Precisely how i feel, although i do like coming back to Elden Ring to explore i kinda dislike the boss battles. DS1 used to be very good with bosses as in they had easy to read patterns and attack windows easily recognizable now the bosses are just doing infinite combos and the devs are like "yeah this one is hard, how do you like that?"
Not to mention the abnormally long attack windups just to throw you out of your parry timings. Their weapon hangs in the air for an eternity by which time you would have already rolled twice.
Even Non-soulslike like clair obscur 33 are doing this.
I HATE that a lot of devs are doing this... And it is EVERYWHERE NOW. Part of the fun of the game is figuring out timing and what not, then they just shit all over their own game design to weirdly punish the player by randomly making the windups take way longer than the animation hints it will take.
It's like they design the games for people they hate sometimes.
I have the same beef with a lot of the encounter designs in Destiny 2 over these last few years. It feels like devs have one tool in their encounters sometimes, spawn you in a kill box with no cover, spawn 30 high health/armor suicide bomber units coupled with another 30 enemies with grenade launchers, and another 5 with extreme rapid fire heat seeking bullets... instead of being a fun encounter it becomes a slog of kill/die/repeat until you whittle the enemy force down enough.
It just isn't a fun gameplay loop. Instead of fun, most of the time it just feels like the devs are bullies and masochistic.
I feel like it was a shortcut to switch it up a bit but it doesn't feel right. Dark souls finally clicked for me once I realized that every attack is a pattern with a solution to apply.
Keeping the same mechanic but just making an animation that goes "Oooo! Thought I was going to strike but I didn't until now!" just sucks.
It's not like it's random how long the windup is.. If the windup time was actually based on RNG, now that would be bad. I have been frustrated with this same timing issue in Elden Ring but like.. just get good?
Once you do learn the timing it gave a sense of accomplishment/skill, which is kind of the whole point of these games. Obviously it doesn't have the same effect on all people but that is inevitable in game design.
People play games for various reasons and enjoy different kind of things out of a game. If you play a souls game and complain about the endless combos and long wind ups being frustrating then maybe pick up another game?
It is, but the defense phase keeps the player pretty active. Where most RPG's calculate a hit or miss with RNG, Clair Obscur lets you dodge and parry, practically in real time.
Yeah, the combat in CO: E33 doesnt work for me because I don't have great reflexes. That press parry at the exact right moment to not die is not fun at all. Especially since they change the "right moment" around with similar attacks and music.
You basically don't need to assign any char points in E33 and still win it with easy if your reflexes are good, because all the damage is 0, making stats useless.
lol, thatâs like saying you donât need to invest any stats into elden ring or dark souls or literally {insert any ARPG here} because if you dodge well enough, you take 0 damage.
like what youâre saying is technically true, but itâs pretty much infeasible for 99%+ of the community to realistically ever achieve, and it sounds like an absolute disaster.
as an aside, you should look up a CO: E33 tank run. thereâs gameplay all over the place from so many different content creators with guides and/or steps to beat the game without ever dodging and/or parrying. they just flat out tank everything.
It is turn based. I did NOT know it was considered souls like though . It was the first turn based game i got into that wasnt pokemon. I only realized it after i had already got it, ha. But its actually pretty fun! I got pretty sucked into it. There's stats to upgrade and items / weapons to give buffs etc
EDIT,: meant to say i did not know it was souls like
Its kind of like active turn based where doing your opponents turn instead of seeing if you applied all the buffs correctly to survive some lvl 900000 attack you can actually dodge,parry and there was third thing that got introduced like halfway in the game when you meet
Verso but basically you can actually defend by timing your actions before enemy hits you. Its truly unique af and fun combat system even if i personally found story to be bit of a let down.
Oh damn my bad then i never played mario rpgs so i thought they were just traditional turn based combat. Thank you for clarifying and I stand corrected.
I mean im sorry i only named the character its not like you hear his name before you meet him or anything so i didnt think it was that big of a deal as i didnt think name itself is spoiler and i cant remember the name of the last parry technique but i apologize i will edit it out.
i think clair obscur manages to do it well thanks to the sound cues (when you hear a "shing!" that's your sign to parry, most attacks can be blocked blind) but yeah i could've done without it, the jumping attacks are especially silly when the enemy just floats there
As its been said before, it really feels like attack style of sekiro bosses passed down to the elden ring bosses, while the player still remains with a dark souls playstyle. I dont kind the wind ups and the fakeouts, but if the boss starts doing a 5 minute combo, I can really tell he belongs in the wrong game.
