself to only using Bloodhound’s step to dodge specific moves that you don’t understand. So yes, if you use the internet to get a game breaking dodge roll and artificially limit yourself to only use it for specific attacks that you don’t want to learn then you can sort of achieve an “easy mode” against certain bosses. I don’t enjoy this approach of having to theory craft a “normal mode” with the internet combined with artificial limitations. That would not give me joy when I beat a boss. I think the game should just teach its mechanics better for the infinitely more rewarding experience of overcoming every boss with the normal dodge roll. Also there are probably a few more items that I didn’t mention in the video that can change boss up movesets like blasphemous claw with Maliketh and parryable bosses. I don’t view this as turning the boss moveset into easy mode, but just as a more difficult form of skipping the boss mechanics. However, if you beat a boss with a combination of learning their actual openings and parrying this isn't true, but if you don't understand how to get openings on an Elden Ring boss and you beat them with only parrying then you are skipping learning the boss moveset. Even if you disagree, parrying only applies to a handful of bosses anyways so it's not too important for the discussion. The point of part 1 in the video is to communicate clearly that there is a large subsect of players like Joe and I who only enjoy Fromsoft bosses when we memorize their movesets and overcome them with minimal hit trading on a melee build. If I cannot do this then I am not having fun.

[@mohammadqasim8392]

Bri write the whole bible

[@flashclynes]

The boss fights in modern souls games are hard. But they are not interesting like in demons souls.

[@Dementor_BloodBowl]

You should probably pin this

[@vs816]

The only thing I heard was "I want elden ring to be sekiro 2"

[@aryabratsahoo7474]

@@flashclynes They were interesting because most of them had some sort of gimmick, such as the accompanying archers during the Tower Knight boss. It can be fun for someone like me but it's definitely not fun for people like Feeble and Joseph.

[@virtualstring2925]

One thing I find annoying in Elden Ring when it comes to difficulty is that we have no option to refight the main bosses without playing the whole game again. When I beat certain bosses, I didn't even know how I managed it. But because I couldn't fight them again, I had no option to learn from them further. While it wouldn't teach me how to fight other bosses, getting good at one does teach many necessary mechanics and skills needed to defeat any other boss.

[@virtualstring2925]

Just reached the part about the Roundtable Gauntlet, that definitely sounds like a fun way to have this

[@jjstraka1982]

Literally no other Souls game allows you to do this without a new playthrough. Sekiro added it in a DLC.

[@winnersproductions7093]

Ik it probably wouldn't work because of Eden ring is open world but something like ds2's bonfire ascetic item for dungeon like levels volcano manor or raya academy would be decent. But a boss only selection option would be more convenient

[@fungus1005]

@@jjstraka1982DS2 lets you do that with bonfire ascetics and bloodborne kind of lets you do that with chalice dungeons.

[@Mr-117]

Just get summoned in

[@igniortix]

Can't wait for the 10 hour long response to this video

[@feebleking21]

Can't wait for this to get top comment.

[@Garvity69420]

@@feebleking21 well it did

[@jacobdeacon2221]

Hopefully it’s multiple 10 hour episodes

[@jacedjohnson3541]

@@oldschoolrpg yeah the point is that there are a lot of different ways to fight from bosses. Even in elden ring

[@zekebanks7876]

I need it in 10 one hour videos plz

[@noname-vw5qw]

The way a game communicates its mechanics to the player is as important as the actual mechanics .The fact that the bosses only clicked for u after watching a youtube video is a huge problem.

[@dashman8499]

I feel like that's the point of the video though? The central theme is "elden ring has amazing combat, but is terrible at teaching it to you." and I agree with that, as someone who considers elden ring his favorite game, tied with bloodborne

[@bwhit7919]

Google and KZbin are the real easy mode. The game is so much easier when you search up the locations of OP items and builds and boss strategies. But since most of the “get gud” crowd abuses the internet you won’t see anybody talking about it

[@TheAzozoi]

The only mechanic that forced me to watch a youtube video was Malenia's waterfowl dance which I think was badly designed. Other than that I learned every other boss mechanic by myself through trial and error. Elden ring boss mechanic are less intuitive than, say, DS3 for sure but they aren't as hard to figure out as some people make them out to be.

[@bwhit7919]

@@TheAzozoi it’s the weapons and items that cheese the game more. Googling “best Limgrave weapons” and “where to find Somber Smithing Stone 7” and “where is right half Rold Medalian” and “best spells less than 30 int” and “best summons Elden Ring” and “where is mimic tear” and “best grinding spot Elden Ring” will shorten your play time by over 30 hours.

[@VerbalIntercourse100]

@@bwhit7919 Thank you. Elden ring is pretty much all about using the best gear and min-maxing your build. If you just try to play normally, with your starting gear, without looking anything up, or abusing broken AoWs, the game will be hell on earth. That's how I played my first playthrough and it sucked. Stark contrast to the souls games where all you need are r1s and good roll timing.

[@BigDBrian]

As a seasoned challenge runner, these games' bosses were NOT designed with that in mind. Just to scratch the surface, terrible arenas and attacks like Elden Stars (especially combined with the invisible walls and the fact that he can recast it at high range, preventing the manipulation dodge), Death Rite Bird explosion's effectively random line directions, or gideon's triple rings of light being a right hot mess ALL show a lack of care to strike that "hard but fair" people like to praise from software games for. Even Waterfowl Dance. While it's perfectly avoidable close range with the methods we've developed, it is EXTREMELY unlikely that the circling before rolling method is intentional. The run and jump dodge is also not properly accounted for as the margins are so small that the weapon you have equipped and going slightly uphill in the arena is enough to fail it. It's not to say these issues can't be dealt with, but the amount of stupid bs situations you have to avoid is far too large to reasonably say it was designed with such mastery in mind. Or, if it is, then they did a terrible job at quality control. Even an attack like Godskin Apostle's basic double swipe is a horrendous frame trap. Malenia had a similar problem with her double slash, but at least the light roll buff works as a crutch to compensate (though I don't think this is good from a design perspective, dodging bosses should really be built around medium roll). She still has plenty of stupidity though, such as being able to do an instant hit follow-up attack after her large disengaging spin. Anyhow. While I agree there's plenty of people that don't invest the time to learn the bosses properly and just call them bs instead of trying to learn them, there's also a lot of people that appear to think these bosses are perfectly designed to be played at a top level, without actually going through the efforts themselves, at which point they'd find the more subtle bullshit. It's close, but not quite there. There are too many rough edges. Please don't think that the difficult kills we do mean the bosses are completely fair, they're not.

[@FatherGas762]

There is jank in all these games though tbh. I recently started doing another SL1 run in DS1 (I haven't played it in a long time) and I don't know exactly how fair it is that Ornstein can attack through Smough who completely blocks him meaning you literally cannot see the attack until it hits you. Smough has an awful lingering hitbox on his butt slam, Ornstein can start his charge attack behind a pillar, or behind smough then zip around and smoke you with it from off screen. Worse yet, sometimes he will zip across the entire arena, then stop right before he gets to you take a couple steps and then almost instantly start the attack again. His charge is literally broken. I'm not saying the fight is that hard I'm just saying that I think a lot of people look at some of the older games through rose tinted glasses. Countless people hitlessing the boss doesn't really address any of these points. Regardless this fight is often extremely highly regarded by the community and is often cited as an example of good boss design. At the end of the day things that challenge runners take issue with are largely unnoticed by the vast majority of the player base. I don't think people should be referencing challenge runners to bolster their arguments regardless which side their on as it can go both ways.

[@BigDBrian]

@@FatherGas762 O&S are really janky yeah. But with rolls most of the time it's not too hard to deal with if the base difficulty isn't pumped as high, which it was in Elden Ring with many frame traps etc I agree with your take.

[@FatherGas762]

​@@BigDBrian Yeah I agree with basically all of your criticisms I'm sorry I forgot to mention that. I honestly die more do Malenia's double swipe these days than anything else. That being said I'd be lying if I told you I didn't enjoy the fight despite things like this. Same with a bus like Lady Maria who is janky as hell but I still love it. Idk if that makes sense maybe I've just become a glutton for punishment lol.

[@anonymousperson8903]

IDK man I feel like you're being too picky. In a game with like 50 unique bosses and thousands of attacks, only like 10-15 of those attacks are problematic (and are often not even THAT bad). Like 98% of the game is 'hard but fair.' Why should we say they didn't put care into making it fair when 98% of it is? Of course for an extreme challenge runner I understand it can be frustrating and makes it seem like those issues are way more heinous than they are as you will often get flat out killed because of them. That being said, I don't know what they were thinking with DRB's AOE attack. Seeing as all of them can be fought on horseback i tried to bolt on torrent as soon as he used it, jump and then double jump to get out of the way when I see it. It didn't work but maybe I'm just bad.

[@BigDBrian]

@@anonymousperson8903 The problem is if one attack is truly inconsistent/unfair, then the entire fight is inconsistent/unfair as a result. Examples aside, a lot of Elden Ring's dodges are positionally based, which the game doesn't properly support enough. The lock on system gives really unreliable roll angles up close, and even playing unlocked doesn't solve walls and objects being terrible in arenas. Btw, bad idea to use an acronym when mentioning a boss, because I have no idea which one DRB is and there's no easy way to look it up.

[@GeezusMcGandhi]

I love how the proposed fix is just "make it Sekiro"

[@guyatanosavia8487]

To me it read less as "make it Sekiro" and more as "adopt new design philosophies and ideas" using Sekiro as an example of the studio being capable of doing that

[@moonie1825]

Although an exaggeration at the end of the day the main complaint sorta holds true, all the bosses are playing sekiro and you're still play demon souls.

[@Reseptics]

​@@moonie1825finally, someone with common sense. i want to play the same game as the bosses. that's the reason sekiro has the best combat in a fromsoft game. because when you fight your enemies, it's a genuine duel with two warriors going back and forth. in elden it's a survival match up of you waiting and sometimes trying to force a turn from a boss that has way more freedom to be overly aggressive than you can be.

[@Reseptics]

​@@guyatanosavia84871000% agree with this. sekiro's combat worked so well because it actually allowed you to stay engaged with the bosses by directly confronting them and staying in the fight like it's a real duel. elden's incentive is very lacking and also delegates you to basically playing as john darksoul all over again when the bosses are just as aggressive as they were in sekiro or bloodborne without speeding up the player or giving them similar tools to perfectly keep pace with the boss in the same way those games did.

[@w4tch0ut10]

And they just made it sekiro 😂😂😂

[@yep8673]

In Elden Ring, there isn't a "Genichiro" like boss in the early / mid game that acts as a skill/ knowledge check to make sure that the devs and the players are on the same page. You can very easily brute force the early bosses and then you get a wake up call in the end game all of a sudden. I actually think that the last few bosses of ER taught me way more about the game than the starting ones.

[@bravepenguin]

Interesting because I had the opposite happen. I played through the game a couple times, but I still can't tell you any of Hoarah Loux's attacks, because by that point I already have spells or equipment or spirits or ashes or etc etc and can just steamroll. Early game bosses seemed a little less easy to just overpower. Probably a side effect of the open world, buffs-and-gear-everywhere design - even if there was a "skill check boss" like Genichiro, Elden Ring's systems would let you win by grinding and exploring. I like how Feeble King put it in this video: "It's not about overcoming challenge, it's about lowering the difficulty."

[@frankiecedeno3724]

I cannot disagree more. That Genichiro type skill check is Morgot. It’s why everyone and their mother new and old players talk about him being crazy hard. You have all the basic mechanics before him and he has pretty much every mechanic that people find difficult in a boss in Elden Ring.

[@Houston4Nication]

@@frankiecedeno3724 Exactly! But not even at Morgott, its already there with Margit and after that Godrick. Both of these bosses teach you the game INSANELY well. Margit is extremly fast with low damage and long lasting combos and projectiles. He is giving you enough time to punish and has a good arena. Godrick is insanely wild just like Red Wolf of Radagon and Radahn for example. He uses fire so you get to know how to dodge it and he's using the "earthquake" attacks that also teaches you that. Even if you didn't learn anything from these 2 bosses SOMEHOW, Red Wolf of Radagon rewards you for playing really passive and waiting for certain openings, for example the Sword Slashes (all of them) and utilizes magic to show you 1. what is coming up and 2. that magic bosses are a thing. Genichiro did not introduce anything new to you except for a lightning reversal. Mikir was taught to you by the guy in Hirata Estate and you already learnt how to deal with long combos on Gyoubu Oniwa. If you get to Morgott, he literally teaches you: Git gud or Get OP.

[@obijuankenobi3814]

@@frankiecedeno3724 This is the exact problem tho, Genichiro was like half way through the game, more so like 30-40% through. So by that point, you've had a decent amount of time to learn the game and get a grip on the controls and mechanics and such. Genichiro comes in as a mini roadblock to make sure the player isn't brute forcing their way through with bad mechanics. He will fuck you over if you are used to cheesing stuff. Margit does the exact opposite, straight at the beginning, he incentivizes brute forcing yourself through. Because his attacks aren't consistent, because the recoveries on them are bullshit, because he has input reads when you try to heal, you aren't really learning anything other than it's a game of endurance and you need to get through him before you run out of stamina. So you end up using summons, which are an INTENDED GAME MECHANIC, to beat him because that's how the bosses in the game work. So you just spawn a summon, the boss focuses them, and you just smack him in the back. Woohoo, I won. Did I learn anything? Did I really get skill checked? Or did I just spawn a guy and then brute force myself through. I can't spawn stuff for Genichiro, I can't power level and gain a bunch of damage and hp and come back, I can't make him focus someone else.

[@Arda-dq4rt]

Bro I'm sorry but you cant be even more wrong. Genichiro is like 40% into the game!! Literally. And it is the ONLY boss that is actually enjoyable and mechanically rich along with Isshin. ER, puts you toe to toe with Margit (which is THE most mechanically rich 1st main boss ever created in any souls game, even Sekiro) and the game 'isnt teaching you its mechanics' It is your fault not 'learning it' and cheesing it with high HP or magics or mimics or whatever else OP techmiques you used to beat him. This is true for any boss. If you felt like 'I killed him but dunno how I did it' Then you are playing the game WAAAAAAAY more OP than you should be. Use a larval tear. Reduce that HP. Get a fun Melee weapon. Make sure to posture break all bosses at least 2 time before killing and boom! You'll play a game that is more mechanically rich than even the greatest moment of Sekiro and the entire souls history. In fact, ER will be so much better than them that you'll be sad you wont ever be able to go back to them because ER is just too damn good in comparison. In every way mechanically. (in terms of bosses)

[@jessicaberry5596]

I'd disagree about having melee weapons dealing less damage and crits dealing more damage. I'd just argue for Crits dealing more damage. I felt in many instances that the Crits were not worth it for the damage dealt to the boss. In your one hit before I-Frames, I just found it infinitely more appealing to hit them non-critically while they were stunned.

[@ZeriocTheTank]

This was definitely the case for me, but it might also be because of my build as well. Only time I did a critical after a stance break was when I was low on stamina, and I needed some breathing room for a chance to gain some stamina before I had to dodge again.

[@travisadams6279]

Crits are in this weird limbo because even if you buffed them there are certain attacks and spells that will just do more damage in the opening granted to you. There are some seriously powerful weapon skills and spell builds in this game. Also, unlike literally every other Souls game, staggering enemies is far easier with multiple ways to do it and is easily exploited by certain builds.

