Elden Ring: YOU DIED on a horse

I never had a PS3 so it was interesting to come to the Demon's Souls remake after playing all the other games. Some of the levels, one bonfire and all, seem monstrously punishing compared to later stuff, but the bosses don't really have any capacity to surprise when you've been through all the more developed, multi-stage/gimmicky ones from later games

I beat most of them in one try so far

Didn't get a network test code :(

Tons of info & videos out there today from people who have early access. I'm trying to avoid spoilers for the most part, except for stuff about the mechanics.

Standing poise (instead of Dark Souls 3-style hyperarmor) = in (not sure how I feel about this)
Powerstancing (ie you can equip two weapons of the same type and get a different dual-wielding moveset) = in
Mixing your own combo potions that can make you explode = sure why not
Solo hosts can't be invaded unless they use a few items = ok, fine
Invaders get a compass to see what direction the host is = sick
Invaders also get an item to quickly vanish from the host's world and reappear nearby = oh my god

It really does seem like a blend of all their games plus a bunch of new stuff, can't wait.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzFR5HsPcng

all sounds cool. I have no problem with spoilers, because not only will I forget by the time I get it, I can't play any of these games without walkthrough help anyway lol.

i have the same problem/gift with forgetting everything! really comes in handy on very rare occasions

Just finished that video and have some thoughts. One, I've never played Dark Souls II because I've ... well, I guess I just skipped it, but I've heard mixed things (and there are essentially two versions of it, for that matter). But it is interesting that some of its elements have made their way to other games, despite its reputation as a disappointment. For example, as I understand it your health can be halved in DS2, and a similar mechanic was brought into Sekiro. And according to this video, power stances from DS2 have made their way to this one, too. Second, I've never used magic in any of these games, because choosing magic is like choosing an entirely different, novel way to play the game, and if you're only going to play it once I'm not sure magic is the way to do it. But maybe it is in this game, because magic looks super cool. Third, I really hope this plays well on PS4 (and other last generation systems), but I have a bad feeling between it being open world and generally newer than the past several From games it might really benefit from the speed and power of newer systems. That's one advantage of (as this video points out) From never being on the tech vanguard, because it means the games generally don't *need* next gen tech to run. (I know Demon's Souls is PS5 exclusive, but those that have played it, do you think it could run on a PS4?)

Anyway, I can already tell there are going to be a lot of funny videos generated by this game.

Oh, also, looks like you don't take fall damage when you jump, which would have been a very perverse thing for From to do, so I'm glad they didn't do it! Or at least, maybe there are height restrictions/allowances? And I like how there is environmental damage that can be done by at least bosses, which I know was in "Sekiro," though I can't recall if it was introduced there.

Demon's Souls is quite a tech showcase, it wouldn't have been able to run at that framerate on ps4, and some of the lighting/particle effects look like they would have been a big stretch too

I like Dark Souls 2 to some degree, some dispiritingly shit world design like the infamous Earthen Peak Elevator Jaunt travesty aside. It's like a difficult 3rd album that isn't among the classics but fits a certain mood when you happen to want it. I found the DLC far too much of a grim slog though

Elden Ring looks unreasonably good, can't wait

This game looks fun, and by early accounts the open world design is supposed to be good, but I can't help but wonder whether the openness actually adds much to the Souls formula. The main draw of the world design in DS1 (admittedly the only one of these I've played) was for me, its labyrinthine density. Eldenringland just looks kinda vast and drab to me.

i was moderately interested in this game, but after watching some of those videos posted above i am now EAGERLY ANTICIPATING. my only problem is i don't have a system for it, and i was leaning toward getting a steam deck rather than a ps5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9DWTt37khU

Fwiw, both videos note the difficulty of the first mandatory boss.

i showed the game a friend of mine who really likes dark souls, and he seemed to be a bit disappointed at first. i think he was thinking of it as a souls-like game, which, it is in some ways of course, very much so. but just being open world and adding jumping completely changes it. it reminds me of GTAIII or breath of the wild in terms of how those games were a departure from the games they built on

Souls-like.

And something else I was thinking about, given From's propensity for hidden walls/loot/enemies/NPCs/entire levels and/or alternate endgames, I wonder what that portends for an open world game? Gonna be a lot of OCD dudes slashing at every bush, rock or piece of foliage, looking for secret stuff, a la the first Zelda.

