Elden Ring

[Zenfoldor]

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Fallout: New Vegas, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Greedfall, Watchdogs: Legion and Monster Hunter World/Rise are pretty fun games. Some are more or less alike Elden Ring. But all are decent fun and offer fun game space.

Nice, I actually had MGSV as one to look for. Think I'll try that one. Thanks!

[Darkarath]

Nice, I actually had MGSV as one to look for. Think I'll try that one. Thanks!

MGSV is a wonderful masterpiece. For real, is the best stealth game ever created. A lot of people criticize it for the story but I love it.

[hellhamster]

Does anyone that liked ER have any recommendations for open world games, that are good(I've already played Dragon's Dogma, Horizon:FW, Witcher 3, and BotW)?

I'm playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey for the first time right now. I'm not a big fan of these games, but after Elden Ring I wanted to play something similar, albeit a bit more relaxing. My enjoyment therefore increased exponentially. It's a good game if you just wanna have a comfy time exploring and being a completionist.

I quit Metal Gear Solid V after a few hours because my gaming backlog was enormous back then and wanted to focus on something else, I wanna come back to it eventually.

I see you played the second Horizon, the first one is also excellent if you haven't played it, especially the story. I haven't played the sequel yet so I can't compare them.

[Tech614]

MGSV is a wonderful masterpiece. For real, is the best stealth game ever created. A lot of people criticize it for the story but I love it.

The story is indeed shit at the end and incomplete but the gameplay is amazing and worth playing for that alone.

[Devilyaki]

MGSV is a wonderful masterpiece. For real, is the best stealth game ever created. A lot of people criticize it for the story but I love it.

Ya I loved that game! It what got me to buy my ps4 to start with lol

[Soulwind]

I'm playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey for the first time right now. I'm not a big fan of these games, but after Elden Ring I wanted to play something similar, albeit a bit more relaxing. My enjoyment therefore increased exponentially. It's a good game if you just wanna have a comfy time exploring and being a completionist.

Origins and Valhalla are also very good open world games, and all three broke away from the formula of the originals in favor of Action RPG gameplay. You can still parkour and stealth your way to your objectives, but combat is more engaging and encouraged than before.

Far Cry 3 to 6 are fun too, if a bit formulaic. With those, it's probably best to look at the theme of each game and choose the one that seems the most appealing, since they all play very, very similarly.

[Fencers]

I'm playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey for the first time right now. I'm not a big fan of these games, but after Elden Ring I wanted to play something similar, albeit a bit more relaxing. My enjoyment therefore increased exponentially. It's a good game if you just wanna have a comfy time exploring and being a completionist.

Valhalla is a bit better and more rounded out. Still the same formula but Odyssey is a more obvious effort of the developers working on the concept, and Vallhalla is more assured.

- - - Updated - - -

MGSV is a wonderful masterpiece. For real, is the best stealth game ever created. A lot of people criticize it for the story but I love it.

MGSV was the only story in the series I gave a shit about. I didn't read much at the time about the story being poor. But I also don't frequent very many "gamer" platforms other than this forum and on occasion r/gaming.

[everydaygamer]

MGSV was great as long as you could ignore the fact that it failed to actually bridge the gap with the original Metal Gear like was promised or the fact that it didn't even have a real ending.

[Darkarath]

I do not get the hate for MGSV's story. I liked the characters and the ending was awesome for me, open-ended, sure, but amazing.

In any case, the game is super fun, enjoy!

BTW I also played AC Origins and AC Odyssey, plus the DLCs of both games. I understand perfecty that feeling of playing in brain-dead mode to disconnect. AC games are perfect for that! And I enjoy both a ton, AC Odyssey definitively better IMO, and I am expecting Valhalla to be better than both, but have to wait for It to get a good sale.

Currently picked Jedi Fallen Order just for 10 euros! So I am giving Elden Ring a break. I am enjoying it quite a bit! Some souls elements there mixed with plataforms. Story seems interesting too.