[@siyzerix]

@@travisadams6279 Well, in ds2 and ds1, Ultra weapons knocked down most mobs and staggered most large foes. ds1 let you stagger bosses with ultra's. Ds2 let you stance break and riposte the harder enemies with ultra's.

[@travisadams6279]

@@siyzerix Ah, I thought we were referring to landing crits on a boss or something similar. Wasnt thinking about mobs. Mobs really arent a problem in this game either way. But there are attacks in ER that will still knock down or flatten mobs. Bosses and large monsters in Elden Ring are not that hard to stagger either. There are multiple ways to increase stagger dmg, multiple ways to land stagger dmg and doing so can be done on things other than just Ultras. You can even do it with spells.

[@siyzerix]

@@travisadams6279 True, but hailgate tree knights for instance took me 3 hits with my colossal sword with the stagger enhancing physik flask to actually reliably stagger. And there's 2 of them at the entrance which means they back up each other quite often. Mini bosses staggering wasn't really my point, but more so ultra's in ds2 reliably staggered some tougher foes to 1 shot them and that was very useful for dealing with mobs. That, and knocking them down with just a 2h poke ugs attack. And that attack came out VERY fast. I personally don't like I can't use my giant hunk of metal to at least toss around the fodder enemies. They can tank a charged attack to the face and only stagger for riposte. Spells always staggered enemies, even in previous games. In ds2 sotfs some larger enemies could be backstabbed and staggered riposted. Charred loyace knights riposted with UGS, smaller giants could be backstabbed, etc. Of course, smaller weapons had the speed advantage and less stat investment.

[@davidnewhart2533]

17:04 In Sekiro they had Hanbei the Undying to help a player understand the mechanics of the game. They could've done that with Elden Ring. I was kinda sad we didn't have a Hanbei esque character.

[@connyslayer4661]

I absolutely agree, Hanbei the Undying is such a brilliant NPC that helps you understand the mechanics of the game but he is also a great character that suits the story, worldbuilding and main base area as well. We need more great characters like that.

[@aryabratsahoo7474]

@@connyslayer4661 we need more Chads like Hanbei who are willing to put up with us killing them to understand crucial gameplay mechanics.

[@connyslayer4661]

@@aryabratsahoo7474 Yes, sir, We need more Chads like Hanbei to teach the player great basics who can help you become smarter, wiser and stronger. They are willing to put up with us and killing them successfully can help you understand the gameplay mechanics. Hanbei was one of my favorite side characters in the souls universes. I would love to play as him or get his assistance in some battles.

[@shiiiiiion]

Sekiro showed FromSoft so much i terms of game design, it's unfortunate they did not integrate it into their following works

[@Owliare]

Bernhal should've been that type of character as he seems like someone whose had his share of battle and already teaches us WA that utilize pure skill with a weapon. Even some that use wind based attacks.

[@SubTonic]

I think the main problem with the bosses is their damage output. If armor had more impact on defense, or bosses just did less damage overall, people would have more fun learning them. They're so mechanically complex that it's weird that most of them will 2-3 shot the player in any gear, and the overwhelming nature of that combination causes most players to just seek an easier way to win instead of take time and learn. I liked learning bosses in previous From games because I could understand the windups better and the bosses didn't kill me in half a second for making one mistake. When every new thing kills you, the learning process becomes tedious.

[@VivianAckers]

It's so strange to return to DS3 and realize that I have taken 10 hits from Gael, still haven't healed and lived Even the light attacks in this game feels like it has the damage of the previous bosses' heavy attacks

[@MrPatrickbuit]

Another one of those things that Sekiro got right. In Sekiro bosses deal a similar amount of damage to what they do in Elden Ring, but: - If you miss a deflect timing you will still often guard, which means that your posture will take the hit instead of your health bar - Attacks that come out fast like kicks, or short swipes deal only a little amount of damage and are there exclusively to knock your out of guarding instead of just randomly halving your health bar - When your posture breaks, you will still be able to recover. Even bosses like Owl which have a deathblow attack give you a chance to roll away. - You get a resurrection every time you fight a boss. I see a resurrection in Sekiro as "another chance to learn" which is a welcome addition to a game that punishing. In Elden Ring, attacks are harder to deal with than in Sekiro, but they also deal more damage than they do in Sekiro and you don't get a second shot if you get caught out like in Sekiro. All of this combined makes the game very frustrating to learn. I only started enjoying the bosses in my second playthrough. But I know what Fromsoft's meatriders will say. They'll say Sekiro was too easy and Elden Ring being even more challenging was a welcome addition. I for one thought Sekiro was hard enough.

[@WokeandProud]

​@@VivianAckersNot my experience I have a strength build with cruible armor and a good supply of boiled crab and I can absolutely bulldoze even late game bosses in ng+5 while basically ignoring my health bar until it's at 25%.

[@benkai9921]

@@WokeandProud even without buffing or summoning I foud elden ring boss way easier than sekiro bosses, I could probably first or two try the first tree sentinel with a fresh wretch or margit with a starter build and proceed to absolutely get bodied a few times by the butterfly lady.

[@WokeandProud]

@@benkai9921 Once you've mastred the posture mechanic and learn their move set and it's weaknesses it becomes ridiculously easy yes but Sekiro is even easier once you've mastered the deflect mechanic you're basically invincible.

[@HalozillaEX]

You know, its actually blowing my mind watching this video because I've put almost 1000 hours into ER and the majority of these attack opportunities you're showing in these boss fights (stuff like simply walking around margit's long cane windup and punishing with a charged heavy) are things I have never done or thought to do in those nearly 1000 hours. I always just wait for an opening and punish, I rarely get that aggressive in fights because I personally could never tell when it was safe to do so. And when bosses do like 50-70% of your HP bar in one attack, even when you're level 130 with 60 vigor (maliketh) it really discourages experimentation and creates a gigantic aversion to risk.

[@Ghorda9]

it really just comes down to over stating how much you lose to death, dying in these games aren't really an issue that anyone should fret about.

[@rhythmmandal3377]

Fun fact there are also attacks that due to precise hit boxes fail to hit you even you are standing right in-front of them, you can also use those for charged attacks which is fucking hilarious.

[@aryabratsahoo7474]

@@flamingmanure going back to DS1 and 2 made me realize how much positioning is more important compared to s.

[@viggen88]

My personal experience was the exact opposite. With how much damage bosses were doing, it heavily encouraged me to start playing more aggressively and to look for more openings, because if the fight dragged on too long thanks to me plaing too safe, I'd inevetably make a misstake and die at some point

[@aryabratsahoo7474]

@@viggen88 that how Sekiro works, if you sneak in attacks between deflects, you basically restrict boss's movements. Genichiro and Lady Butterfly are great examples.

[@UberNiall]

19:10 I physically scrunched my face when you said malenia’s attacks can be jumped over. I had never attempted to jump over any of her attacks because it doesn’t look possible. I’ve fought her hundreds of times as well. I think overall the game does not encourage jumping over attacks to avoid being hit. And I hate how it seems like they ramp this up disproportionately at the end few bosses of the game.

[@obviouslykaleb7998]

You know gurranq's beast claw attack? The one that does a conal AOE forward with a very large, very, very _vertical_ visual indicator? The one that you can never seem to dodge roll through correctly? You can jump over that.

[@UberNiall]

@@obviouslykaleb7998 yes, eventually after trying enough times you’ll learn to try something else and realise what works best. My point with this comment was that it doesn’t seem obvious that you can jump over any of Malenia’s attacks. I’ve still not actually tried it myself. If she does a 360 kick all you need to do is step slightly backwards while locked on. You don’t even have to dodge roll or dash backwards

[@AlexCatable]

"I didn't realize it, so I choose to hate the game for it"

[@obviouslykaleb7998]

@@AlexCatable "the game doesn't communicate it at all but it's clearly the player's fault."

[@AlexCatable]

@@obviouslykaleb7998 the game also doesn't have map markers and quest log. Bad, bad game.

[@eborixnyet5443]

I would hate a game that narrows the ability to beat the bosses down to just stance breaks. I think the gauntlet training idea is good, but lets not remove the ability to win in multiple ways.

[@Numenorean921]

its fucking BORING. It was amazing in sekrio because you could deflect but not in a souls type game.

[@HeevaEgo]

Elden ring has the most utility of all souls. I’m not sure what this comment is getting at? Not having fun breaking stances? Ok then use fast weapons to get attacks in between combos? Not enjoying boss damage? Use buffs and items to reinforce yourself or learn boss movesets? Not enjoying close-quarters combat? Respec into magic builds, because god knows how many freaking Respec currency they put in Elden ring compared to prior souls😅

[@starboypluto]

@@HeevaEgothis comment is in response to the video saying to make stance breaks the main way of fighting as an option to make it more interesting

[@magikazam8430]

@@HeevaEgo The issue here is that despite the tons of utility, the game boss fight ''meta'' is all about quick burst damage stagger spam. It mostly due to the poor balancing on weapon moveset, Boss speed and talisman being strong. Take any Katana for exemple. Their base weapon art R2 is their fastest move on top of dealing almost 3 time the damage of a normal r1 in the early game (It only get stronger the more your scale in stats) So it just turn it into the best move in your weapon moveset and it encourage you to spam it cause it deal more damage with no more risk than a normal attack (sometime even less) at a better range and all while having more chances to stagger the boss. ''Not having fun breaking stances? Ok then use fast weapons to get attacks in between combos?'' A poor choice of gameplay considering how fast boss chain their combo. you only have time to deal max 3 hits on a boss between their combo, and that assuming the ai decided to stall a bit doing nothing. On top of that boss LOVE to jump away after a combo so it turn fight into a slugfest. Im not saying stagger spamming boss and doing the most damage possible is the only way to beat boss, but from my experience on looking up and trying different build the best way to beat boss is to just find one strong move in your spell/weapon, Boost the hell out of it and spam it. It just so sad having so many option yet the gameplay narrow you into using so little of your char.

[@prinnydude5864]

@@magikazam8430 This i have to agree. That is something i always get myself in trouble, because i actually go in defense of the "hur dur L2 spam" guys. What do you expect that will happen if this is your strongest, fastest and most reliable move? If you like going r1 r1, r2 i appreaciate that, but hardly will be your peak perfomance. You give a gun that shoots nukes and if you expect the guy would rather beat with the gun instead of shooting nukes, you are crazy.

[@davidclark765]

Really interesting analysis, though I will say that you are seriously undermining the game's breadth of enjoyment by limiting yourself to this posture break strategy. Yeah, it's still fun and viable, but man, it's barely scratching the surface of what is possible. I have played Elden Ring for 900+ hours. I have killed every major boss 40 times each, and Malenia even more using a separate save slot. And I've done so using almost every style of weapon/magic combination I could think of. Spears, Swords, Greatswords, Sorcery and Scythe, Sorcery only, Incantations only, Fire incantations only, Carian Sword sorceries only, whips, flails, claws, fists, The Black Knife only, Dual daggers, Dual status rapiers, ice weapon and fire weapon, Shield only (literally only a greatshield, no actual weapons!)... I could go on and on and on. The problem with your posture focused suggestion is that it limits you to a pretty small subsection of weapons with charged heavy attacks quick enough to capitalize on the strategy. But there are TONS of amazing weapons that can't utilize that system - like whips, which literally can't critical hit or backstab - that are nevertheless incredibly fun to fight with. Even this analysis, while helpful, is so much more narrow than what the game has available. I'm 40 playthroughs deep, and still haven't even come close to finishing all the experimental builds I want to try!

[@HienNguyen-bi4xv]

I would love to read/watch anything you want to share about ER combat/bosses. ER is my first souls game and I just finished all souls game recently. I have always think ER combat is so deep because of its build variety. I dont understand why people seems to underestimated it. Maybe people doesnt care about exploring or experimenting with the playstyles at all they just want to beat the game 😅. For me I just dont like being restricted to any meta build to beat the bosses, I want to beat it the way I want with the build I like and figure it out by myself. ER did this the best in all of souls game imo.

[@calamatuz]

@@HienNguyen-bi4xv i mean while theres a massive variety of gear and attacks in the game, they arent much different from each other. usually your just using r1 since for alot of bossed the openings to use a stronger large charge up attack is next to none.

[@bigchungus6827]

@@calamatuz There's a lot of setups you can make with longer range weapons to essentially have the hit land right as a boss finishes an attack and lands next to you, many of these being charged r2. It does require good understanding of boss timings and positioning, but the pay off is immense.

[@calamatuz]

@@bigchungus6827 well yeah you can do those super cool fancy combos. a good example would be the youtuber ongbal. this gut does some absolutley badass things. but for someone who doesnt want to spend hours perfecting a boss to do these things which is definetly the majority of players, they gonna stick to r 1 for most bosses.

[@bigchungus6827]

@@calamatuz You're not wrong, but you are overexaggerating how much effort it takes. Every boss has atleast a couple moving attacks and it's not really hard to get a feel for how far they move while doing them, so you just get in position and charge up so you knock em over when they land. Depends a bit on hitbox, though.

[@gustavoviana5508]

So, basically: the full light attack combo is there to look pretty because you can never use it because you get 1 sec jump attack windows or else you die. Got it

[@darrenfleming7901]

Fromsoft heard people complaining that DS3 was r1 spam simulator and said “fuck it lets make an entire game where it’s literally never good to r1”

[@badman5363]

R1 is useful if you’re playing a dex build. This video’s main flaw is that Feeble King says posture break is the way the player is meant to play Elden Ring, but it is actually one of many. Just watch Ongbal’s videos. You can see him using tons of different builds against bosses.

[@fattyflabs4323]

@@darrenfleming7901it's still good to r1 just don't always do it

[@lowresolutionbunnyfeng3919]

Acting like bosses are 100% of the game. There are many open areas, dungeons, and PvP to see these animations. You also get enough for 1-2 attacks most of the time during boss fights on the correct openings

[@josephbornman8462]

You use it against smaller enemies that you ARE the boss and you are steamrolling them But yeah it would be lame if you could do that to the big bosses-they are meant to be like large and overpowering-you can only beat them by avoiding their attacks and getting in damage during their downtimes (I know one shot builds fly in the face of this lol)

[@_execrate_2568]

No one will tell me that waterfowl is fair move from the boss, its bullshit

[@lIlIlIlIllIl]

I hate to defend Elden Ring, but yeah waterfowl is "fair". It is just so poorly communicated how to dodge and evade that the time required to understand it is obsessive. sorry.

[@wisemage0]

@@lIlIlIlIllIl If waterfowl is "fair" then so is bloodhound step.

[@lIlIlIlIllIl]

Bloodhound step has been nerfed into the ground so I would 100% agree that it is fair.@@wisemage0

[@ETBrooD]

WFD is practically speaking the only thing in the game that can be considered unfair. The criticism of Elden Ring reaches far beyond Malenia having an unfair move that makes her very hard to beat. The criticism is about all of the main bosses, including Radagon and Elden Beast, Maliketh, Godfrey, Radahn, etc. That criticism is completely unwarranted. So if you want to criticize Malenia's WFD, go ahead. Although I'm slowly beginning to enjoy the fight against Malenia, I can see validity in that criticism. But if you extend criticism of Malenia to other bosses, then I have to completely disagree.