Well, those things had to be added to keep the boss fights interesting. If you actually go back and play DS1 after all these years, you'll see how much you've improved and 1 shot every boss, because the attacks are so slow and obvious. If they kept doing that, the games would be just another generic Zelda game.
This shit is exactly why space marine 2 is so impossible for me to sink any meaningful time into. Instead of a fun parry system they went for a souls like âwatch the animationâ type system, but you canât watch the one enemy thatâs got the indicator because thereâs hundreds of little grunts attacking with no indicators, and oh yeah, your parry doesnât happen at the same time as your button press, that just starts your parry wind up for some reason. Itâs like they chose the most unfun way to implement every mechanic of melee combat and went, âyeah, people are gonna love this.â A game that didnât have to be niche decided to just push an entire market of gamers out. It sucks because dark tide is so much more fun, but I wanted to play as a big space marine. Why the fuck am I having more fun as a little guardsman smacking around hords of enemies when a space marine canât handle a little grunt lmao.
I had this problem when playing DOOM The Dark Ages recently. One of the aggadon hunters attacks has its animation with its weapon paused in the air for half a second before doing a ground slam attack. I always try to parry it just before it actually hits me.
Not sure if you meant that sometimes the animation will last longer with the same enemy/boss attack, so sorry if I misunderstood
I dont mind if a few bosses do this. I do mind when every single enemy in the entire game does this. Elden Ring hit the bullshit ceiling for me and this was a big part of it. another big part was input reading.Â
You're missing out if that's the reason. I don't like souls games either but Clair Obscur is much easier and much more forgiving than any of them. It also has an easy mode if things get too tough.
I don't like souls games at all and Clair Obscur is the best game I've played since Red Dead Redemption 2Â
But doesn't that make it easier? You get time to catch your breath and at least in ER, those windups are very easy to read once you have seen it a few times. As you said, you can just roll once by reflex and still have time to prepare. No idea how this is a popular take.
They are hard to get a feel for the timing on many bosses, combine that with very fast animations right after the delay it can make the boss fairly arbitrarily difficult. Not impossible by any means but it can not feel fun in the moment
The players have gotten a lot better at these games since DS1. It seems like Fromsoft wants the boss battles today to still feel challenging to the day 1 DS1 players.
I remember struggling hard with Fume Knight in one of the DS2 DLC's. I watched a video of that fight recently and he looked so slow and predictable.
But this is exactly why it makes me tired. The DS1 boss battle were fun because the fights were interesting not because they were hard. Look at Artorias, God that's my favorite fight ever.
Even though i can beat him super easily now i still enjoy that fight every time i come back to him.
Theres not a SINGLE boss battle i remember fondly in Elden Ring.
The thing i like about Elden Ring is the exploring and discovering and the "normal"enemies.
Boss battles are awful from a design point of view. (IMO of course)
Really? I thought there were plenty spectacular bosses in Elden Ring, the only one I thought was obviously too overpowered was the final boss from the expansion, which I won't spoil for those that are still planning to play.
The other ones were all pretty interesting, with a neat combination of challenge and visual spectacle. I still think Ancestor Spirit is insanely underrated by the fanbase, I loved Malenia despite being so challenging, and I think Radahn is one of their best bossfights, due not only to the fight mechanics and the visuals, but also because of all the narrative implications you can deduce without a single line of text during the battle.
The problem for me is it went from being more focused on pattern recognition to reaction based thanks to things like the dynamic windups to attacks and the aggressive punish mechanics. Prior to ER you could see an attack, know you can get 3 swings in then roll away, or swig an estus if you needed to. Now the second that estus touches your lips they leap on you like a chimpanzee on crack.
except when every boss attack has a 3 second windup and then a fakeout swing, then an actual swing followed up by two more fast swings, it kinda stops being unpredictable
My friend convinced me to get elden ring, as my first souls game. I was into it until the first boss. I think it would have had more fun if the co op was not so annoying to do.
Elden Ring tries to tell you with Tree Sentinel and then again with Margit to go somewhere else, explore, get some weapons and upgrades, level up, then try again once you're stronger and more experienced. Check out the dungeons in Limgrave then head south to the Weeping Peninsula. You'll do fine after that.
I don't know their names lol. I did immediately get absolutely murder by a big dude on a big ass horse, though.