[Mehrunes]

Haligtree just wasn't very interesting to me, even if visually gorgeous. The branch area is annoying, Loretta is a completely inconsequential speed bump, there's literally no new enemies, Erdtree Avatars used as standard foes can go die in a fire, the Revenant alley you mention is even worse, and the Tree Spirit in a small area of rot is peak unfun stupidity that begs to be cheesed instead of engaged in earnest. Then the final strecth is weirdly some soldiers and prawns scattered half-heartedly, kinda feels unfinished to me for some reason, feels like there should be stuff like a Cleanrot Knight duo guarding the Site of Grace before Malenia or something, she's their boss after all. The Millicent questline end fight is pretty good at least.

I think Haligtree suffers greatly from what plagues endgame in general, i.e. lack of new enemies. But I really liked the layout itself. The verticality of the end part of the city itself, the branches in the side part with a bunch of prawns and knights etc. Admittedly that verticality made me lose like a half a million runes (though by that point I wasn't really caring about them and so I was just going YOLO), but that's more because of enemies launching me over the wall or knocking me down (including the fucking revenants sometimes somehow aggroing from the bottom and teleporting on top of me while I was on a branch or a ledge).

I played a caster/melee hybrid and Radagon was pretty fun TBH. Maybe because it felt like some moves were best countered with melee and others with ranged so my toolset was perfect for it. I do feel his large conical AoE move is very, very easy to punish in melee. But I dunno I still liked the fight a lot, think the music helped, it's the only track I remember, being a remix of the main menu's.

By the time of the end game I switched almost exclusively to magic for bosses (I still kept my twinblades to smack random mobs) because I felt my 80 int was going to waste otherwise and Radagon was the apotheosis of all the little annoying things From Soft does to artificially increase the difficulty of a boss beyond what their actual move set would justify). Things like delays on top of delays, some unavoidable damage etc. And the thing is, even if you haven't played any other From Soft games (which I had), even be the end of Elden Ring alone none of that is new and as such fails to even achieve the purpose of boosting the difficulty, leaving only the annoyance.

Still my favorite fight by far is Morgott, he's got soooo many attacks and while he can sometimes break into a new combo he doesn't deal enough damage that it feels bullshit, just enough to keep you on your toes. And he's got A+ lines and voice acting too. Bit too easy to avoid and snipe as a caster, but it is a small critique of a great fight.

I killed Morgott before he even reached me, so I can't comment.

Malenia's worst thing, for me, was Waterfowl Dance. All her other moves feel at least somewhat counterable. But then she whips up that move and you either counter it perfectly or you get trucked. And sometimes she immediately follows it up with another combo of moves! That shit is just frustrating as fuck. As you said it feels like there's very little opportunity to be aggressive because she heavily punishes that with her ability to start a combo out of nowhere. But it's still not nearly as aggravating as that damn anime dance from hell. Just not a fun fight at all for my playstyle.

I can understand how that may be hard to deal with for some, but personally I got the hang of it quickly. As in on 2nd or 3rd try, which was way too quickly. Which contributed to the diminished experience for me. Also, like I said, by that point I was exclusively going magic. With Malenia herself being the second reason I made the switch, because her hyper-aggressiveness when you fight her in melee makes for a boring fight.

And here's a thing about Malenia and casting: it completely screws with her AI. The moment you start running around and spamming spells she will just slowly go after you half of the time and most of the attacks she uses as gap closers are either easy to avoid delayed stabs or the Waterfowl Dance (which, like I said, I didn't struggle with much). Which still didn't make up for a thrilling fight, but between having to wait a week for an opening and actually fighting the boss the latter was somewhat more engaging.

Bosses like Isshin or Slave Knight Gael are miles better because they're challenging but don't pigeonhold you into one playstyle. You can be aggressive, you can be more passive, there's a rhythm and dance to it. Malenia mostly means waiting for your turn until she finally does one of the moves she can't immediately follow up on. Or just cheese her with stuff like Tiche, Rivers of Blood and/or freeze pots as she revs up Waterfowl Dance but that's just not satisfying IMO.

Gael actually ended up sort of disappointing me too, though for kinda the opposite reason than Malenia. Which is that P1 is the kind of a fight that's my Achilles heel as far as From Software games go. I struggle more than I should on hyper-aggressive bosses that also flail all over the place like a meth addict having a stroke. And because of that, P1 put me on such high alert that the very first time I beat P1 I burned through the other two phases and killed the boss, experiencing no "climb" for those phases. Still a great fight, even if I preferred Midir from that DLC (and Friede in the entirety of DS3). And yeah, Isshin is an awesome boss fight.

