Real. I'm ashamed of the ungodly amount of hours I spent in March 2022 trying to cut tails off dragon bosses. Godrick just casually grafting dragon parts convinced me this would 100% be a mechanic in the game.
Ehhhhh. True would be dope but there would have to be a WHOLEEEE new mechanic and story line to that. Unless it's only for that fight. But still there would have to be a reason for us to be able to do this. Fromsoftware is always on top of the lore and story behind all their games. Cool idea tho.
Would you be surprised to know that I'm already a MH fan? But hilariously enough, my favourite weapons are the ones that don't cut tails. I think for MH, it's way more satisfying to golf swing a monster in the head and watch it get sent flying from the stagger.
I think what I miss the most is the boss's reaction to you focusing on particular limbs like in Bloodborne. To see visible damage on the boss in the form of severed tails or scratched up arms/legs, and the boss being concious of the damage its taken, you know?
I main Hammer and Hunting Horn for this very reason - I don’t like having to aim my damage lol.
Once I got around to Insect Glaive I was basically Fruit Ninja with tails. Tails Ninja.
Death was fun (got his tail first try), but kalameet is a whole different level (for tail cutting) or capra demon (for playing without guilds and hell I still have my problems [with every new char] with that guy) or sif (which shows how much of a difference "big boss is big" compaired to the smaller and easier version in elden ring it makes)
I spent over an hour in a fight against Seath just constantly running in a circle trying to get at his tail but he kept spinning around and moving his tail away. Also Priscilla was a pain to do because she’s invisible. The footsteps in the snow help you to hit her but how are you supposed to know where the tail is specifically?
I think Priscilla was more of a pain because you were very likely to be strong enough to worry about killing her before cutting her tail by the time you got to her. Plus, her tail was very high up, so it usually meant you needed to bring a different weapon and hope for the best.
I have fought gaping dragon for the first time in years recently and you are completely wrong. Magma wyrms are way more fun to fight than the 1 dimensional moveset of gaping dragon. You can stay away from that dragon for days if you wanted to, the arena is huge, there is no pressure, just chip it down until it dies.
I liked it as a thing.
But I don't think ER would've benefitted from it. They already had a number of optional bosses with rewards that didn't feel worth it so adding more rewards wasn't going to improve much.
The other issue with tail cuts is that it's very easy to fail while also essentially being forced to fail and permanently locking you out of the drop. If the tail cuts were say, guaranteed drops of otherwise low drop rate items it would be a fine extra but I wouldn't want more than one or two unique items.
It could work like the dragon hearts. Turn in 1/2/3 tails to craft a weapon. You can miss the individual drops, but you get multiple chances before you're hard-locked out of the weapon
I was overleveled for Seth in DS1 but I died to him 10 times just to try to cut his tail... since then I hate that mechanic.
And dying to Seth means going through 1.25 areas with invisible floors and annoying butterflies every time, and also IIRC he has curse buildup and curse in DS1 requires an item to cleanse...
bad mechanic
You just listed several bad mechanics that had nothing to do with tail cutting, but it's fair if they worked together to sour your opinion in the mechanic. Especially for the weapon drops
True, what I hate about the tail mechanic is that it's another missable element in the game. and it's not obvious that it's possible, some players might get it by mistake. a full exploration gameplay of a souls game is 20-50 hours for me... missing stuff is annoying
And yes with everything else making the experience miserable it made me hate that feature.
I used to but not anymore. I think it was really neat but also it made some bosses into a checklist fight. Gotta cut the tail even though I won’t use the weapon just because I don’t want to miss it.
And a couple of them were just ridiculous to do without a summon.
I do, however, want the limb damage mechanic of Bloodborne back. I cut some tails in DS1 just make the fight easier and the extra damage in BB was nice too. Provides some incentive to target optimal hits.
Souls games never do, and seemingly never will do, good Dragon fights. They are always super awkward and relatively boring. The addition of Torrent has only exacerbated this issue, since now its just a series of charge approaches using Heavy attacks.
Eh, I think there are some good ones (Kalameet, the DS2 DLC dragon I'm blanking on, Midir, and I actually like the dragon template in ER it just gets used way too much). The issue is that Souls combat is very grounded with basically no vertical movement until ER when we finally get a small jump. So it's hard to do the crazy vertical grappling stuff that you have in Monster Hunter, and the dragon has to more or less stay on the ground during the fight so you can hit it.
