I love when dunkey is so passionate about a game that he doesn't mention knack even once throughout the video

Or Gex/Balan Wonderland.

now *THAT'S* Dedication !

They couldn't afford donkey kong but he still played it four times over

no u

That's how you know it's a good game

I don’t think I’ve ever been more frustrated with a game ever in my life 10/10

What about Bloodborne?

@ALFRED STARK bloodborne is crazy but very few bosses have combos as long as most of the bosses in this game plus most of them have huge aoe’s that’ll one shot you both are great but bloodborne is a pretty decent amount easier and that’s coming from someone who considers blood borne their favorite game

@Cullen Pinney so Elden ring is like play Bloodborne in defiled chalices?

@ALFRED STARK yeah it’s probably on par with that for the most part defiled chalices are lunacy

Beeg/beeg

The health bar is a ruse. You have 3 hearts like in Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It's just that you're fighting an orbital space cannon powered by the disappointment of Christmas gifts you didn't get as a child.

underrated comment

I see where you're coming from, but it's still more like a 1 heart challenge. If it was three, you'd still be taking three hits to die most the time. This is I Wanna Be The Dark Souls.

actual facts

very well put descriptive words

This game is 3 hearts but most enemies to 2 damage and some bosses do 3.

The worst part of this game is that none of the bosses challenge you to a Space Jam-style basketball game.

Man when you fight Hoarah Loux, YOU ARE the basketball

I've been waiting for someone to say this since the game came out.

@Chambooey You win elden ring comment section for today

lol Hoarah Loux gunna dunk you man

@Chambooey which actually does happen to Michael Jordan in space jam

It's sad to think how many bosses would be infinitely improved if their damage wasn't so badly over-tuned. Getting your ass kicked around the arena by a tough boss can be heaps of fun, but getting nuked so fast you learn nothing about their attack patterns, then spending the next five minutes staring at loading screens and running back to the fog door is incredibly dull and frustrating.

Well said.

Yeah honestly one of the worst parts of dying for me was watching my character scream out in pain, the "You Died" text appearing, and having to look at a loading screen in silence for a whole minute just so that I could walk back to the boss to fight them again. I wouldn't mind failing so much if you could just quickly continue fighting the boss.

skill issue

wth is this whole minute loading screen stuff? I never had it

@Victor Prati That is called age. They are to young to have experienced real long loading screens.

The damage near endgame is indeed a problem. Leveling your vigor to softcap is supposed to give you more chances to recover from fucking up. It's not supposed to be a minimum requirement to prevent a single mistake from killing you. You shouldn't have to level your vigor to softcap to prevent the game from feeling like you're doing a SL1 challenge run. When I want that experience I'll choose it by keeping my vigor low. The fact that you can get 1-shot with 40+ vigor and 33%DR in NG is absurd, but merely one extreme of the issue. Pack leader mobs can 2-shot you with attacks that are as swift as an R1 from a straight sword. Mobs can turn a single hit into a guaranteed second hit that will 2-shot you. During my first playthough, I pumped my vigor from 27 to 40+ because I wanted some leeway. I was using dual daggers, favoring ripostes with the critical hit hp recovery talisman. I wanted that HP leeway so that when I took a hit from a trash mob, or got clipped by a swift boss attack, or missed a parry by a few frames, I wouldn't HAVE to top off to prevent one more mistake from killing me. If I could get a critical hit without fucking up again I could recover from the initial mistake. But near endgame that leeway disappeared. I stopped using the critical heal talisman because I could no longer use it safely. I stopped trying to learn parry timing because a single small mistake, a single misread of enemies with timing mixups, could easily kill me. Often you lose so much HP from a single mistake that a single flask can't even put you back to safety. It's not like this was a single boss my build was poor against. It's entire areas: bosses, mini-bosses, tough mobs, and even trash mobs included; Multiple areas even!

Welcome to the souls series, you can recieve your free snack pack after defeating godskin quartet

@Massakre8492nd Bish plz. I've played souls games since before they were a series.

@Deadgye and you are still not used to the bs?

@Massakre8492nd 'Getting used to the BS' is tolerating ass game design that you're forgetting you're paying actual money for, often hours worth of actual time for. It's worth thinking about, and not even with this specific game. I mean, you're right, after all. It is a souls game. Nobody was under the impression it'd be easy.

@The Institute it's not about tolerating it, it's about bracing yourself before it hits, this game it's vigor that is essential until it's not, bleed and lack of balance, you can expect that from a man with crippling poison swamp addiction. Overall brace for bs, You know it's there, nobody says it's good but that's the hand we're dealt

Rather than turn enemy damage down, I think the player needs to be able to increase their damage mitigation actively, more. Leveling up your stats should have a greater effect on it as you scale later into the game, where the damage starts to actually become a problem.

I think they shoulda pulled a DS2 and had every level increase your max hp while still having the vigor stat to really boost it when you wanted. Better defensive scaling coud also help this too

Stats and armor. I feel like there is very little reward for bulking up in heavy armor.

Yes, and it would be nice if it felt like armour actually mattered.

Defence is hard tied to char level regardless of stats

or increase the bosses health and decrease their damage. ds3 mightve taken it too far with midir, but that dragon was challenging as shit to overcome but not because of bs damage numbers

Only now that I finished the game for the first time (almost at the end of NG+ now), I realize that this review is 100% correct. An incredible game held back by poor balancing.

It sucks, bc it couldve been a masterpiece. The world, the graphics, the art design, the atmosphere, and the player's combat were all awesome. But the enemy scaling was so difficult and broken that youre too focused on not getting hit once to appreciate a lot of the little things. Oh yeah, and the endgame, starting once you reach the mountaintop, is straight up tedious, boring, and not fun.

@Billy Costigan it's crazy because even though the late game is unbalanced, it's still quite fun to me. which makes me wonder what could've been if they had balanced it correctly, i don't think i would've ever gone outside again

I don't even feel like it's a damage or health bar problem. Darkeater Midir has 2 shot potential and his healthbar made it a 15 minutes kill for me but was still super fun and rewarding, in Elden Ring most of the bosses abilities are not fun to play against. Like relentless super fast demolishing combos that you have no business in learning, with no tactic to be found except to randomly roll and pray. It does not make it worth it or fun to learn but encourages you to level up broken summons and weapons. The fights were either too easy or non rewarding bullshit. The only cool bosses i've encoutered so far (i've not done the couple of last areas in endgame yet) are the godskin apostle, elemer of the briar and that dragon at the end of Rannis questline. Margit was also quite cool to fight in the early game. But all the rest was done in 2 attempts roughly.

I don't buy it. The game gets way more fair and balanced if you use everything the game gives you. Each enemy and boss have different attacks and weaknesses. If you realize that your build needs to be dynamic (for each boss a different set of talismans, weapon grease, ashes), then it will get way more fair. When Dunkey streamed the game (after this video launched, so probably the 5th time he beat the game) he almost never looked into using this mechanics. He didn't even care about crafting, for example. So yeah, you can still beat it but of course it will be unbalanced: You are deliberately nerfing yourself by not using what the game provides. How would it not be difficult?

