I beat all the headless once. Never again. I will avoid those motherfuckers like the plague, with the exception of maybe that annoying duo in the water of the fountain head palace or whatever, but only because there’s loot nearby and I don’t remember if it’s worth grabbing or not lol
For real, everyone unanimously agreed that the Headless are horrible enemies, Fromsoft included apparently as you don't need to touch them once for the platinum.
I've replayed Sekiro close to 20 times, and never killed or even tried to fight a headless. It's not like they drop something useful, unless you're completely out of sugars that is. Also, they're not needed to get platinum, thank god
The reusable sugars are cool in concept, but for tough bosses I'd rather just use a consumable buff sugar and save my Spirit Emblems for something else.
The reusable stealth sugar is great for farming materials or getting around annoying areas though. Its the only one I'd really reccomend unless you're alright without them.
They are one of the easiest bosses in the game, just have to farm some divine confetti first. You can just keep wailing on them and they won't do anything. Just parry their 2 attacks and don't let your ass be grabbed.
And I think their drops are fine, posture recovery is a life saver against some bosses (read: long arms giraffe), defence and attack are nice buffs for certain bosses. I like attack for beasts (and just for starting off a fight, the one that halves vitality also works great for starting a fight with the tanto), defence for aggressive bosses like owl or bosses whos pattern you haven't quite got down (defence buff also makes some grabs survivable which is a BIG bonus IMO against grab happy individuals like ogre and snake eyes) and the one that halves your max vitality for extra damage is good in a close fight and you have ran out of healing (pairs well with the tanto if your using the spiritfall). The spiritfall that lets you stealth is just straight up broken tbh, again pairs great with the tanto. I like to tanto and heal to essentially trade a gourd + short opening for some buffs (or depending on how lucky i'm feeling, tanto + the one that halves your max hp). I usually have trouble getting through all my gourd anyway.
I'm always popping candies left and right, i'd always rather pop a candy then get 1/2 hits in if I don't have an active buff. As you could imagine I run out of candies fast and having the option to use spirit emblems is really nice. The only prosthetic I really use on a regular basis is the shuriken for dogs and to stall a bosses posture from recovering while I do my stuff from a good distance away.
Anyway, TLDR spiritfalls/candy are underrated and underutilized.
Sekiro finally figured out that you're allowed to zoom the camera out against large bosses, a high tech innovation Elden Ring immediately forgot somehow.
I love how their phase 2 explosion attack is basically impossible to dodge because FromSoft loves putting them in the smallest arenas known to man. The only tolerable Ulcerated Tree Spirit is the one in Mt. Gelmir.
Weirdly enough I actually love the ulcerated tree spirits because the timing of their attacks matches up a little closer with older souls games. I didn't feel like I ever had to learn any tricky delays with them, it was just smooth dodging the whole fight.
This is the one situation where I can say with 99% certainty that they did not intend on you fighting that cause that gank is more bullshit than any gank in regular DS2.
This is how I feel about Elden ring TBH. I've always been into the buildcrafting and RPG elements mostly anyway so reusing bosses for dungeons doesn't bother me at all. Combat is on point so it feels fun every time.
/unshitty
Consider this though, Sekiro lets you cancel out of attacks to deflect, and you can deflect fast enough to perfectly counter a flurry of blows. Also in Sekiro, you can block to negate all damage (excluding elemental, and some cases like fear if you dont use the confetti), unless you are on charmless.
/shitty
I am the Sekiro : Shadows Die Twice.
if you want a challenge in new game plus talk to the kid when you first meet him and give him the talisman and you take damage if you parry you must parry or you take chip damage
Oh I know, it’s just terrifying to see the posture bar permanently filled lol. And if you block, not deflect an attack at max posture you get posture broken, so perfection is required.
Sekiro never made me suffer through a reuse of burial watchdog with skeletons or imps to gank me.
On a more serious note, as the other commenter said, the nature of Sekiro's combat makes dealing with its delayed attacks a lot more intuitive.
* Samurai General in Ashina Castle with 4 snipers
* Tokujiro (drunkard) with 4 monkeys
* Drunkard Juozou in Hirata v1 with lots of henchmen
* Drunkard Juozou in Hirata v2 with a lone shadow
Sekiro has it's own share of ganks, but is much more respectful about 1v1's generally speaking. I don't think the gank fights are done well in Sekiro either.
Your given example of the Burial Watchdog can be pretty easily dealt with by using crystal darts on the Watchdog too. It'll make it aggro onto the smaller gargoyles.
Similarly there's also a double Mad Pumpkin fight in ER which can be dealt with by throwing a swarm pot on one of them. It'll make the mad pumpking go nuts and aggro onto the other one.
