Elden Ring

[Yora]

I played the game for 10 hours now and starting to get somewhat of a proper first impression.

Technically, this game is pretty much Dark Souls 4, using Dark Souls 3 as the basis to make new levels and add a few new mechanics. However stylistically, I immediately was thinking much more of Demon's Souls 2. The whole beginning section of the game very much follows in the footsteps of Demon's Souls with the tutorial section, but also the intro cinematic. And the Round Table Club feels a lot like the Nexus, with even a Blacksmith Ed in it. Which I think is really cool.

Where I think the game did rather poorly though, is the whole first open-world section. Between the Caves of Learning and the first boss, everything is very much the same and empty. I did not feel any kind of progression between my second hour and my sixth hour, and aside from the pretty skybox there really wasn't anything impressive. Just walking around in this giant field and fighting hollow soldiers. Occasionally a wolf or a bat. Nothing to get me excited.

Thankfully, the experience for me changed completely once I got past the first boss and into the castle. Now the game has become much more fun, introducing environments that affect how you can fight the hollow soldiers and actual exploration as you have to figure out the layout while carefully peaking around corners. Running around in open fields with the occasional enemies that take one hit to kill on flat ground does not feel like exploration. That there is nothing to find in the first outdoor area makes things even worse. (Found two merchants and an trivial mini boss. Which I get is there as a tutorial for new players, but doesn't feel exciting.)

I'm having a good amount of fun with the game now, but I am not sold on the open world idea. As I am never sold on the open world idea. It kind of works in Elder Scrolls and was pulled off well in Gothic over 20 years ago, but slapping open world environments on game series that never had it always leads to a worse experience. Witcher 3 is good despite the open world, not because of it. I am sure it would have been great without it. Also, collecting crafting material always sucks. Why do I need to use an item to see summoning signs? Why make it so that the ingredients to make that item is absolutely everywhere in unlimited amounts? This just adds pointless button pressing to create the fake illusion of complexity and new mechanics.

I am hoping that there are going to be a lot more areas like the Storm Castle. That section is a lot of fun. Exploring the outdoors has felt like a complete waste of time so far, though.

[Lord Raziere]

My experience as a dark souls player, skyrim player, and open world player has been the complete opposite of yours, Yora.

I've found a lot of things to discover in the start area alone without going past Stormcastle, there are like four or five mini dungeons you can find without ever going near it, you can go to places like the weeping island to the south, to these burnt out wastes to the east, a beach and an island to the west, I've found a flail- a weapon that I don't think has ever been in a fromsoft game before- a cool new dagger from an NPC invader, by boosting by luck I get a bunch of drops that other people probably need more grinding to get, I don't have the full keidan set for example but just chest piece is awesome with its fur, I've tested out dual-wielding daggers and love how you can just stab them a million times to death. I'm having fun even though the enemies are invisible to me half the time, I've just adapted to fighting them this way, and the mini-dungeons are actually good for me because they're limited enough that they can actually show me the enemies.

ironically, Stormcastle is where I can't have any fun because thats where the framerate issues are at their worst for me. I got past margit and as far as the side entrance and got the hook claws before the game suddenly started dropping frames so hard that it kicked me outy and won't let me back into the game because "framerate is too low for online play" whenever this happens so I had to escape from framedrop castle. thus I'm basically stuck in the south of Stormcastle until that issue is solved. maybe if I go offline, it will at least not kick me out? Stormcastle is the only place I experience this problem, the rest of the game I've been having fun. though my RAM is only 8 GB which is 4 below the minimum specs, so I might have to update that?

but yeah, I'd strongly disagree with your assessment, there is a lot here, you just haven't been looking hard enough.

[Kesnit]

How hard is Elden Ring?

When I first read about it, I thought it sounded interesting. Then I read all the comparisons to Dark Souls. While I have nothing against Dark Souls, everything I've read (and the little I've played) shows that the extreme challenge is an integral part of the game.

I play games for fun and relaxation. Extreme challenge is NOT fun and relaxing for me. I openly admit I play everything on easier difficulties. Given that, should I give Elden Ring a pass, or is it actually playable for a casual gamer who doesn't enjoy screaming at the game?

[Lord Raziere]

How hard is Elden Ring?

