You Should Play Elden Ring (EVEN if you're scared of Souls games)

[@ColedOne]

👾 Discord: discord.gg/Kg8nK4ychH 🍺 Patreon: patreon.com/coledone 🎨 Art by: instagram.com/casatlas 👤 Character art by: caramelcactus.carrd.co BIG thank you to SulMatul for being the Erdtree: youtube.com/@SulMatul

[@NICH.O0O0O0O0]

I never played souls games, got into elden ring with a greatsword build and 160 hours later I AM ELDEN LORD. Worth it even if you suck.

[@loudthedreamer8401]

@@NICH.O0O0O0O0 worth it ESPECIALLY if you suck.

[@zaphod4257]

I am absolute garbage! Even playing an INT/DEX build! Still love playing! Only wish I could get further!

[@dw4897]

​@@zaphod4257 give it time, slow down on bosses. It's what I need to remember, I am too aggressive.

[@zaphod4257]

@@dw4897I’ve done ok getting through. Had to rethink before Renalla as I’d gone full INT prior to that fight. Jumped back on the other day & went back to Limgrave just to feel good about myself for a bit!

[@NICH.O0O0O0O0]

@@zaphod4257 take your time, clear the evergoals and find the right items/armor for the person your fighting. It's all patterns bro u got it

[@Clambeardian]

I'm a 63 year old gamer who hates grinding and challenge. Somehow, this game won my heart. I almost gave up a few times (I'm looking at you, Fire Giant), but it is worth the effort. Im planning to tackle the dlc eventually. Bottom line, if an old, rusty gamer like me can finish Elden Ring, then anyone can.

[@SeireiYura]

i fear the day i lose my gaming skill. ive lost my reflexes as a teen so i cant play FPS games to the highest level but now i can play on instinct and knowing what someone else wants to do. experience vs skill i guess lol

[@gendoslice5971]

@@SeireiYurafeels!

[@TheLordSorin]

I'd highly recommend checking out the Dark Souls games, too. I beat elden ring, and now that I have that under my belt, I decided to give myself the quest to beat all of the dark souls games too. After I got over a bit of the clunky movement in dark souls, 1 I've been having a blast with it highly recommend.

[@loudthedreamer8401]

1. Vigor is your friend 2. No really, level your vigor 3. You’re struggling so hard because you have no vigor. 4. Like me, you’re not that guy. put your points in vigor.

[@corneliussmiff2773]

....Endurance is kinda aight too.

[@Syaniiti]

....because in ER armor matters, a lot.

[@gamera5160]

Got it. I just increased my strength because I want to use a cool sword.

[@Syaniiti]

@@gamera5160 Get enough strength (and endurance to not be heavy) to two-hand your chosen colossal, then dump everything to health until at least 40. Then free to do whatever really. You get enough runes to hit level 200+ if you want by the time you're done with basegame + dlc without rune farming.

[@danield.6452]

​Summons me to help with a boss - host dies getting hit once... cool sword though​@@gamera5160

[@ThisChangeIsAwful]

"if the people writing it dont care enough to get me invested, i guess i dont care enough to get invested" I would argue thats what makes it so good. its a story and you are in it. You are not an omniscient god. its creative and fun and different. What you want exists a million times over.

[@jackstern5737]

Miyazaki is trying to create the strange feeling he felt reading English fantasy books/playing games without knowing much English. It is quite literally not intended to be transparent or direct. Idk how it isn’t universally understood that having a more direct story than the dlc would limit many more core aspects of the game. Namely the freedom elden ring is praised for and the ability, the community it brings together, and the encouragement to piece together a story through the environment and descriptions

[@azurisuru]

This is why I kept telling my friend to play the game "blind" on a first playthrough. "Roleplay" as much as you can and you will have a great time. Be a Lannister, be a Targaryen, be Guts, be whoever you want to be and enjoy the moments. They only come once and the discovery is all the more satisfying for a "blind" playthrough. You can look up guides if you're really, truly stuck but there will always be visual indicators in the game as to where to go next. Graces "point" roughly as to where you should head over to. The only tip that even FromSoftware suggests is for players to level up "vigor", 60 vigor is the goal for soft cap. From that alone, your main damage stat should be equivalent, 60 str for str mains, 60 dex for dex mains, 60 int for int mains etc. May the grace of gold guide you Tarnished! Edit: The journal you wanted is your entire inventory. Read the item descriptions.

[@icemelt1]

I love seeing this as I just got over the hump of not playing a Soulslike for a while, starting out with a Faith build Just start Elden Ring guys

[@gamera5160]

Advice for new Elden Ring players. 1) Take your time and explore. You’ll learn the basics of the game in Limgrave and the weeping peninsula to the south. 2) dying is okay. It’s how you learn. 3) Don’t look up stuff unless you tried on your own first. Discovery is a fun part of the game, but it’s also easy to miss important things. 4) The game is meant to be beaten. Even if a boss seems impossible, they are beatable.

[@aurumvale9908]

5) stay away from any "get OP fast" or similar guides

[@gamera5160]

@@aurumvale9908 Absolutely. There's something magical about discovering things for yourself. Some things you will probably need to look up, but don't just copy paste a meta build and expect to win for free. I mean... you CAN cheese every single boss fight, but it's not fun... unless you discover the cheese, then it's hilarious!

[@TheStrengthScholar]

​​@@aurumvale9908 If you use summons It makes the game even easier than most OP builds. Using OP builds with summons is if you're only playing for the atmosphere and story.