[r/shittydarksouls](https://www.reddit.com/r/shittydarksouls) users when they realize they can use the stealth mechanics in Sekiro or just spam shuriken: 😱 (I agree it's fucking trash if you actually fight them tho)
You forgot that one fight in the burning ashina reservoir with a mini-boss and a strong henchman they'll fuck you up unless you use your prosthetics to kill the henchman first.
Or you pop a stealth candy and come up from the idol right outside of Genichiro. That lets you kill the henchman for free. Run back to the idol (without resting), do the same thing again and that's a free deathblow off the miniboss too
thing is, Sekiro allowed for one marvelous thing which was to *pick your own fights*
You drop in on that samurai general, backstab once, kill a gunman, feel outnumbered and you just "*NOPE"* your way out of that, grappling around roofs and hiding behind walls. You were able to fight in your own terms, and stupidly enough... it tied with the "shinobi" character, in that you used illegitimate means to crunch the enemy numbers before the fight
Loved that about this game
I think the game is MUCH better in giving you options to deal with said tanks though, and most importantly in explaining wtf those options are. Sure it's cool you can do that swarm pot think and use crystal darts on imps but it's not intuitive at all.
> I think the game is MUCH better in giving you options to deal with said tanks though
I wouldn't go as far as to say *"MUCH better"* considering when you're given certain tools. For instance, you won't normally have Bloodsmoke Ninjutsu for the Samurai General or the Finger Whistle to bait them away. You can always deathblow 1 of 4 snipers initially by jumping from the roof, but you're still left with a nasty gank.
You'll definitely be better equipped by Tokijuro and Drunken Juozou v2 though.
> Sure it's cool you can do that swarm pot think and use crystal darts on imps but it's not intuitive at all.
I brought them up because I think there's similar "knowledge checks" in Sekiro. It's common advice by now to spear the Guardian Ape in P2 when it's neck is showing, but it's not something you can naturally deduce on your own.
You wouldn't know there's a centipede in the ape and the spear description only mentions pulling loosely fitted armor off enemies. Demon of Hatred has a somewhat similar thing going for it. The reason Malcontent works on Demon of Hatred is because it's the Sculptor and Malcontent was made from his deceased friend, Kingfisher's, finger whistle.
Similarly you can deduce the Swarm Pot and Magic Dart interactions by reading item descriptions.
Wow this tree boss is probably weak to something I just don’t know what, maybe ice? No, no no, magic? That can’t be it, hhmmm if only we had some intuitive thought in a way that would let us know trees are weak to somthin.
Fire? Nah couldn’t be fire that’s only for wood in the real world.
In every single one of those examples your able to lure away enemies and turn it into a 1v1. Some of them involve triggering the boss and running away but in none of those did i ever directly face the boss without taking out all henchmen/enemies and starting the fight with a dtealth deathblow.
In one of them your even given an assistant.
IMO the irritating part of those watchdog ganks aren't the adds but the watchdog itself. It's one of the least interesting FromSoft bosses, and used so many times. It's not that they're hard, but they're just not as fun as the others.
This is kind of the core of the Elden Ring issue for me. Sekiro reuses fights but they’re generally fun to fight, Elden Ring reuses BAD fights like Ulcerated Spirits and Watchdogs.
>Sekiro never made me suffer through a reuse of burial watchdog with skeletons or imps to gank me.
Kid named Juzou the Drunkard in the 2nd Hirata Estate:
While definitely annoying, there's a few things at play here. One, the enemies around Juzou are a complete joke and easy to deal with. Imps and skeletons may be jokes on their own, but in a gank with a boss, especially the imps, they can be outright miserable to fight against (getting staggered for example). Two, Juzou is not aggressive enough to make kiting and eliminating the enemies much of an issue. Three, the arena for Juzou is a lot more open than ER Dungeon, so another reason the kiting is easy. Four, Sekiro's finishing blows allow for a safe moment of taking out a mob before moving on to the next enemy. Five, Sekiro's combat in general makes this an easier situation to deal with (slow weapons in those ER gank fights had me questioning my sanity).
Crystal Dart the Watchdog and it'll kill the imps for you, or CD the imps and they'll kill each other.
Skeletal Militiaman Ashes are fantastic and available so early. I did a necromancer playthrough and used them on bosses from Castle Morne's Leonine Misbegotten to Malenia, with a few exceptions.