I swear it feels like we're playing entirely different games when people talk about offensive uptime on ER.

I wasn't talking about ER in general, I was quite clearly talking about Malenia specifically.

I did say one of "high stamina, 30str (for a greatshield) or reinforce". Notice how one of those isn't tied to attributes.

Miss me with that glass cannon rubbish. It's still an RPG, if you build a 10/1 offense/defence stats spread (vigor, endurance and str are defensive stats) AND refuse to gear up to make up for it then there really should be something in there to wreck you for that decision.

The same way there should be something in the game to wreck you for deciding to only have fire damage, or for only having magic damage, or for only having survivability, etc... The decision is meaningless if there's no wrong choice

Failing on your build is as valid as failing on the gameplay. Having a character that's 95% damage and complaining that you don't have an easy survivability option is ridiculous - that's what you sign up for when you build a character like that.

Yeah, no, this is an outdated dinosaur of game design. The point of having options is to provide different ways to play for different people and increase replayability, not to trick people into a wrong choice. Options are meaningful by themselves, whereas the only "meaning" of putting trick options into the game is to make the player feel like they wasted time pursuing the wrong build.

[Zenfoldor]

I do not get the hate for MGSV's story. I liked the characters and the ending was awesome for me, open-ended, sure, but amazing.

In any case, the game is super fun, enjoy!

BTW I also played AC Origins and AC Odyssey, plus the DLCs of both games. I understand perfecty that feeling of playing in brain-dead mode to disconnect. AC games are perfect for that! And I enjoy both a ton, AC Odyssey definitively better IMO, and I am expecting Valhalla to be better than both, but have to wait for It to get a good sale.

Currently picked Jedi Fallen Order just for 10 euros! So I am giving Elden Ring a break. I am enjoying it quite a bit! Some souls elements there mixed with plataforms. Story seems interesting too.

Fallen Order is incredible. The animations are bad, but the story gets so, so good, and the gameplay is just fun. I loved that game, especially BD-1. I suggest it to everyone. Honestly, the new Guardians of the Galaxy is a similar(in a more Mass Effect instead of Dark Souls sort of way) and also high quality game that if you like Fallen Order, I would recommend. Huge fallen order fan here. There is one character you meet towards the end that is my new favorite star wars character, lol.

[Jastall]

Gael actually ended up sort of disappointing me too, though for kinda the opposite reason than Malenia. Which is that P1 is the kind of a fight that's my Achilles heel as far as From Software games go. I struggle more than I should on hyper-aggressive bosses that also flail all over the place like a meth addict having a stroke. And because of that, P1 put me on such high alert that the very first time I beat P1 I burned through the other two phases and killed the boss, experiencing no "climb" for those phases. Still a great fight, even if I preferred Midir from that DLC (and Friede in the entirety of DS3). And yeah, Isshin is an awesome boss fight.

I killed Gael in 3 tries I think, but he was still tons of fun. I like bosses that flail around like madmen so long as they're reasonably sized unlike, say, Guardian Ape in Sekiro or Ulcerated Tree Spirits in ER where you can run into camera problems. But you're right that phases 2-3 were easier and full of rather predictable attacks. I for one really hated Friede's 3rd phase, she becomes so fast so it feels a bit off. Like she was a Bloodborne boss in DS3. But Isshin is my favorite boss in From Soft history, his Shura ending incarnation is also dang good but Sword Saint is *chef's kiss*. Literally one of the best bosses ever made. There's basically nothing wrong with that fight aside maybe from the lightning reversal making ph3 a bit too easy.

All this made me want to replay Sekiro actually, lol. Bit rusty but man is the combat more satisfying than in Elden Ring.

[Devilyaki]

Think I over leveled my third play, stuff is just falling over with no real effort lol. Berserk sword x2 with blood loss, combined with the helm and trinket. Hit for big big damage.
I can’t seem to find anyone to summon though so bosses been solo mostly :/ almost done the main ones now..