[@Tamisday]

I’ve started and stopped a few times now. I feel like I’m playing it wrong if I can’t get past the tutorial in three hours. It’s been long enough again that I want to experiment and give it a shot. Once a year it beckons me saying, “You spent all this money, you are so curious,” and I know beating your head against the growing wall of your own dead body is the point but I feel like I keep dying before I can learn anything. I’m avoiding looking up answers so far. I am convinced I just need to keep coming back to it when I have the patience and building up my tolerance in decent Soul’s Likes. Cause I really wanna it sounds so neat.

[@gamera5160]

@@Tamisday If you’re still stuck on the tutorial, go out into the world and use stealth to sneak around and fight baddies one at a time. That’s what I did when I started and lost way too much. Also, make sure you unlock three sights of grace. Once you do that, you can level up and then you can take the game at your own pace and level up if you’re still stuck.

[@hugocardenasulloa3334]

40:40 a story told like that is a design, it is meant to be figured it out by a community. For example PT (silent Hill's playable teaser) puzzles were design to be solved by community and not by oneself. The Game encourages the community, the texts on the floor are like posts, the white shadows are like seen someone else playing, watching a gameplay don't spoil the story, on contrary you learn from seen someone else playing. It is not like looking for complementary material like Destiny (the first one), were the story was told in an internet page made by the company, in Souls it is meant to be discused in community by the players experiences and guesses.

[@anthonybaggott9825]

750+ hours. It’s my favorite game, and I don’t think anything will ever overtake it. If you allow yourself to get lost in it, you will find just how accessible the game is, vs older FromSoft games.

[@Bodhizzle]

Great video man. I'm like 40 hours in and never been able to get more than a couple hours into a dark souls game previously. When I let the mystery of the game take over and allow myself to take my time, it is a really special experience. The ignorance and lack of explanation can give a special feeling of discovery and wonder most games don't provide. Something that struck me during your segment on the narrative, when you describe how it is frustrating and requires patience to complete side quests without outside help, is that it fits with the rest of the gameplay. Every aspect of the game is difficult and mysterious whether it is the combat, understanding the skills and what to level, knowing where or how to progress quests, or anything else. In that way, it is a cohesive experience unlike any other game I have played. And sure you can look up how to do any one of these areas better, get some tips, whatever, but the mystery/immersion/sense of wonder only seems to come from that lack of explanation and forced discovery. Figuring it out for yourself can be so much more satisfying if you allow yourself the patience and time to be frustrated.

[@TheLordSorin]

Bro, you hit the nail on the head. Thank you for this comment. It's something that I don't think that he gets is that if the game held your hand through the side quests, then it wouldn't make it as satisfying to complete them it would just feel like every other open world game with fetch quests. Yes, most of these are fetch quests. Them being hidden makes it more challenging to overcome, and getting a secret ending as a reward is super satisfying because not only did you beat the game, you managed to solve a difficult questline to too.

[@corvuscallosum5079]

Good video, I'm glad I stumbled onto it! I think the series reputation as being simply too difficult for normal people has done it a disservice. That said i definitely have the lore brainworms that make me highly appreciate their trademark obtuse storytelling style. No other video game stories have caught and held my interest so hard and long except perhaps Disco Elysium. I even felt some internal pushback when you were brainstorming ways to make it more concrete and accessible X'D Anyways best wishes, hopefully you can introduce some people to a game they will come to love. Maybe some of them will even turn out to enjoy the storytelling as well!

[@andrejpsaila]

Ill just say that I never played a souls game and only platinumed one game in my life, and I platinumed Elden Ring. For me its the best game ever

[@Atokedo]

i have around 400 hours in the game. did all achivs. around 6 playthroughts with and without guide, still finding new things xD.watched around 20 + lore videos and still dont know the plot . yeah there are bad things in the game but even then everyone should try this game out p.s. if yo uare new start lvling vigor first p.s.s loved the video mate

[@gamera5160]

I don’t know why Marika shattered the Elden Ring and I don’t know who is providing us with Grace in order to keep bringing us back. The Tarnished are supposed to be guided by the finger readers and the two fingers, which are agents of The Greater Will, but why would the Greater Will keep providing us with Grace if we’re burning down the Erd Tree and killing the Elden Beast? Is Marika providing us with Grace? Why? To free her? But then why does Radagon (who is Marika) fight us? I don’t understand the basics of why things are happening.

[@samuelbarton4991]

Do you want an explanation? ​@@gamera5160

[@delphidelion]

I honestly thought most of the icons were self explanatory. Like, the color of the square is the corresponding resource bar. Or the item icon being the buff icon, like the turtle neck, meaning stamina regen.

[@corneliussmiff2773]

Sweet jesus man, this is incredible content. Great work! I was someone who tried Dark Souls 3 first, liked it alot but bounced off it hard because I didn't understand it per se. Elden Ring came along and totally changed my world. It moulded me into a total FromSoft addict and I have now beaten all of their mainline SoulsBorne games (and I suck at games). Deus Ex (the OG) was a gaming experience I never thought could be topped for me in my lifetime. Elden Ring came along and totally shattered it. A seminal generational piece of gaming that I cannot accept is actually real in terms of how much enjoyment it has given me. Loved your analysis of it.

[@richardjamesIII]

I love the versatility of gameplay. It really behooves a player to experiment with mechanics and tactics. If you find yourself wondering if something will work, try it. It REALLY might work. Ranged weapons and consumables have limited feasibility, but they can trivialize some of the most difficult scenarios in the game.

