pandacakes6613: Honestly, I don't think it would be a huge issue if the only Scadutree fragments were at Miquella's crosses. Then you wouldn't need to collect as many and their locations would be telegraphed. (A small arbitrary amount of pot enemies dropping them was a horrible decision)
eliaslamsa6541: The problem with the empty areas is that exploration is heavily encouraged in elden ring. All the other areas have easily missable secrets and items in every corner. In areas like the shaman village and scaduview there are a few important items, but the vast majority of the area is empty. So you are still incentivised to explore since there are things to get, but its mostly just wandering empty areas which is quite boring. For areas like that I just pulled out a item map online because I didn't want to wander for 20 min checking every corner just to get mediocre 2 items
Acusumano25: i just wish they gave us a menu option to disable the in-game "are you sure you wanna drink to resummon the horse" prompt, or at least defaulted the cursor to the "yes" option. kinda the same with summon interactions

also, getting gamepad emote shortcut functionality on pc would be cool. holding x/a and doing motion inputs was actually REALLY fun once you got it down
AndJusticeforAll567: Don’t forget about what Scadu Fragments have done to co-op. You are scaled to the hosts fragment level. Since there’s only three mandatory bosses, lots of hosts are way too low for certain areas. Also, loot. Getting basic smithing stones in the LAST area is criminal.
hellxapo5740: Scott, what's wrong with your final boss? In my game Patches was embraced by the God Miyazaki.
ActiasECHO: Radahn reminds of bosses from a lot of the mods
Flashy with artificial difficulty
definitelynotzima: My biggest issue with SOTE was the when you first finish collecting the map, realizing how big the world is, only to realize two extremely large areas on the map practically have nothing (the two finger areass). Such a disappointment
stygianskies4776: The issue with the empty space in something like Elden Ring relative to other games that tactfully make use of it is that you're getting sent mixed signals. Because other critical items (such as the Scadutree Fragments) are often tucked away in incredibly niche corners or shrines or holes in the ground, you are incentivized to scrutinize every nook and cranny of the landscape. There's no common understanding telling you that you shouldn't, say, explore every square inch of the Finger Ruins of Rhia like you might get in a game with more linear progression and more visual setpieces that exist for their own sake. It's trying to have its cake and eat it, too.
Gooby-xw5uz: My main issue with the scadutree fragments is that if you explore some places too early to look for them you just ruin some side quests entirely
NotLuigi: My main issue with the scadutree fragments is that they simultaneously encourage and discourage exploration. If you don't explore the world enough you'll find bosses are two shotting you while you do chip damage in comparison. Find too many and you'll kill bosses in 30 seconds and wonder where the challenge is supposed to be. Find just enough and you'll have a great experience with the boss but you have to coincidentally find them at the right blessing level. I found Midra and Metyr at what felt like a way overlevelled scadutree blessing and killed both of them first try because they just died way too fast. I see people talking about how Midra was such an amazing boss and can't help but feel like I was robbed of a great boss because I found him later than the devs would have liked me to. Similarly I found Bayle at what felt like the perfect level so he was an amazing boss while a friend told me they found him too late and he just sorta fell over
CuttingEdges: I think the empty space issue in Shadow of the Erdtree is rooted in the fact that some areas are dense and others are just empty and vacant. It isn’t consistent; so when the area is empty, it feels lacking. In Shadow of the Colossus, the empty areas serve the purpose of allowing you to to reflect and think as you pursue each collosus, to make you question your actions. In Elden Ring, aside from the Shaman Village, the emptiness just feels like content deficiency.
frizzman1991: Scott - and to an extent anyone who needs to hear this - in repetitive circling areas, you'll have an easier time if you leave markers where you've already been. Glowstones are perfect for this, but you can just leave any old item on the ground as well.
takubear88: Would have loved less empty space, but I gotta say at least the biggest offenders it kinda makes sense. The finger ruins and the abyssal woods being 99% empty was okay since you really didn't want to run around there in the first place. With the paralyze snipes going on it would be a pain if you had to also grab items there. Other than that definitely a few dead areas they could have done without.
ryandugan9176: Quantity over quality is undoubtedly the largest pitfall of this magnificent game. Midra is right there with Ludwig. I do find it weird that there were so many rng “take damage with basically no startup frames unless you light roll or bloodhound step frame perfectly” attacks across the bosses.
jinsu9004: One of my disappointments is how empty the southern half of the map is. Charro's Hidden grave has a gaol and maybe a few items. I was happy to find spectral rings of light on my first playthough as int/faith but all other runs I began to wonder why I even come here outside of a fragment and maybe the ash of war. The place look beautiful but it felt like it was missing something extra.
Kurai_69420: There should have been like 20-30 more skibidi fragments than you need. Kinda like golden seeds but more varied. Keep the 50 scattered around the world but sprinkle some more around and then just make every boss and miniboss drop one or 2 like the hippo minibosses.
SPplayer76: I think the patch that front loaded the scadutree fragment power is being really overlooked here. I cleared the final boss before the patch at blessing 19 alone with a brass shield in one hand, and a katana in the other. After the patch, the difference is blessing levels is staggering, the old 19 is the new 16, that's 38/50 fragments versus 47/50. The old 17 is the new 12, which is 26/50 fragments instead of 41/50. The patch has made it way less important to collect every fragment, and that is a huge improvement. I do agree that some of the phase 2 attacks are hard to visually see, I'm not 100% sure what the solution on some of those are.
toberone5158: I do want to say too that the ending is super anticlimatic. You get a memory from miquella about something we already know (that he wanted radahn) and thats it.