I love how he could say how good of a game it is but the moment he talks about how unbalanced it is you can already hear fromsoftware fans furiously typing

Okay where are they?

being a ginormous fromsoft fanboy i agree with him

@Ali Hasan Abdullah getting a lil serious for a joke comment

goggles789 taking a joke comment a little too serious I see

goggles789 calm down don’t get so upset over a comment

Finding the balance between genuine critical analysis and humour must be very difficult. But dunkey makes it look so effortless. He's been in the youtube game a long time and it shows. I just love it. Thank you dunkey.

Das ist die BESTE elden ring review

I feel like a major issue with a lot of bosses especially in the late game is the lack of a meaningful punish window. Think of Pontiff in DS3, dude was very fast and incredibly aggressive he had this one move that felt like a 15 hit combo, but if you were able to successfully dodge that combo you were able to get 3-4 hits in. You were rewarded for playing well. Elden Ring they just launch into another combo or hit you with an attack that’s so fast you barely have time to read it. Just seems like you don’t really get rewarded for playing well most of the time. Still love the game tho I just think they kinda fumbled there

I remember the final boss of Dark Souls 1 had that combo that if you had a gigantic health bar and good defense it MIGHT not kill you, but that was one combo he had, it was telegraphed, gave ample opportunity to heal after and he didn't do it all the time, but in Elden Ring it feels like most enemies have that combo but it does double the damage, still loving it, I just want to love it even more

In Elden Ring that combo is every bosses attack and it comes out incredibly quick so that even if you've spent hours learning that attack pattern they will just do another 0.1 seconds later. They got so scared about players being too good for elden ring they just made everything bullshit.

And it's not even like we can't bullshit back, by the time I reached the last couple bosses I was kind of burnt out so I tried out the rivers of blood katana, 1st try defeated every endgame boss including malenia with my mimic tear, the final boss did kill me once but it was mostly elden Beasts fault since I couldn't tell where his hit boxes were. It's not the only thing either, hoarfrost stomp, sword of Night and Flame, tons of magic, it's easy to break this game but its also way to easy for the game to break you

"Loving it, I just want to love it even more." Could have expressed how I feel about Elden Ring any better.

Nah you love ds1 combat coz you just want to exploit circle strafing till the boss dead strat and now they fix it entirely now it's bad lol

@sfseaf sefsfs Nah I love DS1 because the enemies were readable after a few attempts. Elden ring bosses do instant aoes that one shot you if you don't conform to a cheese build

Dunkey is so real, he beats the game 4 times and loves it but will still point out to you the biggest flaws with the game in the most entertaining way. The GOAT of game reviews.

Best part abt his reviews, tells it as it is

Actually i taught dunkey how to be good at these games so thankyou

You are nitpicking and biased I win bye bye

literally zero dislikes on this comment

I hate this bot

This game was a master piece when it came out, and it’s even better now. They balanced it regulary since and I have a blast replaying it now! Fromesoft is the new Rockstar games for me. The golden standard nothing less

Wholeheartedly agree with Dunkey here, the damage output of enemies is astronomically high. There are so many instances where you can go from full HP to dead in less than a second with you not being able to do anything about it that it just gets exhausting and once you do win, it's less of a satisfying "Hell yeah, got their ass" and more of an exasperated "Thank God that's finally done, I hope the reward is actually worth it". It's artificial difficulty, whether others will accept that or not. I feel I was truly beaten when I got out played by someone/something out-maneuvering, not when the game just says "lol you got grabbed and insta-killed/you didn't react in time to that auto kill combo that gives you 1 frame to react". This game is fun and I enjoy playing it, but the balancing stops existing at some point and it hurts the game.

Anyone who actually plays Elden Ring long enough to beat it has Severe OCD no exceptions. hell anyone who plays any fromsoft souls like titles has OCD if they can stick with it, it's a more reliable way to diagnose OCD than anything else we have. Also one of the things that makes having OCD at least worth something. I Say this as someone who has severe OCD as proven by the fact I play these games a lot.

@ZeeHero Never become a psychiatrist.

@BornFlunky 😂😂 I mean, what you said was funny and all. But he could technically correct his theory by simply educating himself. If he were to put forth all his effort, and apply diligence and determination to learning everything there is regarding psychology and psychiatry, he would have a very high chance of being a good psychiatrist. I know what you said was a passive-aggressive joke, but I’m just being technical. Idk why 😂

I’m only 2 main bosses away from beating this game, about 70 hours in and I think the biggest issue of damage isn’t the damage itself but stems from a very basic move set that is not sufficient to deal with bosses spamming attacks and combos for 2 million years until you get a damage window for 3 milliseconds but actually the boss can just sidestep your swing so you have to wait until the sun burns out to do any damage

the magma wyrm's charge attack is the same as the gaping dragon's from DS1, except that when the magma wyrm's charge ends it turns around & does it again so if the player juked the first one & closed to punish the boss they now get hit, whereas the gaping dragon finishes his charge, stands up & then turns around. just flatly not as well designed

​@Tabula Rosa I mean tbh the gaping dragon just stood there after the charge. I think it just stopping for a couple of seconds was too artificial as well

It does seem like that at first but with a lot of strafing strats you can do some creative punishes. Watch some no-hit runs and you will be surprised at the punishes they are taking. But I do agree that other Souls games had much more obvious punish opportunities.

The thing with Elden Ring is that it's balancing is purely handled by locational scaling. Each entity has a base HP and DMG values which you then slap an area scaling (plus NG+ area scaling, plus NG+ clear count scaling). There are a total of 21 different scaled zones at the game (29 if you count newly added unused ones probably for the DLC), from the Stranded Graveyard (which has actually no scaling at all), to the Haligtree Roots (which has a staggering 740% boost to enemy HP and almost 380% boost to enemy DMG) The world and enemies outscale your character massively, especially once you start reaching your soft- or hardcaps. Ultimately, it ends up creating a situation of pure artificial difficulty towards the later stages.

how do you know all these? Do you somehow able to extract the game's code?

@Budi Isnadi There's a handy piece of software called Yapped Rune Bear that allows you to explore the game's contents

I started this game a month ago and thought to myself "Surely it's not that hard right?" But it really feels like I'm being punished for using a melee character through the entire late game

Strength or Dex? At least they buffed the colossal weapons with 1/04, along with Incantations so Str/Faith is looking more viable for PVP, PvE is really matchup dependent since some mobs are just utter bullshit, but sometimes some extra salt is good for seasoning the well earned victory steak later on (btw I'm on first playthrough currently using Moonveil so you can disregard my trash opinion....I didn't know it was really good/broken in PvP though, I was playing blind and just thought it was cool....plus that Magma Wyrm boss was a royal asshole and when I beat him while I was like lvl 30 so I felt obligated to reward myself after my greatest victory)

@TheBfutgreg Dex build, i wanted to dual wield katanas so i got a nagakiba with bloodhound step and an uchigatana to make myself feel like an anime character The only issue is that unless bleed works I'm just slowly chipping away at massive health bars, and the fights with multiple enemies become tedious Honestly though, I'm probably just too impatient or lazy in these fights. When u fought malenia bleed was working great but I'd spent 5 minutes just running around baiting out waterfowl dance because there was a high chance I'd die if she did it up in my face

@EcksDee do you have bloodhounds fang curved greatsword? it does wonders on a Dex build

@T W i do! I even upgraded it and it's a reply cool weapon, but it just felt too slow for my taste. I've played claymore and zweihander and stuff before so i thought i would switch things up a little in this game

@EcksDee well let me know if you need any help I'm on Xbox. Endgame was completely ridiculous but I was able to beat it yesterday

My man knew he had to beat this game 4 and 1/2 times just to be able to say, "It's too hard." I love it.

