Elden Ring Critique - FromSoft's Troubled Masterpiece

This video honestly got a lot more attention than I was expecting - I know it's still not that much, but it's more than I've ever had before, so I appreciate that. I've read all the comments and I'm very glad people seem to have enjoyed the video. Thanks everybody.
My next project is in the works, it's going to be about Sekiro. It'll probably be longer than this since it's a commentary of the entire game. Hope to see you stick around for that one.

Playing a strength based class at launch was actual cancer. I quit ER after about 60-70 hours because the bosses seemed unfair. I have a full time job and can't no life souls games like I used to and I felt like I was exploring, gaining treasure, and building my character, yet I never felt like I was getting stronger. FYi I beat ds1,3, BB, and sekiro inb4 "git gud"

I have to disagree with this video and you may call me a glazer for liking it however i really enjoyed it. This is my first souls like game apart from playing 5mins of DS3 on my brothers playstation many years ago. My first playthrough was around 90% blind, i knew what i was setting myself up for when i bought the game about a month ago (i understand that the game may be in a slightly different state now) however many of the issues that you brought up i disagreed with. I assumed it was souls game ritual to die about 10-20 times minumum per main boss to understand their moveset, countering and different weaknesses and strengths for them. "You can regularly get punished for trying to sneak in an extra move" i thought was characteristic of these kinds of games, for many of the bosses it did punish me very fittingly as i tried to smack my way through the boss before it could kill me which turned out to be the learning curve. Against pure instinct i slowly learnt the attacks of bosses, how much time they gave me and what type of hit i can do based on the time. I learnt the hard way of the RNG of attacks which was painful in some ways namely the draconic tree sent shooting its fireball 10/11 moves however i think it adds variety. I did really enjoy each boss that i fought in Elden Ring, each of them have their own moves and honestly i didnt find the repeats that bad, you could call this as beginner's fever but i guess thats just how my experience went.

Mediocre joseph anderson impression

I quite agree, after i went over mid game the enemies felt overpowered and it didn't feel like you cant keep up,runes that they drop are far from enough to make you lvl up !
So yeah i went and exploit the crow for runes. But even so when i reached snow are i was " damn imagine if i was not leveling up !" They felt like damage sponge, and they were quite similar to early maps..so basically they took them and buffed health and dmg . So yeah i agree!
Early and mid game is superb!
After that,is just unnecessary grindind death and under leveled compare to the enemies!

I wont recommend this game. I think its a beautiful impressive semi-open world game, but the gameplay is really bad, unnecessary steessful and i just looked up the summary od the endings becaude im stuck in one of those bosses that are ridiculously overpowerful

LOOT is my biggest problem with the dungeons. A player can spend 30 minutes in a minor dungeon just to get a spirit ash, rather than cool weapons, armor sets, spells, and tools. Half the playerbase prefers not to even use them, and yet the vast majority of minor dungeons reward you with one.

As someone who did their first playthrough blind and being a huge longtime fan of DS, the fact that you have to go to a specific grace to gain the ability to level up is absolutely stupid. The game gives you the freedom to go to Caelid right off the bat, and yet doesn’t allow you to level up using the abundance of runes you’ll find there unless you knew to go to the exact specific gatefront site of grace. So it absolutely does railroad you, but in a silly way that’s resolved in 5 minutes and doesn’t really need to exist. Sure, if you know where to go, it’s only a 5 minute detour, but if you’re playing blind, which every developer should assume, you’re not just going to naturally go to the gatefront right off the bat when there’s so much to explore and see.

Lol, a Fromsoft game that gets worse toward the end… I’ve never seen that happen before.

I love waterfowl dance. It forces the player to learn a very specific method of dodging it, rather than the standard dark souls formula of just pressing b at the right time. It’s essentially the only way to make a boss any harder than they already have, which is okay because the whole point is that a Malenia is supposed to make you want to give up.

