Elden Ring |OT| DLC Reviewed (MC: 95 | OC: 94)

[the-pi-guy]

I've been trying to play on and off, I still have a long way to go to get to the DLC. I'm only like 8 hours into a new game.

I feel like I'm starting to enjoy the game again. Explored a chunk of the map, and took down a few bosses yesterday. It felt pretty good.

[the-pi-guy]

DLC has mixed reviews on steam.

A lot of people citing performance issues.

Some people are talking about the DLC being substantially harder than the main game was.

[Legend]

DLC has mixed reviews on steam.

A lot of people citing performance issues.

Some people are talking about the DLC being substantially harder than the main game was.

Would have thought people would be happy about it being harder.

[kitler53]

yeah,.. so never buying this. 

[the-pi-guy]

Would have thought people would be happy about it being harder.

I feel like the base game kind of pushes the line where it's challenging, but still fun. And frankly there's a few spots where I would say it goes over that line, and stops being as fun.

Most of the Souls games I feel like are good at being "just challenging enough", they're still generally fun, and you still feel like the challenges are passable.

There are a few bosses in Elden Ring, where it just doesn't particularly feel like that.
If the DLC is even harder, I don't think that's a good thing.

[Legend]

I feel like the base game kind of pushes the line where it's challenging, but still fun. And frankly there's a few spots where I would say it goes over that line, and stops being as fun.

Most of the Souls games I feel like are good at being "just challenging enough", they're still generally fun, and you still feel like the challenges are passable.

There are a few bosses in Elden Ring, where it just doesn't particularly feel like that.
If the DLC is even harder, I don't know think that's a good thing.

Funny then that it has essentially perfect reviews. Just another example of how reviews aren't that accurate.

[kitler53]

I feel like the base game kind of pushes the line where it's challenging, but still fun. And frankly there's a few spots where I would say it goes over that line, and stops being as fun.

Most of the Souls games I feel like are good at being "just challenging enough", they're still generally fun, and you still feel like the challenges are passable.

There are a few bosses in Elden Ring, where it just doesn't particularly feel like that.
If the DLC is even harder, I don't think that's a good thing.

In the older (good) games the games seemed really hard at first until you realized that with a particular strat the game was suuper easy. 

Most of the eldin ring i played did have that.  Some things we're just straight up hard no matter what strat you used.   The games are drifting away from what make them good.  

...but to be fair there was at least 1 dlc to the souls games that had a suuper hard boss that i ended up skipping.   I think it was darks souls 2 but i dunno,.. maybe it was 3.   It was a giant (optional) dragon.  I remember the internet agreed that it was the hardest boss.   

[the-pi-guy]

Funny then that it has essentially perfect reviews. Just another example of how reviews aren't that accurate.

Could be that people are genuinely having different experiences.

Maybe the people complaining are on NG+5 or something.

[Legend]

Could be that people are genuinely having different experiences.

Maybe the people complaining are on NG+5 or something.

Well that'd still count as review aggregates not being accurate imo. An individual reviewer can love it and rightly give it a near perfect score. Every reviewer can love it and rightly give it a near perfect score. The metacritic can be wrong even if no reviewer was.

[the-pi-guy]

Well that'd still count as review aggregates not being accurate imo. An individual reviewer can love it and rightly give it a near perfect score. Every reviewer can love it and rightly give it a near perfect score. The metacritic can be wrong even if no reviewer was.

Well I'd argue all metacritic scores are wrong by that token.

[Legend]

Well I'd argue all metacritic scores are wrong by that token.

Exactly!

Much better to just follow individual reviewers so you can learn how their tastes and opinions compare to yours.

[the-pi-guy]

I put another like 3 hours into Elden Ring yesterday.

As I said before, I'm getting into it. First few hours of my new playthrough, I was largely struggling to enjoy myself. But now I'm really looking forward to playing.

I think this is a great game, but I still strongly feel like it's in the bottom quarter of the From Software games I've played. I'm sure I've ranted about this like 10 times at this point. Maybe the DLC will change my mind, whenever I get around to it.

But Dark Souls 2 is very rough, so that's really the only one I consider to be worse.  

I think the less straight forward progression really hurts the game. All of the other Souls games are very straight forward for where to go. And all of the challenges are reasonable. You're pretty much never going against an enemy that is wildly stronger than you. But Elden Ring makes that possible.

You can certainly jump around and stay in places where progression is more reasonable, but Elden Ring doesn't make it easy to know where to go. The game has some sense of direction, it shows you where big points/bosses are, but you aren't told that you need to go down to this place when you're level 40 or stuff like that.  

If you know where to go when you're level 50 or level 60, the game is pretty enjoyable. But you don't know where that is, unless you're playing with a guide or if you've played before.  

Exactly!

Much better to just follow individual reviewers so you can learn how their tastes and opinions compare to yours.

I personally look at MC scores not as "98 means it's good", but more loosely along the lines of "chances are good, that a 98 will be more enjoyable than a game that gets a 68" I look at it more probabilistically, but very loosely either way.  

[the-pi-guy]

Elden Ring balance update makes the first half of the DLC easier, so you don't have to be as good as games journalistshttps://t.co/bobczembm4 pic.twitter.com/d3ftcbsQzg

— VG247 (@VG247) June 26, 2024

[Legend]

lulz, I'm sure people are happy with that tweet

[the-pi-guy]

"Leading up to the release of any game, I'll be very hands-on playing it and getting as much time on it as much as possible," he told me. "But after the release, I tend to not want to touch it, because I know I'm going to either find things that I left on the table or issues that will bug me. And once I become a player, I'm powerless to do anything significant to change it. So once a game is out in the wild, I tend to not play.

"But in preparation for Shadow of the Erdtree, I played through the main story of Elden Ring. I want to preface this by saying I absolutely suck at video games, so my approach or play style was to use everything I have at my disposal, all the assistance, every scrap of aid that the game offers, and also all the knowledge that I have as the architect of the game ... the freedom and open-world nature of Elden Ring perhaps lowered the barrier to entry, and I might be the one who's benefiting the most from that, as a player, more than anyone else."

The game design secrets of Elden Ring’s Hidetaka Miyazaki | Games | The Guardian