When I first read about it, I thought it sounded interesting. Then I read all the comparisons to Dark Souls. While I have nothing against Dark Souls, everything I've read (and the little I've played) shows that the extreme challenge is an integral part of the game.

I play games for fun and relaxation. Extreme challenge is NOT fun and relaxing for me. I openly admit I play everything on easier difficulties. Given that, should I give Elden Ring a pass, or is it actually playable for a casual gamer who doesn't enjoy screaming at the game?

It is mechanically the same as Dark souls in all the ways that matter, combat wise.

one could argue that due to a few factors that its the easiest iteration of a Fromsoft soulslike in that you can pretty much just ignore an extreme challenge if you find one or a required one to go do something easier because its open world and also open to a lot of sequence breaking and potential methods to get stuff early to like level up without having to repetitively grind the same few rooms, but its still a soulslike.

Its basically Dark Souls 4 crossed with Breath of the Wild. now, I don't know whether you know what Dark Souls combat or how it plays how it actually entails, because to describe its difficulty is hard to someone who hasn't actually seen it, but if you do, and don't like Dark Souls you probably won't like this, because this is just Dark Souls but open world.

(I could go into the Dark souls definition of "easy mode" where the most commonly accepted form of it is to recommend newcomers the Knight class and for Elden Ring the Vagabond class which is basically the same thing but with added halberd, because Vagabond has the best armor, best stats for anything non-caster, best weapons and a 100% physical protection medium shield which is good because it means you can just keep your shield up a lot without taking damage while still being mobile, and to recommend leveling up a quality build of 40 Str, 40 Dex, 40 Vigor, and 40 Endurance because it gives the widest access most weapons and is just all around good. if you manage to find a rapier on top of that, you can attack while your still guarding which is real good. I could also go into how often the best way to play Dark souls is often to play smart and weaken or kill the enemies with ranged weapons before you move into melee and such rather than charging in foolishly.

But on the flip side, there are a lot of opinions about how to best play Dark souls and thus Elden Ring, many of them contradictory since the game is made in a way that all builds are viable in some way, so a lot of weapon, build and gear choices about this or that come down to personal preference, because you can have the right tools but still use them poorly. Like some are of the opinion that being an Astrologer is easy mode since its magic because magic in souls game often pierces through mere physical defense while also being ranged and target-seeking, while also relying on your mana bar which is auto-refillable at any bonfire/grace rather than arrows you have to actively restock, so while you have to manage it as a resource like arrows you never really without it. its that to play Astrologer or Sorcerer to use the Dark souls term, you have to play less like duelist reading and reacting to moves of your foe and more like a tactician who has to stay away from melee combat while figuring out the best way to take out everyone in the room, because if your in range of someone's blade your dead like probably in one hit maybe two. so while its easier in some ways, it requires a different mindset from usual dark souls combat to do it properly, as you have to be even more cautious than usual dark souls caution.

honestly for a Dnd player for these kinds of games I'd tell them to think of the entire game world as a classic dungeon crawl, with all the traps and monsters that it implies. if you have experience as an adventurer in DnD, that will probably help you in a soulslike. its difficult in the way old school DnD is difficult: I'm still hitting all the chests in Elden Ring to check if they're mimics because DS3 had mimics and to my mind, its only a matter of time before an Elden Ring mimic shows up)

[Yora]

I do have four of the five previous games 100% completed, so experience is certainly a factor. But so far I think Elden Ring is the easiest of the bunch. The first main boss was quite hard, but the way the game is set up it's not a roadblock on the only path you can progress. I fought him a few times, found it quite tough, and so I continued exploring the rest of the open area for many more hours, getting more skilled with the game and my character stronger.