[Dudenoso]

I wasn't talking about ER in general, I was quite clearly talking about Malenia specifically.

I generalized because that was my feeling when talking about ER in general, including Malenia. Other notable mentions are Morgott, Maliketh and The God of Wrestling. Best fights I've ever had outside Sekiro, and they really weren't passive-ass fights where I couldn't attack much / stay on their ass for most of the fight.

That seems to be an opposite stance to most people.

But then having a shield on the second slot of the left hand does help with parries and figuring out which attacks don't need a dodge, nor a disengage.

Yeah, no, this is an outdated dinosaur of game design. The point of having options is to provide different ways to play for different people and increase replayability, not to trick people into a wrong choice. Options are meaningful by themselves, whereas the only "meaning" of putting trick options into the game is to make the player feel like they wasted time pursuing the wrong build.

You lost the meta game because you chose a build that's adequate for god gamers or people who mastered the game already. Did you expect your glass cannon to not be made of glass?

The consequences of losing the meta game is a character that doesn't fit your skills, capabilities and the enemies faced. That can be compensated by gearing choices ( or gittin' gud to an unreasonable level )

Complaining that you don't have piss easy defence methods - or that you have to rely on gear to have them - as a glass cannon makes as much sense as complaining that your melee character doesn't have innately good ranged options. You built them for that.

Build choices become fluff choices that just change your skin if they have an equally high performance in every situation ( i.e. if there aren't points where you have to make do instead of just destroying everything ).

[nocturnus]

Yeah, no, this is an outdated dinosaur of game design. The point of having options is to provide different ways to play for different people and increase replayability, not to trick people into a wrong choice. Options are meaningful by themselves, whereas the only "meaning" of putting trick options into the game is to make the player feel like they wasted time pursuing the wrong build.

So, you built a glass-cannon and subsequently complain about your lack of survivability.

Yeah, in what kind of mind does that make any sense?

[segara82]

What build is not a glass cannon? I tried a mage with int 80 and vigor 50, and bosses still can two-shot me. Sure, i could farm the suicide-bird for another few hours to get vigor up to 60, but the damage output gets just ridiculous. And i haven't even proceded in the story after the Fire Giant.

[Fencers]

What build is not a glass cannon? I tried a mage with int 80 and vigor 50, and bosses still can two-shot me. Sure, i could farm the suicide-bird for another few hours to get vigor up to 60, but the damage output gets just ridiculous. And i haven't even proceded in the story after the Fire Giant.

I played through the game twice now, one str based and the other int based. I was never a glass cannon.

Going through the game a 3rd time as faith-based and playing at my laziest with most deaths being from falling.

[dope_danny]

Restarting a new run i noticed something. The four characters other than marika that make the biggest changes in the world, loux, goldmask, gideon and you are all shown as dead. Labelled "the dead that yet live". We know from in game that being tarnished is a form of excommunication and theres more than one punishment such as the tarnished harpies who are infertile but it feels like on replay with context that someone marked by the death tarnishing is the one who gets put in a position to change things rather than keep the stagnation going.

Maybe thats a cycle thing but given the whole ingame "to be marked by death is to lose all you care of" and the state of the npcs questlines almost across the board when you help people i wonder if the point is that the grace specifically targets people who are destined to lose their earthly connections?

[Jastall]

So, you built a glass-cannon and subsequently complain about your lack of survivability.

Yeah, in what kind of mind does that make any sense?

Speaking for myself, I doubt 50 Vigor and just enough armor to not hit Heavy load counts as glass cannon. It's more that unless you really dedicate yourself to being a tank which often requires above-average game knowledge to pull off, most attacks 2-3 shot you by the endgame. If I were glass cannon I'd have like 25-30 vigor and go for light equip load + the headpiece(s) that increase spell damage. To me that's glass cannon, not parts of Raging Wolf + Blaidd armor and Vigor being my 2nd highest stat.

[Mehrunes]

I generalized because that was my feeling when talking about ER in general, including Malenia. Other notable mentions are Morgott, Maliketh and The God of Wrestling. Best fights I've ever had outside Sekiro, and they really weren't passive-ass fights where I couldn't attack much / stay on their ass for most of the fight.

That seems to be an opposite stance to most people.

