This is the first comic that expresses why I rage quit so many games with overly difficult boss fights ( if there's any delay measured in more than microseconds between retries ).
I played (and still do) the original one hit kill arcade bullshit. Hell, I beat Alladin on SNES. I'm not allergic to a challenge.
But, today, I have no time to repeat anything that isn't fun in a video game. I could be filling out tax forms with that time.
Bro, for real. I just want to practice phase two Radahn with my build, but it's such a slog just to get him there and then survive long enough to figure out the moveset.
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If it's a slog to get to phase two, practice phase one more or change your build to do more damage.
"If you don't enjoy doing it over and over again, just do it over and over again a bunch more times"
I have been, doesn't mean I like it. It's been a big time investment on my part.
This isn't really the message of the comic, which is more about the direction of FromSoft's boss design, but it also kinda sucks to struggle and persevere with a fun, wacky build throughout the entire DLC only to be met with a brick wall at the very end because I'm not playing the right way. So I'm faced with the options to either change the build I've been loving to something cheesier/easier, put in even more time at the same boss going through the motions and slowly learning over the course of hours, or just quitting because I have other games to play and there's nothing after the boss anyways.
Ultimately, I understand that this is all to do with my own stubbornness/principles, but I still think it indicates a flaw in the 'balance' of the game where I could easily end the suffering by just parrying or poking with a big ass shield in hand, but quitting gets the same results, is faster, and somehow feels more rewarding. /rant
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That’s what I did. Loved all of Elden Ring, it is at the top of my all time favorite games. Did not have the fun with and didn’t want to pour more time into Radahn and said fuck it. It felt bad at first but I’m sure the time and frustration I spared myself is well worth it.
Took me 12h to kill the final DLC boss with a spellcaster build. It was truly brutal. Didn't help that the boss damage was glitched for one of the attacks and hit during roll iframes.
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This is a big reason I farmed hard in Elden Ring and have 356 hours. I spent a lot of that time leveling my health up so I can take more damage. Level 156 and my health bar is like half the width of my TV lmao.
Sure, but farming isn’t really playing a game though. A boss should be beatable in some clever, but challenging way at a reasonable level range.
You can just do coop to safely farm boss fights without the risk of dropping the runes. Or...
You can get 150+ in <1hr if you grab a great bow and make a beeline for the Varre quest. There's a bird you can repeatedly bait into suiciding without moving more than 10 steps from the grace. Or if you turn 180⁰ there's a whole swarm of albinaurics that give you even more runes/min if you have good AoE damage. There are plenty of extremely easy options.
I beat the original Ducktales and Battletoads back in the day. But, back then I had the luxury of time. Ain't nobody got time for this shit!
Man, I recently introduced my kid to both the NES Battletoads and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!
I beat that one Battletoads stage (you know the one) on the third try. And Mr Sandman on the fourth try (did not play against Mike).
I was super stoked. Third try! I'm old now. Apparently my time put into it as a kid stuck with me.
Doesn't really relate to anything in this thread, I just needed to brag to someone because my kid and couple of friends totally did not get it.
Are people going around playing like duck tales was hard now? You could just pogo jump through most of the game and be fine.
I was kinda thinking the same thing, but lots of people do consider it hard.
The remake still freaking amazes me. It's really good, and the voice actors (at least, the 80% from the original cast) did fantastic.
It's lazy game design to make a fight "harder" by just adding increasingly long periods where all you can do is dodge.
The soulslike genre is simply bullet hell where you don't always get to see the bullets before they hit you, stuck inside a metroidvania.
Delayed attacks as a form of increasing difficult are just extremely unfun. Yeah, you made the boss harder, you also made it extremely frustrating, congratz.
It's literally helping you actually learn to dodge perfectly instead of just spamming it and getting lucky. Like instead of rolling when they do the back swing, you now have to actually wait for them to swing their attack.
If this was the first game like this you played, it wouldn't even be that much harder to learn. It's actually harder having played all the games prior to Elden Ring that conditioned you to dodge on the back swing.
It’s usually not a matter of just waiting - it’s a matter of memorizing. I get the impression if the AI bosses could manually set different delays on their swings after winding up each time, they would literally be impossible.
They can do that. And one of the first dudes you'll see doing it is Margit. They only delay the time between back swing and the actual attack. So you'll know it's coming, you just need to dodge (or parry) when they take a swing at you, not when they bring their hand back. Shit, sometimes Margit will just do the back swing and if you stay away or calm long enough, he just goes back to an idle animation and doesn't attack you.
The first measuring stick dude, he makes sure you learn the mechanics. I feel like Margit and morgott are the exclusively to make sure you have a handle on them. Hell I didn't realize jumping could dodge attacks until godfrey.
The weird thing I found in the dlc with jumping is that, for whatever reason, when the Putrescent Knight does that blue fire attack, you can jump it but not roll it. Or at least, I can't figure out how to avoid damage by rolling it. Rolling forward should avoid a hit, but I still take one; jumping it avoids it totally. It doesn't even seem jumpable because the flames still touch your upper body while doing it and you only have i-frames from the waist down.
The fire is a persistent hitbox that lasts longer than a roll gives iframes. The airtime of the jump lasts long enough when timed right.