The thing with Soulsborne games is that they are not actually very hard. It's just that you will have a good number of deaths and take a lot of tries on many of these bosses. These games are primarily games of skill. The whole point of playing the game is to improve your skill by repetition. Nobody is supposed to be able to get through areas and defeat bosses on the first attempt. Or the third. You encounter the various enemies again and again, and fight some of the bosses over and over, and with each repetition you get used to their behavior and their timing, developing an instinct to see what attack they are going to make and where it's going to land from miles away. It's like the scene at the end of The Matrix, where Neo is casually blocking every punch with just one hand and not even looking.
What makes the games work is that enemies are almost always pretty easy to read and take quite some time from the start of their attack until the weapon actually hits something. Once you have seen an attack a dozen times, you will know where the strike will land and at what moment right when it starts, giving you a good amount of time to react and either get away from that point with a dodge, or use your shield to block. The result of this is that most people playing the game are almost never surprised when they get killed and wondering what just happened. You didn't dodge, even though there was plenty of time, or you couldn't dodge because you had moved yourself into a corner. Or you got hit because you didn't block with your shield, because you thought you could hit the enemy three times with your weapon before he tries hitting back, even though he always takes the same amount of time to make these attack and you know how much time there is before you need to block. Occasionally it happens that you might think it wasn't quite necessary for the designers to make an enemy attack quite that fast or deal quite that much damage. But almost every time, you can clearly see how you got hit, and how you could have avoided getting hit.

I think in many ways, the gameplay of Soulseborne games is similar to racing games. In racing games you also repeat the same race tracks many times. And you don't expect to get first place on the first time you do the race. The first time you come 16th, the second time you come 12th, then you come 7th, and then you do another four or six repeats of that race until you have figured out the track and the car you're using in that race. A game like Dark Souls and Elden Ring is not that different from that.
The main thing you are doing with each repeat is getting practice and improving your skill. But unlike most other games, the game does not reset back to the last save point. Instead you keep all the items you picked up on the previous attempt (though also lose all the items you used up during it) and if you manage to get back to the spot where you died without dying, you can even get back all the XP/money that you had made in the previous attempt, on top of the ones you made in your current run. Occasionally that fails, and the stuff from the previous attempt is lost. But that actually is not very common and mostly you can get the stuff back. The result of this is that if you take 10 attempts to get through a section before the next safe point where you can permanently cash in the points for level ups, you end up with perhaps five times as much experience for the section than you would have had if you made it on the first attempt. Which means that your character is actually stronger going into the next section.
Being really good at these games only means that you do less repetitions of each section, but at the same time your character is also weaker. Conversely, if a section is harder for you and takes you more repetitions, your character comes out stronger, giving you a boost for the next sections.

The key to enjoying Soulsborne games is to not see dying and repeating sections as failure. Being good at them only means that you make it to the end faster. And I believe based on the times all of these games have taken me, I'm actually rather bad at them. But still find them huge fun.

[Fergie0044]

Very tempted to pick this up for my Xbox one (base version) but worried about it running ok. I'm not concerned about the graphics being worse, just that its playable and not an entire game's worth of DS1 blighttown. I'm finding contradictory stories online. Is anyone here playing it on a last gen console?

[Lord Raziere]

Very tempted to pick this up for my Xbox one (base version) but worried about it running ok. I'm not concerned about the graphics being worse, just that its playable and not an entire game's worth of DS1 blighttown. I'm finding contradictory stories online. Is anyone here playing it on a last gen console?

I'm playing it on 8 GB of Ram on a PC, when they recommended specs at 16GB. so.....closest we have to last gen console?

the only place where I experience framerate making it unplayable is Stormveil Castle after I beat the boss in front of it. and thats only because I literally get kicked out by the game declaring it unplayable.

everything else runs fine its just....half the enemies are invisible. Maybe this is a bug they'll work out, but I might just need to update my ram, other people online complain about this bug but I'm the only one I know having it. because it can't load in all the enemies visual appearance or something. I can work with this fine because apparently I consider myself an experienced dark souls player who accept its as a challenge or at have adapted to it in my hopes it will be fixed. its other people I'd be concerned about because reading your foes movements is key to picking up how these games are played. thankfully it doesn't happen when fighting bosses.

Spoiler: Actual gameplay

Show

like I've discovered two evergaols, and on Crucible Knight I've just hit a wall on. I've figured him out enough to know that I need to parry him for the first half of his fight to get anywhere, but when he starts flying I don't think he leaves himself very open to parrying anymore and his attack strings start becoming long before he allows himself to be vulnerable. like, he is one of the most varied and hard foes to face despite just being a big knight, because he has a shield with a spike that he can bash with, a sword he can one hand for slashing and stabbing or two hand for power attacks and a stomp that causes spikes to jump out of the earth and if I get caught in that its basically death. like this guy has four different ways of attack despite being incredibly basic. I think I need to come back later for Crucible Knight.