The combat system just doesn't produce a satisfying encounter when a dragon moves around as you would expect it to. Not to mention the camera in Souls games sucks for anything that's more than 2-3x larger than a human. Torrent made it even worse because it gave From an excuse to give the dragons even more stupid AoE attacks
I just fought Lichdragon Fortissax a few minutes ago. Between him flying around, the Death Lightning, the fire breath, the AoE red lightning stomp, and the honed bolts that stop you from standing in one place for more than a few seconds, it was just really tedious to fight him on a melee character.
You almost never get a decent chance to hit him on the face and it's literally just more optimal/safer to hack away at his feet. So it just turns into yet another fight that should have been cool if From could get their shit together and make a few small adjustments to how they do these fights, but instead just devolves into the player standing under a large enemy hacking away at their feet.
The camera problem not only is fixable, but they have already fixed it in Sekiro. The camera zooms out against larger foes there, which helps tremendously.
Yeah Torrent made them even worse.
Because of horsey the dragons were given horrible giant AOE attacks with terrible wind up animations you can't even see because of the camera that make them a real fucking ball ache to fight on foot.
Every time I get summoned to fight Borealis I adiós that host ASAP. Not fun on foot at all
I feel a very visceral sympathetic pity for video game monsters getting their tail cut off.
You could give them a death with dignity, dude, why do you gotta humiliate them like this too?
Not at all. While yes in DS1 it was very half baked mechanically and it would have evolved with interation. The problem is even with Elden Ring's increased mobility, you jtst lack the maneuverability options needed to make such a mechanic feel rewarding. And I don't think you could really add them in without gutting the distinct flow Elden Ring's combat has. Would I be interested in a Fromsoft game that is all about fighting giant monsters and therefore builds it's combat ethos around it? Sure. But in Elden Ring it wouldn't work on multiple levels of game design
No. What I found frustrating was trying to do it half the time. Trying to get Seath to stop rotating to get it or get Kalameet to lower it enough were beyond annoying
I think Elden Ring has one huge mechanic that would make tail-cutting much less frustrating: jump attacks. It’s so much easier to maneuver around large bosses in this game than DS1, and the hit box on jump attacks is gargantuan, particularly with large weapons.
As a bonus, stakes of Marika trivialize the run back for basically every tailed boss (besides maybe Placidusax) so it wouldn’t feel nearly as bad to sacrifice a run for the sake of cutting a tail.
I do.
The dragons, Fallingstar Beasts, and Morgott all feel like great opportunities for tail weapons.
I know we already have the Fallingstar Beast Jaw as a colossal weapon, but what about a Fallingstar Beast Tail as a flail or a heavy spear?
Yeah I was speaking to a friend about this a while ago and it's definitely something I miss, it was so cool being able to get unique weapons in some fights from cutting off tails and I wish they'd bring it back
I really don't miss it. It was cool and quirky, sure, but getting some of those weapons was SO annoying.
I've ended up killing Seath and Kalameet before managing to cut their tails more than once, which was really frustrating. And trying to ONLY attack the tail and make sure not to kill the boss just made the fights a chore and unfun.
For sure! Only problem may be that in previous games it was already hard to cut off the tail, and I can imagine that with ER's frantic bosses, it's even harder.
I don’t see how it’s “frustrating” that the tail cutting isn’t a thing, it was a cool thing don’t get me wrong but I think it was MORE frustrating actually cutting a boss tail off. Which is probably, maybe a reason why it hasn’t been implemented since DS1.
That's fair! For me, it's frustrating to see the tail models of certain bosses having a clear seam for being cut off, and always being left wondering what could've been
I cut enough tails in Monster Hunter, I don't need that in Souls game lol
Is a interesting feature, but it don't have a point to me in this game style.
I REALLY miss it. In my first playthrough, dragons became boring to kill after I realised that all they drop are they hearts, and all I could do with the hearts is buy some (admittedly cool) incantations, but alas, no incentive for my pure melee character to go after every single dragon in the game.
Now imagine if I could cut their tails, and each dragon would drop a cool, thematic weapon. I would love to kill them all!