[@briandawley7808]

I think the part on "needing a guide" at around the 30 minute mark is relatable but a bit misunderstood. FromSoft builds "community communication" abilities into their games, with the signs and stains and such. I think they not only acknowledge but expect that the community at large will assemble the pieces over many runs and work together to construct things like the game wikis that others rely upon. I think being a part of that is a really cool thing.

[@GlitchGain-s]

Elden Ring, is the best thing that EVER happened to me so far, concerning gaming. My life literally changed after playing it.

[@damienjohnson3450]

I have ER on PC, got it on steam, and have no idea WTF you are talking about @25:15.

[@octavianpopescu4776]

Yes, me neither. I played it on PC, mouse and keyboard and it was all good. I think the game crashed maybe 3-4 times in 850 hours and it did have some frame drops in the DLC in certain areas and boss fights, but I made it to the end just fine. I was afraid that I might not be able to finish the DLC because of frames dropping in some critical moments, but that wasn't the case. It was all good.

[@fireblast133]

if you look at the 2d map of the dlc, it's roughly the size of limgrave and the weeping peninsula, the first two real areas available to you in the base game. but it has a ton of verticality to it, making the actual area closer to about 60% of the base game maps' size, with I'd say about 80% the content. This ain't a DLC. It's an old school style Expansion.

[@cheyennehohman5521]

Hmm. Been bouncing back and forth on some old faves but wanting to try a new thing. Maybe this one will be worth a try! Thanks for the vid!

[@nowieso]

Great Video! A few things I'd like to add: The symbols under your stamina bar are designed in a very intuitive way. Red Square with an up arrow? Your HP bar is also red, so it must be an HP buff. A down arrow is, obviously, a nerf. Same with the green & blue squares. The "finger" icon (as you called it) is actually a turtle neck which you also get for killing turtles, and with turtle neck meat, you can craft items that boost your stamina recovery. When certain talismans are active, you'll also see an icon for that. With a little bit of thinking, anyone can understand what these symbols mean without needing a guide. For the sidequests, most of them are also intuitively designed. Just by progressing, you'll find almost every character again, and their dialogues give you hints for the next step. The only confusing ones are Millicent, Boc and Hyetta. For Nepheli: The Stormhawk King ash is a key item that doesn't tell you what it's useful for, and Nepheli, at this point in the game, does not give you a hint on the next step, so it's only logical to talk to her after finding a weird new item. FromSoft wants you to be experimental in their games.

[@DeyanWell]

It’s about exploring and experimenting, not about being guided. In the contrary, you’re maidenless, i e no guidance. It’s supposed to overwhelm you.

[@ItBeNolanTho]

Which is absolutely annoying lmfao the side quests are so insanely vague of what to do I literally just gave up. Imagine doing Alexander’s quest without a guide? How the fuck are you suppose to find him in the lava without luckily finding him there

[@dw4897]

​@@ItBeNolanThoknow how many times I was in that area before I hit the cut screen off patches

[@chrislail3824]

Kung Fu on NES was traumatic for me as a kid.. I played that for years.

[@maxhocks2006]

Elden ring is one of those games where you get out of it what you want. If you want to understand everything, see everything, and get all the stuff you need to explore everything, read item descriptions and assemble theories, and track down tons of bosses. If you just want to ignore everything and beeline to the end you can do that too. It doesn’t offer all of its secrets and story on a silver platter, but it’s all there if you want to find it.

[@PabloBernardCabrera]

"Visually is a horror show and a delight, all at once." lol that one made my day

[@shellshocktm]

I have 100+ hours in the game and I still get confused between Godrick, Godwyn and Godfrey. Also, one problem I have with Elden Ring's storytelling is that there is no way to know what piece of text has lore implications or is just a bit of dialogue. Like, hypothetically an NPC can say ah you're a 'lowly' tarnished and it can either mean he's being disdainful towards you OR later it's revealed that there was s prophecy made by some outer god that the only tarnished to become elden lord would be a manlet.

[@StellaSable4891]

Vaati lore vids cough. Elden Ring isn't gonna cram the story down your throat. I'm 530hrs in and am completely loving what I know and what I am clueless of...

[@gooseherdez336]

I just discovered this channel today. Good stuff. Looking forward for that hades video.

[@Syaniiti]

1) the player character can talk, there are options for that on occasion. But I suppose because it's not voice acted it doesn't count. 2) A wiki is not required to complete most (if any) quests, I personally ended up looking where to find a man for the age of order ending. This was on my 6th playthrough and was the last ending I was missing, every other ending Ifound simply via exploration and paying attention to what you were doing or the NPCs were saying. 3) The issues with running the game sound more like a single pc issues than port issues, since pre SotE I didn't hear any complaints and it runs fine on my 13 year old computer. And any issues I've heard before the release of SotE were linked to EAC and running offline fixes those. 4) Complaining about the lack of a journal is only acceptable if you are incapable of writing, because that's the only way there's no journal. I feel like some of the points made in this video are way off mark. Some are on point too but factually wrong information should be corrected. While the game has issues and I personally don't enjoy the design direction of some of the DLC bosses, it is still an extremely good game (not perfect, but literally nothing is) whether you're into it for the gameplay or the lore. Just for once I'd like to get an ending to an NPC questline that wasn't depressing, but I suppose in a World made by FROM (and GRRM in the case of ER) that's just never going to happen.

[@1antixz]

I mostly agree but being able to manually create your own physical journal is not equal to having an in-game journal. I would love a minimal in-game journal to keep track of the quests I’ve picked up.