Ancient Hero of Zamor on the other hand I beat in two tries despite them being faster and having more attacks and my hp being brought down to a mere sliver on the second, because they are much more predictable and easily damaged, with less armor and no shield. I got the most ironic reward in Radagon's Scarseal in that it increases vigor, dexterity, strength and endurance in exchange for increasing damage taken....so something if I had during the fight would've made me lose, because I would've taken more damage and died rather than holding out on a slim chance that I'd pull out a clutch win which I did. perhaps not use such a trinket until I increase my health a lot. its just 4% more damage but I literally had a magic pixel of health remaining.

Edit: lowered various graphic settings, tested it out, and that is at least helping with the invisible enemies. they are much more visible and pop out less frequently now.

[factotum]

Edit: lowered various graphic settings, tested it out, and that is at least helping with the invisible enemies. they are much more visible and pop out less frequently now.

What graphics card do you have? Sounds like it might be an issue with the amount of RAM on that rather than general memory?

[Lord Raziere]

What graphics card do you have? Sounds like it might be an issue with the amount of RAM on that rather than general memory?

installed RAM is 8.00GB half the recommended amount... its NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050. its probably a bit outdated yeah.

[factotum]

Yeah, *minimum* spec for the game is a 1060 with 3Gb of RAM on-board, so 1050 is definitely below that, especially if it's one of the ones that has less than 3Gb of RAM on board.

[Lord Raziere]

Yeah, *minimum* spec for the game is a 1060 with 3Gb of RAM on-board, so 1050 is definitely below that, especially if it's one of the ones that has less than 3Gb of RAM on board.

Well, I've got my settings on medium or low and I've gotten through castle Stormveil, defeating Godrick in two tries, beat Castle Morne before that, turns out lowering my settings was all I need to solve the framerate problem to get through it and now the game is opening up. after a while the difference in visual quality fades into the background sooooooo......*shrug* I'll probably have to update my ram at some point but until then this will do.

[Sception]

I'm loving it so far. Started with a wretch and put points haphazardly in all the stats to get a feel for the game, restarted on the second day as a Confessor once I had a handle on what I liked. If there was an early respec option I'd have stuck with the original character, but if there is a respec option, it's later on.

The open world is pretty huge. Combined with the Souls Series typical attitude towards direction and explanation - plop you down and let you go - this can be a bit bewildering for a completely new player. It's a very old school sentiment - think original nes Legend of Zelda.

That said, if you follow the glowing paths indicated by the save points, you'll be pointed forwards in the plot, and if you follow that path, killing weak enemies and avoiding strong ones, you'll meet a merchant who sells a crafting kit, and eventually reach a gatehouse where this game's version of the fire keeper will open the ability to level up and give you an item to call your horse, which you can use to just dash past most overworld challenges that trouble you. The golden paths further direct you past some enemy gauntlets that, again, can be ridden around or through, towards a large castle, and the game's first real difficulty wall boss, Margit. After fighting Margit at least once, win or lose, the next checkpoint you rest at the fire keeper will grant you access to the games rest/hub/nexus area with several npcs to talk to, including another vender and a blacksmith.

Margit was absolutely too much for me, despite having beaten every previous souls game. Which I think describes the difficulty well. Main story bosses, and some of the optional overworld bosses you can flee from or avoid, are HARD. Even by souls standards. And the usual pressure release valve of summoning help doesn't seem as effective in Elden Ring, as boss hp seems to scale more for assistance than previously, and the gatekeeper boss attack patterns are wide and sweeping, prone to hitting multiple combatants at once.

I could have just thrown myself at Margit over and over, slowly learning his attack patterns and openings, 'getting good' like a classic souls game, and I even tried that for a bit. But despite some souls experience, I'm no expert gamer. I even put my summon sign down to help others with the boss, hoping to see how they fight him, but after a dozen tries never seeing anyone beat the guy, I decided to go exploring and level up some instead.