The second paragraph should kinda tell you something.

You lost the meta game because you chose a build that's adequate for god gamers or people who mastered the game already. Did you expect your glass cannon to not be made of glass?

The consequences of losing the meta game is a character that doesn't fit your skills, capabilities and the enemies faced. That can be compensated by gearing choices ( or gittin' gud to an unreasonable level )

Complaining that you don't have piss easy defence methods - or that you have to rely on gear to have them - as a glass cannon makes as much sense as complaining that your melee character doesn't have innately good ranged options. You built them for that.

Build choices become fluff choices that just change your skin if they have an equally high performance in every situation ( i.e. if there aren't points where you have to make do instead of just destroying everything ).

WTF are you even talking about? First of all, "my" glass canon exists only in your mind, because I was sporting a heavy armor kit for fashion souls and a strong shield when fighting Malenia (and, by the time I got to her, a ton of vigor). And while I was playing a meta build, I didn't "lose the meta game" and that build most certainly fit my skills and capabilities, because other than one Evergaol boss I breezed through the game.

And since @Jastall didn't say anything about playing a glass cannon either, I quite clearly ignored that part of your post. Even more so because it wasn't even relevant to your point about blocking Waterfowl Dance, as not having enough STR for a great shield or not enough stability to block Waterfowl Dance with a standard shield does not a glass canon make as far as Elden Ring goes.

So, you know, I was quite clearly addressing the part of your post when you made more general remarks about failing at ones build in an RPG and even made completely not glass-canon related examples as having wrong schools of magic damage, as if mobs with immunities/strong resistances randomly making certain magic builds useless at an arbitrary point in the game weren't outdated garbage already 20 years ago (if I'm being generous). And how such shit design is totally the bee's knees, because apparently there's nothing's better in a video game than it invalidating some of the choices that very same gave its players. Because in your seemingly performance-obsessed view decisions in video games only matter there are noob trap decisions and the concept of different playstyles appealing to different people is apparently so alien to you that you just shrugged it off as "fluff".

Secondly, I actually do have a piss-easy defense method against Waterfowl Dance. It's called "not sucking at rolling". If you weren't too busy trying to talk down to other people based on things that exist only in your head and not what you're replying to and spent more time paying attention to the thread you'd have noticed me calling Malenia a disappointment over how easy she is, including how piss-easy I found avoiding her signature attacks. In fact, the very thing that started this subtopic was Jastall's reply to that precise post of mine. If you need to block the first wave of Waterfowl Dance (by far the easiest one to avoid) because actually avoiding it is, as per your own words in an earlier post, "the hardest way possible to do it", that kinda reeks of you relying on a noob crutch to me.

So, you built a glass-cannon and subsequently complain about your lack of survivability.

Yeah, in what kind of mind does that make any sense?

In the kind of mind where reading comprehension is more than a mere myth. Because unlike you and the other genius I see no sign of me "complaining about my lack of survivability" in what you quoted. First of all, because there's no lack of my survivability in the first place, as I was sporting Cuckoo Knight armor (i.e. one of the better armor sets in what is already one of the heaviest armor classes) and Brass Shield (i.e. the single best standard shield in the game), plus having hefty vigor. Not exactly glass cannon there.

Secondly, because in the real world context is a thing and the context here was that I was replying to a post talking about how you should have 30 str for a greatshield, reinforce or high stamina in order to do Malenia the supposedly proper way of just powering through the Windfowl Dance with a block and dismissing other builds (or even other ways of approaching that ability) as wrong choice. And then even went as far as talking about having "wrong" kind of spells, because enemies being immune to a specific kind of damage are super exciting mechanic in this day and age apparently and how deciding to create a build such spell is meaningless if there's no option for them to be wrong like that. Which, given my reply, was quite clearly what I was replying to.

Especially since the remark about glass canon was randomly thrown in a propos of nothing, because @Jastall that the post in question was a reply to to said nothing about playing a glass cannon either. Speaking of whom, for even more context points, if you went few posts further up the reply chain you'd see how this subtopic started from Jastall's reply to me calling the boss in question a pushover, making the idea that I "complained about my lack of survivability" in regards to it even more disjointed from reality.