[@Syaniiti]

@@1antixz As someone who plays tabletop RPGs I guess I'm just someone who's learned to write down things I feel are important and while I agree it's not the same as being given quest log I believe it's better to leave room for discovery and yes, potential misunderstandings. Having said that I wouldn't mind a "last discussion" tab in the menu which would simply have the lines of the previous discussion in text form, since I've accidentally skipped a line once or twice it would help.

[@denesleal7930]

Great video! Really entertaining and honest, while also presenting fair criticism. It's really funny that you explained your thoughts on the narrative from different perspectives of what different types of people might experience but most comments are like "you see, you need to join the psycho gang to really enjoy it, it's how Miyazaki intended it to be". That being said, I really really would love for you to decide to sink you teeth even deeper into the game and to find out what's the fuss all about, and maybe come back to show to the basic tier people if they're really missing out or not. For me, Elden Ring's story is really special and I can't remember the last time I became so fascinated with another world as I did with the Lands Between.

[@sarringtoniv]

Fake hand microphone is best microphone.

[@gendoslice5971]

Still watching but I love this video essay so far

[@howdyfriends7950]

so the thing about this game, I don't think we're meant to do all the NPC quests without a guide, i think the developer's intentions were to drop this cryptic piece of art into our laps, and then have the world come together and figure out wtf it even is. it's the video game version of the voynich manuscript, and it's an attempt to recreate that childhood magic of talking about pokemon on the playground, the reason pikachu has a 2% encounter rate in viridian forest is because it's going to be a very magical moment for them, same with shiny pokemon, their friends will never believe them, i heard in dark souls 3 there's a way to save greirat when he goes to lothric castle, i heard there's a way you can make boc the seamster into a human without him dying, I don't know what i did, but it worked their art is their means of injecting some wonder into the world, getting everyone to come together and try and figure out all of the nooks and crannies of this very peculiar piece of media. apparently there's still some DLC things that nobody has found and documented yet, months after the DLC came out, and with the demon's souls remake, it took people months to figure out that you need to play two NG cycles basically perfectly to collect 13x2 special coins which unlocks the penetrator's armor set, one of the coolest armor sets. do you see what they're doing? this is the adult version of a shiny pokemon, or missingno, or mew under the truck, it's giving us a platform to build a community, interpret the worldbuilding, extract stories, they're calling on the community to help build a fictional world with them, talk about the game, read item descriptions, share your headcanon, why would radahn let all of caelid fall to ruin instead of just slaying malenia, why was he holding back, why would rykard do this to his followers who he genuinely cared about and was trying to found the world anew on a more egalitarian basis to help them, is miquella actually nice or are those people just being charmed and manipulated, does dung eater have a CBT fetish? these are all questions that it falls on you and me to ask, which weave a deeper narrative

[@brodericksiz625]

Personally, I don't play on hard because I "need to be good", I tend to start on hard because there have been several games that I found boring playing in normal, thought their gameplay mechanics weren't very interesting, then I bumped up the difficulty and it forced me to actually engage with the mechanics I was ignoring, which made the gameplay so much more fun. Two prominent examples of this for me were The Witcher 3 and Pyre. I've seen many people say they loved these titles for the story but didn't like the gameplay, and I believe they played them on easier difficulties because I felt the same way until I bumped up the difficulty. Now, if a game becomes obnoxious, if its concept of more difficulty is making enemies damage sponges that can one shot you with a side glance, I will crank it down if the option is there, but honestly I didn't feel like I needed to do this very often

[@walls_of_skulls6061]

23:31 today my very colorblind self learned that the 2 squares shown are different colors. I don’t know about buffs either, I just know to avoid baldachins blessing

[@FirstNameLastName-lu5nr]

Great vid new sub Edit: if you get a basic audio compressor, it would make it easier to hear the quieter words and smooth the audio out!

[@ravendelacour1917]

Regarding all the similar names, note that all the important characters have a first letter taken from GRRM's initials. Kind of an odd Easter Egg that causes this sort of confusion.

[@briandawley7808]

The other part of this that stands out to me is when you said you're not sure what is a masterpiece in the video game medium. I have two: Outer Wilds and Nier: Automata. I highly, highly recommend you play them both. They are completely different, but they are absolutely at the pinnacle of "video game as art."

[@seijaandwayneglew6979]

If your having stutters or frame rate issues, please turn off Ray tracing, I had stutters and my friend had frame issues and this change made both our games silky smooth

[@colelider5480]

This is crazy, I was just in a discussion with my friend about why to play Elden Ring. He said he tried Bloodborne and hated it... after an hour or two. He said he didn't like how there isn't a story or direction. I tried and tried explaining how deep the lore is and how much content there is. He still doesn't care. And he loves fighting games and reading books everyday. So I'm just completely lost on how to convince him to play. I really wanted him to experience this amazing game the way I did. I never played any souls games and hated fighting games. I dived in and stuck with it, and when it clicked it was amazing

[@1cynicalsaint]

One thing I want to say regarding ER's approach to storytelling, not necessarily defend it, because I can understand why it might not be somebody's cup of tea, but so that you can at least understand is very deliberate. The game's director, Hidetaka Miyazaki, as a kid would read fantasy novels that were written English, but only had a very loose understanding of the language - and to him, one of the things he most enjoyed was filling in the blanks left by his lack of understanding with his own imagination. And so that is the vibe its going for - you're supposed to enjoy trying to piece things together and imagine what fits in the gaps. I get why for some it would be a turn off. But for us sickos - there's really no other games that take this approach and execute it so well.