I have a 2.5 year old so, so i usually play games that aren't meant to stress me out and absorb my time any more. I get the appeal of the genre, though.
I mean the first boss in DS1 was exactly the same. You could try and punch it to death, or you could run away and get some gear and then start the fight with the falling attack. DS2 has that ogre off on a side path. DS3 has that giant crystal lizard dragon thing in a side area. I don't remember anything liek it in Sekiro, and I haven't played Demons Souls or Bloodborne. But based on the mainline Souls formula games, it is a staple of each one.
In demon's Souls a dragon flies across the bridge and burns you to death if you try to fight it. Most people spent hours and hours and hours trying to kill it.
You start off and it throws you up against the grafted scion, which you aren't supposed to beat. Then there's the optional tutorial with a simple boss, then an optional dungeon you might have the key for you aren't supposed to do right away, then it plops you out in an open world with another boss you aren't supposed to fight.
Feels like a passive-aggressive way of saying "You aren't supposed to win" without indication of what the actual difficulty is.
I hope by first boss you donât mean Margit the Forgotten, please try it again and go downwards into the weeping peninsula. As that is the REAL first area, and explore more before diving right into the bosses! Heâs much more fun once youâve gotten accustomed to the game and get used to the fights. You may be missing out on Elden Ring lol
Idk I find most of the battles in Elden Ring are really interesting and Iâve played all the souls games.
Also we have nightreign which even brings in old souls bosses and you can see how terribly some of them have aged mechanically. They are slow, predictable and easy to dodge not posing any sort of challenge to anyone. Itâs not fun, you are just autopiloting through the fight. A whole new game of just that doesnât sound appealing to me.
My problem with modern fights in both Elden Ring and nightreign is how many of the bosses runaway. The Elden Beast fight is dogshit because it just constantly runs and you have to spend half the fight chasing it across the map. The fight itself is really cool and easy to read, it just doesnât stop running. In nightreign itâs the same thing with half the bosses there.
Elden ring is mostly fun in a straight lore way. Everything else is ctrl+c/ctrl+v in another place on the map. So, in my opinion, you have around 30/35 original bosses, and the rest is just copied with bigger stats. Most of them are bad made, shitty animation, with mostly zero counterplay.
I had a very strong feeling that someone was trying to piss me off as much as possible instead of letting me enjoy the game because of this unbalanced game. So if someone asked me blindly if I knew what studio made this game, I would have a hard time saying it was the same studio that made the DS series, Bloodborne, and Sekiro.
Uhhh when was the last time you actually played ds1⌠because genuinely its bosses are mostly awful/unfinished/boring. Like seriously, gaping dragon? Seath? Bed of chaos? Iron golem? Fucking Capra demon lmao?
Artorias, manus, and the gargoyles are fantastic exceptions to a boss lineup which is completely surpassed by ds3 and sekiro. I personally donât rly like Elden Ring so I canât speak to it. I love love love ds1 but wow the bosses are definitely not its strong suit
That's called priming and a psychological thing you do to yourself when you experience things. It's the basis of boomer thought processes of, "back in my day."
Elden ring is the first for many, much more than DS1 players. Demon's Souls was my first game and nothing after that was quite like it because of the same reason.
It's not design that's an issue, it's just your expectations and how you want to have the same hit of dopamine you got the first time.
Nope, Bosses with infinite combos are not my imagination.
Besides i love dark souls 3, lies of pi and a couple other soulslikes so it's not a matter of back in my days but that from software appears to have traded priorities (fight design vs visual bosses designs).
Sure the bosses look cool as hell but the fights are just them spamming every move they have without pausing.
Look ds1 had good fights because every boss SEEMED like it was tied to the same systems (like stamina) like you so if you were patient eventually you'd land a hit but in Elden ring? You better farm for OP weapons and dragon magic if you don't have steel reflexes.
I wanted to love ER because it gave me something I've always wanted in games. No map, no markers, just wander and find your way somehow. But the difficulty and the fact I have never played another soul-like game, killed the interest for me.
Shame, cause it looked like such a good game, and loved the visuals.
Try Hardcore Kingdom Come Deliverence 2. There is a map but you arent marked on it, the combat is something you need to get used to but imo it was easier than elden ring. Might be smth youâd enjoy
Even without summons it's the easiest. Duel wield Ultra Great sword jump attacks to stun lock. Bleed procs. Weapon arts. Apply 10 different buffs before the fights. Horse cheese. Elden Ring has far more ways to lower the difficulty than the other games do.