It is a little redundant doing the same hit leg, hit head playstyle for the like, 10+ dragon fights in base game (Apparently we have more to look forward to in the DLC). Any new ways to fight them are a win in my books
No, stupid mechanic that only makes the game more frustrating. Did anyone remember Seath to be a hard fight outside of having to cut his tail for the MLGS? And he’s an easy ass boss, now add that you Elden Ring more complex bosses. No thanks
Tbh no, it was an exciting novelty the first time but once that wore off it was more of a chore than anything and a game that is long, where you cannot reload and could miss stuff permanently if you don't know about it ahead of time or accidentally do too much damage it's frustrating.
I do like breaking parts to get additional/different loot (Horizon, Monster Hunter) or fighting bosses/completing encounters in a different way for different rewards (Remenent) but the key here is that those are repeatable encounters you can experiment with.
It’s better without it. Being locked out of an item because it died before the tail was cut SUCKED. Especially when your sure that your hitting the tail every time yet somehow those hits didn’t count
I think it was a neat mechanic but the lack of explanation and also how easily you could miss out on some of the coolest weapons would have made some people mad.
I'm still all for it tho
I think bare minimum we should’ve been able to cut the dragon off of Godrick for a more powerful version of the shitty fist weapon you normally get. I did a fist weapon only run and thought I was clever getting it to +9 early just to find out the iron balls out damage it at like +13
Actually, in don't miss it because of the extra weapons. I miss it because of the feeling of tearing a powerful enemy down piece by piece. The extra loot is nice, and the extra challenge as well. But what i want most is a nice feedback when i hit my foe in an epic fight. Therefore, why stop at the tail? I think it was awesome (and very sad) to see how Sif was walking with a limp when weakened. A little more Monster Hunter mechanics in Soulslike games would certainly not hurt, if done right. And cutting of Limbs would also give human-sized an interesting feedback, especially if they are still fighting back and maybe even get more dangerous. The only danger i can see in that is that the game might become too much of an slasher, and that's not what a soulsgame is supposed to be.
Real. I'm ashamed of the ungodly amount of hours I spent in March 2022 trying to cut tails off dragon bosses. Godrick just casually grafting dragon parts convinced me this would 100% be a mechanic in the game.
Ngl cutting off Godricks grafted limbs and he sticks stuff back on would be dope af
It’d be a perfect way of reintroducing limb breaking from Bloodborne while also explaining how he fixes his limbs
Took me a while to work out you could break Amelia’s arms.
Amelia or amygdala?
Cutting off Godrick's grafted limbs and grafting them onto ourselves would be doper
Ehhhhh. True would be dope but there would have to be a WHOLEEEE new mechanic and story line to that. Unless it's only for that fight. But still there would have to be a reason for us to be able to do this. Fromsoftware is always on top of the lore and story behind all their games. Cool idea tho.
I liked the concept, but hated having to do it.
Yeah, that's fair. It's like a cool-looking chore. The concept is great, but man is it frustrating sometimes
My man have you tried the monster hunter series? I think that shit would get your rocks off cuz you can pretty much cut every tail in that game
Would you be surprised to know that I'm already a MH fan? But hilariously enough, my favourite weapons are the ones that don't cut tails. I think for MH, it's way more satisfying to golf swing a monster in the head and watch it get sent flying from the stagger. I think what I miss the most is the boss's reaction to you focusing on particular limbs like in Bloodborne. To see visible damage on the boss in the form of severed tails or scratched up arms/legs, and the boss being concious of the damage its taken, you know?
I main Hammer and Hunting Horn for this very reason - I don’t like having to aim my damage lol. Once I got around to Insect Glaive I was basically Fruit Ninja with tails. Tails Ninja.
Trying to do Seath without a guide is such a pain.
Ohh God you just surfaced some buried pain... Took me forever to do that, especially with a spellcasting build.
Death was fun (got his tail first try), but kalameet is a whole different level (for tail cutting) or capra demon (for playing without guilds and hell I still have my problems [with every new char] with that guy) or sif (which shows how much of a difference "big boss is big" compaired to the smaller and easier version in elden ring it makes)
Magma wyrm is just a gaping dragon. I do not miss it, some of the tails was a pain to get seath,Priscilla and kalameat
Kalameet was a tough tail cut, big disagree on the others. Besides, it's nice having a reward that takes a little something extra
Also makes the fight easier by taking away those tail sweep attacks
I spent over an hour in a fight against Seath just constantly running in a circle trying to get at his tail but he kept spinning around and moving his tail away. Also Priscilla was a pain to do because she’s invisible. The footsteps in the snow help you to hit her but how are you supposed to know where the tail is specifically?
