 So this is the longest I've gone without a video since I started making them and there's a good excuse for that I had a bunch of dental work done and like it was kind of hard to talk I still plan on doing a review of Witch Queen and I'm gonna talk about salt and sacrifice Which I believe is not nearly as good as the first game But after engaging with all of you about my Elden Ring video I wanted to give a few more examples of the things that annoyed me about the game And once I started I ended up replaying the whole game and then about half of an NG plus run and And sometime during that whole thing I started to understand why people's responses to Elden Ring Is more divisive than the previous Souls games And almost all boils down to the way the game is balanced And how easy it is to end up either over-leveled or under-leveled as you play When you combine that with massive player power creep And bosses designed around that power creep You get a game that can swing pretty wildly based on how you want to play And what kind of experience you look for in a Souls-like I'm gonna try to keep this short because the longer the videos are the less views they get And it feels like a massive fucking waste of my time to make a video for 300 people So just a real quick look at Elden Ring's odd balance And the dangerous power creep from has allowed to seep into the game After the logo It's a big game I get it that people seem to think that Elden Ring's massive size is an unambiguously good thing I disagree And it's not just that I generally prefer games in the 20 hour range Because I like variety in my hobby The size and length of Elden Ring has some significant effects on the gameplay In a way no previous title has My complaints with Elden Ring boil down to a few things One, there are way too many one or two hit kills from bosses Two, there were far too many enemies with seemingly endless attack chains And three, too many bosses have punished windows that are way too short to actually feel fun Let's start with the first one because many commenters on my last video seem to think my Complaints about the game would be entirely solved by pumping a stupid amount of points Into vigor After a second playthrough, putting some extra points into vigor, the amount of one hit kills Does go down But it does not at all solve my issues with bosses like Malinia, Radagon, and others I'm not a big fan of open world games in general Elden Ring is one of the best open world games I've played because I love souls like combat But it's that good despite being an open world game Not because of it for me After finishing Elden Ring, I went back to replace Sekiro and Bloodborne And in my opinion, those games are vastly superior to Elden Ring And just about every way, aside from how long they are I am not the kind of guy who likes to aimlessly wander a map Hell, that's why I like Souls games as much as I do They're tight and focused You have a clear path that's carefully designed The game presents carefully balanced challenges to you And you overcome those challenges I have never farmed levels in a Souls game And I never found myself ever having to come back to something later The entire core of my person is simply not wired to do that The first time I saw that Black Knight in Undead Burg I fought that fucking thing until I killed it That's the kind of person I am I'm stubborn My first playthrough of Elden Ring I fought the Tree Sentinel at level 1 And banged my head against him until he died Every attack killed me And it was frustrating But I did it And I knew that that was this game's version of the Black Knight in Undead Burg Or the Executioner at the beginning of Bloodborne A one time challenge for weirdos like me Then I went further and came across the Crucible Knight Who also one hit killed me with almost every attack Has an extremely unfair heal punish that early in the game And an extremely unintuitive tail swipe That it can do twice in a row killing you with either one That's when I started to get pissed off Then I go to Storm Vale Probably at about level 15 or so And that's where an issue that's all through Elden Ring Really became apparent Storm Vale at level 15 is extremely annoying But almost nothing one hit kills you Even at such a low level and with only a plus 2 weapon Which is what I had The Overpower Knight killed me a few times But most of the stuff felt reasonable And I made it through with nothing about it Making me think I was insanely under leveled Or that I needed to go farm for souls And then I had Margaret one hit kill me With most of his regular attacks The fact is if you followed the Sights of Grace And just make your way to Storm Vale You will arrive there under leveled And if you stick it out like me You may stay under leveled for a good long spell thereafter And Elden Ring has a real problem With bosses doing massively more damage Than the mobs within the level If you go to Storm Vale at level like 35 Your introduction to the game would be much different than mine My second playthrough