[@ETBrooD]

@@wisemage0 Bloodhound step is in fact fair. Why wouldn't it be?

[@Chvse4U]

I think a big part of it is that the rhythm is different to what Souls Vets are used to. With Elden Ring as my first FromSoft game and after hearing so many complaints about the Fire Giant, I was pleasantly surprised with how easy he was to no-hit. Maybe there's an aspect of approaching it without already having an idea in your head as to how things should go.

[@3mangaming185]

I played all of their games b4 playing elden ring and defeated fire giant first try. The complain is not how hard fire giant is cause he is super easy, it is just the mechanics of the fight looking at his feet the whole fight with no interesting fight, and how he jumps away every 10 seconds which forces you to go to him frequently instead of a boss that encourages aggresion. And I have to say it took me untill new game plus to know why people hate this boss, it is the fact that u can get one shotted by an attack that u did not even saw to react to it which sucks.

[@das6109]

Fire giant main complaints are health sponge (either long fight or need bleed/rot), that he runs so often, that dodging on horse is limited so lots of people played off mount (danger of using Torrent is completely mitigated by s on stationary dismount but what a jank ass mechanic that is), the awful camera, and that he can one shot pretty decent vigor which is more annoying in a long drawn out fight. Mechanically he's very straightforward if rather tedious without bleed if you're playing a challenge run.

[@Angryegg387]

This is the reason so many souls players hated sekiro on release

[@aguspuig6615]

@@3mangaming185 shit, its the guy that posts "im 13 years old and can do 200 pushups" on every workout video

[@chidori0117]

@@3mangaming185 Fighting at his feet is only in phase one where a lot oif the oneshot from of sceen attacks you are mentioning are not present. Phase 2 is cleary designed ot be fought from in front of him hitting is head and hands. People online claim that tha is the deadzone but its simply not true and the fight is easier and more interesting if you dont try to huddle his legs during phase 2. For me its like people complaining that Midir is a terrible designed and spongy fight while sticking to his back legs the entire fight....

[@kylehart8829]

The problem for me is that the puzzle of figuring out the bosses is much longer than in previous games. And it's to the point where they feel like they're not intended to be beaten without trading hits whereas in previous games that wasn't the case. For me it took a no-leveling run with a bad weapon to properly learn how to deal with Morgott, Maliketh phase 1, and Malenia without face-tanking through some attacks. I simply don't like that. It made my first experience tedious and annoying and even though I have fun fighting those bosses now, I think the bosses overall fail since they encourage really boring playstyles on a first run. I have done every souls game multiple times with stupid restrictions, but even breezing past Orphan of Kos on multiple challenge runs didn't give me a good process for dealing with the Elden Ring bosses. I'm a player who loves playing these games on what you call hard mode, but for the first time ever I picked up the golden halberd and just jump attacked my way through literally the whole game. The rhythm and boss design follow such a different philosophy that my experience was very negative because the skills and learning process didn't transfer. Simply due to hundreds of hours of playtime in challenge runs I'd say I'm better at these games than most souls veterans, and if my experience annoyed me that much it must've been worse for an "average" souls vet. Bosses should be fun for average players on their first run, and Elden Ring's bosses simply aren't. As incredible as it is to figure out that sprinting into waterfowl dance or Maliketh phase 1's double swipe is the way to avoid damage, that is simply not something that an average player will figure out on their first playthrough. Put that shit behind a new moveset in NG+ or something, that would be such a fun surprise in a second run through the game and it feels unfair the first time.

[@ni9274]

How it's a problem to trade hits ? A new player in DS3 would never totally learn the bosses moveset on a first playthrough, you will always trade hits and that's not a problem. The poise system in Elden Ring make it so trading hit as more gameplay value, like in certains situations it's better to trade with the boss cause you can get a poise break. ER was my first souls games and I never exclusively relied on hit trading to beat the bosses, I could naturally learn most of the bosses attacks in a few hours. You act like spriting is the only way to dodge Maliketh double swipe, in reality you can just roll two time. Like I said Elden Ring bosses moveset aren't that hard to learn as you make it seems, most attacks can just be dodge with a simple medium roll, and even if you don't master the full boss moveset on your first playthrough it doesn't mean the experience was bad. If ER bosses were really that bad the game wouldn't be so succesful, most ppl praised the bosses in Elden Ring. ( Every souls games feel unfair the first time you play them, I played DS3 after playing ER and I literally uninstalled the game after dying 30 times to the Abyss Watcher, at the time I thought the first phase was bullshit cause you had to wait around for the third guy to spawn).

[@dinb_dinb]

​@@ni9274 I disagree, Elden Ring bosses moveset is harder and way more frustrating to learn and deal with compared to both ds3 and sekiro for the multiple reasons. First thing is that these games are actually balanced, so usually you don't die in 2 hits even to the late game bosses, not to mention the fact most of them are allowing you to heal without also making you to learn the timing when you can heal and sekiro has a block on top of all that. Second, you need to be a lot more precise with your positioning and dodges. In sekiro bosses usually are as fast or faster, but so are you and wolf can literally cancel his first attack into the block. Third, which is not an entirely new thing for ER, but simply a lot more present particularly due to everything I mentioned above is how many ph2 bosses are completely different in terms of moveset, instead of being upgraded version of the ph1 boss. Finally, bosses in previous games simply felt a lot more intuitive to play due to much lesser presence of delayed attacks and more telegraphing and time to dodge during combos. "If ER bosses were really that bad the game wouldn't be so succesful, most ppl praised the bosses in Elden Ring." Because Elden Ring is a popular game doesn't mean it is flawless. "Every souls games feel unfair the first time you play them, I played DS3 after playing ER and I literally uninstalled the game after dying 30 times to the Abyss Watcher, at the time I thought the first phase was bullshit cause you had to wait around for the third guy to spawn" You said yourself you spent few hours learning each boss in ER but suddenly 30 tries against abyss watchers were impossible to you?

[@Romb772]

Maybe the average player should just get better 😂 I'm only half joking

[@Arda-dq4rt]

I only played DS1,DS and Sekiro when I started Elden ring, it was so much more enjoyable to learn the boss patterns and posture break every boss at least 2 times on a severely low vigor build. Am I a great player? Well certainly I'm above average but anyone who has beaten a souls game on a melee build is on my skill level. The difference is that I had the right mindset playing ER. I realized Margit was one of the greatest 1st main boss in any video game. Had such rich and complex pattern. I had to 'git gut' and learn directional spacing and attack opportunities that arent telepgraped (unlike Sekiro) but if you dont find them, you are screwed on a low vigor run. That FORCED me to master the game. I ABSOLUTELY LOVED my 1st playthrough. So much so in fact that ER is so massively better than DS DS1 and Sekiro that I might have shoot myself on the foot here. I wont be able to go back to boring and archaic mechanics of DS2 ds3 and BB :( ER was just too good. (Yes I dont actually like Sekiro that much and it is very overrated imo. It is pathetic there are only 2 bosses (Genichiro and Isshin) that are mechanically deep and everything else is just boring parry spamming. It is an OK game but nowhere near the enjoyment and richness ER provides.

[@RelativelyBest]

I'm an "average" Dark Souls veteran - in the sense that I've beaten all of the games but never felt the need to make it more difficult for myself than it already was - and I can't say I ever found particularly annoying. I just brought spirit ashes and the best gear I could find and did the same thing I did fighting the Dark Souls bosses, which involves a lot of dodging, healing and hitting the giant dude with a sword. If that didn't work, it just meant I needed to level up some more. Actually, I think I prefer the boss fights in Elden Ring since they feel more realistic. Memorizing attack patterns until you always know exactly what to do ends up feeling a bit artificial in retrospect. Whereas when I'm fighting say Morgott, it's almost like facing an actual skilled opponent who's actively trying to outmaneuver me. I've beaten the game three times now, yet whenever I walk through one of those fog gates I still feel like I don't quite know what's going to happen, and that's not entirely a bad thing.

[@olivsk1]

49:00 That's not proof that the boss design is goated, it's proof that you've suffered so much that you've convinced yourself that you were in the wrong all this time. You make a lot of good points about the Sekiro playstyle not being taught correctly, but this game is very clearly intended to be played in various different ways, not just the one where you posture break the bosses in a perfect god-like flow state. Bosses should be designed in a manner where the playstyle you advocate for is still satisfying and fun to pull off, but not to the point where anyone who doesn't do confine to jumping attacks and crits gets punished for how they prefer to do things. But there 100% should be a posture bar or something, stance is way more important in this game than any of the souls games.

[@lukasr1166]

Imagine trying to play like he suggests with incantations. Half of them take so long to cast that you will miss the opening

[@Nothing-yq2gz]

@@lukasr1166 hey hear me out, maybe that's the case because incants as well as magic are not supposed to be played like that?

[@lukasr1166]

@@Nothing-yq2gz But how are you supposed to play with incantations then? He gave no suggestions for it.

[@Nothing-yq2gz]

@lukasr1166 just like you do with spells? Stay at range, be careful of ranged attacks if boss has them, attack when you get a punish window

[@lennartsenden1220]

If you are hellbent on making a game with this much builds and playstyles then you sure as hell get an unbalanced chaos of a game out of that.

[@Random_19]

I never really thought of the Elden Beasts reveal like that. The whole game (to me at least) made it sound like Marika/Radagon was the God that needed killing as the game hypes up the Elden Ring itself as some kind of all-powerful artifact that is held by the Elden Lord. It literally can control life and death and rewrote how death works for Marika. Only when the game mentions how Marika was punished for the shattering did I think of something more being behind the Elden Ring, after all who could punish someone with all of that power? But it felt like there was too little on what that could be for me to form an idea until I saw it. It's also not the first time has used these kinds of higher power type creatures, just look at bloodborne and all of its Lovecraftian concepts. Even the flame at the core of Dark souls could be seen in the same light as some higher power of questionable origin.

[@BigGnigga]

Nerd

[@roundtabledetails3307]

@@BigGnigga worthless

[@marchmelloow]

I thought that Radagon/Marika were doing some big brain plays the whole game and was completely in control, so It was so cool to get hit by the Elden Beasts grab and realize that they were, in fact, not in control.

[@JoeyWoeyUwU]

This is the only defense of Elden Ring's bosses I've enjoyed watching. Opposed to the condescending video this one replies to, this one is fair to people who don't enjoy the boss mechanics while also explaining something I never figured out on my own, making me want to reevaluate what I originally thought of the game's boss design. Good stuff.

[@JWestend]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/sF6ke6Wla7Cah7M

[@aryabratsahoo7474]

​@@flamingmanure Lupine's video basically comments on the wrong doings of Anderson's points and gives hint into the actual mechanics to use and play with your own playstyle. Feeble's video points out that Lupine is right about bosses but it's the game's fault for not teaching it very well, which is also true. Sekiro has the most complex combat design and because of that, it extrinsically tells the player about it's mechanics through time stopping pop ups and the Perilous Attack Symbol. Using Anderson's video to point out the ER's boss design is bad is like pointing to Mauler's video to tell that Dark Souls 2 is trash. Hbomberguy has really good points about the intended way to play about DS2, while Mauler complains every nitpick that he hates without understanding how it's meant to be played.

[@ВладіславЗаморський]

Yeah, glad to see that some people actually take both points of view into account. For some reason ER situation with bosses reminds me of running to boss room in DS2, it's just so annoying, such a chore. Insane damage and extremely unnatural timings lead to hours of practice to beat even easy bosses and that is so boring. I learned how to deal with x, then y comes into play, then I deal with x and y, but z appears, so die and repeat. Another thing that adds salt here is that a lot of attack are extremely unnatural and make no sense at all, a lot of hitboxes are really weird(surprisingly player weapon's hitboxes are actually often really good) as well, so again a lot of death for no reason, only experience(memorization) can help here. This is probably where "unfair" feel comes from: a huge attack that looks like should have a big recovery has an unexpected followup(so common in ER). Eventually to actually properly beat the game you need to invest weeks of time on repeating the same thing like a madman. I didn't have the same problem with DS titles and Sekiro. In Sekiro when I die it's like "Oh, I messed up", but in ER I just can't stop myself from cursing this game design.

[@TheFuzzician]

Joe's main complaints in terms of bosses were always "it made me feel like I was playing the game wrong". He was expressing his frustration that the next game in the series violates so many of the principles that held in the older games. That you could go in with ANY weapon and learn as you go, and get good at the fights. ER (at least pre-patch) was very unfriendly to certain approaches, one of which was Joe's. The kicker is that if you try using magic or summons, these fights become complete pushovers. I think he is completely correct. Of course, if you LIKE the approach that ER takes to bosses, then you can just skip his section on bosses, because it doesn't really apply to you. Someone who always summons for bosses, for example, will have no issues with ER bosses at all, since that boss design will cater to that player's preferred way of playing. Joe's Boss section TL'DR - ER bosses do not handle the way I always enjoyed them in the other From games. My main complaint against him (and many others) would be that an option against unreactable attacks is.....a SHIELD. Did everyone forget that shields are a thing? When did we decided that you have to be able to dodge-roll everything? Against Beast Clergyman, I just blocked most of his attacks, and dodged + punished a few others, and I could get through that phase will no damage consistently.

[@Akechifan]

​​@@TheFuzzician Ever since Bloodborne came out I've found that no one really uses shields in souls games anymore which is a bit silly since the game gives you plenty of good shields and even buffed shields overall. It feels like Dark Souls 1 was last game where the community actually acknowledged shield.

[@feidamack2006]

Yep. If the posture mechanic was better communicated and I had ample room to experiment without having to run back each time trial and error failed, I probably would have enjoyed the combat more.

[@MrPatrickbuit]

Play Sekiro man. I guarantee you'll love that game because it fixes both of those issues.

[@makia3]

@@MrPatrickbuitthey’re both equally enjoyable when learned to play incentivizing posture break,

[@curious2882]

Bro your vids are so well spoken and thought out every time. When nobody else can put my thoughts into words, my boy Feeble King has my back covered

[@jamesarthurkimbell]

Quick defense of Margit as a teaching tool: 1) He has weak enough posture that you will stagger him, even unintentionally, and see the benefit 2) Most of his moves, including tricky ones like the spectral knife, do tiny damage 3) Really obvious difference between left and right hand weapons, so you notice that dodging to different sides gets different results

[@whirlwind872]

True but depending on weapon and attack style you probably won't ever stagger him. He doesn't encourage you to use jumping attacks or R2, he encourages you to slip in some quick R1s since he's so aggressive. Which means you won't be doing enough stagger damage to actually get a stagger

[@milksteak553]

​@@whirlwind872 I staggered him with a dagger

[@ShadowProject01]

@@whirlwind872 not true I staggered him all the time with 2 straight swords and Uchigatana with Dex. You need to know your strengths and use them effectively

[@crungusbungus2519]

I think the second point actually works against his favor. It tells you that hit trading is safe and even encouraged. It gives the exact opposite lesson it's supposed to. I steamrolled Margit and Morgott because the low damage combined with the low stagger makes hit trading not just viable, but arguably optimap

[@Akakiryuushin]

​@milk steak I never staggered him with carian slicer

[@808pitfallseed]

I think another big issue with how the game is designed is with presentation in general aside from the lack of jumpable indicators or posture. Dark souls is already something a lot of people have played or watched so i think its totally fair to assume the usual way of approaching boss mechanics would work when everything from the animation to the UI is almost the exact same as ds3 and basically doesnt differentiate itself at all like sekiro does with the prosthetics and obvious pushes for deflects. Also I think the bosses having so much tracking makes people realizing positioning was this important really unreasonable for a game like this. Old monster hunter games for example were entirely position dodging almost because of the super low s but they usually had fairly bad tracking on most attacks to make it obvious to players that you're supposed to just be in the right spots rather than dodging with s or whatever else. I think positioning and baiting super specific combo extenders also feels a lot more like a scuffed solution to the hyper aggro tracking combos than if they just made it an explicit mechanic like sekiro so i think its fair for joe to not realize baiting reactions out is even consistent. Especially with how many bosses are honestly gonna die before you learn them well enough to see that

[@anidiot8845]

Wouldn’t the whole „you have to play for heavy attacks and jump attacks“ thing ruin many play styles? I’m not saying that to argue against what you’ve said, rather I’m saying that would probably be another critique of elden rings boss design. Weapons that have weaker poise damage could be a LOT worse then.

