Elden Ring (2022)

For no reason at all a few days ago I decided to start a new game and try out a "parry build". Some of the parries can be satisfying, but overall my conclusion is that parrying in this game is kinda ass.

Parries need to be anticipated; it's not Sekiro's style of pressing the button right when the attack lands. And with tons of delayed attacks and smushy enemies with ill-defined hitboxes, it's all very hit-or-miss. Some bosses' attacks are also not parriable. Godrick has many AoE attacks and (now after a quick search) none of his attacks can be parried.

Even if you land a successful parry, chances are 30/70 whether the critical attack is going to register or not because it's too easy to stand just a bit to the right to the exact spot.

Well, oh my god this game.

I am still terrible at this, but it's so f_ing good. Elden Ring is as addictive as sugar.

How to even say what have I done since my past review? I have DONE SO MUCH. I can't believe how bad I started playing this, I knew NOTHING, to be honest, sometimes I feel I still know nothing. So, i explored so much around everything I just went on and leveled up as much as I could, I defeated Leonine Misbegotten before going to stormveil castle, and let me tell you, HE WAS A PAIN. I think I did it after 30 tries?! Lmao I was so bad. And I was like level 26?! Kept exploring, did caves, arrived to liurnia, all of this instead of going to stormveil castle, because I read everywhere that Margit and Godrick were super hard to defeat, and I thought "well im already bad, im just gonna go around it and explore". I found so much stuff, I arrived to liurnia until the frenzied flame outskirts site of grace I think, (im still discovering the other side of it tho), after a while I said ok, im like level 40 now, im gonna go to stormveil.

Oh my gosh what is that castle!!! There's so much stuff, so many paths that connect to other paths! I DID NOT LEAVE ANYTHING UNTOUCHED!! I had to go everywhere and do it all!!! I defeated Margit on my 6th try I think, with the sorcerer help, I don't care ahah. After that, I think I spent an amount of 6?? hours exploring stormveil!? The Root boss was a pain in the ass, but after a while I did it, with all the exploring got my self with level 50 to go to godrick, so was a bit shocked having defeated him at my first try. Thank bloodhound and my magic staff <3 Also nepheli , great helper.

I know I read a lot about "ah you have to go to the bosses by yourself bla bla" I don't care honestly, its in the game I can use it, I'm enjoying it a lot, and I love using spells, and ashes of war, and summons and everything I find.

So I think im doing this all in the wrong order, lol, but I'm loving it so much, it's such a fun game. Sometimes I die with the dumbest fights, sometimes I do such cool stuff I can't even explain how. Its also such a strange and exhilarating feeling when you defeat a boss, or when you "clean" a place fast. I have not played anything else except Elden ring, I go to work I come home I play even if its 30 minutes.

I hope I get better, I think I am honestly, comparing myself with my first hour in this game im a lot better! I can dodge now at the right time AHAH! Im still a bit impulsive so my patience to wait to read the attacks lacks a bit.. But oh well, learning with my mistakes.

I think im gonna take a lifetime to end this game, but im loving every second of it. Its so good, I wanna do it again. Until my next review! :b

So, I loaded up Elden Ring for the first time in well over a year last night, and think I might need to re-tackle this game.

I've never been good at Soulslikes, but Elden Ring was the first game to get me into them at all, and while I may not exactly seek them out now, I also won't shy away from them like I used to.

Has anyone else had that experience with a game, where you basically avoided a whole genre of games, then decided to give it a chance after having a positive experience with an exemplar of the genre?

I am clocking now at 100 hours, and from the 70 hour mark this game already felt like a chore... I mean, Leyndell was cool and some boss battles are ok, I guess, but ugh... Why is this game so freaking long? why is Malenia such an unfair, bullshit fight? why is it always mushroom?

Take me back to Yharnam, man...

Well, down goes Malenia. Killed thanks to the grace of the RNG so that she only did her waterfowl dance once and against my Ash and spamming attack to stagger her and do as much damage as fast as possible so she didn't get the change to do it again.

That move really ruins the fight. The rest of her moveset is fun and it was interesting to try to master it, but that single move made it all filler. The most viable strategy wasn't to master the patterns to avoid getting hit, it was just to hit as fast as I could, stunlock her if possible, try to cheese her with the Freezing Pot if I could and pray to the RNG gods.

Got to Malenia. Such a fucking difficulty spike. I noticed that she heals with every hit. An interesting modification to combat. Now not getting git it much more important than tanking damage and ashes are a liability because they are essentially free heals for her.

I was enjoying the fight. Learning the patterns. Maybe this could be the Isshi fight that Elder Ring was missing...

Until she started with that hullshit spinning move. What an astonishing way of running a good fight. Now it doesn't matter how well I'm doing or how well I understand her attacks. At any random moment she can just say "fuck you, you lose" and start a virtually unavoidable barrage of attacks that will kill me almost 100% of the time.

Well, the final bosses were pretty disappointing. First an asshole with really annoying AoE attacks that hit you even if you dodge so most of the time is spent holding back waiting around for openings.

The beast was relatively easy; most attacks are well telegraphed so I barely got hit except for some weird AoE that took me a while to understand and a lot of attacks that I simply couldn't see because I was too close to it. But the fucker would just move away halfway across the map before you could get more than 3 hits, so the fight got long, repetitive and kind of boring. It was pretty, though. I particularly liked how it lighted up on every hit.