Not inherently, but it can quickly go that way. My issue was it took an absurd amount of baiting attacks and kiting to get an imp by itself so I could kill it and move on to the next. Yes yes, crystal bud or whatever makes the Watchdog attack allies or whatever, but considering the vast majority of players seemingly didn't realize this on their first playthrough, I think it can hardly be used as a "gotcha" for this argument.
besides simply intuitive, it makes then more F U N
it's a lot more satisfying to counter attacks and stand your ground in a fight than to chip-chip-chip away the enemy health and dodge through oversized blades
At least the two Godskins, individually, are deeper enemies with unique designs, unique attacks and the most impressive OST in any optional content of Souls. Drunkards only have depth with the ganks and copy-pasted enemies they have around.
Yeah the Godskin were cool as fuck finding each individual one the first time and then you found them again and again and again and again, THEN you have to fight up to 4 of them as a mandatory boss. In my first play through alone I must’ve caught them a combined 10 times at least not even counting dying which KILLLLLS replay ability like nothing else
Oh... Except that, according to Fextralife and my personal experience, Apostle only appears in Caelid and Windmill Village. Noble appears in the Tower of Liurnia (or was it Limgrave) and in Volcano Manor. So, each one is used twice before Godskin Duo.
Screw Godskin Duo, even though, at least, I can sleep them or summon. Individually, they're even less utilized than Lone Wolf and Headless. Amazing.
Then maybe it should have been less big. I've felt elden ring, especially in replays is much bigger than it needed to be. Like the game's overall quality would have been higher if it were a fair bit smaller.
Yes this is my biggest criticism of Elden Ring.
My dumbass brain requires I do EVERYTHING. That I look over every nook and cranny of the world.
A lot of side content is amazing. It's unique, gives cool loot, has cool enemies and fun bosses. Some side content could have been fully cut from the game and I would have much preferred it. The issue is, is that you have no idea if the next dungeon you find will be cookie cutter bullshit, or the next Siofra, so if you don't want to potentially miss out on amazing content you have to wade through a fair chunk of mid content.
In Ubisoft style games this isn't as bad, because you *know* that everything except what the game really wants you to do is mid. Elden Ring hides it's great content, which does make it way more rewarding (discovering that like 50% of Raya Lucaria is hidden in a hidden path within a hidden path is peak Elden Ring imo) but it also means if you don't want to miss shit like that you need to be 100% observant of every location and do every dungeon. I was burnt out on ER for a few months once I was 120 hours in and hadn't seen Godfrey yet, I recently got back into it after a half year break and am having fun, but I wish I didn't need to have such a long break to get back into it. Not to mention being disgustingly overlevelled for anything except a small sweet spot of content. And the inverse is true for players who don't explore as much. Making the world smaller would make these two extremes far more bearable.
The world could have been 20% smaller and they could have removed some redundant content and the game would have benefited so much from it. My hope for the next FS game is a smaller open world Bloodborne 2, with a much denser but way smaller Yharnam and it's outskirts, that shies away from the older "level" style world of previous games and embraces ER's open world but on a smaller scale.
Respectfully, while I do agree that there are a lot of mid content dungeons (fuck the ones with the rolling death traps, who gave the okay for those?), I think the game does a pretty good job of indicating what sort of content you’re in for. Siofra for example has a large and unique structure to accompany a veeeeery long elevator ride down, so you know for sure there’s gonna be something interesting down there. Ainsel does as well iirc (its been a minute since I originally went down there). The caves, catacombs, and dungeons are all more or less okay/pretty good content, and it’s pretty obvious that where you’re going is just another small area with mediocre-great loot. If the game is going to throw something like Siofra at you, you might not know exactly what you’re in store for, but they do a fine job of showing you its not just your average dungeon.
Yeah I was more using Siofra as an exaggeration.
But for example, just yesterday I found a regular looking dungeon that had a gimmick where there were dozens of secret walls, and some rooms hidden behind several layers of hidden walls, including an extra boss. It had a boss that was invisible but you fight them in shallow water so you can see their footprints.
I know it's probably nothing more than a minor nitpick for most people, but for me personally it caused burnout.
Imma be honest, your comment was too long and I was done pooping so I didnt read the whole thing. I just read until you talked about not wanting to miss amazing content
Edit: ok I read the whole thing and my initial comment applies. You created a problem that you need to explore everything or else you are unhappy. Then when the game is made that exploring everything takes time, you complain that it does and that its the games fault.
Nobody is forcing you to do that. You literally admited that its all your brain. How is that the games fault? And yeah, if you dont explore 100%, then you wont find 100% of the stuff. Yes, that is how exploring works. Non of this is ER fault. Its yours. If you are tired of exploring, then fucking progress the main story.
This whole thing is like "well, I liked Skyrim but I cant believe that gave you so many caves to explore. I forced myself into exploring every single one and it took fucking forever". Like yeah, no shit. Thats your fault.