[@UrbanRave1982]

27:06 no it's not on consoles. I have ps4 and sometimes when it's lots of npc on screen it drops in framrate but never freeze. Like when u have the 2 giants drawing a big wagon with weapon at the end. Those places gets pretty bad but like I said it never freeze

[@ThisChangeIsAwful]

that scene at 47:56 is on Desktop Engine, thats what i have on my main monitor

[@AstonishingRed]

Ive been playing these games so long, I got to really enjoy piecing the lore of these games together with the community. Actually, I do believe that is the intended experience. Putting a sort of lore hub in the game would completely rid the need to engage with the community and share findings. So personally, I hope From never adds anything like that to these games.

[@callsignfatbeard2637]

I really appreciate the narrative style of the souls games. Reading items and piecing things together and constantly asking what the fuck is this now when you pick a thing up. I just enjoy engaging with the way the games tell their stories, it feels unique. I love me a good dialogue tree, but sometimes narrative that feels a little more subdued feels good.

[@Deboo-oz2rb]

Elden ring is my first souls game. I'm going back to play the older ones also. I'm currently on sekrio and looking back for real elden ring wasn't as hard as I thought it was 😅

[@jordanbrown3816]

Great video! Love Elden Ring, but my two biggest issues: 1: They did bad with the PvP, invasions were better in the other games. Their focus was purely on the single player and co-op experience for this one. 2: The story is too open ended (even considering that it’s a FromSoft game). Even the other games weren’t so mysterious with the important lore. It’s still really intriguing, but it’s just not an overall lore that we are all going to agree on. Ever. There will never be consensus on certain huge lore mysteries. I think it’s because Elden Ring has much more character lore compared to the other games. We have all these demigods with motivations and history, but we still have that no-clear-answers approach to storytelling and are stuck trying to piece things together with environmental clues and item descriptions, dialogue gives us scraps. And basic questions about the world-that we would just ask any npc in the game were we there and could speak- are unavailable to us. A healthy amount of mystery is good, but damn we can’t agree on every other aspect of the lore. It’s just mysteries whose answers have implications for other mysteries and so on and so on. Now, after the DLC we know that some things will never be clear. I can live with that, but I would kill to read the raw material that GRRM gave Miyazaki!

[@TheEveryDayC]

i will say, the thing with the performance that i've noticed is that the people who have problems with the performance usually have super high end PCs with 4080s and the like. i'm on a fairly mid-range build and have NONE of these issues, running solid 60FPS 99.99% of the time, with the only times i get frame drops being minor drops to 45 FPS for at most a half second.

[@DonutSwordsman]

Love the chill vid. Please cover shin megami tensei 1 and then hi fi rush lol

[@thanganbabp5570]

Fromsoft created a special visual for npc messages, and they barely use it. it would have been a great way to signpost better. It's way too easy to miss sidequest steps in the open world. That said I think the main story of Elden Ring is a mystery, and you get plenty enough information to chew on and try to piece together an answer of what happened before you got here, just by doing all of the main dungeons/bosses and missing all of the sidequests.

[@colingrogan111]

Great vid man! ER was my first souls game and I feel like we had a very similar experience lol You earned a sub from me!!

[@YangSakka]

In my first playthrough I did not look anything up or even saw any content on it, full blind I managed to finish the game, did I miss like 3 bosses? Yes. Did I missed like 5 or more quest? Yes. But that´s Elden ring's magic, you are not gonna do it all at first, so just do it again, but better. You might find a new favorite weapon, maybe a favorite quest or spell. But you can either let it where you finished by yourself or go back and do more if you do want to

[@XDenyDefendDeposeX]

Hands down my favorite video game ever. The scale alone 😮

[@UrbanRave1982]

Why do so many use the crossbow? It is incredibly slow and often heavy. Use bow and arrows instead. The tiny bows are so light you can have it equipped all the time in one of the slots

[@billbino6560]

29:29 top tier should be called sacred tear

[@atimholt]

I have no issues playing on PC. Sure, I have a 3080, but you said you've got a 4080, so I don't know what's going on. For what it's worth, while I do play with max graphics (minus ray tracing), I'm playing on a 1440 screen. It even works okay on my Steam Deck, though the framerate goes down to around 40fps, and the resolution is of course much lower.

[@noahwright3519]

I play on pc and on my 40/80 I haven’t gotten any issues like I did when I played on my gaming laptop

[@aesonone]

even though I understand the idea behind the information obfuscation style and what it achieves, my personal problem with it is the clash with the desire to play blind the first time, while also having massive FOMO over inevitably unfinished quests and parsing only a fraction of the meaning that people on the internet way smarter and insightful than me reveal after the fact. that resulted in an anxious feeling and eventually caving in to go and get some pointers anyway. STILL i suspect this is yet another meta-punishment for bad character traits of the player themselves. any aspect of the game becomes massively more enjoyable the more zen you are in your approach to it. combat is the more apparent case, but i guess story progression or the impossibility to 100% it is a sort of an invitation to let go and accept the slice of my own journey as what was destined to happen for the time being

[@evilfungas]

The game has a narrative "codex." It's the items and their descriptions. The narrative is like the gameplay. You only get out as much as you put in.