I cleared the entire zone Before heading to the Legacy Dungeon And I face rolled the whole thing I died once to the night with the ridiculous AoE wind attack And then I blew Margaret up on the first try with ease Souls games have always been extremely carefully balanced But Elden Ring trades that for an open world And as the result the player has no real way to know If they're playing the game at the difficulty the developer's intended You can be certain that when you fight the Shadows of Iornam and Bloodborne You will be about the level the developer's intended This is simply not the case with Elden Ring And as such the difficulty of the encounters Can vary wildly This stays like this for the entire game Malinia is still totally bullshit at level 150 But at level 75 she is just terrible Nearly every attack takes 90% of your health And a bunch of them one hit kill you This would be far less of a problem If the level itself communicated this to you If the regular mobs did massive damage to the player You would know you were underleveled But that's not the case Because more than any other game in the franchise Bosses do far more damage than enemies in their levels So I could make it all the way up to Malinia at level 75 With no problem Only to find that everything she does kills me In Dark Souls If the Silver Knights in Anor Londo don't kill you in two hits You can be sure that Ornstein and Smog are also not going to But that's not the case in Elden Ring You can roll through the level Only to find the boss kills you in one hit with a regular attack Either the bosses are overtuned Or the enemies around them are undertuned Either way It ends up with the player having no way to be certain They are around the level the devs intended for normal play By the end of the game Being underleveled really piles up So that almost every boss you fight is just a slog of one hit kills Again, the issue here is the game does a bad job Of telling you when you were underleveled Because if you have enough health to deal with regular mobs You have every reason to think you'll have enough to deal with bosses That's how these games have always worked Until now My second playthrough I cleared far more of the map And ended up around the level that Fextralife here Says I should be for the areas And this helped with the frustration of one hit kill attacks But there's another issue with Elden Ring That isn't addressed by leveling Enemy design has to overcome overpowered players Power creep in a souls game I cannot tell you how many reddit threads I've seen with people complaining about a boss moveset Only to have a bunch of people in the comments be like It was easy I used mimic tier plus 10 Pour for a stomp And then swish the rivers of blood To kill them in two minutes without getting hit Elden Ring has several enemies and bosses With movesets That do not feel good to fight with the basic Dark Souls kit Because magic, ashes of war, and spirit summons Are so insanely overpowered The only way to make bosses and enemies even a small danger Was to buff movesets to a ridiculous degree If you like how that plays That's perfectly reasonable I'm not going to argue with you and say it's bad It's not bad It's different I fully understand that we are moving into a subjective territory About what different people like in their Dark Souls You might like peanut butter and chocolate But I am a very simple man I don't put condiments on food Seriously, I don't Because I like the taste of the food itself And sauce just fucks everything up Here's why I do not like power creep in Elden Ring And why I think the previous games Are immeasurably better gameplay experiences I do not summon in souls games Not because I'm trying to prove how big my dick is But because I don't like what it does to the combat system The very best souls bosses end up feeling like a dance You dodge for a little bit And then you attack for a little bit Usually it feels like it's about a 50-50 split Every three times you dodge you get a few attacks in You and the boss take turns Sekiro is a little different Because in that game Even when you're playing defense You are on offense Because parrying is about as effective as attacking But as soon as you summon another player in The combat utterly breaks down You're not in a dance anymore You're in a mosh pit You aren't really carefully dancing with the boss Learning his attacks And getting it down so perfectly That it looks amazing even to watch Instead you take turns beating on the boss' back You dodge a couple of times when he turns around And then you go back to beating him in the back This can be fun sometimes Hell, I love getting summoned I do it all the time But it's not what the combat system does best It's not what makes me love these games The very simple and limited combat systems and souls Work so well Because you're simply not that powerful In Dark Souls or Bloodborne You have two attacks A dodge and a parry The boss and the player feel like they're on an even playing field But Elden Ring gives