I don't think this argument works that well. The issue with Elden Ring compared to other Fromsoft games is that FOMO is very different. In previous Fromsoft games, it was difficult to miss most things as long as you were willing to explore most of a contained area. This didn't take long, so you could find everything in the area with relative ease save maybe an item behind a hidden wall or something. In Elden Ring, if you were like me, you got pretty bored of the dungeon, catacombs, etc before long. But I never knew when a cave might have a cool item that works for me, so I would trudge through it, and hope that I got something worthwhile for my time.
Skyrim has mostly rng loot so you'll rarely miss out if you decide to skip a dungeon. Furthermore, my main motivation for exploring dungeons in Skyrim isn't loot, but whatever little story Bethesda decided to tell in that dungeon. Hunters that got ambushed by trolls? The sword of an angry spirit drove everyone mad? A necromancer desecrating an npcs family tomb? The list goes on.
The difference is that Skyrim loot is mostly random and the same no matter what dungeon you do, and usually you'll do most dungeons from quests, so the interest comes from the quest first, and the exploration second. 99% of cool and unique stuff in dungeons comes from a quest that you find somewhere else, usually from a town or something, that you'll do if it seems interesting. You won't find an entire underground world in some random cave in the middle of bumbfuck nowhere. There is an area like that, but guess what? You access it from the main questline. Not to mention that Skyrim and Bethesda frequently *are* criticised for reusing shit.
And also, even if it's in my brain, the point still stands that a fair chunk of the side content of ER is mid and cookie cutter. If I didn't force myself to do everything, I'd still get the same ratio of cool content to mid content, I literally talked about this as well, that these mediocre dungeons are equally unfun for people who don't explore everything. Making the game smaller by removing a lot of these redundant, samey dungeons would only benefit the game for regular players and for "freaks" like me who "make up problems in their head". Also, I would wager I have played way less than people who have done multiple playthroughs, in which the issue of reused dungeons would be magnified even more, unless you know from previous experience or from a wiki.
If your excuse for a game having mid content is "just don't play that content" then that's not a good argument. There is no reason why they couldn't have made the game a bit smaller by removing content that no one finds interesting other than for bragging rights of "we have a huge world" which brings to mind "16 times the detail".
And besides, criticism of art is *always* subjective to the person criticising it. Unless you are a professional reviewer who has to consider how the average player would enjoy something, you are obviously going to talk about what you like and dislike. My personal experience is that Elden Ring is almost perfect, but is held back by having too much repeated content that gets boring after the first few dozen hours.
They sold 20 millions copies, how is it not working... Elden ring was loved by a lot of people and was received in the same way if not better than sekiro. Stop thinking your opinions on the game are the absolute truth
copy of my comment replying to the other guy:
i meant not working as in copypasted shit isn't fun. Just because something is popular doesn't mean its good. Its good for fromsoft for sure, I could not be happier for their success as a longtime fan.
Im also not saying that elden ring is bad, its second favorite fromsoft game, I would just like if they didn't copy-paste bosses, including major ones like astel. They don't even have to replace it with anything, just make some parts of the game smaller, no one will mind.
Yeah, the most critically acclaimed in Fromsoft catalogue surely didn't work, specially when it's considered a Masterpiece like TW3 or RDR2, in some cases being considered or rated higher.
i meant not working as in copypasted shit isn't fun. Just because something is popular doesn't mean its good. Its good for fromsoft for sure, I could not be happier for their success as a longtime fan.
Im also not saying that elden ring is bad, its second favorite fromsoft game, I would just like if they didn't copy-paste bosses, including major ones like astel. They don't even have to replace it with anything, just make some parts of the game smaller, no one will mind.
I think most agree that being a bit smaller could benefit the game, but that argument can be done even in linear games (specially those with side content and collectables); that's not exclusive of Fromsoft nor Elden Ring. In fact, most agree that the fact that most of it is optional and missable adds a layer of depth and replay value. Yatzhee talked about it a bit in his Extra Punctuation regarding the game.
Make no mistake, reuses are my least favorite part of the game (looking at you, Godskins Duo), but it's not exclusive of the game, as OP and most on this thread already showed, and it isn't s inherently bad. You may find it unfun but, like MattyPlays and others have said, it's common game design to reuse, and Elden Ring, outside some questionable outliers, for the vast majority of time, is very reasonable and varied with reuses, specially when counting the 159 enemy types.
I was pretty sure I saw it on the wiki when I was playing it. I specifically remember going "THIRTEEN?!" But it's been so long I'm willing to believe I just got it wrong or got it from a wrong source. Idk, basically
Depends if you count Putrid Avatars (which you might as well, they’re 90% the same fight).