[@BarnabyFWNightingale]

Maybe I’m a hostage to From but I’ve come to love everything you hate about it the most 😂

[@AscendantStoic]

Yeah, the stuttering issues in Elden Ring PC A version are pretty bizzare, I have 3070 and I never experienced any of that even though I have been playing since day 1, most of the people I saw talking about the stuttering or experienced it are streamers with high end PCs and usually 3090s or 4080/4090s .. It's quite strange that the high-end hardware is the one facing problems, whereas the mid tier hardware has no issues at all. 🤔

[@ThisChangeIsAwful]

i have 500 hours on elden ring and i do not have the problems with stuttering you show here. I did find a spot on the map that would stutter everytime i went over it though. eastern lurnia on the way to a runebear

[@j0nnyism]

There are I think some video gaming masterpieces. Super Mario 3 metal gear solid 3 shadow of the colossus and dark souls definitely fit the bill in my eyes

[@bobsinclair8990]

Only disagree on the kind of story telling holding the game back, it's the opposite for me. Otherwise I think this video accomplished its premise very well. See you in the shadow of the erdtree, fellow tarnished.

[@justpaul3451]

From Soft isn't hiding anything. Miyazaki purposefully makes it so people have to engage with each other to put it all together. It's about being a cooperative. Jolly cooperation, if you will. If you see it as a failure because you can't do it by yourself, maybe it says more about you than it does about the game. The game is super-massive, to say the least. Exploration is the point, and if you don't like exploration, well, don't play it. Play something more linear that puts the story in your lap. Something like an interactive movie. Something hand-holdy. From games aren't for you. But that's okay. Because all games aren't for everyone and a game for everyone is a game for none.

[@maxhocks2006]

Yeah. The entire point of Elden ring is to explore find new things and discover things. Community is quite literally built into the game. From coop, messages, blood stains, and invasions. The story is too. There’s a reason there’s an entire community on KZbin that specialize in explaining for soft stories. And the best part is that most of them acknowledge that there’s room for interpretation and coming to your own conclusions. Like he said in his video some books require outside help to understand them. But the really good boosts that do this is often considered masterpieces.

[@TheStrengthScholar]

It's so ridiculously easy with all the OP builds and summons. You won't be able to brag about being here but you'll be able to enjoy the experience.

[@meteorwalkergg]

House of Leaves mentioned House of Leaves mentioned

[@trevorjones3905]

The Hades to Elden Ring pipeline is too real

[@cenationofjnu]

Elden ring is a must play game. I found it 100x more enjoyable that gta 5 and red dead redemption.. The exploration part is the best thing about the game. Game is extremely difficult for new players but in the end, you are the champion.. I uninstalled it twice. In my third attempt, I kept playing it and kept exploring. Finding new items and beating boss with them provides a great sense of satisfaction and adventure. Elden ring is made for everyone for so called veterans to new players who never played dark souls. Game is huge. 60$ provides the fun worth 500$.

[@Solare1]

''what's a green square what's a red square'', how can anyone know...

[@-HellsSarcasticComedian-]

Also... Please don't be intimidated by Bloodborne. I thought I'd never beat NG +1. Now I have platinumed it and have a ng +6 +1 character playthrough. If I can do that, anyone should have the ability if you just knuckle down. Then, you will love Bloodborne like it's a member of your family. You're glad it's around to pick you up and it provides you with many fond memories. Love Fromsoft games!!!

[@flamingmanure]

elden ring not caring to invest you in its world and lore implications is exactly why its lore is laughably better than 99% of games with an "actual" narrative. elden rings narrative is like finding a tattered and torn book and putting that book back together through lore flavor text, visuals, npc diologue, environmental design, enemy and boss design, item descriptions, and cutscenes. one of the best example of that in the entire series is how marikas statues in the shadowlands are all decapitated except just one, the giant one in mesmers arena, you can go deeper in the lore to figure out why that is but thats all im saying. thats just one bit out of thousands of just visual and environmental story telling. its a beautiful community effort that literally created youtube empires with careers XD its just that good, its one of the many reasons why souls is what it is today, and frankly new people to the genre are gonna have to accept it and move on, cuz it aint changing.

[@colbyboucher6391]

TL;DR tips for Elden Ring, for anyone actually new: - You woke up in a coffin and something in your head (basically the "holy spirit") told you to go put the Elden Ring back together. I'm telling you this because the phrase "stand before the Elden Ring" seems like translation nonsense and I don't think it was INTENDED for your basic goal to be murky for as long as it is. You would be correct to wonder why you, and why you should bother listening. I won't say more on that, just pay attention. - Be skeptical about what characters are telling you. Specifically, the first guy you meet in-game will tell you to follow some funny glowy lines. It should be obvious from his dialogue that he doesn't have your best interests in mind and that you should consider disregarding him. Consider NOT following the funny golden lines just yet and saving your skin. - Significant content is sometimes hidden away so that you can't see it from a distance. Pick a line and go straight in that direction until you actually bonk your head against a wall, or you might miss that there was a cave behind those bushes you've been staring at. - Read stuff. Seriously, just take the time to read what's in front of you, please. All of it. The "Explanation" button is your friend and you'll know what that is if you read. 90% of the time whatever you're wondering about is told to you at some point (even if the translation team does a poor job of wording things sometimes). - If you want to do NPC quests without looking stuff up, prioritize finding said NPCs in a given "major zone" before actually doing anything there. Otherwise it'll probably involve backtracking that you'd never consider doing otherwise. - Take notes. You shouldn't have to, but do it, because you do have to unless you have quite a good memory.

[@j0nnyism]

Just a vague clue as to where they’re heading would be something but no it’s just impossible to complete these quests without guides and I hate guides so no complete quests for me

[@roninviszla6628]

Runs flawlessly on my 2060, and my steam deck.

[@dw4897]

Yes you should, it's the best open world there is head of fo3 and fo4. I never got into Skyrim, so idk about that. I have had so much fun in this game, it's my only souls like game.