@Marshall Higgins Bruh, you think out of this 4 and a half tries he didnt do the normal "knight with big sword" build? I finished this game 3 days ago using the General Rick (TM) characterset with the grafted blade greatsword, and it has been as equally painfull at the endgame as boring. Tank god for beef Endurance beacuse fatrolling will never lets you win. Ever.

@Cin game has a few too many multiple enemy boss fights for me to consider not cheesing.

@AchedSphinx bad multiple enemy boss fights*, multiple boss fights can be good. ER's aren't

@Sopadefideos yea I think they're designed specifically to use summons. Like double crucible knight etc. Batman players try to do it solo anyways even when it'll be unfair doing it solo. Godskin duo is a perfect example of a boss that was seocifically designed with spirit summons and multi-player in mind yet people hate it because they try to solo it

For me it's too hard and too easy at the same time. I think that's okay tho cos there's different ways that work best with different bosses and it makes the player think smart.

I think the prevalence of weapons like Rivers of Blood, Moonveil, Giant Crusher, etc has really psyched people out of using weapons that they like. I'm plowing through my second character exclusively using Serpent-Hunter (because it looks cool) and I'm having a blast. I do think the late game damage spike for enemies is really odd. My only explanation for it is that they balanced the enemy damage in accordance to late game optimized builds (like BleedArcane or MaxStrength). It would be cool if the enemies starting doing as much damage as you do to them, but that just isn't the case for a lot of players. That, in turn, leads to this weird dissonance. I think if the armors were to get any use beyond fashion and poise, they should be able to substantially mitigate certain enemy damage types. Don't like the dogs? Bam, anti-dog armor. Don't like the stupid hellfucker Perfumers? Boom, anti-perfume armor. At present, the armors are all pretty much cosmetic, beyond some random +3 to a stat or extra poise. I would like to see more put into that area of the game. Maybe Boc could do more than just cut off the cape of your armor and actually customize it to your needs? It would also be great if 40 vigor wasn't required to survive even one hit in late game. That really feels like some kind of oversight. Against Radagon, I had to put on Pearldrake +2, Haligtree +2, and Dragoncrest Shield talismans PLUS Lord's Divine Fortification for him to even feel like a normal boss. It was pretty ridiculous.

i really tried to use magic estoc like i did in DS1, but after trying moonviel there is just no way to switch back

I’ve never played a Souls game before, and I didn’t even have Elden ring on my radar months after it release. I bought the game after watching this video and it is AMAZING! Thank you for introducing this game to me!

Do you live under a rock?

Nice :) you should try dark souls 3, ds1 is really fucking good (every area is interlocked and interconnected on top of each other) but it gets kinda shitty in the second half. Also Sekiro is amazing as well, but it focuses more on parrying rather than rolling/dodging. Sekiro is probably my favorite fromsoft game just because its combat is so finely tuned and awesome

Dunkey's eloquence and passion for great games is what i live for

"This is an evil game made by an evil man." That should be on the box-art for whatever ultimate edition is released down the line. Love this game. 🥰🥰

I absolutely love the game, I’m a long time die-hard FromSoft fan, and I agree that the enemy damage is insane.

I love Elden ring but it's difficultly balancing is almost as bad as dark souls 2s

@Nerdo THN it's been co-directed by Miyzakazi and the director from DS2 and sadly I think his influence carried over some bad stuff from DS2.

My favorite part was watching the bosses do a 30 hit combo, dodging it perfectly then failing to get a counterhit because they landed too far away. Great game nonetheless

Maliketh moment

@WorKSimi fr

Lol u a legend

**rolls through attack** Alright, time for my roll counter attack **whiffs entirely** ;-;

Yeah the mobility is the biggest issue. Damage can be dodged, but mobility to jump away from return damage, and never-ending combos that leave tiny windows in which to do that return damage, are the main issues with lategame bosses.

Yeah Dunkey nailed what's probably my biggest issue with the game. The difficulty spikes are so bad sometimes it genuinely doesn't feel like you're improving. I remember feeling like I was somehow getting worse at the game going into the later areas but when I went back to the first area I was an unstoppable killing machine. I had actually improved a ton, but the game cranks enemy stats up so much in between locations that it felt like I was weaker than I had been when I first started! It's just not satisfying in the same way other fromsoft games I've played are, because unless you have the right builds that feeling of hard-earned progression is just... not there.

WEAK

@berisiq silence, anime pfp

@Wires Dawson funnily enough, fromsoftware rips off a lot of concepts from a manga called Berserk

I just beat this game for the first time after 120+ hours, and have since gone on to play and beat all three dark souls games (still working on dlcs). This game is a masterpiece with a serving of bad design mixed in that's too big to fully ignore but small enough to accept and not let it ruin the enjoyment of the game.

Dunkey I think you’re right about players being funneled into the same builds. Every streamer I see play this game uses a strength build, because bosses give very few windows to safely attack. So, the best strategy is to just wait for the long combo to end and then attack with a jump attack(the love that does the most damage with the least amount of recovery).

I just finished my second full play through as a tank build with a shield and colossal sword and so much poured into vigour, strength and endurance. I was surprised that I ended up being forced to resort to playing more like my first dual-katana wielding Dex build. I needed to dual-wield colossal swords to do reasonable damage and just avoid being hit completely because my shield didn't do anything.

If the soft cap for your stats were maybe like 10-20 levels higher (particularly vigor) I think you could stand a better chance against the late game difficulty spike. But it feels like the enemies all leveled higher than you were ever meant to be equal to.

Agreed. I think if the soft caps were even 10 levels higher, it would be just about perfect.