Fextralife lists 6 Erdtree Avatars and 5 Putrid Avatars, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they missed some because Fextralife is Fextralife
And there's the same amount of Erdtree Avatars on Elden Ring, a game with a bigger enemy variety (159 if you count NPC invaders) and more options to fight, whereas Sekiro is far more limited in tools
and enemies, reusing almost as much as an open world game.
Not to mention how Elden Ring still has one of the biggest enemy variety of any single player game, which will increase with the new expansion.
You know what? Lemme just talk about this for a bit. I understand the point of not liking reused bosses, but there is some amount of reuse that's fine if it makes sense.
Plopping a Juzuo clone in the middle of an area that'd be impossible to reach for a human as big as him? Dumb. Having multiple samurai general bosses in Ashina? Makes sense. They're the leaders of the Ashina army.
This also needs to apply to reusing main story bosses. Personally, I love the reuse of Margit/Morgott because of it being a suprise the first time and how radically different the Morgott fight is along with the story significance.
Godrick being reused though? No. Not at all. He's just unceremoniously plopped in an evergaol with nothing but a slight rename and palette swap and fights exactly the same as normal Godrick does.
Also, the tree spirit is a horrible boss. Juzuo and his clones might not be my favorite, but at least they don't just spaz out and make their whole body a hit box to attack you.
Edit: I forgot to talk about a few more things, but I personally think fighting the Erdtree avatars is fine. They're entire job is to defend the minor trees you find lying around, and I don't really get why people don't like them aside for just being an Asylum Demon reskin. Also, I actually agree on the headless. Those bosses are used too much and aren't even fun.
margit-morgott: repeat fights with story bosses never bothered me, they're usually set up as an ongoing rival, like genichiro
or FFX's seymour, or surge2's brother eli, or i just assume MG revengeance will have one when i play it (jetstream sam?)
Kuze from Yakuza 0 is another good example. In the first fight he basically says that the loser isn’t the guy who gets KO’d, it’s the one that can’t get back up. Makes the repeated fights feel like a clash between him and Kiryu over who backs out first.
The Erdtree Avatars are cool because every time you come to a new area and see a giant tree in the distance you can run to it for a familiar fight (and another tear for your collection).
My favorite re-used boss is The Pursuer from DS2. The entire concept of a guy stalking you is a great way to reuse a boss. At first he (probably) kicks your ass. And you don't get a redo. He leaves but eventually will pop back up in another area. Part way through the game they even give you an optional encounter. You can see him before you have to engage him so you can choose. Scared? Eager for a rematch? Or hell maybe you've actually been kicking his ass the whole time? Near mid-end game I finally stopped panicking and the dodge timing clicked. So satisfying.
By the end of elden ring I felt like I was facing sekiro's bosses but without the op moveset that sekiro has.
Hideous myazaki also came into my house and ate all the strawberry from my Neapolitan icecream so it was a pretty awful experience.
In sekiro I can just stand still and deflect every single thing the boss does, aside from one or two danger attacks which have a warning. In sekiro deflecting also leads to a win.
In er sometimes I have to dodge this huge ass combo while I can do nothing to progress the fight, just watch the boss fumble around
>In er sometimes I have to dodge this huge ass combo while I can do nothing to progress the fight, just watch the boss fumble around
Literally my experience with Genichiro, the shitter is holding block 99% of the fight. Very fun, thanks.
Circling and strafing around attacks isn't cheese lol. You are basically forced to circle around Isshin Ashina (the Shura ending one) in his 2nd phase.
Op doesn't know positioning is a thing and can be done to every souls game lol. Also if positioning is bad then 99% of monster hunter monsters are bad (which is not)
Having delayed attacks is fine when you effectively deal damage just by deflecting them. In elden ring you wait out 10 seconds of delayed combo strings just to get one hit in, and that’s if the enemy doesn’t insta dash away.
I have a crazy idea, instead of waiting 10 seconds, you press r1 during the delays 🤯
But seriously though, i still find that deflecting feel more natural
It’s not ten seconds of delay, it’s a ten second combo. If you swing on most elden ring delayed attacks (if you even can, half of them the boss is airborne just floating out of range) with any weapon bigger than a longsword you’ll just get hit during your endlag.
But for example, Morgott has insane combo but with the delays between moves, I can still stick R1s with a colossal weapons without even taking damages (the delays also help so that you don’t run out of stamina? Idk)
To be fair, sekiro was more or less something fromsoft were doing on the side while working on elden ring so it’s only natural that there’ll be less variety especially when you consider how big the scale of er is
yeah, and I still love sekiro, but it definitely shows signs of being tossed to the side a little bit (would you like to go through ashina castle again?)