[@FearTheCaboose1337]

This is exactly my particular issue. Elden ring has a very particular way to play (especially now with the DLC) and other methods just feel terrible. I also think we need to stop calling magic "easy mode" at this point. It's not DS1. Bosses are designed to account for ranged attacks.

[@teletubbyfan8209]

@@FearTheCaboose1337 pls 🙏 ive had to memorize movesets SO much more facing a boss head on at the distance spells give you on my mage hitless than my melee one where you can get away with haphazardly rolling into a boss, even on dex without any stance breaking.

[@wesleycascio568]

In my first elden ring play though, I used hit trading strength weapons to succeed through most of the game. When I finally got to malenia I had all the drama and about her difficulty and bs beforehand and walked in prepared to hate. What I found was a boss that challenged my approach from the rest of the game. Her healing made hit trading worthless so I had to learn her openings and combos for myself. It only took me two sessions to come away with the win and I enjoyed her fight more than any other fight in the game

[@victorprati7908]

If there is an "ideal intended way" to figure out and deal with bosses out there you probably went very close into reaching it in my opinion

[@aryabratsahoo7474]

​@@flamingmanure that's what creates the issue among the various playstyle communities. The melee-roll only no-shield people can't enjoy while all those who experiment with playstyles, builds, items enjoy it.

[@Assassin5671000]

​@@flamingmanureI can argue that there is and that is probably finding his weakness and exploring them ,but just because it's ideal isn't aways fun for everyone

[@mcfroogle2946]

I did the exact opposite to this. My first playthrough I used a shield and great sword (the crucible knight one along with the armor) and throughout the entire game I never need to rely on hit trading until I got to malenia where I would use the black flame protection on myself at all times of the fight and trade blows whilst also learning attacks it wasnt worth trading with. Strange how we just did the opposite of each other

[@Batateto_Sus]

​@@aryabratsahoo7474 what really creates this problem is the communities themselves, you can beat the game with a stick, sure it will giva a lot of work, but there is no need for crying in the internet because the game is easier for them, only because *you* refuses to use the new game mechanics. If you dont like it, thats okay, but again, there is no need for crying.

[@peschionator7873]

Your criticism pretty much sums up my thoughts after watching Lupine's video. His response is valid, but ER does a terrible job at teaching the player these nessecary insights. Margit doesnt teach any boss mechanics to most players, he teaches you to explore the world and come back stronger. I remember using charged heavies and guard counters excessively in the first 5 hours and then discarding them because they didnt feel relevant enough. Light spam is just safer and looking to posture break is a guessing game. I didnt even think about using the jump to dodge attacks (I didnt even think about the jump warning in Sekiro until now but that change would be great), a lot of jump sensitive attacks either dont have a matching animation and some are very timing sensitive to you might draw the wrong conclusion if you miss the timing. The worst thing is that since ER as an open world game about "you play the way you want" it never checks that you learn these lessons. The game is actually really easy until you finish Ledynell, every obstacle until that can be powered through by exploring enough and leveling. The fact that you and Lupine find so much praise for explaining the combat shows how much FS messed up. A lot of frustrated players have played multiple of their games and thus show the ability to learn a bosses moveset with enough time, but they dont learn the intricacies exclusive to ER. This is similar to veterans playing BB or Sekiro before they have beaten Genichiro and Gascoine, the only difference being that with beating those bosses you have proven that you understand how the game is to be played. Beating Margit for most just means that they have a higher level and better gear.

[@kinguchiha6212]

Alternate video title: I’ve played Elden Ring so much over the last two years I’ve finally mastered it lmaoo

[@corporialme]

Quick tip: Maliketh's beyblade attack happens almost every time if you roll away from the 2 handed uppercut move.

[@feebleking21]

That would explain why I almost never saw it

[@selethag]

@@feebleking21 as a bit of an addition to this, the best way I understand to dodge it is to go directly left or right, and dodge a bit late if you can. it's got a pretty wide hitbox, because his sword is massive and all, but once he's done lining up the first swing he either stays on the same path for the second or only moves very slightly. This means that if you go far enough in either direction, and mid roll is more than capable of that, you only have to be fast enough to dodge the first rotation, and then maybe again when he lands depending on where you are. Basically, if you're far enough away from him that he decides to use it, don't worry about getting back under him until that first swing is dodged. the only way to dodge it going straight back and forth is bhs, and even then you might get clipped due to how fast the second rotation comes around as a final note on the bosses as a whole, I personally hold to the idea that infinite agression from either party is a bad thing. Even in Sekiro, where you're given the freedom to be on both the offensive and defensive simultaneosly the entire fight, the idea is to be engaged with the boss, instead of trying to overpower it. Finding windows in Elden ring bosses is hard, and even when you know they're there I think there's a difference between trying to squeeze out every single opportunity even if it means they can't make a single mistake and letting smaller openings pass by to capitalize more on larger ones later. All the same measured agression is for you to measure and there's more than one way to work inside of a boss's tempo. I honestly agree with the people who think Maliketh could have had a full hp bar phase 2 because as long as you don't get greedy he's one of the most rewarding bosses in terms of free time, and as-is he often feels like a glass cannon given the offensive options you have by that point in the game

[@mishaf19]

This video actually makes why I didn’t understand understand Joes and Lupines videos. I played for posture breaks because I played Lies of P before Elden Ring and posture breaking was a clear part of the game. It would explain why I found elden ring bosses decent challenges and rather fun. Playing without posture breaks on a second play through made Joe’s critiques make so much sense.

[@pacnat_9069]

I’ve fought Mohg so many times that I can definitely say I’ve mechanically mastered dodge timings and what not.. it’s such a fun fucking fight!!!!!! edit: not to mention, fighting with that beautiful soundtrack in the back is so rhythmically satisfying

[@calamatuz]

i got to him at a really low level before beating morgott i think and i stubbornly wanted to beat him. i died an unbelievable amount of times but thanks to that ive pretty much got all his timings down. and yeah i love his soundtrack

[@NekokraTerias]

His ground stabbing and make big explosion happen move still haunts me.

[@Grimnoire]

Hated that dude, went there as a level 50 int build with 29 vig and and died so many times... Only to finally beat him and get nothing.

[@highchief3911]

Absolutely hilarious watching this after the DLC where posture breaking bosses takes so long that it’s not as reliable

[@howbob4118]

You can quite literally use 2 charged r2s when spec’d into posture breaking and knock most of the bosses in the dlc. Rahadn takes 2.5ish but even then it’s not that hard. I mean I used lions claw for a good bit of my first run in the DLC and could just hyper armor through attacks and stager them.

[@jaystar6357]

⁠@@howbob4118”Lions claw” ah there ya go

[@defaultweeb3389]

@@howbob4118ah yes "you can posture break easily if you min max for it" lol ok bro

[@howbob4118]

@@defaultweeb3389 They said you couldn’t. I simply told them that you can posture break reliably. Where am I wrong

[@TheArtDev]

Metyr exists.

[@clunkye8053]

You should link lupine’s response video in the pinned comment so that more people can see it.

[@simonealcazar816]

I think core problem with how every video I’ve seen of ER’s bosses on whether they are both good and bad miss something important to about why ER’s bosses the why they are. Everything ER bosses do are done by bosses in Bloodborne and DS3, this isn’t actually new. Combo attacks that has open in between them, combo extensions based on position, Strafeble attacks, multiple hitting moves that can avoid by running away, heck DS3 has a posture system similar to ER, where bosses will get knocked down or get heavily staggered with aggressively play. Seriously go check them in those games. The difference between DS3/BB bosses and ER is that it was too easy to just rely on dodge roll. ER took those elements and amp them up. In the comment section someone described ER bosses as amped up versions of Champion Gundyr and Pontiff but that’s actually true because they follow a similar design philosophy w/ ER bosses. What I’m trying to say is that, ER bosses are the way they because From assumed vets understood this from the previous games and amplified those elements but obviously that the community never actually realized that and only learned dodging part and nothing else. Now here we are. ER bosses are natural evolutions to bosses of DS3 and Bloodborne they aren’t actually that different.

[@FlightX101]

Idk what they tell them. Just play good lol.

[@Sinhsseax]

Yeah, that is a very apt description. It also irked me a bit about Lupines initial framing, even though he did go into examples of these things being present later on. Another element, that is shared more or less since DS1 is "input reading" leading to heal punishes. But people just won't accept, that Elden Ring, DS3 and Sekiro use the exact same system or that there is even heal punishing. I once got a comment saying "Lorian is just attacking, when he would always attack, he is not cheating by input reading."

[@calamatuz]

@@Sinhsseax about heal punishing. in sekiro and ds3 you could still avoid the punishing. for example against genichiro as long as you time your dodge well you can avoid the arrow. ER tends to be too heavy on the punish with some bosses

[@Sinhsseax]

@@calamatuz This is a very late response by me, but: It's dependent on the distance you are from a boss, really. Genichiro has two very common heal punishes: 1) his bow, which he already uses in phase 1 and which is parryable. (or dodgeable, as you say) 2) a lunge by him, in the Tomoe phase, which can be Mikiri-countered. But with 2), if you stand too close, you will be trapped in the animation and can't mikiri counter it. It's the same way with Elden Ring. Depending on your distance the Godskin fireballs or Malenias thrust are actually more like punish windows for you after. But Elden Ring has a lot of different enemies and also a lot with ranged attacks, so no heal punish a boss does is really the same. The speed and with that the distances are always different.

[@calamatuz]

@@Sinhsseax yeah but in ER some bosses rewuire too far a distance for a heal. i just feel like a heal from mid distance shouldnt have an undogeable punish no matter the boss

[@ClikcerProductions]

Honestly my biggest issue with ER bosses is the insane amount of delayed attacks, my favourite kinds of bosses are ones where intuition is actually useful for learning them, that's how I get into a flow state, ER bosses have so many attacks where playing intuitively will just get you hit, and you just have to bash your head against the wall to learn the timing, and to me that just leads to a ridiculous amount of boredom while I work it out, because I know I'm not getting anywhere until I do

[@ronthorn3]

Because your intuition is based off previous games.

[@ClikcerProductions]

@@ronthorn3 Ah yes, my intuition was informed by previous games the first time I ever played DS1, where my intuition carried me through many of the boss fights

[@doriangray1935]

Delayed attacks are great opportunity to reposition yourself to behind the enemy and also allows you to regen a lot stamina(if you are not panick rolling, that is) Moreover, I think delayed attacks are interesting way of changing the tempo of the fight.

[@ClikcerProductions]

@@doriangray1935 I'd agree if delayed attacks were there to mix things up from the regular Fight, like ds3 was, but there are so many bosses in ER where almost all of their kit is delayed and its just tiresome to me at that point

[@feno8104]

​​​​​@@ClikcerProductionsI don't agree with your take on delayed attacks but I see where you're coming from. I think your real issue is with the lack of diversity in the boss formula itself. Demon's Souls bosses were simple in difficulty, but they each presented a new learning curve and method to approach them with, which is where the fun in that game derived from. This, opposed to DS3 and ER where the only learning curve is reading the boss's move to respond accordingly. Turn-based, as the video described. There isn't many ways to make this method engaging without the inclusion of mixed delayed/fast attacks, an unfortunate consequence on part of the series for giving up on creating new innovative ways to fight bosses like Demon's Souls did

[@erfv-o5l]

a big problem i have with this video it acts like you need posture breaks and that they are the main way to win when thats simply untrue

[@Winter_Lantern]

Exactly that, there's a billion things that are hand waved as "easy mode"

[@sonokawaray]

Stance is such an important mechanic if you're a melee player that I'm still surprised ER didn't bother to have a visible meter for it, especially when prior games like Sekiro and Nioh let you keep track of that and/or enemy stamina to let you know how close you are to an opening for big damage. My last playthrough focused on heavy attacks with a greataxe, and it certainly would have added to the fun if I could see how close a boss was to the next stagger and decide in the moment whether I might as well back off to heal, or yolo for that last crit I need to win.

[@C_O_N_C_E_P_T]

You should know when their stance is about to break and what hit will do it. You play enough you understand what does it and what hit will do it. It doesn’t need a meter to tell you and in some ways the meter throws off fighting because it tells you hey you can be super aggressive on the next 1-2 hits because it will break. It takes away from the fight when you don’t have to focus on that and you understand what’s happening because you’ve grown to learn how posture breaking works. Getting good with every weapon class also helps a ton because each will change their posture bar and will change the way you fight them.

[@tifolol6687]

@@C_O_N_C_E_P_T ye fuck you im not gonna play 500 hours to learn when a boss’ stance breaks

[@TNumbers]

Throwing knives are the best tool in the game for keeping posture up when the boss decides to retreat. Wish I knew that earlier in my 1st play through though.

[@weirdbro6597]

ER never really tells anything. Not even some of the most important parts of the game like pouches, seal/incantations, side missions, or even spirit ashes. Most of the game is basically "fck you, figure it out yourself or look up google". At least that's how I felt.

[@charlestonobryant807]

@@C_O_N_C_E_P_Ta mechanic that important should not take playing with multiple weapons and hours to actually even know exists

[@why7868]

One thing you missed about radagon is how he can sometimes early cancel his teleport into another teleport (he sometimes actually spams thats shit) which will hit you due to the timing (either roll with correct timing get hit with the sudden reappear or anticipate the cancel and get hit with the normal). Its an example of how sometimes the AI bugs out and the fights get stupid.

[@rayzu4380]

Do you have a clip showing that??

[@FunkiMonki69]

And you'll find that stuff with a bunch of bosses which has me assume they were designed that way. And yet you find people vigorously defending them

[@TheSilvantor]

One of the things that I've thought about in regards to Elden Ring bosses is that perhaps we are so conditioned to fight bosses a particular way that we are blind to the possibilities. It is so obvious that a game that finally added proper jumping and implemented the posture system would require a change of approach on our part, yet we kept doing the same old song and dance even when it didn't work. We couldn't even recognize some openings for what they were. On my first playthrough, I've felt the "no openings" feeling many times. Later down the line I realized just how blind I was to the possibilities. Elden Ring is much more about the dance than the previous titles were, where you could easily just get by with the standard Dark Souls just roll through it and wait for an opening tactic.