Cant believe Dunkey gave a spotlight to this small indie game even when they could afford 0 Donkey Kongs. He really is a nice guy

I heard he started a gofundme to raise bananas to buy a few Donkey Kongs for them

Donkey Kong is coming with the season 1 battlepass update. You unlock him by opening Rune Boxes

@MK Ultra 🤨

Yeah, but then he also does reviews for games that don't need one like Knack 2, why would you do a review on that if everyone already knows it's a *mastapiece*

2.3k likes already with 5 replies? Definitely botted

Dunkey's point about damage being too high is good, but he's also the only other person I've seen mention how limiting the upgrade system is. There is so much choice and variety in weapons, armor, talismans, spells, incantations, and arts of war but once you've picked up all the smithing stones of a certain level it's a huge pain to get more until you get their bell bearings, which come too late. This discourages you from trying out weapons and builds for fun. However when you are having some trouble and want to switch it up you can easily change spells, miracles and arts. This guides players to discover the broken buffs and arts that can carry you through the game. On the one hand that's a great way to teach casual players how to make it through the game but on the other hand it fucking sucks to find 20 types of weapon in Limgrave alone and have to choose just one of them. This design also means that if you want a more classic, difficult experience you can't just level strength and not look back, you have to always choose to not use ashes and arts that are cool and perfectly usable, but trivialize the game more than you would like. If the miner enemies were a more consistent smithing stone farm or they dropped at decent level from normal enemies like in past games, then players could experiment with weapons as much as they like. You might even be able to make enemy damage more manageable without adjusting all their stats by making armor actually upgradeable for some modest damage reduction. Personally I don't mind the endgame difficulty spike quite so much. I think of it like G Rank in Monster Hunter, or maybe deviant/hyper/apex monsters. The boss design in Elden Ring is Fromsoft's best ever. They've slowly fleshed out players toolkit and become masters of making enemies with tight, fluid movesets that counter your tools and are countered by your tools. Throughout the game a lot of effort is put into teaching players the proper usage of their tools and what to pay attention to in enemies. Bosses like Malenia are the final test. I spent many, many hours fighting Malenia with only a sword and shield, but by the end I felt like a master of the video game. I am reasonably confident I could pull off a hitless run of Malenia in just a couple hours and I've only beaten her once. They set the bar for the player's own improvement much, much higher than in past games and it's very rewarding. They knew people would play like classic masochists and gave us a worthy challenge. If that's not what you're here for, it doesn't really matter! Just summon something broken, use your best sorcery/incantation/art of war and the only thing you have to learn is how to dodge the supermoves. Or summon Let Me Solo Her and you don't have to learn anything!

Yknow, the first time I played through the game when it first came out I had very little issue. Likely due to the fact that it was a bleed katana build where I used both moonviel and rivers of blood before I realized they were busted. Now, in my second playthrough as a faith strength build, I realize how difficult it gets.

I completely agree with you man. I love this game to death and it has quickly become one of my all time favorite open world games. But the damage and balancing especially in the endgame is terrible. Enemies start killing you super fast with insanely fast and powerful combos that are near impossible to dodge. I have beaten all the Souls games, and I feel this is one of the most unbalanced. That being said, I’m having massive fun replaying this game even after beating it and I can’t wait to see what FromSoftware does next.

The balancing for the players damage can also be broken sometimes. I like to use colossal weapons for fun, but after a while, I switched to smaller weapons because colossal weapons only do like 100 damage more per hit, yet are 3 times slower.

If you're going for big weapons, just take the absolute minimum dex you need and pump it all into strength. Strength scales well up until 50-55 and if you rush it with large weapons you feel insanely powerful. Also, a big benefit to larger weapons is that they break through enemy poise, while smaller ones do not.

Completely agree with most of your takes. I think alot of the balancing issues stem from just how many different player builds there are. How do you balance a boss when there's so many ways to deal with them? For example, on my first playthrough, I had a pure strength build and I bet the fire giant with relative ease. Maybe took 20-30 mins to get him. Might've used mimic, but I cant remember. Had no clue why so many people struggled with him. But then my 2nd playthrough I did a glass canon mage build and it took 1-2 hours to deal with this fucker. Keep in mind, if I took no damage and got everything right, the fight wouldn't have even lasted 5 mins. I think that's the problem. The weapon upgrading system has a different problem. Why do the best weapons in the game need less stone upgrades than standard weapons? I think it's because FromSoft went into it with the wrong mentality. They thought too short term, choosing to balance it around a player's first playthrough who's passively exploring the world and won't look anything up. I'd argue that that's the best way to experience the game for the first time, but not everyone's gonna play like that, and on your other playthroughs you're probably just gonna be experimenting with cool builds. Sure the normal rocks are technically more common that the somber ones, but when you know where they are, it's WAY more tedious to get normal smithing stones than to get somber ones.

That moment when you are wielding in each hand a colossal greatsword of black meteorite steel, etched with gravity defying magic runes, taken from the corpse of a warrior demi god who once had enough power to halt the very motion of stars, but you're getting slaughtered by rats because their teeth are apparently as strong as my swords

Or dogs. Literally just dogs.

You don't mess with the rats bro, have you seen those bastards? I fear them more than Elden Blub

I have this experience.. I'm running double faith scythes but play them agile like a greatsword. I fight rune bears when I see them just to kill them, and have first tried a few bosses (albeit possibly overleveled)... but rats and dogs I fear the most.

love that giant guy who shoots arrows the size of pine trees at you? bout 170 damage little red dog with some mange and bleed? that'll be about 4000 damage

You should not underestimate the power of the Elden Rat

I think I can safely say that we all trust Dunkey for giving us the best reviews.

It took me a year to play but I finally got it and I regret not getting it sooner.

What you don't touch on either too much is not only do enemies deal too much damage but so do you sometimes. There are so many weapons that are so insanely dumb overpowered that everything else feels obsolete and if you don't use it then your progression is halted and you feel limited in how you can play. I think my favorite section of the game is definitely limgrave because of this as pretty much everything you find at this early point in the game is always useful and exploring that first area and beating stormveil was some of the most fun I have had in a while.

spells are even more broken then they were in DS1, they do insane damage but at it they have windup time in DS1, in elden ring the windup time is only for the first spell, and the consecutive casts just melt the boss's hp

Difficulty spike is definitely true. The upgrade system though, especially with being able to freely swap ashes of war and affinities, is super friendly in a good way. You can buy like infinite somber smithing stones to get most things to +9/+24 and they throw enough larval tears at you per playthrough that you could reinvent yourself a thousand ways I feel, even for each stonewall of a boss.

I like how stupidly resistant the final boss is to all elements, especially holy damage which is a damage type the game loves to throw at you because of the lore.

I honestly have to respect Dunkey for giving Elden Ring a chance even though it’s not a strand-type game. Obviously it’s not going to be on the same level as brilliant titles like Death Stranding or Knack 2, but it is a decent little game for what it is.

Dunkey usually takes some time to give the spotlight to indie studios like FromSoftware, even though this is not his type of game. Dunkey is the realest 💯👊😎

I heard Dunkey’s copy of Elden Ring was personally delivered by Reggie himself.

Dunkey is always giving small indie titles like this good reviews. What a good guy

But Elden ring literally is a strand type game. Honestly dark souls had 'strand type' elements for a while

Death Stranding is actually good, though.

Beautiful game. The difficulty is definitely a huge part of makes it feel so rewarding. But I couldn't agree more that enemy damage output is just stupid. In the later game you can get 2 shot by almost anything and everything

Very well said. I just finished my blind playthrough as a 2H greatsword knight, and I was winning or losing with not enough learning. Some boss fights were too easy to learn anything, while others were too cheap to learn anything. In terms of boss fights, Elden Ring was sadly mediocre.