And that seems to be intended. Like, IMO the point of Margit is to tell you 'you're a scrub, go explore the world and level up'. The big castle behind Margit gates progress to the north, but there is a HUGE explore-able area before that. Not just the main zone you start, but lands to the south and east as well, which are all accessible right now, with interesting overworld encounters, npc vendors and skill tutors, and fun little mini-dungeons (complete with their own, much more manageable bosses), scattered throughout. There's even a handful of what feels like proper entire souls levels, with more significant bosses and rewards at the end. My favorite was probably the castle you reach by following the road to the southern-most point of the map, where some of the common knight enemies are battling against a rebellious class of formerly-servile harpy monsters.

And it's not all generic medieval landscape, some of the areas to the east especially feel like... well, I don't want to spoil anything, but there's definitely a 'late game' feel to them, even though they're still technically in the early game part of the map.

Random exploration and dungeon delving will easily push you from the naked scrub with a soggy bonk branch up to a level 30ish seasoned warrior with solid armor, a +5 legendary boss cleaver, and a backpack stuffed with exotic weapon arts, magic spells, spectral summons, and utility items. And you can get there without grinding at all, just exploring and investigating new content in the available zones the whole while. And that's without skipping the castle to get north some other way, which in theory should also be possible.

And when you do come back to Margit after all that, the tables will have well and truly turned. I easily smashed past the monster who gated entrance to the castle, the same guy who felt impossible at the start of the game. And once I got to *his* boss at the *end* of the castle - a fantastic and tricky dungeon full of alternate paths - it felt like taking on the last boss of an already big game, only to realize I'm still at the start of the game, and a whole new world is opening up in front of me to the north. I haven't felt that feeling of a game world that just kept opening up more and more since the first time I played Hollow Knight. It's magical.

I think I'll be playing this game for a long, long time.

[Anonymouswizard]

Have From Software actually added accessibility options, or do I have to skip this one as they don't believe coordination disabilities are a thing?

[Sception]

Have From Software actually added accessibility options, or do I have to skip this one as they don't believe coordination disabilities are a thing?

Sadly no. This is not a particularly accessible game for those with coordination disabilities.

[Wookieetank]

So Stormveil Castle is not a road block for exploration, there's a treacherous and easy to miss side trail around the place to the east, found it before I ever ran into Margit. Made it all the way to the northwest Erd Tree and "Angry Groot" as my daughter called it before deciding to take a look at following the "main story" markers on the map.

I'm greatly entertained by the horse having double jump, and flying over the heads of enemies has gotten me past a number of difficult road blocks.

[Dienekes]

Have From Software actually added accessibility options, or do I have to skip this one as they don't believe coordination disabilities are a thing?

Depends what you mean. Pick bows/magic farm a lot to get the highest armor and poise and use the new summoning feature to drop aggro and I'm pretty sure you can beat the game even with terrible coordination.

But FromSoft basically exploded in popularity by catering to the "Badge of Honor" game market. So I don't think they're ever going to put in an easy mode or something like that. At least not in the foreseeable future.

Anyway, games fun thus far. Hasn't really unseated Sekiro as my favorite of the souls games. But that's to be expected. Sekiro is pretty much a straight line (with admittedly a few forks) where to gain power you actually have to beat the bosses and minibosses with very little possibility of farming to gain power and make the game easier. Which I loved.

This one is a lot more exploration and trying to get the player to go wander off and do other things instead of beating the boss straight in front of you. Mind you I still bashed my head against Tree Sentinel until I beat it. But I finally got the memo with Margit.

I'm not as far off as Yora, I did find a lot of random things in Limgrave, from hidden caves, to strange chests that teleport me across the map. I always could find stuff. But I really do prefer the catered almost leveled experience of the earlier souls games to wide open worlds.

Still having a blast of course.

[Burley]

I'll be picking this up soon and, from what I've seen, magic is more accessible than every, and that's what I want.

I'm really interested in starting as Prisoner and playing a spellblade character. From what I've seen (not seen everything), players are leaning toward Astrologer. Has anybody here gone Prisoner and found good weapons/spells early enough to not feel played? Bloodborne took forever to reward an arcane build and DS3 takes until the Crystal Wizard, unless I've always missed something good.