To be honest the open world part isn't particularly compelling to me. I do like the idea of all the new handcrafted zones that are the equivalent of large Dark souls areas, and a whole bunch of new build options and mechanics (and invasions, of course).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEypd23I0pQ

here's footage of the PS4 version - it seems like it runs without any serious issues or significant visual downgrades. i got into the network test on PS4 so i'll see how it is in a few hours from now.

i'm not at all concerned about the open world, all the footage of the network test has made it very clear that it's avoiding all the common open world pitfalls (repetitive content, big for the sake of being big, etc.) & is very dense with unique content. there are at least 10 bosses in the network test area alone (which is estimated to be around 1/12 of the full game's map). it's a big change, sure, but i don't think anywhere near as radical a shift as say GTA3 or BOTW were - the core gameplay is still very much the same despite the change in environmental scale.

For example, as I understand it your health can be halved in DS2, and a similar mechanic was brought into Sekiro.

DS2's max health decreasing on death (in increments down to a min of 50%) was more of an iteration on Demon's Souls' mechanic where you lost half your max health when you were in 'soul form' opposed to 'human form', which happened upon dying while human. in both cases, the game was generally balanced around the halved max health, with more than that being a bonus, but it was still kinda presented as a punishment. i think both were intended to give the player another incentive to go into human form, which enabled being invaded as well as summoning other players as well as removing the max health penalty. DS3 improved upon this by having embers, which worked the same way in enabling multiplayer, provide a bonus to your max health instead.

there wasn't any sort of max health restriction upon death mechanic in Sekiro though, and there doesn't seem to be in Elden Ring either.

DS2 is one of the weaker souls games but it's still worth playing. the issues with it are largely that the encounter design isn't quite as tight, the world design is clumsier & it rarely reaches the same sorts of high-point boss fights as the best of the series. i'd still put it above Demon's Souls at least.

i may be a minority opinion here, but i don't worry at all about whether something can run well enough on a certain machine. i can count the number of times i have been bothered by the framerate/slowdown of a game on one hand. i think part of it is that i came to gaming age playing games like LIFE FORCE. the slowdown was part of the game. the bug became the feature. aiming for this perfect-smooth framerate ideal is understandable but also kind of disappointing. it's just different, i guess

blighttown was pretty miserable at times in the original console versions of ds1 due to all the slowdown. it's certainly something to be concerned about & can make experiences much worse. with cross-gen games like this, it does happen sometimes that the last-gen versions are significantly inferior due to cutting corners trying to get the game to run on hardware they weren't focusing on, but that thankfully doesn't seem to be the case here at all.

IDK I think having a smooth frame rate is critical for a game like this where you have to time movements precisely. And while 60 is nice, 30 is perfectly good as long as it stays consistent. I played DS1 on Switch and it runs great!

As a relatively recent returner to games, I've learned my lesson the hard way. When I got "Doom" for the Switch it kinda ran like shit, even after a few updates. The slowdowns definitely affected game play in such a fast paced game, and even things like jumping were impacted. Like, you would run at a couple of spots (even with no enemies) and suddenly things would slow down, right before you pressed jump, and you would fall to your death. But tbf, "Doom" is almost uniquely busy and fast paced, and yeah, I can't think of another game off the top of my head with issues like that.

That said, I sort of suspect at least some of my problems with "Sekiro" were related to the frame rate. Usually I don't notice/care, but that game was all about timing, and while it could have been me (I mean, for sure it was me), it's also possible it was just that much trickier for me at 30fps than it would have been at 60.

there wasn't any sort of max health restriction upon death mechanic in Sekiro though

Oh, I just meant the mechanic that makes you lose half your souls or whatever. And gives everybody dragonrot. There's a cost of dying, which I found irritating since these games are built around dying over and over again. DS1 and DS3 don't have that cost, and Bloodborne gives you a shot to get some echoes back, too.

I never minded slow downs either, it's like slo mo at a dramatic moment.

Glad the PS4 version runs well, I never cared about graphics but had to admit that 60fps is really nice after playing the DS1 remaster and now DS3 on PS5. But I played all of the other games at 30fps for hundreds of hours and had a great time, so it's definitely not essential.

very positive impressions

https://kotaku.com/elden-ring-may-just-reinvent-the-open-world-genre-1848093261

I look forward to suddenly earning souls from some NPC that dies fighting enemies on the other side of the map.

I keep wondering if I should give the other From games a shot? I just got incredibly fed up with BB but maybe having a shield would make me feel better? (Probably not.)

On the one hand having experience in one of these games helps with all of them since they have some basics in common, but on the other hand, ER looks to be the most user-friendly of them all (from little things like the menus and upgrade systems, to how the combat system seems to align with what you see onscreen in a more intuitive way, rather than having to look up online how combos/poise/parries/etc work...that's mostly for pvp though).