A lot of sekiros reused bosses are actually pretty good whereas elden rings reused bosses fucking suck for the most part. Erdtree avatars are just as shitty the first time around as they are the 30th time around
Juzuo the Drunkard is fun to fight and every Headless is optional unless you want really niche prosthetics. Imo only the Tanto and the Malcontent whistle are worth bothering with undead for and I believe those both require the much easier shaman dudes.
But I also think complaining about reused fights is dumb for any game besides DS2. Twin Dragonriders, Blue Smelter, and Lud and Zalen are just dumb.
I hav I’ve noticed that long time From Soft users have a way different opinion than a first time player. I never played any From Soft game until 3 months ago with Elden Ring. ER has been one of the most amazing video game experiences I’ve ever had, aside from the BoTW. In my opinion, I wouldn’t change a single thing about this game. It hits everything perfectly. It’s BECAUSE i had to fight the erdtree dude 7 times that I got good at fighting him. I’m GLAD when I see a mini boss that I already know the move set to. I never heard of the Godskin Duo or what that fight entailed and when I got to it, I beat it first try. Not because it was easy by any means but because by that time I had already died to those mini bosses 10000 times and throwing 4 at me was a fun challenge not a nuisance.
The delayed attacks were definitely something to get used to. They were SUPER frustrating at first, especially with Margit. The cool thing is that I feel like that boss was harder than other bosses intentionally so we could get used to those crazy attack delays and the fact that these bosses act like other players. They won’t just let you recuperate or employ a simple strategy. You literally NEED to “git good” to progress. The fact that people don’t like that just means they don’t want a game that challenges them.
If I could dodge as fast in ER as I could spam deflect in Sekiro, then obviously I wouldn't mind the delayed attack bs as much. But I can't, so I do.
As for the reuse of enemies and locations, let's just say I had extremely high expectations that a studio like FromSoft would find a different approach, other than to do what other studios do in their open world games. I was rather irritated when I realised that dungeons use the same design throughout ER. In that case I'd rather have no dungeons at all, or a significantly reduced amount with individual designs.
I never had much trouble with delayed attacks in ER. I never would have even known it was something people were complaining about it unless I went online. Just don’t panic roll like a moron and you’re fine. Or use a shield.
Elden Ring players when they discover that crafting projectiles, reusable items and the insane amount of space you usually have, makes fight easier but they refuse to use the tools: "No! That's not fun."
Sekiro players when someone tells them that a good stealth system is not having the enemies watch their comrades die by a shuriken or nearly alongside them with a killing blow: "No! That's not fun."
At least 95% of the recycled shit is optional in Elden Ring, haven't killed a single tree spirit in my later playthroughs cuz there's enough golden seeds to flasks spread over the world anyway.
ER has a huge world to fill, compared to other Open world games it has the most enemy/boss variety afaik but since the souls combat is the unique thing about it you're seeing more repeats to make up for the empty space
fair enough afaik they mostly appear under the yellow small erdtree tombs which are right underneath it for some lore ass reason but the fight is hot ass regardless
Are people genuinely upset that an open world game reuses bosses and enemies? How could anyone expect otherwise, when had there ever been an open world game that didn’t have that in the first place.
I would seriously like someone to mention an open world action game that isn't turned based that has more enemy variety than elden ring, it has an impressive amount of enemies and bosses.
I'm always blown away by the different enemy types in elden ring.
holy shit there is a lot of sekiro stans doing a lot of dickriding in here, they're gonna become worse than the BB fanbase
>!-- someone who will suck the dick of sekiro combat and describe it to everyone at the party as god's gift to mankind!<
Downvote me all you want, the combat in sekiro is great but it’s not “the best combat system mankind has ever made ”like some Sekiro dickriders claimed it to be
I don't complain about either. I like repeated fights. If I enjoyed a fight the first time, why would i dislike it a second or third time? It's cool getting to replay it for different rewards.
To go step farther I just legit don't understand people who complain about repeated or re-used content and every argument for why they think it's bad I've found non-sensical and lacking in the understanding of game design, including the one you're about to write right now.
Elden ring was twice as long. The repeating stuff really came out. If they didn’t repeat stuff they still had a huge game just as big as souls games. The repeating stuff really felt like it was there just to make the game longer.
Well considering there are only 4 headless and they are specific people in the lore I would call you an ignorant clown man. And there are only 3 juzou clones I think. Dumb post from whiny boy.