[@alek1498]

That comment about how the bosses punish you for trying to learn their movesets with high damage is really good, i ended up playing elden ring ~8 ish times before i realy clicked with some of the endgame movesets and i'm having a realization moment. Sick vid

[@jakelee8789]

I've noticed that no one has complained about the crippling effect against bosses in Bloodborne. Another hidden mechanic that we learn as we play.... Idk but maybe all of this info is hidden to the player so they can discover it instead of it being a mandatory way of defeating bosses...either way I absolutely love this game

[@FlightX101]

i mean thats literally the point of souls games lol. I do agree that a posture break meter would be nice tho. Theres plenty of viable and non-op ways to kill bosses in Elden ring. There are many mid level enemies that will simply kill you for running in and trying to trade

[@jfranks1295]

You didn’t point out every problem with ER design. You pointed out how you prefer to fight the bosses and then highlighted when the game doesn’t let you.

[@minerman60101]

Amazing video. I went in to the game after seeing a VaatiVidya interview where he was allowed to play the game early, and he pushed the fact that doing light attacks on Margit wasn't getting anywhere, but when he threw in strong, charged, and jump attacks and was able to break his posture, the fight made sense. This is the mindset I approached the game with, and for bosses that worked well under this system (Mohg and Radagon being the most memorable examples) I thought were great. I will say, this game absolutely needs a boss rush; the game is so large that people are discouraged from going through it all again to fight bosses they never understood enough to like. Also long comment incoming: I did not understand Maliketh. I had a mid level on a faith build (yikes) who was only allowed to kill the minimum number of bosses using speedrun glitches to skip all but Maliketh, Radagon, and Elden Beast, and Maliketh was an insurmountable roadblock. Then I saw a challenge runner who understood the boss fight him, and my eyes opened. Later I fought Maliketh straight up, learned his moveset, forsook mimic tear, and it was genuinely a great experience. I similarly had a character who went to fight Mohg right after seeing Varre in Liurnia, and I did poor damage and died in 1-3 hits. But I pushed through, I learned all of Mohg's combos, found circle strafe openings, end of combo openings, mid combo openings, working in charged attacks to get those posture breaks, and then phase 2 iterated on all of what I had learned in the best way. I feel constantly engaged whenever I fight him, just like any Sekiro boss, making Mohg my favorite boss in any game that isn't Sekiro. And holy shit you see it too, you share my understanding of the sheer brilliance of Mohg. Thank you. Maybe Mohg beats every boss in Sekiro except for Inner Father??? I'm going to need to fight Isshin some more to see if I need to give Mohg even more praise. For phase 1, I poise broke him under the blood shower attack more often than he shouted in latin there because I get a couple extra poise damage evaporation prevention glintstone pebbles in, so I share your annoyance there. Also the biggest flaw of the fight is that he has a mechanic where his damage is increased for a while after a bleed proc goes off on you or him, but there is no sound cue and the visual effect is so tiny that you'll only see it if you found the "Lord of Blood's Exultation" talisman from the Leyndell sewer catacombs, have used it yourself, and actively looked at him to see if he had that buff. The mushroom dudes who buff when poison happens do this far better with a distinctive sound cue and a visual effect that covers a third of their body. As per the first part of "How to Fix Elden Ring Boss Design", Sekiro has bosses which are literally this. Ashina Elite just before Genichiro is literally the kind of boss you're describing, he forces you to learn how to time deflections, _they know how to design games like this_. Margit should've been a better tutorial like you said. I enjoyed Radahn quite a lot more than you, fighting him on my RL1 run, mainly because I rolled through most of the big combos and only did the "run under him" strat for exactly one combo where it didn't feel quite as trial and error-y. He definitely needs the camera zoomed out more, and he can spawn ground lightning AoE right on top of you if you're too close to him and kill you, and yeah the arrow phase is annoying. I guess you should will yourself to learn the dodge timings for combos instead of just standing under him for all of them and reevaluate your enjoyment of him. Also, one of the best things this game did was to tone down the Godskin Apostle's heal reading attack. This one change singlehandedly takes the fight from A tier to S tier; they made it come out later and not be able to interrupt his general AI as easily. This has respectively two benefits: the first means you can heal, then have time to dodge the fireball and get a hit in on him, and the second means he stops feeling like a robot who will automatically fireball you each and every time you hit the heal button. Patches have also given the player's melee arsenal a lot of buffs. Poise damage is a lot better when two handing a weapon, pretty much every moveset is better in some way, etc. Playing on current patch is just a way better experience than playing on the old patches.

[@Yobolight]

I love the Elden Ring bosses. And I'm a normie non-summons player. Sort of think the people who were satisfied by and large stayed mostly silent. A posture meter would've made sense though.

[@ama9385-w2g]

Whenever you say that you enjoy the bosses because it requires more out of you or to simply heal and opportune times you're met with thats not fun or thats bad design blah blah so it's easier to not comment I guesd

[@victorprati7908]

Ah a man of culture as well! We do exist my fellow enjoyer. I think the only thing in this video that's not utter BS is that we might be only the 5% or less whose love the bosses because it really feels like it sometimes

[@SevereOutcast]

You are correct. One of the worst things about ER was going to places like Twitter as a long-time Souls player and being utterly ratio'd by bad takes from people who had only heard of Dark Souls for the first time when this game was announced. That and people who proudly say, "I have 300 hours in this game. I know what I'm talking about." As if 300 hours is any time at all when it comes to mastery or it somehow means their opinion didn't come directly from the lips of some KZbinr they watched.

[@Assassin5671000]

I don't think that normie part is true because avoiding using summons in itself can be a challenge run in my opinion since you have tools to make it easier but you choose not even though it might be one of the intended ways to experience the game since all the enemies and bosses don't have to split their focus

[@connyslayer4661]

I personally love Elden Ring bosses as well. I am a regular action games/souls game fan that is a mostly solo non-summons player. I only use summons occasionally when i feel like it but i do love fighting by my own. I also believe most people who were satisfied just stayed in their lane and were busy doing their own things. I love almost all bosses from Dark souls 3, Sekiro and Elden Ring for different reasons. They are all great in their own way. A posture meter or stance meter would've made sense and could be something interesting to see.

[@SpxnZ01]

I feel like making the game relying so much on posture breaks would hurt a lot of builds that dont rely on them, I run a bleed build with 2 curved swords wich rely on your ability to be aggressive and land allot of hits quickly to keep up the bleed proc, but if they did the change your proposing that build idea would be underpowered, and I personally didn't have a problem with the boss designs other than bosses like elden beast and the fire giant, malenia is understandable and I'm not defending her boss design but one of my most memorable experiences was my first time dodging her waterfowl dance perfectly, and thats part of what makes her unique. I'd prefer if they showed the posture bar and gave us some more bosses close to margit in the beginning, but changing the game to be so posture based also feels like it'd steal some aspects of sekiros identity, instead of making elden ring feel unique to other games of the souls genre, but then again this might just be the rambling of a "filthy bleed build" who doesnt have posture breaks on his mind when fighting a boss

[@SpxnZ01]

I also notice that your way of playing relies allot on poise breaks wich is why I respect your opinion while also trying to shed light on a different perspective.

[@lIlIlIlIllIl]

Yeah so I also used a bleed centred curved sword build for some fights and you are correct to say that stance break strats don't work with them. Power stancing is a huge aspect of the game and he failed to take into account that more than straight swords exist and play differently.

[@Noelci035]

@@lIlIlIlIllIl Status build-ups follow the same logic as posture breaks. Stay close and try to get as many hits in as possible to build up your status. Especially when the fight becomes long and you need more build-up for every bleed proc. The only playstyle that doesn't profit from his playstyle is power-stanced weapons that do small posture damage like scimitars

[@spark9189]

might be because i'm used to kingdom hearts, but extremely aggressive bosses that have little to no room for error and demand mastery are what i expect when i fight optional superbosses edit: oh my god elden ring is a spectacle fighter disguised as a dark souls game

[@ama9385-w2g]

Exactly this, I wan't a challenging fight and make me feel like the boss is a complete monster or god like the lore says

[@itsprod.472]

Same here I have many hours in almost of the Souls games mostly in PVE since PVP differs so much in each one especially the meta so I get burnt out quick but I found Elden Ring fun in my first play through of it because I knew what to expect of certain bosses.

[@warcoder]

One day I spend like 3 hours trying to beat the Lingering Will but ended up rage quitting and decided to visit a friend to play ds3 and finally see the Ringed City. Man, I first tried the demons, Halflight and Gael (Midir took me two attempts). I felt like everything was in slow motion compared to the stupid Lingering Will.

[@spark9189]

@@warcoder my experience was an even starker contrast, going from yozora to dark souls 1

[@azure4622]

That's what I've been saying, this is just kingdom hearts but I don't play as sora

[@VIVc-art]

The thing is that challenge runners dont get in my opinion is that any person can become as good at the game as they are but not everybody wants to spend theyr pretious time off work or studyies dying over and over and basicly treating the game like work or research, where i study 30 or so attack pattern combinations and figure out unintuitive broken ways to exploit ai or animation hitboxes. That is not what the majority would consider a fun and quality time spending, not everyone even has that kind of time. To me its clear that bosses where designed around the idea of the player using spirit ashes that is why they are overtuned and relentless it makes it a challenge even with a summon unless you have an op build. In previous games especially ds1 and 2 bosses would have way less attacks and always give you consistent timings for punish, it was fun to learn exactly because you could easily keep in mind those 5 attacks. With elden ring this type of approach just started to seem like an absolutely gruesome ordeal, obviously not imposible that much is clear when you see a guy beat malenia sl1 with no rolls but i can imagine the hours and hours he spent in that arena hearing her say who she is.

[@ni9274]

But you don't have to study attack pattern or do anything like that, Elden Ring was my first souls games and I learned all the bosses moveset just by fighting them and paying attention. It doesn't take more times to learn bosses in ER than in DS3. They are more relentless cause you have more stamina and less recovery, it doesn't have anything to do with spirit ashes who are just another version of spirit summons. ER bosses have consistent timings for punish...

[@I-ONLY-BUILD-MECHS-AND-DUSTERS]

Challenge runners, still playing this game every day since release, pouring over flowcharts and datamined attack scripts... yeah, super fun stuff, and since they can technically beat the game with bad builds, everything is fine with the game design for sure!

[@jehyjehy9374]

You don't need to study the bosses; you just need to be more observant. I can understand why you did not understand these bosses because of the openness of the game, but you do not need to invest lots of time just to learn them. People keep perpetuating this idea thinking that they understand, but they still don't.

[@ulysses5340]

This video is actually better than both Joseph's and Lupine's tbh. You got the most of your points rights. However I'm still confused how you and all other people resorted to roll+R1's in the first place. I thought it was very obvious to use charged/jump/guard R2's since literally every enemy in the game has posture mechanic unlike any other souls game. Idk, I experienced the game this way from the very beginning, the moment I guard-countered soldier of godrick and killed him in two hits. It was very clear to me that game encourages this behavior. Also the tutorial gave enough messages for a souls game. These games have always been cryptic and having a screen to tell you this was more than enough I believe. I believe the culprit here is again the players for sharing a very bad strategy from the very first day(I was there on Twitter/Reddit w/e) that souls games and consequently Elden Ring are about rolling at the right time and hitting the enemy with a light attack. This dogmatic behavior later caused most of the players to wrongly accuse the game of having a bad design unfortunately. But thanks again for this incredible video. I very much enjoyed it and really appreciate your change of attitude regarding the ideas on your first video and not being stuck on them. Congratulations! 🎉

[@nicolaskelvin8582]

Yeah, if you play ER like DS and just spam roll+R1 of course you're going to have a hard time, just accept it's a different game, if you want dark souls there's three of them waiting for you...

[@ulysses5340]

@@nicolaskelvin8582 Exactly. Even though the core mechanics are more or less the same, ER is a way different combat experience. If the posture mechanic is utilized to its full extent the game becomes easier than almost any entry in the Fromsoftware collection.

[@facundovera3227]

The Crystal Tear and Talisman that improve charged attacks are both very close together at the biginning of the game, and charged attacks are the strongest attack already, so I figured maybe it was a good idea to use them. I use the attack that I find the most useful for the situation "I'm going to side step that big swing and do a charged attack" "I'li jump this shockwave and do a heavy attack l" "I'll stagger the enemy with this AOW" because not all punish windows are created equal.

[@JoseViktor4099]

Well, on a response to "However I'm still confused how you and all other people resorted to roll+R1's in the first place" this actually has a very concise response; Appereance. ER looks like too much like DS3 on a surface. So people expected to play like DS3, although I doubt DS3 combat would work on an open world due to how simple it is. They got flattened, probably used summons to mitigate that, and instead of finding a video like this to help them on order to get better, the answer they got was "The game is just unfair, and you cant do anything about it" Is sad, because people who claim that it should had been more like DS3 could hadn´t been more wrong on this context.

[@ulysses5340]

@@JoseViktor4099 you're right. But even though it's the community's mistake here I think he is right about the posture bar must've been visible. It could've been better nonetheless.

[@soycastroman7636]

200 hours in the game and I finally get the bosses and having fun. Thanks man, didn't expect this video to help me this much

[@HeavensBane53]

I'm glad I found this. I've been looking for someone who likes elden ring bosses to explain why they like them in a way that doesn't come across as elitist or ignorant and hadn't found that until now. I was hoping that changing my way of viewing them could get me to like them, since, like Joe, I adore many aspects of this game but my dislike of most of the bosses really sours a game that could otherwise be a favorite of mine. Unfortunately, I left the video thinking this will likely not be the case even though, ironically, the intended playstyle actually fits the way I like to play the game surprisingly well. In previous titles I really enjoyed finding openings in the middle of combos or cheeky little places you could stand to cause the bosses attack to miss, however I liked them as ways to optimize a fight that functions as a solid challenge without them, rather than a borderline necessity to overcome a near impossible challenge without them (which is the take away I got from this defense). An example of an elden ring boss I did phenomenally in this regard was the Tree Sentinel (at least when fighting him immediately after leaving the tutorial area), which remains one of my favorite elden ring fights as well as probably my favorite tutorial boss in any fromsoft game. However, as your video brings up, the difficulty of finding those openings amidst so many long combos that could often even be extended to punish you for trying to attack in an opening if you weren't in the right position made me abandon trying since I assumed the game just wasn't built around that. Moreover, your tier list made me realize that even if I come to see the bosses as you do I still probably won't like them because things you see as a minor issue are to me an absolute dealbreaker and vice versa. Margit for example, even if I come to like the flow of the fight will never reach above maximum c tier for me because I almost categorically despises enemies in fromsoft games that can cancel what should have been the end lag of their combo by either tacking on additional attacks or jumping away in response to your actions, since it almost always feels unfair to me, like they are adding difficulty by letting the boss cheat, and then I just don't enjoy the challenge anymore. Therefore even if his design, lore, and arena were absolutely top notch (which outside of maybe the lore they certainly are not) then my irritation with the fight would still keep me from truly enjoying it. On the other side of things, I'd probably put fire giant in the low b/high c tier because I found the bullshit in his fight mildly irritating at worst (though I guess im also more used to camera fuckery and the like) which detracts less from my enjoyment of how cool the bosses design is than a feeling that the boss is cheating. Mohg is probably the only fight in the game where my opinion might actually change significantly since that was a fight I almost loved but was always just too annoyed with how few openings it felt like he had as well as how irritating the persistent groundfire was for me (though that aspect won't change). Oh, and I am going back and editing this because I forgot to even mention my dislike for attacks with long windups where it feels like the attack is being unnaturally delayed just for the purpose of fucking with your dodge timing. And yeah, it IS being delayed just to fuck with your dodge timing, but it really takes me out of the fight when the animation and timing feels so unnatural, and elden ring was rife with those for me. Same with a lot of the heal punishes that start coming before the flask animation even visibly begins. Even in cases where it's not that punishing (like margitt) it still strips away the sensation that I'm in a duel with the character I'm fighting and reminds me that I'm really against a computer, one that is not above cheating. At the end of the day, even though it helped me better understand what elden ring's bosses were going for, it didn't alleviate my fears that the direction of boss design fromsoft is taking might just not be for me. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, since I adored all of sekiro's bosses (minus the ape gank, but the headless ape without its girlfriend is S tier so I found it at least somewhat tolerable), but if this is how from is going to be designing bosses in the future I just don't think the game's will ever quite be the same again for me, even if they do a better job of tutorializing them. It'd be a shame, DS1 is my favorite game of all time and bloodborne and sekiro are both not far behind it, but doesn't seem like there's much I can do about it. At the very least, though, if they want to make inbuilt challenge modes (like what fighting bosses without summons is, say what you will but I still think the default experience the game was designed around assumed a summon would be used) I'd at least like it to be implemented in a way that gives some middle ground to the bosses, so they don't feel like either total bullshit or a non-interactive pushover.