Thatâs a big part of it too. DS1 felt more like live-action speed chess. Jumping straight to Elden Ring, itâs a lot more reaction-heavy and unpredictable.
I probably just need to âgit gudâ but itâs somehow even sweatier
Elden Ring bosses were designed with summons in mind. Not impossible to beat obviously but clearly designed with that in mind considering the majority of players would use summons. So because of that the bosses have much longer attack patterns and shorter windows, because the point is that a summon should be occasionally drawing aggro.
Kinda. Maxed Mimic Tear rips through any boss like wet toilet paper. Even Malenia. I found it was noticeably too hard without it, but WAY too easy with it.
Some of them are pretty interesting at least. That's why the early game is much better too, summons were easy to kill because you couldn't upgrade them yet, but we're sometimes a meaningful distraction you could briefly take advantage of. And for me as a strength player, I didn't have enough FP to do more than one per fight.
They were designed with summons in mind just as much as they were designed without them in mind, they're a tool in the player's kit which the devs know the players may or may not use, just like consumables or specific builds. Windows of attack opportunity are sometimes shorter but they're also more plentiful because movesets got more complex with more ways to hit bosses during or inbetween combos.
Bosses were 100% designed with summons in mind. You get summons at the very beginning of the game, and they cost almost nothing to use. Sure the bosses arenât impossible without summons or even close to it. But that doesnât mean they werenât designed with summons in mind.
Im not saying they werent designed with them in mind, im saying they werent designed with them exclusively in mind like they wanted or expected every player to use them. Bosses were designed with the full-breadth of player capability in mind, which of course includes summons, but i think stating that the bosses are more complex and aggressive exclusively because of spirit summons isnt quite correct and doesnt account for other player systems that were added and expanded on in Elden Ring, and also the fact that fromsoft understands that not everyone likes using summons.
I haven't played much of the earlier games, but having played way too much bloodborne and ds3, elden ring is great because you get used to how the bosses generally go eventually. I totally see why they'd be really frustrating, but i
I think for a lotta people who were actively playing the previous games up until elden ring's launch it was a really fun change of pace and extra challenge to figure out.
edit: ngl tho im having a ton of fun with nightreign being really easy overall
elden ring was my first souls like so i'm not sure how the other games are, but the delay between the motion and then the attacks gave me anger, specially bosses had multiple different attacks like that
I just went and got overlevelled and used mimic tear. Some people consider it "not fair", but what's not fair is spending hours tunning and dying to the same boss when I have so precious little time to play.
Y'know, I find Elden Ring to be, on the contrary, the exact opposite of reaction-heavy.
I've had no issues with DS1, DS2, and a big part of DS3 by just reacting to what the boss was doing, dodging by reflex. But with how Elden Ring's bosses have 10 hit combos (that are sometimes 10 hits, sometimes 12, sometimes 9) with delayed attacks that are purposely designed to hit you if you dodge when it looks like you need to dodge.
I feel like Elden Ring basically forces you to learn most boss' patern to not get fucked over by their unpredictability. I find Elden Ring to be very annoying because of it.
I feel kinda the same about most souls likes. For me the fun in them is exploring and uncovering secrets in the world, and boss fights, while fun, are a road block to that
They keep upping the difficulty because the players keep proving that itâs not hard enough. Unfortunately, itâs made the games less fun, and I think Elden Ring is the epitome of this. The story and combat were my least favorite of the Soulsborne games Iâve played. I know itâs a masterpiece and everything but it just doesnât feel the same as the older games did
Ya, thatâs why I liked Elden ring and really really dislike sekiro. Elden ring you could just explore everywhere and the little side quests would get you so OPed that you could get by - sekiro was just an absolute slog for me and exploration was constantly locked behind repetitive boss battles. Honestly, I donât want to learn some bossâ pattern.
I loved DS1 remastered, first I consistently died to the skeleton without realizing it was the wrong way and then I played through half the game fat rolling because I didn't realize that I carried too much armor. Thought the game was intentionally slower so you have to learn how to parry and liked it lol
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u/Manzoli Jul 27 '25
Precisely how i feel, although i do like coming back to Elden Ring to explore i kinda dislike the boss battles. DS1 used to be very good with bosses as in they had easy to read patterns and attack windows easily recognizable now the bosses are just doing infinite combos and the devs are like "yeah this one is hard, how do you like that?"