[Anonymouswizard]

Depends what you mean. Pick bows/magic farm a lot to get the highest armor and poise and use the new summoning feature to drop aggro and I'm pretty sure you can beat the game even with terrible coordination.

That's not accessibility features, and does little to help with my major problem with the game ('timing on dodge rolls is too tight for me due to a disability').

I also think the phrasing you're looking for is 'But FromSoft basically exploded in popularity by catering to the ableist game market'. The worst part is, if I have the audacity to use the only tools I know of to make the game accessible they'll at least softban me from online features for 'cheating'. So I'd like them to get off their arses and do their bloody job if they're going to stop me from doing it.

[Burley]

That's not accessibility features, and does little to help with my major problem with the game ('timing on dodge rolls is too tight for me due to a disability').

I also think the phrasing you're looking for is 'But FromSoft basically exploded in popularity by catering to the ableist game market'. The worst part is, if I have the audacity to use the only tools I know of to make the game accessible they'll at least softban me from online features for 'cheating'. So I'd like them to get off their arses and do their bloody job if they're going to stop me from doing it.

That seems rough and really frustrating. Were there any options in previous titles? What sort of accessibility options do you use and how do they work? As a member of the ableist game market (), I've never experimented with that tab in the options menu, other than turning on captions, if the option isn't under Audio.

[Dienekes]

That's not accessibility features, and does little to help with my major problem with the game ('timing on dodge rolls is too tight for me due to a disability').

I also think the phrasing you're looking for is 'But FromSoft basically exploded in popularity by catering to the ableist game market'. The worst part is, if I have the audacity to use the only tools I know of to make the game accessible they'll at least softban me from online features for 'cheating'. So I'd like them to get off their arses and do their bloody job if they're going to stop me from doing it.

I mean... get armor and high poise and a shield and you won't need to dodge, provided you level up.

As to the phrasing, if that's the way you feel about them. Sure. I'm curious why you'd want to go to From games though. That's kinda their whole thing. Like, if you're interested in action games Devil May Cry is more exciting and much easier to beat. Open world, you have Zelda or whatever Ubisoft is doing. Lorewise, let's be honest Dragon Age has more depth.

Really FromSoft's only thing they excel at is creating experiences that beat people down completely and utterly until they master the timing and spacing necessary to win. If that is not fun or impossible for you, I don't get the appeal of the game.

I'm actually curious, why are you interested in it?

[LaZodiac]

*gestures vaguely at all the cool **** that's been mentioned in this very thread*

You know, that. And also the fact that hey cool thing everyone is playing, sure would be fun to play but oops it's not actually playable for them.

The advice of "just get heavy armour and poise and build to that" is useful but only to a point. Some things still penetrate a 100 physical shield, and the fact of the matter is some of these games just are't playable by certain people, mostly due to motorfunctions issues. It's an unfortunate thing, and it's why Sekiro being purely single player (and having a modded in difficulty slider that influences how fast the game goes) is probably the best bet for someone like Anon Wizard over here.

[Dragonus45]

But FromSoft basically exploded in popularity by catering to the "Badge of Honor" game market. So I don't think they're ever going to put in an easy mode or something like that. At least not in the foreseeable future.

Less a "badge of honor" thing then it is a specific artistic decision about how they want the game to be interacted with really. There was an interesting article interviewing Miyazaki where he talked a bit about it.

[Anonymouswizard]

That seems rough and really frustrating. Were there any options in previous titles? What sort of accessibility options do you use and how do they work? As a member of the ableist game market (), I've never experimented with that tab in the options menu, other than turning on captions, if the option isn't under Audio.

There was nothing in any of the previous games, and it's becoming a real bugbear of mine because I really like most elements of the game. What I, personally, need is the ability to adjust game speed* or tightness of timings, although there's a lot of other options that should be available (such as filters for the visually impaired).

* This one is more difficult to implement alongside the online features, but I'm certain it's not impossible.

I mean... get armor and high poise and a shield and you won't need to dodge, provided you level up.

It only works until you get to enemies designed to work around blocking and force you to dodge/parry. I got further in Dark Souls 1 than either of the sequels because it has fewer enemies.

As for the inevitable 'grind more' comments, gah. I already tend to grind to a greater extent than recommended, anything else is tedium.