Let’s compare elden ring to a game like monster hunter rise. In rise they first designed the player’s moves and were like, ok we have made an op mess of a moveset, what if the bosses get similarly op. While this idea is not that deep it at least gives a way for the game to be fair while feeding into the power fantasy. Elden ring seems to have done the complete opposite, the bosses get the coolest moves that genuinely compliments their character while the player gets a simple roll. Don’t get me wrong i’m not advocating for making elden ring a power fantasy i’m just posing a question: If bosses like melania keep showing up shouldn’t the players get a deeper combat system?

I hate the bosses. Their recovery times are too fast, and their damage output it too high. There are way too many cheap AoE attacks and long combos, and the player attack window is too short. I can count on one hand the number of bosses in DS1, DS3, Bloodborne and Sekiro that I would consider poorly balanced, cheap or unfair. Almost every major boss in Elden Ring, about 80% or more, I'd consider unbalanced or unfair or just un-fun in some way. The design philosophy is all wrong. I'd go as far as saying they ruin the game. ER would likely be a 9/10 or 10/10 if the boss combat wasn't such a mess. I'm amazed that this wasn't taken into consideration when the review scores were given, I'm assuming reviewers didn't complete the game, had tailored difficulty settings or invincibility codes...because objectively the game is heavily flawed. Anyone who can't see this, obviously hasnt played or beaten previous fromSoft games

It's crazy how critiques never made a game

The biggest thing that kills me about this game is everytime somebody decides to criticize the recycled content and bland areas its always followed by the defense of "it would he rediculous to expect all this content to he completely unique."....... well then dont make it that big. I feel like its completely fair to criticize a game gunning for pure size of the world then not making any good content ro fill over half of it with.

This game IS rewarding aggressive playstyle. In fact, THATS how you 'should' have played. Thats the entire purpose of posture break mechanic. In fact, playing defensive and baiting out the 'obvious punish windows' is a surefire way to hate this game and get bored while the boss is doing his 6 move combo. You need to hit INBETWEEN their attacks and trust me every boss has INSANE quantities of creative punish windows that changes with different weapons. You just need to stay close and learn the directional dodging and consequent follow up (dodge R1, jump R2 or charged) BEFORE the next combo hit connects and then dodging immediately to space out for the next window. This game is basically a MUCH better Sekiro where attacks arent 'telegraphed' like you are a 2 year old baby and require the player to 'create' their own punishment windows, find them, exploit and punish afterwards with a posture break. Saying ERhas a defensive playing spirit is saying you have NO idea what its core mechanics and style is all about. I dont wanna say you played the game wrong but unlike what you are implying, THAT is exactly how you 'shouldnt' have played by design.

I've just reached Mountaintops in my 1st play and holy jesus, this location is boring. I was enjoying Caelid, Underground including Lake of Rot, Limgrave, Liurnia, got almost all items etc. Enemies were fair, I even felt that I am overleveled at some point. Mountaintops: enemies have tons of HP, damage, low runes dropped from enemies considering how tanky everything is, I just don't feel that it's worth to fight and look for items. I just travel from grace to grace and want to leave this place as soon as possible.

i had a similiar opinion about elden ring, then i finally beat malenia without summons or "op builds" and now i love it again

good critique, lets hope you do that for your games you make

While I definitely agree with the first part of the video, I find the second part about bosses to be just a showcase of some kind of impatience you have towards them.

My biggest problem with the game is that it was made so incredibly hard for no reason. Like in past souls game a boss felt hard but do-able. In this game I feel like every boss is actually impossible and it feels like a grind fest just to survive one more second against it. Like they made the game so flipping hard with the intention of being what journalists actually thought the other souls games were like. I've beaten bloodborne, ds1 and currently playing ds3 and none of the elden ring bosses feel like their as possible as they are in those games. Like every time I fight I boss it feels like I have to take 20mins just to learn the movement then another 30 to actually learn when to attack. Each boss shouldn't feel like they can't be done within the first second because the boss is super aggressive and kills you instantly.

Bosses in Eldin Ring are challenging but definitely not fun. I can't think of a single FUN fight from Eldin Ring. The bosses ruined it for me.