[@erikhendrickson59]

The inevitable result of a decade-old formula that many people have mastered. In order for the game to remain difficult for Souls Veterans, it will inherently be TOO DIFFICULT for newcomers & casuals. Id argue that this actually started with DS3.

[@poutineausyropderable7108]

Fire Giant isn't that bad. Do it again on the ground. Constantly hit his right leg. It will break at some point and then you'll have a damagr multipler. Then fof phase 2, the riskier but higher dps and fun way is to target the hands and the eye when he falls.

[@Graysett]

I have not finished the video, but I just heard one of your proposed solutions (21:24) and it made me stop what I was doing because my brain started screaming at me (though I have listened a bit further). From my experience with Wo Long Dynasty, both playing and seeing what other people playing it think, making weapons do little damage but make up for it when you get staggers into crits has the opposite effect and mostly makes people play even more defensively and cautiously, even though the game is VERY heavy handed with how it teaches how it works and how it wants you to play it, far moreso than any Soulslike (except Sekiro if you count it as one). I'll either edit this comment or write a reply later on once I've watched the whole thing and actually get into it all, but I wanted to write this now before I forgot.

[@darthnut7089]

Maybe it’s just because I’m naturally a aggressive player in any game I play but with Wo Long I had the opposite effect with weapons and magic doing hardly any damage it basically is like the game screaming at you to focus on filling their spirit bar and getting fatal strikes or be aggressive and that’s how you find the most success in that game.

[@ryanfromcanada778]

I felt the opposite with Wo Long. It felt very skeiro to me in that it rewarded aggression and staying in combat. It forced the stance break based combat which requires you to be in their face weaving attacks in between the parries.

[@Graysett]

@@ryanfromcanada778 ​ @Darth Nut You're both correct that the best and most fun way to play Wo Long is to be aggressive, but that's not how most people are "taught" to play it by the game. Most people end up playing it like Souls but with Deflects mixed in for the big attacks, and the point of this video (or at least the part I wrote that as a response to) is that playing the way Souls "teaches" you to is "incorrect". (Side note, I think the video's premise that ER is the first of the Souls games to reward calculated aggression more than defensive play is flat out wrong, though I do think ER has escalated bosses to the point that defensive playstyle is being punished much harder than it was in Souls.) Sekiro stands out from the rest of these games because being aggressive against a lot of the bosses forces them to block or deflect your attack, which makes learning to attack nigh constantly then deflect/dodge the counter so you bully them the best way to be defensive (though a lot of people, including me, take a long time to realize that and struggle through by trying to play it defensively like Souls "teaches" you to). Furi is the same during the melee phases, and Wo Long has that feel as well sometimes against human style enemies (up until they start a red attack in a tiny gap mid string then they super armor through you and you die in one hit because of the NG+ morale difference >_>). But Souls bosses almost never react to your attacks that way, before ER the closest you got was that they might be easy to stagger so they'd get interrupted. Melenia is the first boss I can think of that straight up will try to defend herself and/or back off if you just throw out attacks at her, though Radagon also does it with projectiles sometimes. Anyway, I think I've got off track from "make normal attacks weaker but criticals stronger to compensate" probably not being a good solution to the proposed issue, but I still haven't rewatched the video yet.

[@ryanfromcanada778]

@@Graysett I tend to disagree. Maybe it's because I had experience with Sekiro beforehand but it seemed very clearly like that's how the game taught me to play.

[@empire4420]

I agree with Wo Long's approach encouraging passive defensive play, but I think it's for a different reason. Playing that way means a focus on parries, which rewards you by raising your spirit and lowering the opponent's (eventually leading to a high dmg crit). I don't think the proposed solution in the vid will encourage players to play how they might in Wo Long because they dont have Wo Long's deflect or spirit mechanics. Give me a visible posture meter along with low dmg and high crit dmg, I'd probably realize I need to be more aggressive to stun the enemy/boss if I don't want the fight to be a massive slog. Depending on your build/weapon choice, Nioh 2 plays similarly to what I'm talking about and bosses require you to be more aggressive to break their visible stamina meter for maximum dmg plus other benefits. That said, I think most ER boss fights are fine as they are

[@connorevans104]

I’m not kidding when I say you made this game enjoyable again after the first playthrough. By explaining how openings in Elden ring bosses work, properly, I was able to actually understand and learn openings for these bosses. My opinion has shifted dramatically from very negative to very positive on er bosses. Genuinely thank you. I’m still frustrated that the game taught me none of this but I’m glad I have found what I’m actually meant to do

[@DDobs12]

After beating the whole game with an ultra greatsword (guts build). It honestly gave me more light into the game. I think not giving up is the best thing you can do for yourself. This has been the game I've been waiting for...appreciate the in depth videos like this.

[@warcoder]

My third playthrough was with this build at patch 1.0.5 and I think it was my easiest run in the game. Bonking everything with a huge slab of iron was much more effective than I could've imagined.

[@DDobs12]

@MDJM always trust the power of the bonk.

[@lordgrim752]

i just wanna say i found this game near impossible when going through it, but i never disliked it during playing it. i bought elden ring knowing i was going into an extremely hard game so every single time i progressed past a boss filled me with an unrivalled sense of accomplishment. and im not what you consider a souls vet, i had roughly 200 hours or so in DS3 only.

[@sachinperimbeti1874]

Hey Mr. King, or Feeble, this was a great break-down of the boss mechanics that I felt like explained a lot of the issues I had when playing Elden Ring since launch. The only thing I have to talk about is whether stance-breaks are actually intended to be a core part of the gameplay. The only reason for this is because the Ash-of-War you use in this video is Square-off which has, after the Flame of the Redmanes nerf, THE highest stance damage of 40 for an Ash-of-war which no other Ash-of-War does. Now after watching your video, I used a straight sword with the Square-Off Ash-of-War and played how you recommended in the video and it made the game a lot more fun, however I ended up just using the skill most of the time rather than jumping heavy's or charged heavies because I knew that those would bring me the highest chances of breaking posture for bosses. While I think the playstyle that you brought up in the video is great and made the game a lot more fun and aggressive, I don't think playing for posture-breaks is intended by the developers since other than Square-Off and maybe Unsheathe(katana skill) no other Ash-of-War allows you to break posture that fast with a light weapon like a straight sword. I am just bringing this up to you to maybe see if you can still play for posture breaks with other weapons that do not have this unique skill but rather by just using charged or jumping heavies. I've watched all of your level 1 runs and you are a lot better at the game than I am, so if this playstyle of focusing on posture-breaks is viable for other weapons without these stance-heavy Ashes-of-War then you will be the one that would find that out. I love the way you figure out mechanics of Souls games and would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

[@GothicEU]

Amazing video! I initially hated the bosses in this game, I thought they were so unfair and impossible to get good at. My feelings on the bosses changed drastically since I realized I shouldn't play Elden Ring like I would play a Dark Souls game. I just had to go for posture breaks, and take the time to find more positioning based openings. Since then with every run I do, I just enjoy them more and more.

[@CRAM079]

I literally had no real issue with any Elden Ring boss. Nore do I think they are poorly designed. No have I seen any majority of souls vets bitching about it.

[@rachi7629]

Hot take: the "easy mode" discourse has always being dumb, but it is beyond stupid in Elden Ring, where 90% of bosses have enough mobility and ranged attacks to be a challenge to most mage builds (including faith ones). You can not "skip learning the boss movesets" at all, and have the different and additional challenge of spacing and mana management. There are some specific magic builds that could amount to easy mode, for sure, but the very same could be said about any other playstyle. Most people who say "but you are not learning the moveset!!!" probably haven't seen the full moveset even once, as there are many attacks and patterns only activated against people who are either far from the boss, or even more specifically, casting spells at it. Yes yes, you can kamehameha blast Mogh to oblivion, which is a shame since his fight is cool, but that would be an exception.

[@Scalfr193]

Excited to dive deep into this. Always enjoy your critiques as you seem to understand the difference between personal enjoyment, and good/bad. You can enjoy something bad, and you can personally dislike something that is "good". Although I don't always agree with what you have to say, I've never felt like you force your opinion as the holy grail as so many other discussions tend to go. I hope you continue putting out high quality videos and keep the discussion going. Its hard to discuss souls games in general because every complaint is met with a "get good", but providing at least a place to have some discussion on the dreaded taboo is well welcomed.

[@austin0_bandit05]

Exactlyyyyy! Its still an overwhelmingly good game but it has some crucial flaws

[@victorprati7908]

Thoughts on how he immediately starts to subvert your expectations by saying that stance braking bosses is the only fun way to play which is failing to understand the difference between personal enjoyment, and good/bad

[@giorgitsereteli2809]

Yes! Also it's not like mage builds aren't fun and super easy. Most bosses have insane gap close and your damage is limited so you have to learn how to approach them. I don't want ER to be more like sekiro, I think it is already way better as is.

[@handtomouth4690]

Wouldn't everyone's "good" and "bad" be slightly different though? How can you enjoy something that is bad. I get that there is the "so bad it's good" thing, but what about if they truly believe that the thing you find to be "bad" they find it good?

[@ragegaze3482]

the entire video he is literally saying the only good way the game should be played by posture breaking... So idk where you got the idea that this is separated from his personal enjoyment. He literally wants the game to just be like Sekiro, there was nothing objective about that. You don't have to know the bosses posture bar to know it exists, I figured that out on margit alone that posture breaking bosses exists. You don't have to get a popup on screen to tell you if you can jump over an attack, it's mostly obvious and if it isn't you can just try anyway. The game literally lets you spawn 2 seconds from boss doors to try again.

[@paulcashion8049]

This was my first soulsborn game and I'm frankly hooked forever. I love rpgs with an unspoken protagonist. This has been everything I've wanted in that category. It's put skyrim and fallout to shame in regard to role playing. The combat and the difficulty has been unlike anything else I've ever played. It's like zelda but with much more diversity and challenge. I'll never be able to go back to skyrim or fallout which were two of my favorite games prior to elden ring. I've found the combat to be deeply satisfying. My first playthrough of elden ring was such a struggle for me but also so very satisfying. My second and third runs were effortless breezes after getting through the initial learning curve of my first playthrough. This game honestly changed gaming entirely for me. I've played other games since elden ring, lots honestly, but I always find myself coming back. Going into a fresh game or starting a new game plus. I'm a FromSoft fan now. I'm excited to try armored core when it comes out. I plan to play bloodborn and all the dark souls but as I've kept playing elden ring I haven't gotten around to it yet. I can understand some criticism of elden ring and that it's not for everyone. As an avid gamer in my 30s who's played tons of games for tons of time, elden ring is my new favorite game and definitely on my list already for one of the best games I've ever played. I can't sing this games praises enough.

[@SevereOutcast]

Welcome aboard comrade. Been addicted since DS1 in 2011. You'll love it here. Your excitement is infectious.

[@chadzard4]

Dude I'm literally in the same boat. ER was my first Fromsoft game ever and after beating it I tried playing Skyrim again and I just couldn't.

[@empire4420]

Better than Skyrim in roleplaying? Idk about that, guess it depends on what you consider roleplay. You cant own property, steal, jail break, marry, join guilds, or roleplay as different races like you could in Skyrim. That said, the combat in ER is far more engaging than Skyrim I agree with that.

[@RedWolfenstein]

Souls games are action games

[@mathewomolo]

When I find a boss in these games, I first just dodge them, observing them, enjoying the rhythm. It's the best way I found to get used to a boss. I don't even think of attacking in my first several tries, there's no use, you're still going to die.

[@hi-uz6uo]

I played 2 runs One int/dex moonveil with summons Second is blasphemous blade build no summons that I enjoyed more actually I think ppl forgot that in ER is that YOU are a lot stronger than usual So technically the "Easy" hit trade weapons are actually the new expected normal That open world was not designed to be left empty with some broadswords and like two daggers Over the top looking or acting weapons are awesome for me!

[@alexeyserov5709]

This is the thing that I think many people missing in rating ER bosses. Especially early essayists with "FromSoft difficulty is broken now". Like why the fuck even making this big great open world if you can defeat all the bosses with simple broadsword and dodge on your first playthrough never putting more than couple hours into learning their patterns.

[@FlightX101]

@@alexeyserov5709 Agreed many people including KZbinrs are missing just how strong we are as well as how many options we have to destroy people. From hardcore str builds that can crack the planet in half to crazy hybrid builds with dozens incantations and spell options not to mention items that boost you further you are basically a boss your self. Think of the red revenants and times that by 5...........that's our threat level to enemies in the game lol.

[@domp2729]

There is more to strength than just damage numbers. Yeah it’s cool you can 4 shot a boss by dumping runes into strength but it’s not exactly engaging gameplay which is the real problem with the bosses.

[@samalmond2321]

All I can say is fucking finally you found how to enjoy the bosses in Elden Ring. I enjoyed them pretty much from my first playthrough and have enjoyed them more and more with each successive playthrough as I discover more and more ways to fight each boss. The biggest problem with ur video though is you approach it as though stance breaking is the only fun way to beat each boss but I disagree, if you apply the same mentality just with quick attacks, you have even more openings at the cost of never getting a stance break release of tension.

[@firmak2]

Thats how i played too. Between a couple of light attacks and a heavy jump attack, not even malenia stood in my way for very long.

[@person3362]

This is how I’ve generally played too. Stance breaking does seem to be more efficient tho.

[@samalmond2321]

@@person3362 well if we're talking about efficiency then bleed/frost procking is the most effective method for encouraging aggressive playing in my experience because it immediately starts to reduce after each individual hit.