Genuinely a 10/10 review. Couldnt have said points better myself. Such a great and beautiful game but the boss fights, and the scaling. I get that they want it to be difficult and they know players have learned how to adjust to their mechanics but almost half of the bosses are the cheapest bullshit. Then the balancing, like wtf happened?

"Pre-morgott" and "post-morgott" genuinely feel like 2 different games. I enjoy making a new character build just so I can play "pre-morgott" elden ring some more.

Exactly. You either farm forever to boost your stats so you can have a semblance of fun in the Mountaintop, or you go to the Mountaintops and run for your life. But wait! Did you decide not to farm for 10s of hours? Well then good luck fighting the 45,000 HP Fire Giant, you will 1 shot you with any of his moves. I am of the group of people who straight up dislike post-Morgott. Not a fun game after that. Haligtree is cool i guess

@Billy Costigan Haligtree looks nice, but it just being a tiny zone with relentless enemy spam of reused mobs is lame. Fighting swaths of enemies at once is a breeze for certain builds and a borderline impossibility for others without kiting or cheesing. The couple of zones like that in Ds2 got an incredible amount of criticism but people just refuse to criticize elden ring no matter how much it deserves it for lazy reused enemy spam.

@Billy Costigan I have bought the game 2 weeks ago, I have 120 hours in the game and I just can't fucking kill the fire giant at level 110. Its like a wall I can't pass

@beastmasterbg Thats the worst part! You are supposed to be lvl 120 for the fn Giant. I dont know how you are sopposed to get that without farming halligtree Soldiers or farming auranics in moghs palace. I finished the game with a lvl 160 Character recommended is 150. Thats my complaint that i dont ever read around here: Runes are super hard to come organically by after lvl 50-60. Without extensive Farming you are always underlevelled.

@Christopher Schneider yeah , I finished the game at level 147. Once I did a new build on faith. It was easier to kill them but I had to cheese it with lvl10 mimic spirit

I actually really loved this review, thank you for being honest. I only just started elden ring so it feels like I've got ages to go but I'm super excited for everything I discover ☺ but it's gonna be hard getting killed so much cause I'm not a skilled gamer at all 🤣

I mostly agree on the balancing....its the fact that it swings wildly between too easy and too hard is the real problem. I am constantly changing from feeling overlevelled to underlevelled, often in the same area.

The mountaintop of the giants comes to mind. I one-shot all the normal enemies and then do 1/100th of Borealis's health with an r2

I kind of hope they go back to more linear Souls-Like-Games in the future or figure something out for their open world. Cuz in a linear game you would not have that problem, in the original Dark Souls you are almost always as strong or weak as they want you to be in that moment, and if an area is unbeatable hard, you are not supposed to be there. In Elden Ring, I could not tell if I am right or wrong all the time.

@Sansibar Yeah this is kinda the confusion, it's like am I dying over and over to this guy cause I suck or I'm supposed to go grind more first?

I actually think the areas are reasonably consistent within themselves for the most part, it's mainly bleed I have a problem with. Other than that just build Vigor you'll be ok.

@William Hall I agree with this, There are definitely instances where you can accidentally stumble upon an area that's too high level (like going from Limgrave to Caelid for instance), but to the player, spending even a good 5 minutes in these areas should tell yourself "Oh I shouldn't be here yet". But overall I never really experienced this too much, because the game incentivizes you to explore everything, rather then trying to go from area to area as quickly as possible... in fact you'll get punished more often then not if you play like that. Most of the time, I was quite on par for every new area I entered because of that fact, albeit maybe even a little OVER-leveled. I also think people severely underestimate how important vigor is. I've seen people who are like level 80 and only have like 20ish vigor which in most areas around that level will have enemies that borderline one shot you.

"This is an evil game made by an evil man..." hahahaha nailed it

If Lucifer and Hitler did the fusion dance they would create Hidetaka Miyazaki

@Jermbo Notrombone so you are implying that hidetaka miyazaki is a nazi?

@BozoBandOfBenin no, only that he is more evil than Hortler

After beating Starscourge Radahn two times, one with claymore and light load, and the other with daggers and medium load. I couldn't agree more.

Finally someone brings the balance issues to light. Thank god for dunkey. I beat bloodborne, ds3, ds1 and sekiro on multiple ng plusses and eventhough the difficulty went up drastically it never felt unfair, elden ring on the other hand...not so much. That being said the game is fucking awesome and I love it.

I agree with everything he said. I've got just about maxed stats on my character, and you do ludicrous amounts of damage and take next to none regardless of the game cycle you play, but the second I get summoned to a friend's world just about anything can one shot me. That's not even taking into account the invaders that use attacks you can't see to one shot you. There's ways around both, but it's still frustrating to lose to something you not only know you can, but already have beaten.

The way to fix this game imo is to turn down enemy damage for most enemies, and for boss enemies(like Maliketh for example)give them longer delays in between attacks so that dodging all of their moves actually feels safe and worth it instead of getting one hit and then having to dodge another minute long combo.

Love this! If the enemies did less damage, i could actually enjoy the boss fights instead of shitting myself and i could explore the world. Simple tweaks would e made this the greatest game of all time but as it is it just hurts too much

Elden ring has some of the best examples from any fromsoft game of why I don't feel bad about cheesing fromsoft games. Enemies have absolutely no problem stunlocking you, hyper-armoring through everything you do, one-shotting you, or doing really whatever they feel like to make you drop your runes. You best believe I'm going to come back at that shit with every tool under my belt idc if I gotta lure em off a cliff or snipe them from on top of rock lmao fuck them

I'd say I agree with this especially for Elden Ring, some Dark/Demon Souls and some Bloodborne bosses . Sekiro though because you're supposed to play a certain way is hard but fair and just require to memorize every boss move until you anticipate each of them. And Sekiro being a solo experience first it's pointless to cheese your way to the game. That said I'm in the Souls game (including Elden Ring) for the PVP so my goal now is just to quickly get 2 or 3 builds to meta level and you can bet I'm not going to try and beat every boss fair and square haha

@TheBGYeti I wouldn't describe Monster Hunter as the pinnacle of balancing. Some bosses are straight copy and paste with artificial difficulty slapped on, while some bosses just put giant AoEs of debuffs everywhere that force you to roll 20 times just to be hit by another one. I get the complaint tho.

The rule of thumb I used was if it was a unique design or a main story boss to beat it myself - but if it’s a boss I’ve already fought in a previous area or a bullshit double fight then the cheese tactics come out

@RaimeTheTraitor lunastra ptsd?

@Kojin to be fair some of elden rings bosses are the best in the series since sekiro. Margit/Morgott for instance are amazing and can be fought super clean, same goes for Godfrey, Radagon, etc. When elden ring wants to have a fair fight it's usually pretty good.