[@commanderpower99]

Who's here after beaten the game several times?

[@ValmathWF]

i play on pc my gpu amd 5900, is not good and i play ER in ultrawide wiht nearly 0 issues, i hate it dont haves support for ultrawilde but not in a single fight the game as freeze, idk if im just lucky and if you already play rpg or mmrpg you can configure the keyboard with aloot of freedon in keys than in a controller and better camera managment that i know is a issue with controls

[@whiskeybuddha1995]

“Mega man mega man…..!” 😂

[@OffBrandChicken]

I’ve never had a single issue with the PC port of Elden Ring, and I’m on Linux, so idk what issues you have, but I guess it’s not universal.

[@BrainBurnStudios]

The one single thing I hate about this game is the quests. Oh, you forgot to talk to an NPC before going to another location? Too bad, you're locked out of one of the most useful items in the game.

[@vengerofthelight]

"...he's finished Elden Ring at least TEN TIMES..." >_> ...I'm reasonably confident I've cleared the final boss of ER hundreds of times (I have well over 3100 hours in the game and counting). At first, I thought you were being satirical, but then I thought "I'm pretty sure there's just something wrong with me." XD

[@joetomanek660]

Summon 3 people let them beat the game for you, praise the sun 🌞

[@billbino6560]

Are you just mentioning all the attributes throughout the vid? I heard intelligence and arcane and you’re not even talking about attributes

[@sleepypanda5466]

You can make it having done 90% of the content without looking anything up IF you played all the other titles dark soul, bloodborn and sekiro

[@KnightofEkron]

I love rot builds, I stab stab then I flee, and no one is better at being a coward than me.

[@Jsch23]

elden ring is the best video game of all time no doubt about it and it has ruined most other games for me besides god of war, god of war ragnorok, and lies of p, and armored core 6 actually. i havent played any of the dark souls series and i tried bloodborne like 5 years ago and put it down cause i kept dying and got frustrated. I picked up elden ring a year after it came out and it changed my entire perspective on difficult games and my first playthrough is genuinely something ill never forget, it impacted me beyond what the average video game could. in fact it was the entire reason ive gotten back into gaming as a whole because im chasing that feeling of my first elden ring playthrough again. (tbh i actually hated it for the first twelve hours of playing it but once i grinded to get strong enough to hold my own everything clicked). if you are on the fence about playing it just do it you dummy!! but you have to commit to it, it cant be just a fling its gotta be a somewhat serious relationship. its like telling a friend to watch game of thrones and they just dont know if they should or not. and as anybody who's seen that show knows, they should.

[@5chneemensch138]

Sekiro is not a Soulslike. If you *really* want to count Sekiro, you'd first have to mention King's Field and Shadow Tower. Hell, at that point even Armoured Core.

[@LegacyDrummer]

Symbols under your health bar are not that difficult to surmise the meaning of using basic reasoning. Don't insult the player's or your own intelligence. If you want a quest journal, take out a paper and pen and start writing. Nothing is stopping you from having a quest journal

[@maxhocks2006]

Yeah there’s even an explanations option in the game. It tells you what each stat does. And most of the buffs/debuffs/status ailments are easy to figure out in game. If you don’t know what at they’re doing you’re either not curios enough to investigate them, or actively ignoring them.

[@tristingarcia5718]

I agree about the buffs but asking someone to have a physical journal to play a video game isn’t it. As someone who loves these games and the story telling, I can see why casual gamers or first time souls players get turned off by that

[@colbyboucher6391]