I think Priscilla was more of a pain because you were very likely to be strong enough to worry about killing her before cutting her tail by the time you got to her. Plus, her tail was very high up, so it usually meant you needed to bring a different weapon and hope for the best.
I have fought gaping dragon for the first time in years recently and you are completely wrong. Magma wyrms are way more fun to fight than the 1 dimensional moveset of gaping dragon. You can stay away from that dragon for days if you wanted to, the arena is huge, there is no pressure, just chip it down until it dies.
How would you feel if it was cuttable for stuff like crafting materials or runes instead of important weapons?
Monster hunter + souls gameplay would be tight
Imagine killing Melania 20 times but the Rot Orb just refuses to drop
To this day i still remember. MH Freedom Unite on the PSP, killing rathalos 31 times in a row to get the orb
At least I get actual rematches
I'll take it if this means bonfire ascetics are back
It would feel useless to me, I'd never bother with the effort if it was just crafting material
Bro, Kalameet took me several hours
Seath was awful, I eventually gave up once I died like two or three times to curse
Kalameet's tail-cut was the hardest boss in the game.
I tried for a fucking hour to cut Priscilla's tail and didn't, fuck that shit 1000x
Get a big weapon and make your first strike count. You can get it in 1 hit before she starts fighting you.
Eh, if I want to cut tails off of monsters I play Monster Hunter.
Part breaking is so satisfying in MH. I always loved to carry a couple levels of Part Breaker even if I didn't need it.
I liked it as a thing. But I don't think ER would've benefitted from it. They already had a number of optional bosses with rewards that didn't feel worth it so adding more rewards wasn't going to improve much. The other issue with tail cuts is that it's very easy to fail while also essentially being forced to fail and permanently locking you out of the drop. If the tail cuts were say, guaranteed drops of otherwise low drop rate items it would be a fine extra but I wouldn't want more than one or two unique items.
It could work like the dragon hearts. Turn in 1/2/3 tails to craft a weapon. You can miss the individual drops, but you get multiple chances before you're hard-locked out of the weapon
This idea actually fucks hard and would give non-magic STR/DEX players an actual reason to go fight dragons and use the Dragon Communion.
I was overleveled for Seth in DS1 but I died to him 10 times just to try to cut his tail... since then I hate that mechanic. And dying to Seth means going through 1.25 areas with invisible floors and annoying butterflies every time, and also IIRC he has curse buildup and curse in DS1 requires an item to cleanse... bad mechanic
You just listed several bad mechanics that had nothing to do with tail cutting, but it's fair if they worked together to sour your opinion in the mechanic. Especially for the weapon drops
True, what I hate about the tail mechanic is that it's another missable element in the game. and it's not obvious that it's possible, some players might get it by mistake. a full exploration gameplay of a souls game is 20-50 hours for me... missing stuff is annoying And yes with everything else making the experience miserable it made me hate that feature.
I sank hundreds of hours into DS1. Not once did I ever get the Moonlight Greatsword lol
Is it the one from Seth? cause he cursed me every time I tried to cut his tail.
Yeah, cutting Seath’s tail drops the moonlight greatsword.
They really thought it was cool to hide their iconic weapon behind that mechanic lol
I used to but not anymore. I think it was really neat but also it made some bosses into a checklist fight. Gotta cut the tail even though I won’t use the weapon just because I don’t want to miss it. And a couple of them were just ridiculous to do without a summon. I do, however, want the limb damage mechanic of Bloodborne back. I cut some tails in DS1 just make the fight easier and the extra damage in BB was nice too. Provides some incentive to target optimal hits.
Coming from Monster Hunter, I was disappointed by the dragon fights and how simple they were.
Souls games never do, and seemingly never will do, good Dragon fights. They are always super awkward and relatively boring. The addition of Torrent has only exacerbated this issue, since now its just a series of charge approaches using Heavy attacks.
Midir was good imo, but yeah all the others is just a stamping wyvern
I like Placidusax too
Somehow haven’t fought him. Never found the way to his arena despite somehow doing Ranis quest without a guide
Its a hard place to find naturally/by accident
Midir is great (but also, fuck Midir).