As to the phrasing, if that's the way you feel about them. Sure. I'm curious why you'd want to go to From games though. That's kinda their whole thing. Like, if you're interested in action games Devil May Cry is more exciting and much easier to beat. Open world, you have Zelda or whatever Ubisoft is doing. Lorewise, let's be honest Dragon Age has more depth.

Because I actually like how combat is designed, the aesthetic, and everything else on that front. What I don't like is knowing exactly what to do and dying for the fiftieth time on the same point because my brain and hands don't have a great relationship so I missed the Dodge timing by half a second again.

I've beaten Devil May Cry, can get to Mission 19 of DMC3 on normal mode (the boss rush kills me), and beaten Devil May Cry 5 on hard mode. I'm on my fifth run of Dragon Age: Origins. And while I don't have a great relationship with open world games I do like Dark Souls.

Really FromSoft's only thing they excel at is creating experiences that beat people down completely and utterly until they master the timing and spacing necessary to win. If that is not fun or impossible for you, I don't get the appeal of the game.

I'm actually curious, why are you interested in it?

FromSoft makes games with a very specific level of challenge. Unfortunately they refuse to let those who are less able at the reflex challenges part have the same level of challenge. I'm actually on the relatively minor end (having dyspraxia rather than any of a number of more deliberating conditions), and able people showing off by beating the game with Morse code controllers can make us feel worse.

*gestures vaguely at all the cool **** that's been mentioned in this very thread*

You know, that. And also the fact that hey cool thing everyone is playing, sure would be fun to play but oops it's not actually playable for them.

The advice of "just get heavy armour and poise and build to that" is useful but only to a point. Some things still penetrate a 100 physical shield, and the fact of the matter is some of these games just are't playable by certain people, mostly due to motorfunctions issues. It's an unfortunate thing, and it's why Sekiro being purely single player (and having a modded in difficulty slider that influences how fast the game goes) is probably the best bet for someone like Anon Wizard over here.

Zodi speaks the truth.

[warty goblin]

I'm not disabled in any way, and frankly I find the game's lack of difficulty settings pisses me off. I like Elden Ring for the exploration and tone and art design, getting routinely stunlocked and murdered doesn't improve my experience. Mostly it irritates me into playing something where I don't wipe 20 minutes of progress because I failed to instantly understand how to fight the giant bear that just spawned in out of nowhere. I don't get a lot of gaming time anymore, I appreciate it when games have a modicum of respect for that.

I don't mean to diminish the worth of developer vision here. If that vision is super hard, do that. Make it the default option, label it as the intended vision, whatever you want, but you can still have difficulty settings. Ice Pick Lodge did this with Pathologic 2, and they're a full on arthouse developer who make vastly weirder games where mimes explain the plot to you or you literally paint color back into the world. Their original vision is still there if you want it, nothing has been lost by including other options.

The inclusion of a mode with more generous timings or whatever doesn't take anything away from you if you like the hard mode; I usually play shooters on Hard, I don't begrudge the existence of Easy.

[LaZodiac]

I'm not disabled in any way, and frankly I find the game's lack of difficulty settings pisses me off. I like Elden Ring for the exploration and tone and art design, getting routinely stunlocked and murdered doesn't improve my experience. Mostly it irritates me into playing something where I don't wipe 20 minutes of progress because I failed to instantly understand how to fight the giant bear that just spawned in out of nowhere. I don't get a lot of gaming time anymore, I appreciate it when games have a modicum of respect for that.

I don't mean to diminish the worth of developer vision here. If that vision is super hard, do that. Make it the default option, label it as the intended vision, whatever you want, but you can still have difficulty settings. Ice Pick Lodge did this with Pathologic 2, and they're a full on arthouse developer who make vastly weirder games where mimes explain the plot to you or you literally paint color back into the world. Their original vision is still there if you want it, nothing has been lost by including other options.

The inclusion of a mode with more generous timings or whatever doesn't take anything away from you if you like the hard mode; I usually play shooters on Hard, I don't begrudge the existence of Easy.

The thing everyone misses in discourse about "make things better for disabled folk" is that anything that makes life better for people with disabilities also makes things easier for non disabled people too.