[@rebastori]

Honestly would like to know how you pulled that off. I think we have a similar playstyle but I found it difficult that if I make a mistake there is almost no room for heals and late game bosses took tens of tries because I either got into healing-punish cycle or was low on HP and the boss uses long combos and some hit finally got me. I've played it trough couple of times but can't get enjoyment out of them because they are relentless. (And didn't know about posture breaks before this, or was lucky if I got one per fight)

[@person3362]

@@rebastori I’ve personally found that these bosses are a lot like BB bosses wherein they discourage passivity and moving back to heal. My advice-I am uncertain if this will help, is to just play aggressively and see what you can get away with, becuase it is a lot more than you would expect; You can use jumping attacks to crouch under punishes, get free hits in during charge attacks, exploit the openings in between attacks in a long combo to counterattack, and stagger humanoid bosses pretty easily. A lot of bosses, Malenia especially, will go apeshit if you play passively, so always try to reingage the boss.

[@WarpsmithAdam]

I also loved a bunch of the bosses in Elden Ring that people had frustrations with, I didn’t even hate Godskin Duo. I beat almost every boss in the game, but gave up on Elden Beast after several times of getting into melee range, starting my attack (played the whole game using the Zweihander, wasnt about to switch to something faster) & having it run away (or just have the idle swaying motion take it out of reach) before my animation could finish. The same thing would happen to me with many of the giant monster bosses in the game. That and the the camera being the actual most difficult enemy. FromSoft really needs to improve their camera for those huge, fast bosses.

[@Talking_Ed]

We don't like godskin duo just because it's a lazy design nothing else, the bossfight is okay

[@axt_4254]

​@@Talking_Edputting that rolly polly of a boss in a small room with minimal cover should be illegal

[@Talking_Ed]

@@axt_4254 If the roll didn't bug I would be okay but if you try to avoid it 50% of the time it just keeps rolling it's so poorly made lol

[@FunkiMonki69]

I got nothing against people liking terrible bosses as long as you can acknowledge that they are utter garbage

[@WorldsUnhealthiestFitPerson]

It's FromSoft. The camera IS the boss.

[@roscora614]

Thank you for putting out this video. You convinced me to try and really learn the game, and now I'm working my way through RL1 maliketh and enjoying it thoroughly :)

[@PBandJ21]

I think one of the reasons why i enjoyed elden ring so much in my first playthrough and still do to this day is because the game i played prior to it was sekiro. While i was playing elden ring, my mind still wanted to play like sekiro, so I really tried to play the game in a way that would get me those satisfying posture breaks, leading me to play the game in the most fun way possible

[@josephbornman8462]

I would say hard mode is the default mode for a play who doesn’t look things up You end up with a crappy weapon, crappy stats, crappy upgrades On the other hand, when you look things up-you get a weapon that is simply way better, good stats, all upgrade materials To me, that was really weird about elden ring. I get that there isn’t weapon balance in the sense that a dagger isn’t as good as a halberd But the weapon balance is just so random. Random weapons are 10x better than another weapon I always found that an odd choice

[@bingo2underscores]

i’m a complete souls newcomer, ive only played a very little bit of elden ring and bloodborne, and im nearing the end of my first playthrough of dark souls 1, so if i can ask, why is the “passive” playstyle of waiting to bait and punish a specific set of attacks considered unfun? maybe this playstyle is more encouraged in ds1, but ive been fighting many bosses like ornstein and smough and sif like this, and its a lot of fun to me. i like the feeling of starting the battle feeling out the boss’s toolkit, and then picking out certain openings to punish until i feel ive got a full-ish grasp on the boss. also, me personally, when i fought margit, i completely understood that i was meant to dodge certain attacks and circle around him in order to punish. i also really enjoyed his long combos and feints, it gave me the same rush as blocking a tricky mixup in a fighting game

[@biglad6749]

This was pretty much my first fromsoftware game, and I used mimic tear and the blasphemous blade throughout most of the game. I've beaten all the soulslike fromsoft games now, and I've beaten most of them multiple times. I need to redo elden ring and see how good the bosses are because I just cheesed my way through it the 1st time. Edit: I've beaten every boss but malenia with the godskin noble outfit and godskin greatsword. The bosses were hard but doable and pretty fun. Malenia seems pretty bs with waterfowl and is pretty brutal so far. I beat Malenia, she's a bit too rng for me tho. Sometimes she's great when she dosent spam her ults. Sometimes she does 3 waterfowls in a row when she's three shot. Overall she's alright but could be better. Edit: Beat her again with the guts sword on my second try at like lvl 120. She's honestly a really good boss when you know how to beat her and she dosent spam her ults. Edit: I've beaten her so many times with a bunch of weapons like the claymore, radahns greatswords, +20 knight greatsword, godslayer greatsword and greatswords, sacred relic sword, winged sythe, godricks axe, ghiza wheel, bloodhound fang, dungeaters sword, hand of melania, dry uchi and nagi, and mohgs spear. It dosent even matter if she spams her ults anymore this boss isn't that hard if you practice her a bit. Definitely my favorite boss in the game, the Stockholm syndrome has taken ahold of me and I am now a malenia stan.

[@BenedictVo]

You'll be in for a big disappointment, especially if you played Sekiro and Bloodborne

[@simonealcazar816]

@@BenedictVo Brother, Bloodborne is second favorite From game right next to Sekiro but I’m not insane to think it’s bosses are better than ER. 50% are mediocre to okay and doesn’t touch anywhere near ER’s. The DLC is only reason BB gets to play along side Sekiro😂

[@Yobolight]

@@BenedictVo Bloodborne's bosses are aesthetically top-tier. Mechanically, however, Elden Ring's are better.

[@ama9385-w2g]

​@@simonealcazar816 He's in most comments saying this because he isn't as good at these games as he thinks he is

[@Assassin5671000]

I don't think you cheesed anything outside , unless you beat the bosses in a glitchy way . If you use summons or your finding gear that helps you against encounters is on of the intended ways to play the game. Yes if you go without summons and use a different weapon you will find bosses more memorable since there focus will be on you and you might die more ,but it will help you to become a better played at these games

[@indech7269]

i have beaten pontiff when i was 10 and still thought it was fantastic

[@goatednoob]

also i disagree with another thing. the game does teach you it's mechanics quite well like godrick teaching you to jump shockwaves , agheel teaching you about positioning mattering tree sentinel about how to stay agressive and make use of stance breaks also phase 2 crucible knights being the perfect teaching tool to explain how combo branches work it's just all so amazingly explained. also there is something that elden ring teaches you every step of the way. TRY ALL OPTIONS instead of sticking what you know explore what you don't know. me doing this for my first elden ring playthrough and my first playthrough of a fromsoft game is what allowed me to enjoy the game while not using summons melee only and no shields. even though this was my first playthrough. the fact that i approached it like a teacher trying to show me how to solve a problem and not like most people who use the title of ,,souls veteran'' who think that they are godgamers that can't do wrong and if they die they don't need to learn but the game needs to be dumbed down is what saved me and my mindset.

[@metalsludge8205]

the amount of "souls vets" who went through the entire game without utilizing jumps, and consequently complained about "unavoidable AOE hitboxes" with Godfrey's shockwaves. the problem is their refusal to engage with any new mechanics and to expect every fromsoft game to play the same as Demon's Souls

[@goatednoob]

@@metalsludge8205 could not have said it better myself.

[@tywonellington]

People finally got a really hard Souls game and can’t do anything but complain about it.

[@_laserpants_2203]

This is my first souls game and I went in blind. I chose samurai (because he looked sick) and am now on the last boss after no summons, no incantations, no sorcery, no guides, and no cheesing bosses. Other than stupid quest lines I, see no necessity for guides and the bosses have been more than manageable, with the exception of Malenia, who I still am trying to figure out. This was a great first souls experience and I plan to replay the game multiple times utilizing different builds after I defeat Malenia & the Elden beast (who I also haven’t found as intuitive). I firmly believe that it IS infact a skill issue and if you use the multitude of difficulty-dampeners at your disposal then the load is more than manageable(I didn’t even use affinities until I fought Godfrey because my friend told me I was an idiot for not equipping any, the first half of my playtime was on release and I didn’t really pay attention to anything the game told me). A game made for everyone is a game made for no one, even if it’s an everyone in a sub-group of the gaming community.

[@archie3547]

I’m not a challenge runner of anything like that, in fact Elden Ring was my first souls game, and it led to me getting to experience the other masterpieces that precursed it. But after my first playthrough where I only used magic, I switched to what you describe as “normal mode” and I feel like I understood how the bosses worked. I think it’s namely because I didn’t go in treating the bosses like DS3 ones because of the somewhat similar combat speed, but the only time I truly felt like it was unfair was the Gank bosses and Elden Stars. I’m not sure if I’m the minority when it comes to this experience, but it’s why I loved Elden Ring so much, especially since playing normal mode on this game felt so much harder than it’s predecessors.

[@sunbrojeff9115]

After scrolling through the comments and considering my own experience, I don't think you're in the minority at all lol. It seems like most people who didn't play Elden Ring like it was Dark-Souls-3 2 had a good time with the bosses

[@FinneousPJ1]

"The vast majority of vets hated elden ring bosses" Um, citation required

[@keyamazed1038]

That was my first thought as well. Sizeable minority maybe, but not the majority.

[@Marco1995Mega]

Yep. Myself a vet, and I mostly loved the bosses on my first run, and even more so on repeat playthroughs. Plus, Soulsborne enjoyers like Asmongold, Nightwalk2, Magicat, Penguinz0, Rusty and so on all love the bosses, too.

[@Saowli]

I'm not even a vet and i absolutely loved the boss fights in this game.

[@lucideclair6690]

yup. exactly what I was trying to say in my post (much more long-winded) but that is a big leap/assumption to make. As a "souls vet" I loved the bosses in this game (although some are a bit annoyingly balanced)

[@Jakobgeholm]

Exactly

[@MorizonPlays]

The reason the Elden Beast is the final boss is because Elden Ring's story has a big cosmic element. Marika/Radagon might be a god but they are still just vassals for the greater will. Marika doesn't even want to be a god anymore (hence the hewg plan) but the greater will says that "even in shackles she remains a god and it's vision's vassal". They could have fleshed out the beast's mechanics more but thematically the Elden Beast (which represents the greater will's influence on the lands between) had to still be a boss after Radagon the same way the moon presence still had to be the final boss after gehrman even though gehrman is much more climatic mechanically

[@shiroamakusa8075]

None of that justifies the Elden Beast. Bloodborne also had a cosmic element, but it separated its final two bosses regardless so you didn't have to go through Gehrman every time you wanted a shot at the Moon Presence. Also, the Moon Presence was only ever the final boss in one specific ending and the Elden Beast should have likewise been only the final obstacle for the two endings where you basically come to end its existence (Age of Stars and Frenzied Flame). In the other four endings you have come to mend the Elden Ring...so why does it resist your attempts to put it back together?

[@MorizonPlays]

@@shiroamakusa8075 I was just saying why the elden beast exists. Of course both your points would have also been logical (and possibly better) ways to implement the elden beast. Edit: No matter what ending you chose you did burn the erdtree which is the first cardinal sin, so it does still make sense narratively that the elden beast fights you either way

[@shiroamakusa8075]

@@MorizonPlays The only reason you burn the Erdtree is because Radagon sealed it shut and it's obvious from the Two Fingers' reaction that this wasn't the intent of the Greater Will. So no, the Elden Beast should not attack you in the endings where you mend the Elden Ring because that restores the Erdtree back to its undamaged state anyway.

[@MorizonPlays]

@@shiroamakusa8075 of course you're right, but you don't get to choose ending until you've beaten the elden beast. Because you made your choice to burn the erdtree without consulting the greater will (source: Enias Dialogue) the elden beast might be assuming you want to overthrow the greater will even if you don't

[@shiroamakusa8075]

@@MorizonPlays If you get embraced by the Three Fingers you are locked into that ending and can't choose any others and you have to summon Ranni for her ending. The game could automatically bring the Elden Beast out if you went into the Radagon fight with the Fingerprints on you or if you started summoning Ranni.

[@bornacimic6902]

And now after watching I feel an urge to go play again keeping these points in mind to see how it feels compared to how i felt before

[@moniker2804]

As someone who kinda struggles memorizing things in general, discovering new moves on a boss you thought you understood is kinda crushing. Especially when its something like waterfowl that makes the fight feel like RNG.

[@petarsabev6770]

Waterfowl is not even about memorization Malenia will do it randomly when you pressure her too much,not to mention most times it's when she detects you attacking taking extra insurance you can't escape which punishes you with death for no reason because you are doing too well

[@FlameOfRoyeca]

@@petarsabev6770 doing too well meaning you're spamming attacks. Idk if it's your first Souls game, but always leave some stamina after wailing at the boss. Pacing attacks would serve you well.

[@petarsabev6770]

@@FlameOfRoyeca Well I wouldn't call it spamming I was outplaying her consistently,dodging almost her every move and punishing her like I should.I made this comment when I was severy pissed out at her though now that I have beaten her I learned that constant aggression isn't the way because she will find a way to punish you no matter what.Also it wasn't exactly a stamina issue it was more that I used Starscourge Greatswords so there was a chance that if she did it I would be stuck in attack animation.

[@zachattack4666]

Watching people fight certain bosses really helped me to learn how to dodge certain moves.

[@tuseemusic6269]

Magic and summons make elden ring fun. Idgaf if it makes it very easy or not. Not using things the developers put in the game is stupid

[@Gatchu137]

I think I said this back when Joseph's video came out, but even at the time, I recognized that most people's gripe with Elden Ring boss design was due to them playing it like DS3, when there are plenty of attacks that don't require timing rolls if you just position correctly, or sprint to avoid them. After having done a few separate playthroughs and breaking my Dark Souls habits, the only moves in the game that I haven't found a consistent response to are some of Morgott's sword attacks, and the first hit of Waterfowl. Otherwise, people just weren't ready to incorporate positioning and defensive tools besides rolling into their general play. This got mixed in with some actually bad bosses like Godskin Duo or Fire Giant, and made people complain about Maliketh, Mohg, Malenia, etc. without even learning them. Now that I understand how they expect me to play the game, it makes a lot of older bosses feel a bit shallow.

[@tlk777]

I see what you are saying. I think the reality though is that a lot of us just prefer that style of game. Its not that I can't learn to play ultra patient or learn where to position myself, but rather that if I feel forced to play defensively because of the mechanics, that just takes away from my fun. Which is an opinion of course. I could definitely see how some people could really enjoy the defensive style

[@Gatchu137]

@@tlk777 You don't have to play defensively. Nothing I said implies playing defensively. You can be more aggressive in ER than in Dark Souls. You just have to do more than just roll and use light attacks. Heavy attacks are incredible in this game, and there are tons of openings if you use jumping attacks, and strafe around bosses to find blind spots.

[@theresnothinghere1745]

@@tlk777 Ironically defensive play is at its best in ER. Shields being at their best and guard counters being the monster hits they are go a long way towards making defensive play more valuable than in the prior games along with other things like the various parry types. What ER punishes isn't defensive play, its inactivity/reactive play. Waiting around for bosses to give a big and clear opening is inactive/reactive play as you make no attempt to create said openings. In that space you could be shield poking for damage, guard countering hits, parrying, getting distance to prepare an attack/heal, preparing items like pots or buffs in your inventory etc... All of those are defensive actions that contribute towards the fight and really they all work well in ER.

