A Brutally Honest Elden Ring Critique

Fort, night.

You are correct about how fall damage is a bit funky. The way it works is that you get 0 damage between like 0 -14 meters, then you get damage that scales between 15-19, and then 20 meters just kills you. So you can fall for 19 meters and it takes half your health and you may think that you still have plenty of space next time for a higher fall, but the reality is you were just 1 meter away from death.

How in the hell did they NOT THINK TO INCLUDE TORRENT in the Elden Beast fight? That’s a fight practically made for horseback combat.

I wish there were more non-violent NPC's scattering the land. It's weird to walk through a world where you literally just kill everything around you.

Just a point about the abundance of sites of grace. I think this works for the overworld because the openness of the environment means the player will often ride right past sites of grace if they aren't the type of player that systematically combs the entire map. While the sites might seem redundant to more thorough players, some that are less thorough and tend to just go where their eyes take them might find themselves going much longer distances without finding a site of grace and if they weren't so abundant, this could lead to frustration. This wasn't a problem in previous games as their level design was more tightly guided than the open world of Elden Ring.

Glad I’m not the only one who feels like the late game difficulty spike is ridiculous

If bloodborne 2 happened I really would not want it to be open world. Froms intricate level design is way more interesting

My issue with the game is that so many of its flaws make it EASY to forget how good its moment-to-moment gameplay can be. The early game was one of the most unique and engaging experiences I've had in the medium as a whole. The late game on the other hand, seems intent on not just SHOWING you its seams, but smearing them in your face relentlessly until all memory of any semblance of a good time is lost on you. It wasn't until a day or so after beating the game that I was able to decide that overall ER is a good game, since SO much of the post-Leyndell content is just riddled with frustrating game design.

From all the repeated bosses I had issues with, the night cavalry was the least of my concerns It made sense to me that there were many hidden around I actually look forward to finding more of them and you win different attacks and weapons when you fight him including his armour

I still don't know why they haven't pulled a monster hunter and make the camera zoom out farther when fighting large bosses,it would make 40% of the fights way less frustrating

51:42 I went through my entire 1st playthrough without using a rune arc because I thought they were just a small health buff, but if you power up the boss runes they actually have meaningful buffs, there's a great rune that essentially just makes the game bloodbourne when activated

One of the biggest issues I had is in the late game it really feels like if you didn't spec into a meta build your damage is garbage, on top of being able to casually get 2 shotted even with 50+ Vigor at a high level thanks to how completely and utterly useless most of the armor sets in this game are outside of fashion. This makes it feel like you're a glass cannon but without the added effect of being a cannon. Hence why I felt like I was pressured into respeccing into a more meta playstyle that I didn't want to use to begin with, but it was better than spending 30 minutes fighting a boss that can 1 shot me even if I enjoyed the pure strength build more.

I'd say the knights cavalry makes sense to have 9, 1 cavalry horseman would be a bit weird. Like the ring wraiths, imagine if there was just 1 lol.

While I overall agree with two much copy paste boss fights, the fact that there is nine Night's Cavalry boss fights is brilliant for the Tolkien Nazgul reference.

I know this is an old video now, but in my experience I appreciated the sometimes excess grace sites because I am oblivious and have countless times walked right past them. Many times when going to show a friend something or vis versa we each found a grace the other hadn't, so I feel it was done to make sure youre exploring the world instead of grace hunting

53:25 “The game subtly guiding you to run past them” couldn’t have said it better, especially in the exact area of the clip when you go up the stairs and face the erdtree keeper and the two knights behind him and the enemies shooting arrows at you, even if you try you wont succeed, the knights are too strong with alot of health and poise, the erdtree keeper keeps shooting things at you, you get staggered so quickly, at this point of the game i was really just fed up and just wanted to get to the end of the area (melania) skipping all other enemies. I usually tend to return to enemies i didnt beat, but close to the end game i was just not giving a damn it felt like they just wanted you to die making it harder just for the sake off.. making it harder.

14:10 the reason fall damage feels inconsistent is bc theres only a 4 meter window when falling that separates taking no damage and dying. anything between 16m and 20m will damage you depending on where you fall within that range. in ds1, the height for death was still 20m but iirc the height where damage starts is like 6m, so fall damage prob felt easier to judge

"I thought I'd walk through a door and fight Ornstein or something" Capra Demon and his dogs of bullshit is literally a boss lol

The burnout you mentioned at 52min hit me hard. After 108h, I burnt out. Just before the Firegiant. Haven't gotten back to continuing, even though I absolutely adore the game.

24:55 it's interesting that you bring up the "lack of backtracking" design choice. However, depending on the order of locations you chose to go while playing the game, some of the questlines REQUIRE backtracking, normally without even telling you. It sucks when you find an interesting character whose questline you want to do, only to never find them again because they spawned in a place you already cleared and have no particular reason to go back.