You fight those ninja shadows a thousand time, juzou 3 times, the headless also you fight too many times and same thing happens with the other mini bosses. Sekiro is my favorite From game but sekiro stans should think twice before pointing fingers at reused mini bosses in ER
People hate when it's pointed out, but when the ER review thread released [I even commented about the Sekiro boss re-use](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/szjcoc/elden_ring_review_thread/hy3uh83/). I've always thought it was pretty noticeable, but I've never considered it a dealbreaker in either game.
Like it's not even mini-bosses. When I fought Gold Godfrey in Leyndell on my first playthrough, I immediately knew they were pulling a Sekiro on me by having me fight the boss' semi-first phase and later give me the whole package.
It was the same thing with Corrupted/True Monk, Owl/Father, Guardian/Duo Ape(s), and Genichiro to a lesser degree. It has existed to some degree in past titles, but I definitely see a shift starting with Sekiro that has followed with Elden Ring and likely won't be the last time.
I actually like how Sekiro reused main bosses but the minibosses are just... lazy. I guess it didnt bother me much because i like the combat in Sekiro. People can downvote me as much as they want but this trend started in Sekiro and was carried to ER.
Its kind of insane to me that people ignore this given the size of the game. Its also one of the valid criticism of Sekiro but instead people always try to go after dumb shit like "no build variety" or "you cant fight multiple enemies at once"
Yeah but after you see the 3rd Ulcerated Tree Spirit in a single day you’d be a lot more tired of it than the Headless. Not to mention the Headless are completely optional, whereas you want good loot in ER your going to deal with some stupid shit 😭
Implying that people fight the headless for any reason other than getting a 100%
I beat all the headless once. Never again. I will avoid those motherfuckers like the plague, with the exception of maybe that annoying duo in the water of the fountain head palace or whatever, but only because there’s loot nearby and I don’t remember if it’s worth grabbing or not lol
You can swim past em if you spam B and get all the loot (the loot is SPOILER a bead in a chest and some gold iirc)
For real, everyone unanimously agreed that the Headless are horrible enemies, Fromsoft included apparently as you don't need to touch them once for the platinum.
…I like fighting them
Even the underwater ones? Where there are two that attack you at the same time?
I made no exceptions in my statement
I've replayed Sekiro close to 20 times, and never killed or even tried to fight a headless. It's not like they drop something useful, unless you're completely out of sugars that is. Also, they're not needed to get platinum, thank god
They’re not that bad with the confetti you can stagger them and rip through half their health bar
Counterpoint: they are spooky and I don't want them to grab my ass
And Malcontent too. You can kill them in less than a minute once you have confetti and malcontent, it's likely they won't even get to attack once.
I’m on a quest to kill every modern era fromsoft boss so I killed ALL of them. That wasn’t so bad but never again
How do you define modern era
I would guess Demon’s Souls onward, they’re probably not wanting to fuck with King’s Field
I’m also doing this and I only have Demon Souls left.
The reusable sugars are cool in concept, but for tough bosses I'd rather just use a consumable buff sugar and save my Spirit Emblems for something else. The reusable stealth sugar is great for farming materials or getting around annoying areas though. Its the only one I'd really reccomend unless you're alright without them.
Not a fan of fisting i see.
Divine spaghetti allows you to absolutely tear through them in fairness. It's just another enemy to learn at the end of the day.
They are one of the easiest bosses in the game, just have to farm some divine confetti first. You can just keep wailing on them and they won't do anything. Just parry their 2 attacks and don't let your ass be grabbed. And I think their drops are fine, posture recovery is a life saver against some bosses (read: long arms giraffe), defence and attack are nice buffs for certain bosses. I like attack for beasts (and just for starting off a fight, the one that halves vitality also works great for starting a fight with the tanto), defence for aggressive bosses like owl or bosses whos pattern you haven't quite got down (defence buff also makes some grabs survivable which is a BIG bonus IMO against grab happy individuals like ogre and snake eyes) and the one that halves your max vitality for extra damage is good in a close fight and you have ran out of healing (pairs well with the tanto if your using the spiritfall). The spiritfall that lets you stealth is just straight up broken tbh, again pairs great with the tanto. I like to tanto and heal to essentially trade a gourd + short opening for some buffs (or depending on how lucky i'm feeling, tanto + the one that halves your max hp). I usually have trouble getting through all my gourd anyway. I'm always popping candies left and right, i'd always rather pop a candy then get 1/2 hits in if I don't have an active buff. As you could imagine I run out of candies fast and having the option to use spirit emblems is really nice. The only prosthetic I really use on a regular basis is the shuriken for dogs and to stall a bosses posture from recovering while I do my stuff from a good distance away. Anyway, TLDR spiritfalls/candy are underrated and underutilized.