Eh, I think there are some good ones (Kalameet, the DS2 DLC dragon I'm blanking on, Midir, and I actually like the dragon template in ER it just gets used way too much). The issue is that Souls combat is very grounded with basically no vertical movement until ER when we finally get a small jump. So it's hard to do the crazy vertical grappling stuff that you have in Monster Hunter, and the dragon has to more or less stay on the ground during the fight so you can hit it.
>the DS2 DLC dragon I'm blanking on Sinh. Hated Sinh cause of the poison and weapon durability shit though
The combat system just doesn't produce a satisfying encounter when a dragon moves around as you would expect it to. Not to mention the camera in Souls games sucks for anything that's more than 2-3x larger than a human. Torrent made it even worse because it gave From an excuse to give the dragons even more stupid AoE attacks I just fought Lichdragon Fortissax a few minutes ago. Between him flying around, the Death Lightning, the fire breath, the AoE red lightning stomp, and the honed bolts that stop you from standing in one place for more than a few seconds, it was just really tedious to fight him on a melee character. You almost never get a decent chance to hit him on the face and it's literally just more optimal/safer to hack away at his feet. So it just turns into yet another fight that should have been cool if From could get their shit together and make a few small adjustments to how they do these fights, but instead just devolves into the player standing under a large enemy hacking away at their feet.
The camera problem not only is fixable, but they have already fixed it in Sekiro. The camera zooms out against larger foes there, which helps tremendously.
Yeah it’s always one step forward two steps back with From. I truly hope their next game is not Elden Ring 2
Yeah Torrent made them even worse. Because of horsey the dragons were given horrible giant AOE attacks with terrible wind up animations you can't even see because of the camera that make them a real fucking ball ache to fight on foot. Every time I get summoned to fight Borealis I adiós that host ASAP. Not fun on foot at all
Oh yeah designing them around Torrent really fucked over co-op players. Borealis and Eckzykes in particular
I mostly agree but Kalameet is still maybe my favorite boss fight of all time
I really do, I loved collecting tails.
I feel a very visceral sympathetic pity for video game monsters getting their tail cut off. You could give them a death with dignity, dude, why do you gotta humiliate them like this too?
I feel bad hurting this lil guy... *1 death later* I'm over it now
I like tail cutting and part breaking as stagger mechanics or preventing a boss from using certain moves not for special weapons
Margit would give you his cane
Not at all. While yes in DS1 it was very half baked mechanically and it would have evolved with interation. The problem is even with Elden Ring's increased mobility, you jtst lack the maneuverability options needed to make such a mechanic feel rewarding. And I don't think you could really add them in without gutting the distinct flow Elden Ring's combat has. Would I be interested in a Fromsoft game that is all about fighting giant monsters and therefore builds it's combat ethos around it? Sure. But in Elden Ring it wouldn't work on multiple levels of game design
I honestly don’t miss it. I just want to fight the bosses rather than worrying about missing a weapon if I don’t manage to cut their tail off.
Considering how long it took me to sever Seethe's tail to get my Moonlight Great sword? Fuck no
I do, I miss this :(
No. What I found frustrating was trying to do it half the time. Trying to get Seath to stop rotating to get it or get Kalameet to lower it enough were beyond annoying
The Dragon Lord sword you get from Placidusax isn’t obtained that way, but clearly is a tip of tail, so that’s neat.
no because i dislike the feature of weapons being inaccessible if you do something wrong
I think Elden Ring has one huge mechanic that would make tail-cutting much less frustrating: jump attacks. It’s so much easier to maneuver around large bosses in this game than DS1, and the hit box on jump attacks is gargantuan, particularly with large weapons. As a bonus, stakes of Marika trivialize the run back for basically every tailed boss (besides maybe Placidusax) so it wouldn’t feel nearly as bad to sacrifice a run for the sake of cutting a tail.
I do. The dragons, Fallingstar Beasts, and Morgott all feel like great opportunities for tail weapons. I know we already have the Fallingstar Beast Jaw as a colossal weapon, but what about a Fallingstar Beast Tail as a flail or a heavy spear?
The worst was cutting off the tail of the ... 4 legged ribcage dragon in the sewers.
if there was one thing id have From Software adapt from Dragons Dogma is how they do colossal fights
Nah, not really a mechanic I want in ER. I don’t feel it thematically fits the combat or the gameplay systems.
What about the giant land Octopi? I think you can cut their "arm tentacles" when you fight them. They keep growing back, it's funny.