players ridiculously powerful toolkits The Ashes of War are actually just the weapon arts From Dark Souls 3 But in Dark Souls 3 They were entirely niche little attacks That had very limited uses There were some very powerful ones on boss weapons But these caused massive weapon durability damage So you couldn't use them all that much Before your weapon literally broke And needed to be repaired In Elden Ring The weapon arts are insanely powerful And can be basically spammed They're so powerful You can use them to trivialize almost everything The same is true for Magic Which I used a little bit in Elden Ring The Rock Slaying Spell and Glenstone Pebble Are insanely powerful I'm not sure why they thought it was a good idea to have this stuff I can only assume they needed excellent rewards To populate the world with And this is what they settled on But once you add this stuff in the game You're left with massive power creep That can only be overcome By pushing boss damage and move sets Right to the edge of unfun The Royal Revenant Enemy Is an excellent example of this It constantly spews damage and poison pools He lunges at you from 20 feet away He never stops attacking And he has a combo that's like 10 hits long Fighting him normally is frustrating and annoying He's balanced for a game With things like Rivers of Blood Or Moon Vale But what happens when you use that stuff? It's boring and easy You spam magic at him for a few seconds And he dies He is annoying to fight normal And much too easy to fight If you use the tools the game gives you In other words I don't like the balance But Elden Ring is supposed to be a Souls game So there has to be bosses and enemies that are really hard So how do you make enemies that can kill the player Even if they use Moon Vale? Let me introduce you to one of the most infuriating enemies I have ever encountered in a video game I got to Castle Soul underleveled my first playthrough And this place fucking tilted me with its bullshit If you go there at the correct level It's manageable But it's still extremely frustrating Because the only way to challenge a player carrying an enemy Delete button in both hands Is to make the enemies positively toxic The Banished Knights here Have the same frustrating roll catching AoE attacks The same ridiculous poise The same long combos and high damage And they also teleport But even these OP dudes Are still obliterated by your OP toolkit Until you get to the dual wielding one over here This guy is the perfect example Of how Power Creek makes the game frustrating Fighting this thing is awful He teleports all over the place He literally has combos so long You will run out of stamina dodging them You can't block this stuff as the AoE still damages you The only reason this guy is so broken Is that they had to have something that can kill the player But the player is far too powerful This is why bosses are so ridiculously mobile This is why Godfrey requires you to dodge 8 times For every single hit you get on him This is why Radegon can literally spam AoE attacks And instantly teleport into an attack with almost no wind up I tried to play this game solo And not using the ashes of war as much as I could But by the end of the game Everything is so ridiculous To overcome the outrageous power they gave to the player That it just didn't feel worth it So I used the summons and moon veil And then what happens? It's not hard enough then Godfrey is bullshit With constant attacks Three different one hit kill grabs And a million massive AoE attacks Fighting him straight up with a sword is insanely frustrating But then using the tools the game gives you Makes him a fucking joke that isn't at all rewarding That's why the game is not well balanced in my opinion It's too annoying and hard without the summons But not hard enough with the summons Giving the players free summons and overpowered weapons Means the boss and enemy design has to be annoying as shit To pose any challenge at all And then using the tools means nothing's hard enough Every boss would be improved by raising their health by a lot And lowering their damage by a lot I only ran out of Estis once In my 2 and a half playthroughs And that was to Elden Beast The fights aren't endurance tests anymore They're almost all DPS races You try to blow the boss up fast enough That he doesn't get to use his most frustrating attacks More than once or twice Malinia is all about winning Before she can do the waterfowl dance More than twice The entire fight depends on how often she does it If she doesn't do it in phase two You win If she does it three times in phase two You lose That's not interesting to me It's not like fighting Frida or Owlfather Owlfather is quite difficult to learn But every time you die You instantly know what happened And you'll die to almost all of his attacks Because the entire fight is a threat Malinia will only kill you with three moves The entire fight revolves around those three Instant kill attacks Godfrey is the same thing Elden Beast is the same thing I recently