Generally speaking though Dark Souls 1 and 2 are slower paced, while the combat in Bloodborne is faster (and DS3 is somewhere in-between).

Shields in these games are mostly there to taunt you and weigh you down.

i have played defense heavy builds to some advantage in these games on occasion; it's a preferred method. it makes me shit at pvp tho!

I haven't used a shield in DS3 since my first playthrough, but I might use one for ER! For one thing, there's a shield weapon art (or "ash of war" I guess) that acts as both a normal parry AND can parry spells (and turn them into little magic swords you send back):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BBLmt_DI50

In the pvp world, there's been a lot of talk of the big changes from Dark Souls 3, particularly:

-No guaranteed combos, ie hitting someone once doesn't necessarily mean you can hit them again if they decide to roll out of it. In DS3, most small and medium weapons had a guaranteed 2-hit combo on normal attacks, with a shorter stun window after that so the other person could get away.

-Backstabs are de-emphasized, and no one's sure if they're "working as intended" or not. Basically the backstab doesn't work if the other person isn't perfectly aligned with your character, or possibly if they're in any kind of animation. In DS3, it would work as long as the other person wasn't moving away from you, meaning that you could sneakily backstab someone if they were in a long animation (like after swinging a large weapon, or casting a healing spell). I enjoyed that system, but it makes sense that From is trying to smooth over elements that looked or felt weird to anyone not super versed in the mechanics.

I'm all for the changes if they make the pvp more intuitive and appealing to people. Although I hope there are some good unparryable attacks to use when someone keeps throwing out parries, since that still seems strong, and in DS3 you could run around behind them, use a kick, etc.

This looks really good. I mean, it's very Soulsy and sometimes these things can feel like Scategories. Just replace bonfire with lamp; souls with blood echoes etc...
But I'm down with this. It looks a lot more open and less fiendishly claustro than Bloodborne. I also like how you can actually jump. There also seem to be a few more NPCs about the place, so it's got more of a Witchery vibe to it. Yeah looking forward to it

This is gonna own me isn't it.

There has been much Oroboro watching in our household this past month

just bought the lil baby xbox series s in a chip-shortage panic, just in case they disappear again before this comes out

I also got the lil' baby Xbox, the first Microsoft console I've ever had! Personally, I think it's great as an affordable, stand-alone Game Pass machine

are they readily available?

though frankly i don't think i can hang with that joystick

got one at a gamestop on myrtle ave, looked like there were tons

https://kotaku.com/the-elden-ring-community-is-now-arguing-over-horse-crot-1848315650

They should split the difference between Dark Souls and Red Dead Redemption and make horse genitalia prominent, dynamic and a stat. Because you know there would be hundreds of level one players who will put every single soul into horse dick.

Counterpoint, you should have a separate character creation menu for your horse, complete with gender and appearance sliders

Why not both! Customizable horse would be next level From. Hell, you should be able to *play* as a horse, that would be rad.

If they did have horse dick, what stat would it scale with

Luck

girth

all horse dicks aside, i am really fucking hyped to play this game

I'm medium hyped! I literally beat Gael for the first time today yay

I cannot wait. I may have said this but the weekend it comes out I'm going to be in Florida playing a gig and visiting my folks, and it's going to be tough avoiding spoilers!

Josh is always worried about the horse parts

I enjoyed the new trailer very much. It told me nothing other than... maybe Nepheli Loux has some link to the DLC? Big if true!

Been up the last two nights till stupid o'clock trying to get my current playthrough ready for the DLC. Ugh, much as I love this game, I don't miss my addiction to it.

Great to go back and refamiliarise myself with certain areas I don't already know like the back of my hand. Also, as this is a "no-farming" playthrough, I'm having to think harder about the order I tackle it in. Still use mimic tear where I can though.

Also, now I'm pretty familiar with the lore and how to "read" Elden Ring the correct way, it's very rewarding. I'm trying to do the NPC quests "correctly" - without a guide this is almost impossible, but I've got a pretty good handle on who to speak to and when these days, and I'm even finding some fun dialogue I hadn't heard before: Jarbairn talking in his sleep about how lovely and soft Diallos's hands are made me laugh.

Shaded Castle was never my favourite area (poison swamps, royal revanants), but fighting Elemer of the Briar was a blast. In my initial playhthrough I came to him quite late-game but he's a tough dude if you're only about Level 90.

Had a good old poke around Dominula Village too. A strange area that's more about vibe than difficulty. Bit strange that it's flanked on either side by similar-looking mini villages though - not sure about that decision really.