While the game is difficult and in some areas unbalanced (cough cough waterfowl dance cough cough godskin duo) I never felt pressured into any broken builds. I started my game as a strength build with nothing but a greatsword and ended my game the same way. I can see how you can definitely be tempted to use more broken builds to compensate for the games poor balancing but the game isn’t impossible with other builds experimenting is still 100% viable I think even especially in the later game since that’s when you unlock more of the cooler weapons.

Finally got to watch this video because I beat elden ring yesterday. I feel like you just validated my opinions on the game and glad I am not the only one who thinks the one hit kills are bullshits.

I’ve played all the other games, and I always like to be just a guy with a sword the first time through. Maybe I kind of missed the point with Elden ring with it being much more high fantasy than the others. That being said, from exploring as much as I could, I was over levelled for pretty much the entire game, and then lifesteal sword woman felt like a wall. It definitely does feel like the endgame is balanced for you using magic from the other side of the arena. I love the game a lot but it lacks the satisfying difficulty of the others, which I would also argue usually reinforced the games’ stories about struggling through dying or in this case broken worlds. It was part of the immersive quality these games have and while I think Elden ring has made up for that with its visuals and scale, it hurts because From have made yet another game that was so close to being perfect 😅 I guess perfection is impossible and these people are maybe too good at making games to the point where our expectations are impossible to meet

This game was a humbing experience and almost tore my family apart. 11/10

The thing I agree with most is that From Soft discourages experimentation with different equipment. They truly are stingy, and I couldn't believe they did what Dark Souls 3 did: placing a limit on the number of highest upgrade materials in a single playthrough. It's a huge open world game with so many fun and awesome weapons! And they even let you re-spec your stats so you can try different builds... But nope, you can't upgrade more weapons to max to complement more builds, if you've already used up your highest materials. Makes me miss DS1 and DS2, where you could farm for titanite slabs and have a fun variety of max weapons in your arsenal.

DS1 > Every other fromsoft game fr. Not even nostalgia tinted, just facts.

@Two Become One no bloodborne >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

@Peter K. Bloodborne also absolutely fantastic, no argument there.

@Two Become One DS1 is pretty dated. But the leveldesign and first half is godlike. Definitely not my favourite FromSoftgame, but its great.

@Two Become One i like ds1 since it helped me play the other fromsoft games, but i cant see how you think ds1's better than the other games, aside from level design although that was also kind of a miss for me

If he completed it 4 times that makes the dunkview a 40/10. Not a bad rating

When the thing has a thing the thing said the thing was thinging too thing but now the thing lives in the things life... that thing, the thing is, a thing.

Well well who do we have here ...the overlegends guy

pnuch

Still not enough times

RATS

Found your channel today. The Ghosts and Goblins run and Assassin's Creed review you did had me laughing so hard. Subscribed.

I've always firmly believed that the games you find the most flaws in are your all-time favorites.

the second i finished it i rewatched it, a 5 minute video, its so well paced and the script dense yet comprehensive. SOLID 9

My biggest gripe is the upgrade system as well, it really is a shame that there is sooo much to play around with, weapons spells ect, but you can't cause of something or the other. I literally play this only to explore and collect all the weapons and such....

Dunkey hit the nail on the head— beautiful game, great— but the bosses hit obscenely hard no matter what. It makes even a minor bit of experimentation or any mistake just restart the fight, basically. I hated almost every boss fight compared to the rest of FromSoft’s games.

True, and it's super sad. A lot of wasted potential. Bosses are super cool in design, music is stellar as always, but you just get frustrated while fighting them at the point you cannot appreciate anything about the fight. These games used to be tough but fair. In Elden Ring you feel like you're constantly overwhelmed by the opponent and can never retaliate.

This man beat the game 4 times in the amount of time I've played half of this game.

right? I haven't even gone up the Dectus lift yet and i'm 130 hours in. So much to see and explore.

Same. I'm like 200 hours in and only just getting to the capital. Granted, I'm exploring every inch of every map and not leaving them until every rock is turned over.

He got it earlier I guess

I'm 95 hours in and just learned how to use the Great Runes... I'm a slow gamer

I mean .. thats what he does for a living

The upgrade system actively discourages changing builds even if the rebirth system encourages it. I think if you upgrade one normal weapon to +3, smithing stone 1 should be unlocked for purchase without limit. Same for +6 and the [2], +9 and [3], etc., up to +24 and the [8].

Nah there are hella smithing stones just go on a walk for a minute and you might find some

There are special bells that allows you to buy unlimited smithing stones you know? Maybe you didn't explore enough.

@Cristian Manquilef I know, but they lag too far behind the weapon level you can reach with normal stones. IIRC only up to [4] is available through the bells before the capital, but you can reach at least +22 by that point with stones you find if you save them all for a single weapon.

@Matthew Sisinni Oh, you want smithing stones to upgrade many weapons before getting the bells? Well, you can always farm smithing stones from enemies too, it takes a bit of farm of course, but it would also takes a lot of farm to upgrade many weapons if you could buy smithing stones too because you need to get those runes to buy them and to upgrade the weapons.

@Cristian Manquilef I just want the bells available earlier in the game so that I don't feel like I'm hindering myself by switching weapons mid-game. I'm not saying they should be available right away, but I think it would fair that if you hit the limit of what a specific smithing stone can give you (so every three levels up to +24), you could start buying that stone in unlimited quantities.

Totaly agree.. I feel like im playing two different games. normal to mid size enemies are fine.. but some of the later 70 foot bosses are cheap for the sake of being cheap. And with the big bosses, the unbalance is'nt just the FP and HP (which is already silly).. but the super fast movement speed, combo combinations of the bosses vs the slow motion un-cancelable slogfest your charachter moves out is just torture.

The odd thing is I agree with every criticism this game has yet its still one of my favorite games.

I played as an overleveled mage warrior and found the game quite easy. Then for the 2nd run went full melee and it was so fucking hard

Yeah, Its an incredible game with great story and so much to explore, but I'd rather they delayed it for couple of month to balance it right. Its incredibly stupid especially in pvp, when single attack with dual wielded bleed weapons bleed you instantly and fill another bleed bar for 90%, or ashes of war that are 2x faster than regular attacks, 3x more range than regular attacks and somehow to balance it they do 5x of regular attack damage

I've put 200 hours into this game and the rune scaling for enemies frustrates me the most. Dunk put it perfectly here - you get basically no runes from normal enemies and even minibosses, so you're incentivized to run past things you've beat once and grab items on the way, and either use sleepy boys' farming ledge or rush main bosses so you can actually level up

This series has always had this quirk.

@Bard88 True, but the main boss chain is a fair bit longer in this game, so it becomes more noticeable. It would be nice to see at least a little rune reward rebalancing for some of the later zones.

If you have that many hours then you should know runes dropped by regular mobs are irrelevant. You get so many souls from bosses and so many loot souls like hero's rune and lord's rune. Any one of the last few bosses drop over a hundred thousand runes if you hop over to do co op.