Some of the channels of blue fire can also be avoided outright but I never got a handle on how that worked. And the visuals, like a lot of fires in Elden Ring, don't look like you should be able to jump it. Looks super edgy though when you do though.
The one he shoots at a single target in a straight line can be strafed if you're at the furthest it can reach. But you can also roll left or right and not be in it anymore.
The weird one is the first time he busts it out. There's like 1 big wave that goes everywhere. A small one that can be left or right of you, and then another big wave in front of him (which is usually facing you if you're solo). Later on he might do something similar to the Elden Beast where he created a large ring that gets smaller so it comes at you from behind. That one always fucks me up because I expect the other one.
This dude is my arch nemesis, and just like the Nameless King in DS3 I am starting to get to a point where I can avoid him forever. Not quite, though. He has this weird hitbox on one of his ride by swings where I dodge completely away from the blade and he is like 5 yards away when my i-frames end and then I take a hit seemingly from nothing.
Putrescent knight is probably the weirdest boss of the dlc, I had more trouble with him than anyone else save maybe messmer.
In Elden Ring you can often attack during the windup and then dodge. Creating a posture break during those delays can be quite a fun experience.
Plus you can do things like jumping attacks to dodge and duck a lot more of those spinning combos than you'd expect.
The ascetic with the hoops at the very start whiffs most of his chained attacks without you even having to dodge once you figure it out.
FromSoft games are fun to learn, and that frustration is often the appeal as the tricks are discovered.
Because Sekiro is based and killing bosses is insanely satisfying (we do not talk about demon of hatred)
That's my biggest problem with FromSoft games. They are not challenging, they're just slow HP sponges that can one-shot you. That is not challenging, it's just unfair, and frankly boring.
I think the game would be funner even with the simple tweak of making the animations faster. No fighter EVER wins IRL by telegraphing their attacks for three seconds.
Sekiro is much faster paced; it pays to be aggressive after all. The only time I felt like having to delay my reaction time was with the snake eyes with her weird grab iirc.
I didn't like elden ring much, combat felt more plodding and frustrating to me (and I plat "difficult" games: HK, sekiro, STS).
Coming from someone who shares your frustration with morgott or morgit or the 3 other copy-paste boss's stick that hovers in the air for 5 business days...
Play sekiro
Slow and delayed is not the same thing, Dark Souls enemies won't wait 3 seconds mid attack to throw you off.
The base game was way more accessible than any other Soulslike which pulled in way more players than any other soulslike and now all the players that got used to the base game are mad that the DLC is as hard as any soulslike ever has been.
I think it's hilarious seeing all the players half the item descriptions in the game make fun of.
All the souls dlcs have been much harder than the base games. Artorias, fume knight, ludwig and gael all stomped me until i changed up tactics. The dlcs have always been aimed at late/post game characters.
I went back to DS3 a few weeks ago and its insane how easy Gael and Friede are compared to like everything in Elden Ring.
I agree for the most part but with the catch that I have almost 5x (and counting) the time sunk in ds3.
Scales off of it still, the requirement of beating mohg and radahn puts you late game regardless.
I can beat both at level 30. I'm not confident that I have the patience to even fight a Soldier of Messmer at that level. I'd be dodging and whittling away at them for like an hour. 😩
I feel the soldier of messmer is a slight exaggeration but anything bigger would definitely be an issue. They might be harder than mohg though, he has gohans dodging skill while the soldiers have and use shields.
Boiling down the descriptor to one word - “hard” - really doesn’t serve the discussion well.
Someday, I want to make “The hardest game ever made”, just to show raw inability to win is not fun on its own.
That makes sense to me. DLCs come after you finished the rest so of course difficulty has to rise. It's the same in all games with an escalating difficulty and force balance I would think. Doom Eternal does the same.
Wish cheat codes were still a thing. Sometimes I just need a little help getting past one part but don't have time to grind it out like I would have before.
Or trainers, equally ready to access. There's even tools like wemod that offer trainers for all your games at a convenient single click.
The comic author did not in fact play the DLC
I do not remember one boss having a slow wind up. Erratic and confusing timings sure
People refuse to collect fragments, refuse to use better weapons they refuse to buff or use summons AND then act like little bitchbabies. Nooo i want to beat it MY way. And by my way they mean naked with a stick, because they see streamers do it. This literally doesn't happen in any other game. Factorio is way too hard, and no, i won't use conveyor belts. Destiny 2 is IMPOSSIBLE to beat with my 600 light level, what a bad game. DOOM is way too hard, why is everything such a bullet sponge, they need to buff the starter pistol. Ugh, this 6 man wow raid is too hard to do by myself, i think i'll sue blizzard.
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those are all part of game design and are valid things to criticize. for example, if a game needs you to grind 400 hours before you can enter your second dungeon or else it's too high level for you to beat, it's shit design. "oh but you're not playing the way it's designed; you're trying to beat it YOUR way" isn't enough defense by itself.
for me I'd suggest maybe don't be that invested in a game that criticism of it enrages you this much. it also helps if being "good at hard game" isn't a replacement for a personality; one would not need take those critiques so personally and get mad like a... what's it called? ah yes, a bitchbaby.
Incoming flood of posts about Assassin’s Creed, Redfall, Gollum, and Skull and Bones. Remember what you said - if you don’t like the game, stay silent!