just went back to refight some Sekiro bosses And dying never leaves you wondering How you were supposed to deal with a move Owlfather is an insanely hard boss So is Isshin It requires you to perfectly respond to all of his moves And constantly keep pressure on It took me about seven tries to even get the feel for it again But every one of those tries got better Nothing he does leaves you confused about how to respond Then there's Radegon Who even after fighting him three times There are several attacks I do not understand how to dodge And a bunch of others that feel deliberately designed to trick you Fighting Owlfather or Isshin You will run out of healing while you learn the fight Because they don't have one hit kills And they're still extremely hard Elden Ring bosses never ever result in you running out of healing Because all the deaths come from making one mistake Or dying to an attack you don't even know how to dodge Elden Ring bosses do so much damage It's not a dance anymore It's a race While I think bosses attack far too often in Elden Ring There are examples of this done well The bell-bearing hunters are stupidly overpowered When you first meet them because the game is poorly balanced But the actual move set is very cool It's almost like the pursuer Watch this here Yes, you can only attack once per punish window But this still ends up feeling like a dance Because the attacks make sense And you spend as much time attacking as dodging His attacks are easy to understand They're not stupidly delayed And he only has one AOE Compare that to Radegon Where he has like 10 different AOE attacks Or Godfrey who just never fucking stops attacking These guys right here are actually pretty okay Once you get them down But they suffer from the same thing Constant attack chains This is fine in moderation I can enjoy fighting one of these guys once in a while I actually quite enjoyed the boss version of them But it's exhausting to fight five of them directly in a row Or three of them at once I have never been someone to run past enemies in Souls games Ever Even on runs back to the boss I have always killed every single enemy in my path Seriously, I have just never done it Elden Ring had me running past enemies fairly consistently Because move sets have gotten frustrating Finally, the difficulty in the second half of the game Is clearly balanced not around learning the game But around access to overpowered tools Enemy move sets and damage start to get absurd In the blood area on the way to Mog The bird things have a move set that's so confusing to deal with It has a move that I'm almost positive Is literally taken directly from the Sharks in the Bloodborne DLC Where they flop on the ground and just flop all over the place What the fuck is that? An attack I loathe in Bloodborne 2 by the way They attack erratically and leave almost no openings to attack back They jump in the air and spin your camera They actually end up hitting you behind his shield So you can't even block it The game very much devolves into just burning things down as fast as possible Because you get to a point where enemy move sets Don't make intuitive visual sense anymore Although these bird things are amazingly animated The art design is as amazing as ever It's awesome These things look great They are fucking horrible to fight Just awful There are still great fights in this game, of course The Jeregon Lord Placidable whatever his name is is a great fight I actually really like the Gargoyles When you are leveled enough to not be one hit killed by every attack But even there fighting two of them at once is stupid The gods can do is a fight that basically entirely depends on you Blowing him up as fast as possible Because their ridiculous movesets start overlapping and killing you So you kill one and then like kill the other and just camp the spawn That's the way it's supposed to be done Fighting two at once is awful Just awful All these issues boil down to the same thing The game isn't well balanced Because unlike the last games You can end up ridiculously under Or over leveled And as such The game isn't as perfectly tuned as the previous ones are And perhaps more important The player is massively overpowered And as a result The bosses and enemies in the late game Need to be positively obnoxious to make up for it In conclusion By the end of the game The bosses are so OP That fighting them solo without ashes of war Feels like shit But you are so OP That actually using that stuff makes the game too easy That's like the definition of being not well balanced Souls games are my very very favorite games ever I sincerely hope that this is the last open world one they make for a while I like Elden Ring People seem to act in the comments as if I was saying it was terrible It's not I liked it a lot It's very good But Elden Ring is no Sekiro And it's no Bloodborne It's just not well enough balanced to compare with those games Those games are basically perfect Elden Ring is not Alright Thanks for coming I'll see you next time Bye