@CristobalTL 100k runes are irrelevant if the sleepy boys give you that much in 15secounds And I'm not even over exaggerating any decent aoe ash of war or skill will kill all of them in 1 or 2 attacks on a good upgrade level, which you'll have anyways in the endgame. And one run nets you upward of 40k without the item that temporarily boost rune gain. Heck you can kill that bird for like 14k at level 1, no need to do any real damage to him either and you can redo that about every 20s or so aswell Boss runes just feel unrewarding. And before the update 100k runes are not even enought to boost a unique to +9 if you had to buy some stones

Sleepy bois always the way to go.

I agree with you on this. Don't get me wrong, Elden Ring is fantastic! I enjoyed that game start to finish and never got bored...and I did EVERYTHING! That being said, balancing is an issue. I started to notice it with Dark Souls 2, but especially in Dark Souls 3 where the later bosses (and most definitely the dlc bosses!) became capable of draining your health bar in one or two hits. This is something I wish Fromsoft would steer clear of going forward. I don't mind endgame bosses doing large chunks of damage, but to be almost wiped out by even so much as getting clipped by an attack...is just artificial difficulty. Even with a massive health bar, Elden Ring's endgame bosses will cut through you like swiss cheese with ease. It becomes less about perseverance and going the distance, and more about frame perfect dodging and avoiding any and every attack.

This game cannot be spoiled because this game never ends 😂😂 .. best dialogue I ever heard !

A few days ago, finished my first playthrough. Clocked completion at 128 hours, I'm back at Maliketh at 134 hours on NG+ I picked up the game a few days after release, I've just been taking my time and I've gotta say this is the MOST valid review I've seen so far, as always Dunkey hitting nails on heads, even when i love a game i can't help but find myself agreeing with and accepting his analysis because it's entirely correct. I was really enjoying my first playthrough of Elden Ring up until the damage outputs of enemies skyrocketed. Every new area i reached late game the enemies damage jumped drastically, I had to try multiple new builds, none of which worked for how I was playing the game so i just gave up and farmed runes until i could soft cap Vigor. Found the final boss encounters a little daft on damage output even then, i might be able to take 3 hits if i was lucky, wiith defensive and negation talismans, great rune active and the best armour i was able to wear without getting that fat roll on. Now the enemies on NG+ are 1 or 2 shotting me (at level 240) this can be standard enemies! I haven't played for a few days now because I'm just fatigued with it, i found myself getting tired of the game even before then but stuck with it because i was too far in to put it down and just wanted to get it done. Which is sad because i was having a good time

Totally agree. But the worst thing about this game is Malenia's endless oneshot combo which is almost impossible to dodge. Spent almost 2 weeks to kill her first time...

The reason for the bosses late-game feeling so janky is because the devs intended you to use summons for them. Summons take the aggro off of bosses so you get time to heal and plan your next move. I cannot say anything about the damage output-section though. The enemies in the endgame are all on steroids from space, like, I level 50 vigor and still get vigor checked by bosses. My question is how much vigor did the devs intend for us to level? In any other souls game I feel like a scrub if I go above 25 vigor, in this game, you literally can get one shot by any enemy if you don't level vigor up to at least 40. That's so many statpoints wasted. I could all put them into other categories like int/faith/arc but nope, FromSoft decided you get vigor checked by anything if you don't level enough vigor up to a certain point. Don't get me wrong, I love the game, it's my second favorite FromSoft game after Bloodborne and I managed to get every achievement for it. But the balancing in this game has HUGE issues that need to be resolved.

Elden Ring is an amazing game. Honestly one of the most phenomenal games I've ever played. That doesn't make it immune from criticism. You can love something and still recognize it's flaws.

Thank goodness Dunkey point out it’s flaws. With all of the praise going around I swear it was the second coming of Christ.

Seriously. Nothing is perfect, and people really want to believe that this game truly is perfect, but it's not. Doesn't mean it isn't amazing though.

tell that to all the people on reddit that got mad at me for saying some of the UI is pretty unintuitive and poorly designed

Thank the Lord. Like I'm genuinely having a good time with the game, despite hating all the other Souls games, but there are still elements here that make the game less fun than it can be. It's a great game but Souls fans really need to stop pretending that every inconvenience in the game is some divine pure amazing decision that can't be questioned because of its artistic integrity

@R6Scrubs Anyone that thinks From softs UI is intuitive is an idiot. This is by far my favourite game of all time but some people can't even get into it because the Menus and Tutorials are so bad that you need someone to explain everything to you that knows the Souls games. This didn't take away from my experience but boy do I remember my struggles with this garbage when I first got into Dark Souls.

Their damage doesn't matter if they can't hit you. Unlike other games, in Soulslike games you get the ability to dodge an attack. Just don't get hit.

I Love it when Dunkey likes playing video games.

I agree with the difficulty thing. I’ve always been a souls dude and Elden ring really slapped my balls around. I liked it tho 🥺

I never got one shotted so often in DS3/Sekiro as in Elden Ring, despite maxing a lot of health. Malenia is someting totally different. Its an optional boss and its THE challenge (and its not that hard for the hardest boss in the game) I think Elden Ring is perfectly challenging. Some are BS, but for me that was the challenge. The rest was pretty easy.

The worst boss in this game was Maliketh purely from a design point. He's not difficult, but he jumps and dashes around the arena so frequently that by the time you reach him he just jumps back to the other side. And his movement is so unbelievably sporadic that even he can't control himself. One of the times I fought him, he literally clipped though a pillar like 5 times and had to despawn out of it and then respawn back in the center of the arena.

Spot on with this. The scaling is insane and you can do a whole dungeon and get 3k runes after a boss that will make you its bitch but you can shoot a bird 4 times for 10 times the amount.

wow early game gives less runes than endgame?? aint no way boy DDDDD:

the point still stands even in the late game lol. a late game optional dungeon can take you an hour and give you 50k runes, and you can get 50k from fighting common enemies in a neighbor area for 2 minutes

tbf im at the kfc farm like 5 hours into a character

well you don't need to abuse anything, have fun and when you're ready just do challenge runs 👌

@AfterAttackTV 50k? Leading to the boss if you kill everything. You'll walk out with close to or above 200k for actual late game dungeons.

I'll just say the animation for the twinblades' charged attack on horseback is cold af.

First playthrough was 110 hours, beating my previous record (Witcher 3 and all its DLC) by 12 hours. Game just kept going, and going, and going.

So far the difficulty for the game hasn't felt balanced. There are enemies and bosses that should be hard I accidently murder(str/fai build though). Then some things/moves that for me are just super hard to deal with. I think the multiplayer aspect of coop is great for that. The real hard mode? Going from heavy armor STR build just power bashing enemies and stun locking bosses to leveling an arcane/dex build and learning real fast you have to dodge again as you can't stun lock.

The dunkview of all time!

I never leveled health and so there was no major difficulty spike. I always died in one or two hits to everything. The balance actually worked really well that way and I had high damage in a variety of types. What got gradually harder were the legacy dungeons, where my low health made it a challenge to get from one bonfire to another, and this was a lot of fun. The bosses on the other hand didn't get too much worse over time as long as I kept up in damage. I only used the mimic summon for the big snake because I had to use a talisman and a rune arc to get enough health to use it. By the end my damage was massive.