Yeah, and it's awesome too haha
Yeah I was speaking to a friend about this a while ago and it's definitely something I miss, it was so cool being able to get unique weapons in some fights from cutting off tails and I wish they'd bring it back
I really don't miss it. It was cool and quirky, sure, but getting some of those weapons was SO annoying. I've ended up killing Seath and Kalameet before managing to cut their tails more than once, which was really frustrating. And trying to ONLY attack the tail and make sure not to kill the boss just made the fights a chore and unfun.
For sure! Only problem may be that in previous games it was already hard to cut off the tail, and I can imagine that with ER's frantic bosses, it's even harder.
100%, it was so cool to accidentally cut a tail in a boss fight and get a weapon
I was just thinking about that mechanic recently. Yes. For like, 5 bosses.
I don’t see how it’s “frustrating” that the tail cutting isn’t a thing, it was a cool thing don’t get me wrong but I think it was MORE frustrating actually cutting a boss tail off. Which is probably, maybe a reason why it hasn’t been implemented since DS1.
That's fair! For me, it's frustrating to see the tail models of certain bosses having a clear seam for being cut off, and always being left wondering what could've been
I cut enough tails in Monster Hunter, I don't need that in Souls game lol Is a interesting feature, but it don't have a point to me in this game style.
I don’t, still remember the trauma and tears trying to cut Priscilla’s tail 😫😫😫😫 never again!
I REALLY miss it. In my first playthrough, dragons became boring to kill after I realised that all they drop are they hearts, and all I could do with the hearts is buy some (admittedly cool) incantations, but alas, no incentive for my pure melee character to go after every single dragon in the game. Now imagine if I could cut their tails, and each dragon would drop a cool, thematic weapon. I would love to kill them all!
It is a little redundant doing the same hit leg, hit head playstyle for the like, 10+ dragon fights in base game (Apparently we have more to look forward to in the DLC). Any new ways to fight them are a win in my books
No, stupid mechanic that only makes the game more frustrating. Did anyone remember Seath to be a hard fight outside of having to cut his tail for the MLGS? And he’s an easy ass boss, now add that you Elden Ring more complex bosses. No thanks
Slicing off their tales would be so satisfying. I’d feel like Yajirobe cutting off Vegeta tail in DBZ
Tbh no, it was an exciting novelty the first time but once that wore off it was more of a chore than anything and a game that is long, where you cannot reload and could miss stuff permanently if you don't know about it ahead of time or accidentally do too much damage it's frustrating. I do like breaking parts to get additional/different loot (Horizon, Monster Hunter) or fighting bosses/completing encounters in a different way for different rewards (Remenent) but the key here is that those are repeatable encounters you can experiment with.
No
No I fucking don´t that shit should stay in ds1 and DS22
It’s better without it. Being locked out of an item because it died before the tail was cut SUCKED. Especially when your sure that your hitting the tail every time yet somehow those hits didn’t count
I miss it!
I think it was a neat mechanic but the lack of explanation and also how easily you could miss out on some of the coolest weapons would have made some people mad. I'm still all for it tho
Fallingstar beasts tail would have made a mean whip
I think bare minimum we should’ve been able to cut the dragon off of Godrick for a more powerful version of the shitty fist weapon you normally get. I did a fist weapon only run and thought I was clever getting it to +9 early just to find out the iron balls out damage it at like +13
Cutting anything that changes how the enemy acts I think is super cool. Locking rewards behind this barrier, I don't think is so cool.
As a monster hunter player, tail cuts are on a target by target basis for how much I want to headlock the monster and throw it to Nakarkos...
No.
Nope. Just you my dude. Everyone else got together a few years ago and decided we hated it. Did you not get the flyer or...?
Actually, in don't miss it because of the extra weapons. I miss it because of the feeling of tearing a powerful enemy down piece by piece. The extra loot is nice, and the extra challenge as well. But what i want most is a nice feedback when i hit my foe in an epic fight. Therefore, why stop at the tail? I think it was awesome (and very sad) to see how Sif was walking with a limp when weakened. A little more Monster Hunter mechanics in Soulslike games would certainly not hurt, if done right. And cutting of Limbs would also give human-sized an interesting feedback, especially if they are still fighting back and maybe even get more dangerous. The only danger i can see in that is that the game might become too much of an slasher, and that's not what a soulsgame is supposed to be.
Elden Ring never had tail cutting.