Last night I also did the majority of Volcano Manor. It's such a good legacy dungeon, and like all the best ones in this game I still get a bit lost and confused even though I've played it through a lot of times - especially the last part after Temple of Eiglay. It's much bigger than it is in my head.

I need some sleep

Ha I saw you were online when I was playing. I saw that all the big Souls youtube people dropped their 'I got to play the DLC for 3 hours' videos, do not want to see those. Although I did strategically click on one just for the new weapon classes, which sound extremely fun. Lots of throwing weapons that are non-consumable!

I took a peek at Vaati's one and he is known for getting straight to the matter with no intro, so I immediately switched it off. I am so excited for the DLC.

Also, I've been dipping my toes into multiplayer - something I never really fucked with before, mostly because I rarely seemed to match with anyone. But I've been putting down my sign for co-op a few times and if anything it's a neat way to experience these areas in a new way while earning some extra runes.

Might even try some pvp at some point.

I'm still confused about all these different multiplayer options though: What's the difference between half of them? Does it make a difference if I'm a recusant or a bloody finger? What are all these things?

Recusant & bloody finger are the same thing, no differences once you get it, just different quest paths. The other ones are basically the difference between putting your co-op sign down in a specific place vs sending it to a summoning pool (either nearby or faraway).

There's also the duelist sign - everyone used to have duels outside of the Raya Lucaria main gate, but I think that stopped after they introduced the arenas (although I don't know how active those are right now either?). If you try pvp I definitely recommend a lot of duels before invasions, which can be very frustrating in ER compared to the other games. Invasions require a lot of caution and a lack of mercy because everyone is capable of high damage weapon arts /spells/status effects, so they can end very quickly. In Dark Souls 3 there was a lot more room for playing around and silly hijinx imo.

Man if you don't get to fight Lady Tannith Snakegod in this DLC then it's no star

Haha. I killed her in Rykard's arena in my last playthrough so that I could fight her knight.

Seriously though, I'm hoping there are a few harkbacks and loose ends tied up in this thing beyond "here's some other bullshit and a bunch of new charcaters that are only tangentially related to the rest of the story".
Like, Rykard strongly hints that he will be back after you kill him, and the fact this major (but optional) sidestory doesn't have its own ending always felt sus to me

I feel you, but I'm wondering if they won't do anything that could conflict with the main game (ie you might not have encountered Rykard yet when you play the dlc)? Or maybe Final Form Rykard would make sense regardless of whether or not you killed him in the base game.

Very true. It's hard enough getting the npc quests to work properly

I've made it to the Mountaintops, which heralds the start of the part of the game I'm least interested in.

That said, one of the reasons I rushed through Leyndell is because I've come to realise my current quest this run-through is NOT to become Elden Lord.
It's to track down and kill Juno Hoslow. Not because I want to progress Diallos's quest. Not even because I want his whip. But because I want to finish all the Recusant quests before fighting Rykard and getting that sweet Blasphemous Blade.

It's interesting that you have to wait till you're well into the Mountaintops before you can finish that whole Recusant questline. My guess is that most people will just end up fighting Rykard before then.

Leyndell continues to confuse me, layout-wise. Even on my fourth playthrough, I don't feel like I truly understand the map of the city at all. There are so many side-streets, so many crossroads and distractions. Plus the enemies are SUPER TOUGH, so in having to fight them, I'm constantly being disoriented about where I am going. I can't even find the area with the well that takes you to the Shunning Grounds. It's HUGE even when compared to the other legacy dungeons in this game.

On my last playthrough Leyndell was the place that really stuck out as being just as labyrinthine the second time around. It took me forever to figure out the sewers, and I still have the sense that I missed things.

At a friend's 44th birthday party last night he asked if I could drop him the Magic Scorpion talisman, but I've never ever done Seluvis' quest properly.

Ah yeah I did that one on this playthrough (I'm trying to do all the quests "properly"). It's pretty convoluted

I did loads of Elden Ringing last night: Explored the first area of Mountaintops, fought Juno Hoslow, completed Diallos's quest in Jarburg, fought and killed Rykard, finished Tannith's quest, watched Patches expire(?!?!)

Thoguh it would be fun to livestream it from PS5, although wouldn't expect anyone to watch all this. If you do, apologies for the odd bit of seasonal allergy-related sniffling. After I stopped broadcasting I managed to get all the way to Mohg, but he kicked my arse.

I'd love to know how to edit videos down in YouTube but for some reason whenever I follow tutorials, my UI is different to the one I'm being shown.
Also, people were livechatting me during the broadcast but I couldn't see the comments - they were flashing up in the corner of my screen but I couldn't see them on my phone for some reason. This morning I logged into YouTube on my computer and I could see them there, but it was a bit annoying. Why is YouTube such a fiddle?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5It1WHaD3o

Beat Mohg after a fair bit of difficulty. Then I figured I'd start playing through to the Haligtree rather than re-do the Mountaintops/CFA again, since that's an area I've only played through once.