Oh really, why dont you record yourself beating malenia, malekith, godskin duo, radagon and elden beast with minimum vigor, would like to see that.

@BastosFC I am not trying to brag, it's not a remarkable feat. My starting vigor was 15 because I chose vagabond, which isn't that low and is the highest of the starting classes. People do level 1 runs all the time, with all kinds of other limitations. I on the other hand used every powerful thing I could including spirit ashes. For Malenia I used Black Knife Tiche, dragonice, swarm of flies, and moonvail. As a caster I didn't need to get close to do damage so waterfowl wasn't too bad, and Black Knife Tiche's jumping knockdown attack let me hit her with the ice breath. Tiche was strong enough to last well into the second half. For Maliketh I could melt his first half with the wonderous physic+ comet azure infinite kamehameha beam. His hardest move to deal with was the jumping red projectile combo, but you can stand behind a pillar and count the projectiles, then dodge the last hit where he lands. Other than that his second phase has low health so it was quick. Godskin duo I used the npc summon plus latenna. Stood behind a pillar using hoarfrost stomp a lot of it. Also used a lot of sleep pots. If you hit one with a sleep pot it stays asleep until it gets hit again, which is super useful if you can get both summons attacking one of them. Radagon I had to learn to dodge, but every build does, and it's not that bad. I used the black fireball and comet and it wasn't that bad. For the beast I just used pest threads. Ran behind it right at the start and took it out super fast. Pest threads gets massive damage on it up close. Generally I always used opaline bubbletear for one free hit, and I sometimes used talismans or rune arcs to boost my stats (including vigor). Early on I used the bloodfang blade and I got the meteorite staff as early as I could. The hardest boss for me was Mohg. Obviously I am not gonna record all that footage because of this comment, so I hope you'll take my word I did these things, I promise it was not super hard. I am doing a second playthrough now leveling vigor and using melee only (but still spirit ashes) and it seems pretty equal in difficulty, and lion's claw ash of war on the greatsword is killing everything up to the mountain so far.

I just beat Malenia with a high vigor melee no summons no bleed build and I can now say the fight was well balanced for that too. I used Lion's Claw and guard counters to get posture breaks for massive combos. It ended up being like a Sekiro fight and it was amazing. I even have a video of it this time that I could upload. I think the buffs to strength since 1.04, especially Lion's Claw, made a big difference.

@Blah Bliff i wasn't being sarcastic in my 1st comment

@BastosFC yo, I saw you just uploaded a Malenia win with the lowest health I could imagine! Very cool to see!

Absolutely agree with this take. The scaling is absurd and the bosses seem to have infinite stamina, leading to you running desperately away from endless combos. My late game boss victorys dont feel earned, instead feeling like i had to beat my head against the boss until the one attempt where they didn’t decide to one shot me

Nailed it! You have to try and try and try again and HOPE they don't pull off "that" move. So, it makes you find a cheap way to beat them, just to get past them, instead of enjoying the battle.

That’s how I felt w malania lmao

@Luna Same, just waiting for the one and only move you can run up and get a single hit after before running away again for five minutes.

@VSM me when I just take my hand off the controller when malenia decided to use her weapon art. It wasn't worth the hassle of maybe dodging it and losing like half my estus. Just go next and hope she doesn't use it.

You must've been underleveled if you felt like the endgame bosses were overpowered, once you actually pay attention to their attack patterns they become fairly trivial. And there's tools the game gives you to make bosses easier like Elden beast/haligdrake talisman+2, Mohg/purifying crystal tear and shackle, maliketh has the pillars to block his projectiles easily, even with Godfrey you can literally jump over all his AOE attacks lol

Spot on dunk thank you. “Im the realest gamer of all time, and i think its too hard” For real. Ive beaten it 3 times and think the same about the cheap one shot barrages

Totally agree man I was fighting the fire giant and skipped the phase two cutscene right when it popped up and I died immediately

I love this game and I love all the beautiful moments it has, and all of the genuinely well designed boss fights. I was quite skeptical of your review initially, as i had spent around 30 hours on the game, gotten to Leyndell, and noticed no extreme difficulty curve. 60 hours in now, I fully understand what you mean and it is simply dreadful. I am in pain.

While the difficulties spike during the end game were pretty extreme it didn't stop me from experimenting at least not for me. I constantly messed around with different weapons and consumables throughout my whole play through and even respeced a couple of times. Don't get me wrong there's definitely some BS. But it has nothing to do with the damage in my opinion. The BS that is in the game have to do with some really questionable move sets & hitboxes on certain attacks. A few of malenia's attacks, everything having to do with the royal revenants, magma wyrm's, and few other attacks come to mind. But other than that in my opinion the game is completely fair imo. I feel like people complaining about delayed attacks and aoe attacks expect elden ring to play exactly like ds3 where it's almost always dodge then r1. Elden ring is supposed to play different and evolve the series. Dealing with those attacks are completely fair you just got to learn how to deal with them. (Like I said definitely some exceptions but still most attacks and bosses are completely fair imo)

Great video. I especially liked the shot of a tree in the Village of the Albernaurics. At least, that’s what I believe that shot is at 1:23

I’m so glad he mentioned how the respawning giant guys that can’t turn and have 1 attack are worth almost as much as a non responding mini boss in the same area that’s much more difficult. When I killed him I thought there was some glitch because he wasn’t worth the effort for that little at all.

When I first killed one of those guys, I thought I might have accidentally gotten myself way overlvled for the current zone. I didn't have to travel much further to realize that was definitely NOT the case.

I just found out that guy and he almost became my favorite farming spot for upper-midgame

It's even worse in Ashen Capital. There are some miniboss encounters there that could probably slap some of the earlier Shardbearer bosses to death that only give like 18k souls when you beat them. Soul crushing. Mohg alone gave me 500k and a Great Rune while a more difficult miniboss encounter at endgame gave me like 18k and nothing else.

Oh that's because you have to figure out a way around their annoying breath attack, the few thousand souls is your reward for doing so. The Crucible dudes are more out of the way and you have to more or less seek them out.

Can’t agree more

I do think some bosses should be allowed that almost 1 shotting or 1 shotting "big move". You use the Godfrey example but it's a move with a huge build up that screams to the player "this is going to do massive damage". Like Astel's grab attack that I think 1 shots you no matter what. It might be the scariest move in the game but I kind of like the game has those things. Generally though there's a point to be made. And especially about creativity in builds due to high difficulty. But what's the idea? Should Late game bosses be doing the same damage roughly as mid game bosses? Do you then have to adjust their health and boost them? Or perhaps nerf Player Damage for some weapons so the fight doesn't become too one sided?

The most accurate synopsis of this game ever! 😂

There’s a Bloodborne dash replacement for the roll made for Dark Souls 3 and one for Elden Ring by the same guy for people on PC. It suits the style of combat for both games very well since both are like Bloodborne with a Dark Souls guy dropped in. Square peg, round hole.