I'm not disabled, but Sekiro is just weirdly miserable a play for me. Something about it doesn't click. So slowing the pace of the game helps me a lot too. Having options to adjust the difficulty to your liking is literally never a bad thing.

[factotum]

I don't have a disability beyond "being old", but that's certainly sufficient to keep me a long way away from Fromsoft games. When I was in my 20s I might have played and even enjoyed them, but the reflexes aren't what they were and my patience for repeating the same section over and over again until I get past it is nonexistent these days.

[Dienekes]

The thing everyone misses in discourse about "make things better for disabled folk" is that anything that makes life better for people with disabilities also makes things easier for non disabled people too.

I'm not disabled, but Sekiro is just weirdly miserable a play for me. Something about it doesn't click. So slowing the pace of the game helps me a lot too. Having options to adjust the difficulty to your liking is literally never a bad thing.

No, I think that’s what the issue is.

Again Sekiro was my favorite precisely because I could change anything about it. I couldn’t be tempted to go farm souls to get stronger, I couldn’t just tweak it to make it easier for myself. I had to beat it, no cheating. No fiddling with things thinking no one would know. It just needed to be beaten.

If the game can keep that experience while also making it playable for the disabled I’d be 100% for it. But my primary concern is creating the difficult experience that can’t be wiggled around. Removal of temptation and all that.

[LaZodiac]

No, I think that’s what the issue is.

Again Sekiro was my favorite precisely because I could change anything about it. I couldn’t be tempted to go farm souls to get stronger, I couldn’t just tweak it to make it easier for myself. I had to beat it, no cheating. No fiddling with things thinking no one would know. It just needed to be beaten.

If the game can keep that experience while also making it playable for the disabled I’d be 100% for it. But my primary concern is creating the difficult experience that can’t be wiggled around. Removal of temptation and all that.

To each their own.

But having the option is never a bad thing.

[Dienekes]

To each their own.

But having the option is never a bad thing.

I mean it kinda is.

People have a weird habit of optimizing the fun out of things. Taking the easy route even when you know the difficult is more fulfilling in the long run. It’s kinda human nature. I can’t tell you how many times in other games I did knock the difficulty down when I was having trouble and ran through a game on easy just to beat it even though the challenge was gone.

So, yeah I actually do appreciate that these games don’t give me that temptation. It’s part of why they’re the only action games I really play anymore.

[Psyren]

How hard is Elden Ring?

When I first read about it, I thought it sounded interesting. Then I read all the comparisons to Dark Souls. While I have nothing against Dark Souls, everything I've read (and the little I've played) shows that the extreme challenge is an integral part of the game.

I play games for fun and relaxation. Extreme challenge is NOT fun and relaxing for me. I openly admit I play everything on easier difficulties. Given that, should I give Elden Ring a pass, or is it actually playable for a casual gamer who doesn't enjoy screaming at the game?

I was never a huge Dark Souls fan either, but I'm really enjoying Elden Ring. (Or at least, I am when the PC version isn't dropping a ton of FPS or turning the enemies invisible ) One big change here is that dying doesn't make you a weaker form and thus easier to keep dying - at least not that I've experienced yet - though you still drop all your money souls runes when you die and must go retrieve them.

There are a lot of ways you can approach problems in this game, including stealth - and playing as a low level caster feels better than it ever has since you start with both a single-target and AoE spell.

One big downside is that this is the kind of game where you want to have a guide open on your other monitor if you want to understand basic systems and not miss key timesavers. (It's possible to completely miss the tutorial area as one early example.) If that's not a dealbreaker for you, this is probably the easiest soulslike to start with.

I'd go through a bunch of other reasons why this is a more accessible soulslike than its predecessors but one of my favorite channels did it for me:

The thing everyone misses in discourse about "make things better for disabled folk" is that anything that makes life better for people with disabilities also makes things easier for non disabled people too.

Indeed. There is even a name for this phenomenon: curb-cutting, named after the fact that cutting ramps into sidewalks in major cities to help wheelchair-bound people get around had huge benefits for the able-bodied population too, like making it easier for people using carts/dollies to get between the sidewalk and the street. (If you've ever had to move out of an apartment or dorm in an urban environment, or get a shopping cart to your car, you've likely benefited from these ramps despite them not being originally made for you.)