Was definitely nothing like getting the actual fucking dark soul and implying you make bloodbourne with it, thats for sure.
teaman1275: Agree with all these criticisms although I would like to point out that whilst Bayle doesn't have a remembrance he does drop his own exclusive dragon hearts that can be used to get his exclusive dragon incantations, which I honestly thought was cooler than a remembrance thematically.
tako5018: one complaint regarding spells is that it felt like a lot of enemy spells that could have been made into player variants just... werent

like, why didnt we get the splitting/bouncing nail barrage spell or the nail mortar one? why no spiral sorceries?(since so many of their descriptions call them sorceries but the few we get are incantations)? could have been interesting to get a more interactive phalanx-type spell from rellana instead of the silly double moon(or on top of it)
leonardo9259: >oh wow cool area
>walks around
>the size of Weepin'
>3 enemies
>Ghost Glovewort 7
>rides around for 20 more minutes
>encounter another fire dude
>"""Fight""" him for 3 minutes
>drops crafting material and tear that increases poise and holy damage when Golden Crux'ing your urethra at 3:56 am
>wandering for 10 minutes again
>fights boss
>Divine Super Horned Lumen Consort Mungus Jr, The Sorrow
>boss does 45 second projectile combo
>dies
>try again for 30 minutes
>walks around a bit
>found: Super dragon man hunting smegma
>"Liberates the power of the hunting of dragons blah blah blah"
>use it on boss
>the boss literally might as well be afk
>dies in 30 seconds
>mfw
ahigherplace1542: After having beaten DLC Radhan 4 times by myself, I completely agree. There are still attacks that he does that I have no Idea how to properly dodge. It just feels random, even though it might not be. He also clutters up the screen with so much shit, that attacks that you can perfectly dodge in phase 1, seem undodgeable in phase 2. Not a terrible boss per se, but far from being one of my favourites, even though I usually enjoy hard bosses
st._john_henry2241: Something else that is easily overlooked, the localization of the DLC in a language that isn't English is terrible.

Missing punctuations, nonsense sentences, false translations, spelling mistakes, missing spaces between words, too many spaces between words, texts that go beyond window borders, just about every mistake in the book, at least for the German version.
I wonder how the localization to other languages went...
josephcola9662: I'm also a biff miffed with the Leda Gank. Felt like it was an entirely missed opportunity to let players invade on both sides, so you could have had a chaotic mish-mash of a 4v2 NPC fight plus the player and 2 summons, and then you could have thrown invaders on both the player's side AND Leda's side for even more chaos.

As it is, it just... doesn’t feel fun. I get what it's supposed to be in the lore, of those still charmed by or loyal to Miquella fighting against you and those who broke free, but to me it feels like either you get embroiled in an NPC fight, or you summon two people and gank the crap out of some NPC's with ridiculously inflated HP.

Like, the fight didn't feel bad,
conor9745: You've hit the nail on the head in regards to why I also hate the final boss.

I've had several arguments with people who don't understand the difference between something being impossible and something being unfair trying to defend this fight by showing me videos of people no hitting him.

I've beaten Malenia at level 1 and I still think she's a terrible boss for the same reasons I think the final boss is also terrible.