OK, actual comment about the video time: HELL YEAH SulMatul WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? You're getting the core idea of these games pretty on the nose, which is cool, because I think there's a hard split at Bloodborne where their style shifts to become more accomidating to people who refuse to do what you're talking about. A lot of people who have hopped in since then absolutely can't stand DeS, DS and DS2, or at least complain about parts of them that were seen as features rather than problems. It's kinda sad to me. That being said, it's also kinda meandering and the title doesn't reflect the content very well when half of it is a critique for people who have actually played the game. 22:57 I... halfway agree with this? But quite a few of them can be understood by inference. I'm genuinely just guessing here, haven't looked it up myself. Green square? Stamina. That's the stamina bar. Your max stamina went up or down. Red square? Health. The "finger" you mention is pickled turtle neck as an icon so that's got to be stamina recovery speed. Axe icon? Well, did you stick a talisman that buffs axes on? Something is giving you a buff, mess with your talismans and see which it is. The descriptions tell you what they do anyways. Admittedly the online play icons just suck, like, what's a grace with a red X supposed to mean? There's no quick way of working that out. 30:06 The funny thing about the "base tier" narriative experience in these games is that it's almost always diagetic to the world that you're acting as an unquestioning, useful idiot for someone. 31:10 I really don't think this is as bonkers as you're making it out to be. You know that those ashes are for Nepheli because there is literally a prompt telling you to give those ashes to her. Obviously the game doesn't expect you to somehow "know" that you're supposed to go and get them, either you're exploring thoroughly and already have a solution to that issue of hers, or you do not. Even if you find them later you should hopefully be trying to talk to people sometimes. I actually agree that some of these ARE absurd, but that's in scenarios where someone is conditionally at a location you've probably already been to and would need to backtrack to find, which was much more common in the earlier, more linear games (looking at you Dark Souls 3). 35:00 Elder Scrolls mentioned, rep gained. Far too many people try to call the lore of TES "contradictory" as if that's a dunk when it's just following in the footsteps of RuneQuest. 37:00 I'd indicate that I'm paying attention but the YT gods wouldn't like that. Honestly it's comments like this that get people mad more then the actual content of a video most of the time, because, like, there's this phenomenon that occurs constantly on the internet where someone goes "you angry!" and, like, I wasn't. I'm liking the video. But now I'm a little ticked off _because you're trying to imply that I am,_ when what I'm trying to say is that a lot of criticism actually boils down to something not being for you. You can say that it bums you out, and that for someone like you it's a disappointment, but to act like something's objectively bad as a result is often just haughty. Yeah, FromSoft's naming scheme for characters was a bad choice in a game with THIS many characters and was more reasonable when there was just, like, Gwyn, Gwynyvere and Gwyndolin. In Elden Ring it's excessive. And yeah, on some level it's unfortunate that I needed an Obsidian notebook that looks like that "guy putting red string around his office" meme to wrap my head around it. I could add that it's really annoying how characters sometimes have lore dump dialogue, and you can never ask them to just... say it again. It only plays once and that's insane. The problem is that you'd have a massive appreciation for this general approach to telling stories if From put as much effort into it as, say, Return of the Obra Dinn. You could make someing like *Return of the Obra Dinn* out of FromSoft's narriative and it could be great, because that's already the kind of story that it is. But since this is primarily a character action game, you're left to choose whether you want to play that metagame and it takes too much effort. ...But it wouldn't be all that interesting if you just handed it out as a typical story. 39:36 This is fair to a point. Sometimes your character has some degree of motivation you're only faintly aware of (see my first comment). But often, they're you, they're just as confused as you are because they know no more than you do. The game doesn't give you a "I'm suspicious about this" dialogue option because it wants you the player to just think that for yourself rather than putting the words in your mouth. 41:26 Item descriptions fill this role. Considering that only certain items actually mention something in a manner that makes an idea clear, it should be obvious that From did this on purpose. Like, From could just tell you what the Golden Order is, but the whole point is that it's that it's cosmic-tier nonsense, most characters just take what they're told about it at face value, and realizing how conceptually bonkers it is is like becoming the sort of person who rants about black helicopters. That IS part of roleplaying a character in this world. If there was a real codex, it would be taken at face value, and it'd either lay things out so plainly that it isn't as cool, or be an intentional lie, but as "authorial text" no one would consider that it might be. My point is that if you tried telling this story in a conventional way, it'd be a fundamentally different story.

[@haggus71]

I haven't had half the problems you've had with the game. Maybe don't run five hundred other things while playing the game? The problems you had sound like a bandwidth issue, not a software one. As for the story, you answered your own question. Replay. It makes you want to dive into the game more. Millicent's storyline. The Dung Eater. All the items having lore attached to them(which, if you READ, would have most of your questions answered). It's a game made to teach you that paying attention to the world around you and what's going on matters. I find that players that get it, and do well in Souls games, have the same success in life.

[@soyborne.bornmadeandundone1342]

Lol my bro hates the crap hit detection in many parts of these games. He hates the long boring ladders and elevators. He hates the lack of split screen and lack of easy ways to get into the game. He hates that the coop isn't just player 2 enter, you gotta run around in the game world for hours first lol. No wonder the coop mod is the most popular mod lolz He hates that invaders can just F up your day and there isn't much you can do about it aside from playing offline which cuxes your coop experience... Game needs Lan. He hates how long it takes to get places He hates how empty many large areas are He hates how the game doesn't have a survival tower defense mode He hates the story that even George RR martain doesn't even like or understand lolz He hates how unbalanced pvp is no matter how many times they have updated it with patches over the passed 2.5 years. He hates the 40 dollar dlc when it should be more like 20 or 30 bucks given how disappointing it was compared to the base game. He hates the copy and paste style of dungeons, bosses, and enemies that most of the game cheaply throws at you. He hates how most of the weapons are just slight diff versions of each other. He hates the lack of a transmute system. Can't blame him... Almost all the best armors in the game are ugly af lol. I dunno dawg. He makes some decent points. Maybe he should NOT play it lulz. Ever look at it from his point of view or is it all about you you you right now? I'm tired of you being all about you. I'm gunna make it all about me. You should play.... Battle toads and double dragon on super nintendo!

[@ryandesilva1206]

It's honestly not that hard... Maybe in the first couple dozen hours of your first playthrough at most.. For me it took me 150 hours to reach defeat the elden beast and defeat melania which I left for last.. Struggled a bit against the elden beast even with max power weapon, but only took 15 - 20 tries.. Melania literally took 2 tries, which surprised even me.. Huge disappointment compared to how much she was hyped up... Disclaimer I did use summons, but it's part of the game, so what the heck.. Now in ng+, doing the run without any summons and it's ridiculously easy cause I have high level weapons and stats.. So yea if you are scared of this game don't be..

[@ThisChangeIsAwful]

i think your definition of masterpiece is wrong I'm not sure how you define it, but if it doesn't include Elden Ring then its wrong

[@snonyabeeswax]

i think elden ring is easier to learn compared to dark souls and bloodborne.

[@snonyabeeswax]

i dont have th dlc yet i barely started the game lol i know im not ready

[@SnotpitThe_Legend]

Still do t get it why all Kids say Souls Games are hard 🤔 You Kids Always forget to mention Otogi 👀 get off my lawn!

[@5chneemensch138]

"Hand fixation" aka trying to follow the trend of people not even using half a braincell.

[@planetbizzaro1839]

Hah. Wait till you try Sekiro

[@coltonissarasgod]

Great video but I feel like your title is contradicting the title. If I didn’t beat Elden ring already you would’ve scared me off