0__0 [he/him]
There’s a difference between reusing some assets for graphics, enemies and the such, and reusing something that is supposed to be the bread and butter of the experience you want to present to the player. Like, the System Shock Remake pretty much reuses the same fucking boss every single time lmao, yet I think that game is absolutely amazing. Again, boss fights aren’t central to the experience System Shock offers. FromSoftware has set a precedent in their other games where most of their boss fights each felt unique and challenging, but fair. Not every boss is like this, but most of them are. In this game, bosses feel more like just another mob/NPC encounter (probably because a worrying amount of them are). Not a unique challenge you know you’re gonna have to take some time to master, but just another roadblock you bump into that you instantly forget even existed.
I mean sure, it’s technically possible to beat the game on sl1, but even those people use mostly broken builds, as far as I could see. The bosses just aren’t fun anymore, it’s all about waiting for the boss to do his 50 hit combo, and if it’s an attack where he can input read you attack, he just chains into another one and you’re just fucking dead. Just feels like the middle class has been extinguished, you’re either a souls pro who does a no-hit, sl1 run of the whole franchise in 1 go for fun, or you’re a newcomer fine with just using spirit summons to do work (not judging people who do this, just personally not the way I wanna play). After every fight in the other games, while there was some bs, I mostly felt like me dying was my own mistake, and me actually beating the boss was rewarding. In Elden Ring, it felt like the me dying was mostly some bs, and me beating the boss left me mostly empty.
I really didn’t like my experience with Elden Ring, since it’s more about optimizing builds at this point than just that classic learn the pattern and punish soulsborne has been known for. This seems like even further straying from that formula, which makes it just another game in a medieval action rpg genre, no different than the rest. Not to mention that I’m really not looking forward to fighting bosses I already beat in the other games. Just seems like they found their cash cow and are milking it for all it’s worth at this point.
Which would be fine if I didn’t see fucking nameless king in the game lmao. Like, I’m 100% sure the bosses are just gonna be mostly copied from the other games. I mean they fucking copied a regular boss of the main game as a DLC boss in Elden Ring, let alone a game where they can justify their blatant laziness. I’m moreso making fun of the delulu git gud fanboys who defend their laziness with bs excuses such as lore.
I’d say after they lose the war to China (if it even happens), absolutely anything is possible. Probably like Germany in the 1920’s, where it could go both ways. Either the working class gets out of it’s own ass and starts to organize, while also managing to diminish the already omnipresent right wing influence, or they simply get caught with their pants down and mowed down like the Spartacists. Only time will tell.
Masterpiece? I’m playing through it right now and honestly, I would rather take the other two souls game I played (DS3 and 2) over Elden Ring any day of the week. If you haven’t played it, I recommend you don’t buy into the fanboy hype about it being “one of the best games of all time”. I made that mistake, and whilst it sounded like a sound take at the beginning of the game with the novelty of the open world, QoL changes and a horse, once all of that newfound charm wears off and you enter the end game where people legit have to respec just to beat one fucking boss because the game is ridiculously unbalanced and the boss design is objectively trash, you quickly begin to realize that giving this game GOTY inspite of its quite blatant flaws was a major fucking mistake.