The issue with the fight is how his attacks are poorly communicated to the player. Essentially forcing you to learn by getting repeatedly pancaked by them. It's trial & error design at its finest. It's not that it's impossible to beat, it's the learning proccess that isn't fun.
Joandersonso: Glad you covered the scadutree fragment issue first and that's exactly what i've been complaining since the release: there are too many fragments and you need all of them to maximize your level rather than the game providing more than necessary like the golden seeds for the flasks. That and second problem being that these fragments doesn't have a pattern on where you're suppose to find, like the chalices which you would always find at a church, or golden seeds that you find either at a erdtree twig or erdtree related boss
OccasionalGoof: I honestly feel like From either has forgotten how to make fair, polished bosses, or just feel pressured to make them less so to appease people who want ever-increasing difficulty and value difficulty over quality. And people will just point to a video of someone no hitting a boss like that must mean it's well designed while completely discounting how unintuitive or stupid some attacks or mechanics can be. Radahn really is one of the best examples of that though as this video points out, Waterfowl was too.

It was a really unpleasant note to end the DLC on that kinda soured the whole thing for me a bit. It was like the exact opposite feeling Gael gave me in DS3.
theamazingdagger5584: Sennasax = 8 tries
Bayle = two tries

Make it make sense
ethanalspencer7294: I truly think that both the Radahn fight and the ancient ruins of Rauh (but not Enir Ilm, I think that's great) are results of late development rush or changes. We've come an immensely long way from Lost Izaleth levels of what that results in, but the fact Romina has like zero explanation and there's just a bunch of awkward tunnels when the rest of the world has such more interesting and varied locations kinda makes me think they had to fill space a bit.
ivoryquillum4436: Promised Consort Radahn is the 2nd Souls Boss I ever cheesed and felt no remorse in doing so.

That 2nd phase is busted.
L0rdLexan01: There actually is a reason for Godwyn to be the final boss; The Death Knight's are looking for "The Prince of Death's cadaver-surrogate". They're looking for either Godwyn's "real" body (which implies that the one under Leyndell isn't entirely his) or they're looking for the fake body used in his funeral.

Either way, they haven't found the body (though they did find another growth like the one under Stormveil) so I imagine the original idea was that Miquella was trying to revive Godwyn by using his cadaver-surrogate over his real body.

Additionally, the Suppressing Pillar states that "all manner of Death washes up here" to be suppressed by the Pillar. I recognize that Godwyn's Soul was supposed to be destroyed, but they always could've asspulled something to bring it back, especially since Ranni's actual body is only burned rather than completely destroyed.

Radahn honestly feels like a last-minute lore change compared to their original idea.
trebilicious: I still remember that sinking feeling of disappointment on my blind playthrough of running through Rauh Ancient Ruins for the first time after defeating Messmer. I vividly remember thinking, "Uhhh, did they run out of time giving this entire zone a meaningful purpose?"
Shmeky.: Taunters Tongue still is able to be toggled and there is no 4 player limit rip
ongabonga4378: I actually like a lot of the updated moves that consort Radahn has. Lion's claw, the gravity pull, the gravity meteors attack, the blood flame slash, and the hitscan flaming meteor work because they are all attacks that you've seen before, but have slight twists.
One of the coolest moments in my attempts on Radahn was when he did the Lion's claw attack, and because I was using the new savage lion's claw AoW in the dlc for a bit, I knew that he was going to do the follow-up spin even though it was first time I had seen him do that attack.
MrNuclearz: Least replayable souls game? Yikes, could not disagree more with that one...
gumbotime9564: I like how prayer beads were handled in sekiro with them being behind a lot of mini bosses that skill check you but are still very beatable for players. Better than having them hidden in obscure areas
poiumty: It's amazing just how much your experience with Radahn mirrors my own. I wasn't on the review copy, but I did play through mostly blind. I eventually gave up and followed what I read online and heard from friends and made myself a super high armor build with the (since nerfed) bloodfiend's arm and just bled him to death. There was no satisfaction and the feeling of emptiness really put a damper on this entire DLC for me. I immediately wanted to beat him again, maybe slogging through the fight with my unoptimized build would give me some sense of closure... but I'd have to do the entire DLC again for that, and... all things considered, replaying this entire thing doesn't appeal to me anymore.

I've tried to help others beat him and spent quite a few hours doing it since then, but it's mostly just funny how quickly people die and how miserable it is to employ a bunch of randoms to 3man this incredibly tightly-designed boss that seems made more for coordination and live communication than random casual cooperation. Nevermind some hosts have a level 10-12 blessing and get absolutely 2shot by the boss and there's nothing you can do about it except sever out.
humblehomunculus2722: Dont forget that there was ZERO covenants. The hype I had for the DLC went down dramatically after I found out covenants were not added.

Jul 20 2024

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