I'm a pretty big fan of Castle Sol on a ludic level. It's relatively bereft of enemies, but the ones you do fight are tough as nails, and some are partly invisible so you have to be on guard for the whole thing. On a lore level it's a little confusing though. My understanding is that the Lands Between don't have a celestial Sun, and most of the light comes from the Erdtree. But here's a faction who use the Sun as their banner symbol, and there's evidence that Miquella came here intending to cause an eclipse - but why and how, I don't know.

Once I got the secret medallion and took the Grand Lift Of Rold to the Consecrated Snowfields, I noticed a severe difficulty spike. Depending on your level, you can easily get one-shot by those Albinauric archers in the Snowfields. I also had tremendous difficulty fighting the Sanguine Noble that invades you when you get to the transporter that takes you to Mohgwyn Palace. Interesting that they place this so late into the game, whereas I could imagine the vast number of players take Varre's shortcut from Liurnia.

There's more to Consecrated Snowfields than first meets the eye - for those who plough through it due to the empty-looking whiteness of the area, it's worth poking around its peripheries. There are some cool things going on there you might have missed.

I, however, was keen to get to the Haligtree so I went to Ordina Liturgical Town. Man, I hate this area. I also hate Sellia for similar reasons. Zelda-style gamey puzzles while trying to avoid very tough enemies who can appear out of nowhere and one-shot you. Also my Faith build doesn't have that much in the way of ranged weapons.
The trick to this one turns out to be the use of the talismans that cover your sound and make you partly invisible. Carrying the Sentry Torch also means you should be able to spot the Black Knife Assasins, who can still find you and attack you if you're not careful. Thankfully they do not respawn if you get them first.
As for the archers on this level, it's a pain in the arse. Even with a good ranged weapon, their own range and ability to fire multiple arrows at a time can do serious damage to you. I've never enjoyed this place.

I'm now in the parkour-y section of the Haligtree. It's alright - the enemies aren't super tough, but it's easy to get lost in the network of branches, and when those marshmallow guys start trumpeting bubbles from on high, it's very off-putting.

I love the haligtree. Such a cool design. The whole thing including the legacy dungeon part.

I liked the Haligtree more on my recent playthrough when I thought of the upper section as one of those Sonic the Hedgehog bonus levels, with running past everything as the intended strat.

The Haligtree never posed a problem for me as a platforming area, but I found the bubble blowers extremely difficult to deal with. That trench run down the scarlet rot branch toward the trio of shitheads is nightmarish.

Elphail in comparison is prob my favourite single FromSoft area, perhaps tied with the entirety of 1-X in Demon's Souls and/or Undead Burg circuit in DS1

I'm running as an int/dex character in NG+2 currently (my only character, and the one I'll be using for the DLC), and attempted Ordina again dreading it. This time around, I retraced the steps to each candle and honestly I only really needed the Sentry Torch to off the black knife assassin for the first candle.

The other three I just needed to find the right path to, and for the last one, was able to block and then confront the archers enough to push them off the roof to get to the last candle. Only died twice in the process and it was much smoother. Didn't need to consult a guide.

For the Haligtree, which I have mostly cleared with the exception of Malenia (still need to beat her, took a break after like 20 attempts), I loved playing the first part as a magic user. Was able to mostly shoot down all the envoys and ants and get all the important items for once. Easily one of my favorite areas in the entire game - from the branches to the roots!

Malenia is such a pain though, she's extra challenging against a magic user I feel. Almost tempted to respec super bonk style (dual Great Stars, perhaps?) or back to my blood priest build of my first playthrough to off her.

If the DLC has at least one or two legacy dungeons on the level of the Haligtree or Farum Azula, it'll be legendary indeed.

this reminds me - didn’t i see an interview where they said they were tweaking the open world / legacy dungeon design approach? it wasn’t this one but this is something similar to what i saw. sounds like it will be v structured and maybe a bit less open.

“"Obviously it being exactly the same, but smaller, wouldn't quite cut it, so we wanted to approach from a sense of granularity, is the word we're using," he said. "How dense this map is, and the ratio of legacy dungeon to open field areas, and how they intertwine. This is something we wanted to explore anew in the DLC: In terms of recapturing that sense of scale but in a slightly different way with a slightly different granularity."”

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/hidetaka-miyazaki-erdtree-size-sense-of-discovery/