[@JoseViktor4099]

This is actually gonna be a retrospective of my opinion on all whats happened with ER bosses. Why they were despised and why more and more people sees this critiques much more negatively. First of all, im glad that more people starts to understand this took they made and I hope that more and more this videos are made. 1) The DS3 on open world dilema. No wonder why Dark Souls 3 is one of the most beloved games on the franchise, as it was one of the first Souls that a lot of players experienced in fact. So is no surprise that when ER would be similar to DS, they used the skeleton of DS3 combat. But there is an issue; DS3 is too easy [The thing with DS3 is that all their attacks were so ritmically based, that by only timing roll and using r1 you can go trough the game without any big problem (except Pontiff)], and being adapted to an open world would not only makes the bosses a joke due to the open world nature of being easily overpowered without doing anything wrong, but as extend, would make the exploration worthless as players would need it to beat the bosses, it would just make the fight longer. Thats why ER boss design was more complex, on return of having more options to contarrest them. Thats much suited for an Open World RPG than DS3 nature. This is actual very good design if you think about it. 2)So...Players didn´t liked it? Lets gonna make an imagination example. You came back from DS3, where you only preocupation was to time the rolls well and r1 when you have the window, like a very simple turn RPG in fact. So, you go to this open world game. It does looks like DS3, it feels like DS3, it has a lot of mechanics inherited of DS3...But, something off with the first big boss. It has more delays attacks, it reacts of your position and attacks depending on what you do, even if you heal it may trow you a proyectile from afar...Too overwhelming eh? So you go to level up and with newer equipment you destroy the boss, so thats the answer right? But then you reach the endgame, were you can´t overpower anymore. You seek help on the internet and go trough with the most broken stuff on the game, and when you found how to beat bosses without it, you find something interesting,"Elden Ring Boss Design Critiques"? and tells all the problems you had and agree with them. Congratulations, now you despise ER boss design without even knowing how to act! 3) I despise most ER boss critiques and the concept of circlekerking Well, you might think that the critics would give information about this boss design. After all, the job is to give information about how a game should improve, so they must know every detail about the game. On reality, they didn´t played more than once and only gives first impression, on order to use the popularity on the moment and gain delicious views using the hype! Thats sadly how the world of criticism and review had become into. This lead to the Joseph Anderson video, which is not about giving information , but more an 2.8mill views 2 hours opinion instead. And when the most liked comments begin on "Souls vets here" it gives a validation that is actually a bit worthless if you think about it, but if it did said a souls vet that has so many likes it must know what he talks about, right? This lead of thinking that this videos have all reason(appeal to popularity), when we now know is not the case. 4)And what about Feebles video? Well, im was actually a bit mad to seeing that the first critique, but im glad that this video actually exist. It actually on point with the most part. Although I personally think the aggresive is not the "normal playstile" but an effective and fun one between all of you can choose for. Meaning that posture bar not showing is a big as an issue as any status bar not showing, it could be very beneficial having it, but isn´t something negative if not. Completely agree that ER should had explained better that this is not DS3 despite the appereances, as too many people complained about this on order to not be an insolated issue(critics didn´t helped). So, thanks if you read all of that.

[@JoseViktor4099]

Btw, if you are gonna say "Im not reading allat" dont read it, is your option not mine, but let you know that comments are more annoying than anything, not really funny honestly.

[@MIDO44444]

The one boss I truly struggled with until I understood how to fight was Maliketh because the way I used to fight is that every boss has a window of which they will be in a recovery from an attack chain or a big slam attack even if the recovery was only 2 sec that was enough but Maliketh had none it was at that point that I realized I have to attack him while he is performing his heavy attacks and be up close to him all the time ( I used to always keep distance until I see a recovery window to attack )

[@Apple-mq5by]

As a souls vet (somewhat) i find it very fun to learn movesets and is one of the reasons i play souls borne

[@ThraxJay]

I will say this. I’m completely new to souls games and started with Elden ring. I played it when it first came out. Dropped it out of frustration. Then came back and started over to complete my goal of beating the game. I disagree that fromsoft needs to teach boss mechanics. I learned all on my own with no guides when to parry, how to fight different bosses, how to stop panick rolling, how to get a rhyme and dance with a boss. Basically I taught myself thru trial and error how bosses work. New players just need to suck it up and get good. You can’t just jump into new territory and expect to be good, it takes time and practice. I love how Elden ring makes me actually strategize how I should attack a boss. Perfect example for me is the Crucible knights. The first one I encountered would block alot of my strikes unless I got behind by circle strafing him when he stomped. What did I do to stop him from blocking? I took that opportunity away from him. I let him strike first and locked him in a parry nightmare. I parried him 8 times back to back and that was the moment I realized I got way better at the game then when I started.

[@allmotorm3539]

I highly disagree with your assessment of Malenia’s 2nd phase. I have been no-hitting her with many different builds for almost a year and I always melt her 2nd phase much quicker than the first because she is constantly attacking and constantly giving me openings. I dodge waterfowl by circling her, but I didn’t see you mention (what is probably FromSoft’s intended way of dodging waterfowl) that you can run and jump away from waterfowl even if she does it point blank after one of your attacks to completely avoid damage. On another note, I do believe that showing the posture bar in this game would solve most of the issues, but FromSoft said they were not able to apply what they learned from sekiro while building this game since they were making both games at the same time. Hopefully the next FromSoft game will be the better version of both games. Great vid.

[@highlightermarca-texto3281]

Sekiro still came out like 3 years before Elden ring released. Adding a visible posture bar wouldn’t have taken more than a day’s work, considering it’s already there, just invisible and you can turn it on with cheat engine

[@Marco1995Mega]

I'm not a challenge runner, but I started to get an idea on how ER bosses operate on my first run; Radahn and Maliketh (especially Maliketh) in particular were bosses where I started to use things like good positioning for both baiting favorable attacks and creating windows of opportunity while the boss was still attacking, and I learned early on with Malenia that rolling in certain directions at given times creates better openings. In my second playthrough, I believe I was pretty confident in my understanding of them. Personally, position-based comboing was something I was already aware of, which helped a fair deal. Owl, for example, has a big overhead slam attack, but if you dodge too early, he'll shift into a horizontal slash instead. Pontiff I also understood that his super fast attacks were consistent parts of certain combos. And, again, never did a single challenge run in either games, nor did I think understanding these mechanics was all that hard. Ultimately, I understand that this is just me; I am just throwing my own experiences and thoughts out there. Other than that, the only other thing I'd like to add is to remember that you're playing action-RPG, not a pure action game. You have tools like talismans and the flask to help with certain aspects, like high damage. For example, you can make Maliketh's attacks do less damage (without neutering him) by using the Haligdrake and/or Dragoncrest Shield talsimans, or use the Opaline Hardtear when he enters second phase, or all of them if you do actually want to neuter his damage. Also, Maliketh will only do the vertical spin if you're a short distance or right in front of him after he does that one attack where he drags the tip of his sword along the ground. Double also (sorry), the best and most forgiving way to dodge Waterfowl is by doing a running jump. Basically, run away from her and then jump just as she's about to reach you. Unlike the run-only strat, you don't need to start running immediately, which helps a lot in phase 2. Another way to dodge is a close-range strat, though it requires light-rolling. Basically, stand in front of her while she's in the air and unlock the camera, and when she moves, dodge forward diagonally to the left and then forward diagonally to the right immediately after. It's been very consistent with me.

[@kuro21313]

I'm divided on this analysis. I think its interesting analysing bosses and saying you didn't like them at first but looking back they taught you something is great. However, boiling every fight down to a move set analysis and discouraging any other play style and saying that this is how the game should be played takes the fun out of the game. I just finished the game and had a blast with a strength build but rarely hit traded. Trying to find openings was my way of playing but my friend really enjoyed sorceries. If the game wasn't intended to be played with sorceries at all then FromSoft wouldn't have put it in the game. Personally this video seems to be a "this is how you should play the game". I fully agree that the game doesn't properly teach the mechanics of their move set, but to say "mechanics a player needs to know in order to enjoy Elden Ring bosses" is so harsh on the game. There are so many possibilities on how to play the game that there is no "definitive way" to play the game

[@sablemae8853]

My favorite bosses were Godfrey,mohg lord of blood ,radagon and morgott. Fire giant is really fun. It's best to use the horse to close the gap but get off to attack. Mechanically it's an ok fight but there's something about it I love

[@PythonPlusPlus]

Funny enough. The people who struggle with the bosses are the ones that understand the mechanics. People who don’t understand the mechanics play it normally using spirit summons, magic, and whatever other shit they want. People who do understand the mechanics avoid using them to make the game harder for themselves. Then they complain because the game is too hard.

[@Gigaover]

Which is ass backwards. What they ended up doing is rewarding noobs who played this as their first game and punishing long time soulslike fans.

[@PythonPlusPlus]

@@Gigaover Not at all. The game doesn’t punish them. They punish themselves… on purpose as well. If you are gonna purposefully ignore mechanics because you are too proud to use them. Don’t complain that the game is too difficult. If you want to finish the game in “hard mode” then practice what you preach, and git gud scrub.

[@gabzsy4924]

12:46 which was exactly my conclusion. The game forces you to play a certain way, where few good strong hits are essential to even attempt to defeat a boss the "normal" way, both because you need to break his posture and because you have so few windows of attack that you need to make every hit count. So basically the game forces you into this high dps, great or colossal weapons meta...or you know bleed or magic. If you want to play a fair game with shield and straightswords, or a bow build, or daggers or even double straightswords build without bleed, you're going to regreat it and you will need to use summons to compensate the lack of dps. This single fact is the reason why I hate the game design of Elden Ring. It offers so much freedom and build varieties, in theory, but in practice you only have a couple and there is no say around how to fight a boss, either you do it the way they want you to, or you cheese it somehow. Most of the bosses end up being dps checks by the end, and that is awful.

[@Jay_daewi]

W vid, but the problem I have with it is that you’re assuming players are supposed to go for posture breaks. I’m my first 3 play throughs I didn’t prioritize poise breaks throughout the entire run. I think it’s up to the player to determine if their build should prioritize it. And as a primarily dex player, posture breaks are cool when they happened, but again I never actually pursued them. And I don’t think I ever went for a charged heavy attack.

[@Jay_daewi]

Honestly I think this video isn’t how to make elden ring bosses better, it’s more like I love sekiro so I want elden ring to be sekiro instead of elden ring.

[@NotMeButAnother]

I'm sure you're correct and all, but I went for an aggressive (but strength/colossal based) build that relies on posture damage to some degree on my first playthrough, and especially with fairly slow attacks it's just a lot of work to figure out all the timings, positionings and openings of a boss that kills you in less time than you need to run back to it when you make a single mistake. Of course it's possible, but not everyone has the time or inclination to spend a thousand hours in a single game. Btw, I remember that Lupine video turning up as a suggestion and me trying to watch it. After 15 minutes of all insults and zero information I decided that even if there might be some actual arguments later in the video, I wasn't interested anymore in hearing what that person had to say. Presentation matters. Good work.

[@NotMeButAnother]

Addendum: I've been fighting Malenia for about 2 weeks now and coming back to this video, I feel even stronger about weapon choice as a factor. While I have beat her first phase several times and do consider it an engaging fight, especially the point about stance breaks seems biased from the point of a weapon with a fast recovery. For me, if I stance break Malenia and it's not right from the front, recovering from the attack animation and repositioning for the critical takes longer than she needs to get back up, and while I could get in an additional non-critical attack, it leaves me open for a point blank waterfowl dance that is very likely to trigger at that point. The same danger is there when I punish her uppercut with a charged heavy. She can also use her uppercut jump and flurry as combo extenders in ways the triggers of which aren't obvious to me. In general, since her recovery from stagger is faster than mine from an attack animation, I can only ever hit her once except for after certain attacks. Fighting her successfully involves a lot of keeping my distance and only attacking at safe openings, which is kind of the opposite of being aggressive and trying to stance break.

[@andrejilic2264]

@@NotMeButAnother Not sure if you ment it this way, but afaik you can critical hit from the back as well as the front, which should help in a lot of cases. That only leaves situations where you stance break her while being on the side, and i dont think she gets back up fast enough for u not to be able to turn 90 degrees, though i might be wrong.

[@andrejilic2264]

Also, he did say that playing in the way he discribed is much harder then in previos titles, but at the same time its fun if ur willing to put in the effort to learn the mechanics (which for me is a critique in an of itself because it means less people are able to enjoy the game in the way that they were used to, making this playstyle more of a challange run, rather then a "normal run"

[@NotMeButAnother]

@@andrejilic2264 I know it works at the back, but believe me I've died enough times to the critical not triggering but instead locking me in a normal attack while she kills me to know that she stands up that fast more often than not. I only go for the critical when I'm right before or behind her, otherwise I use the time to take my distance in case she spins up Waterfowl.

[@АнтонШабат]

to be fair, with malenia colossal weapon adds option to stagger her mid attack. it still requires figuring out wich attacks are staggerable, but it adds a lot of oppenings. I just recently beat her for the first time after 3 weaks of tryes with colossal hammer

[@DuelistRL]

This is my second souls game. Beat it without any major issues with aroubd 50ish deaths. Summoned for Malenia. Made a Marais Executioner build cause i liked the damage. Why is everyone so salty. Rusty's vid that you are replying to summed up my experience pretty perfect. I explored a lot and did NPC quests and i was rewarded with options for bosses. Beat the game in around 85-90 hours. Do we reakly need another long ass video about this topic xD

[@אוריאיזנברג-ס4ו]

This was my first dark souls game and I immediately went for an intelligence build, just because I thought it looked cool. While I agree that this build definitely makes the game easier I definitely wouldn't I enjoyed half the bosses and much. I did notice a big problem at the end because I defeated mohg before Morgot and what happened because of that was that I was over leveled for both Morgot and the lich dragon which really sucks because it took away from the epicness of the fight. I wish that there was some kind of balancing system that would have made the earlier bosses feel as hard as they looked.

[@rationalbimbo8811]

arguing that the correct way to play is to posture breaks is ridiculous. daggers do almost no posture damage, and daggers are my weapon of choice in every souls game, and while they typically have high crit damage, the only way to be able to land a critical is to parry, which you cant do on many bosses. also, strength builds were already OP, honestly just as much as magic (fight me), so adding the poise break thing makes them even more broken. this is supposed to be a game where freedom is encouraged and build diversity is abundant, but dex is clearly just the weakest build type if you dont use bleed. i agreed with parts of the video but i feel like its silly to try to argue that playing aggressive for posture breaks is the "intended normal mode difficulty", you can only say that because youre using a quality weapon with decent posture damage.

[@rationalbimbo8811]

also using magic without summons is actually fairly difficult. bosses are very aggressive and most can close the distance easily or have ranged attacks, so you cant just hang back and mindlessly sling spells. bosses as early as the tree sentinel and as late as radagon have spell reflection mechanics, and in order to do decent damage you have to make yourself a glass cannon. you also have to balance a bunch of resources, like FP. just because sorcery was broken in ds1 and hexes were overtuned in ds2 you guys seem to think its literally "easy mode". it can be with summons bc the ability to range down enemies safely becomes a lot more viable when theres someone holding aggro, but if youre soloing the end game bosses with sorcery its honestly probably more difficult than a strength build. strength has been OP in every souls game.

[@Rhinlord]

The game *purposefully* doesn't try to teach positioning. A lot of bosses attack have 180 degree tracking, so unless you feel can get completely behind them, youre still going to get hit. Also the charged heavy/jump attack meta is just so incredibly boring.