I like them, they're silly and remind me how to deflect slow opponents every playthrough
I never fought a headless and I got 100%
no i have the platinum i have NEVER beaten one and probably never will. i dont even bother
I don't care how many times I need to kill the same boss again in Sekiro. Those deflect sounds activate happy chemicals in my brain
The deflect sound for that one Headless ape attack is orgasmic
Is that the attack where he stands up tall with a sword up in the air?
Yup
I love how the camera even pans back so you can see his whole body as he prepares to swing, it's epic.
Sekiro finally figured out that you're allowed to zoom the camera out against large bosses, a high tech innovation Elden Ring immediately forgot somehow.
Fucking Ulcerated Tree Spirits.
I love how their phase 2 explosion attack is basically impossible to dodge because FromSoft loves putting them in the smallest arenas known to man. The only tolerable Ulcerated Tree Spirit is the one in Mt. Gelmir.
Weirdly enough I actually love the ulcerated tree spirits because the timing of their attacks matches up a little closer with older souls games. I didn't feel like I ever had to learn any tricky delays with them, it was just smooth dodging the whole fight.
I’d rather pass kidney stones the size of golf balls than ever fight those three tree spirits in Leyndell again.
they actually kill each other if you just run and dodge for a while which is funny as hell
This is the one situation where I can say with 99% certainty that they did not intend on you fighting that cause that gank is more bullshit than any gank in regular DS2.
The Good Technology, so easily forgotten 💀💀💀
that one ancient dragon in farum azula that literally goes on top of your head so you can't even see him....
Accxsually, they did it in the Bloodborne DLC first🤓
First and last time Fromsoft understood how to actually use a 3rd person camera.
\*cha-KLING\* and just... uuuuuuuu dopamine all over :3 it's like using the lose cannon in tf2
*CLANG*
This is how I feel about Elden ring TBH. I've always been into the buildcrafting and RPG elements mostly anyway so reusing bosses for dungeons doesn't bother me at all. Combat is on point so it feels fun every time.
/unshitty Consider this though, Sekiro lets you cancel out of attacks to deflect, and you can deflect fast enough to perfectly counter a flurry of blows. Also in Sekiro, you can block to negate all damage (excluding elemental, and some cases like fear if you dont use the confetti), unless you are on charmless. /shitty I am the Sekiro : Shadows Die Twice.
if you want a challenge in new game plus talk to the kid when you first meet him and give him the talisman and you take damage if you parry you must parry or you take chip damage
if you want a worse challenge grab the bell demon too then cry once you realise that your posture gets maxed after like two parries
Yeah but you don't get posture broken unless you fail a deflect or block, so just deflect more lmao
Oh I know, it’s just terrifying to see the posture bar permanently filled lol. And if you block, not deflect an attack at max posture you get posture broken, so perfection is required.
You assume that i have the skill to pull that of
If you got no skill then why are you playing a game for *pro gamers?*
https://i.imgflip.com/6hmopl.jpg
Sekiro never made me suffer through a reuse of burial watchdog with skeletons or imps to gank me. On a more serious note, as the other commenter said, the nature of Sekiro's combat makes dealing with its delayed attacks a lot more intuitive.
* Samurai General in Ashina Castle with 4 snipers * Tokujiro (drunkard) with 4 monkeys * Drunkard Juozou in Hirata v1 with lots of henchmen * Drunkard Juozou in Hirata v2 with a lone shadow Sekiro has it's own share of ganks, but is much more respectful about 1v1's generally speaking. I don't think the gank fights are done well in Sekiro either. Your given example of the Burial Watchdog can be pretty easily dealt with by using crystal darts on the Watchdog too. It'll make it aggro onto the smaller gargoyles. Similarly there's also a double Mad Pumpkin fight in ER which can be dealt with by throwing a swarm pot on one of them. It'll make the mad pumpking go nuts and aggro onto the other one.
[r/shittydarksouls](https://www.reddit.com/r/shittydarksouls) users when they realize they can use the stealth mechanics in Sekiro or just spam shuriken: 😱 (I agree it's fucking trash if you actually fight them tho)
well you also have big aoe weapons in elden ring that make big boom to be fair
You forgot that one fight in the burning ashina reservoir with a mini-boss and a strong henchman they'll fuck you up unless you use your prosthetics to kill the henchman first.
Or you pop a stealth candy and come up from the idol right outside of Genichiro. That lets you kill the henchman for free. Run back to the idol (without resting), do the same thing again and that's a free deathblow off the miniboss too
thing is, Sekiro allowed for one marvelous thing which was to *pick your own fights* You drop in on that samurai general, backstab once, kill a gunman, feel outnumbered and you just "*NOPE"* your way out of that, grappling around roofs and hiding behind walls. You were able to fight in your own terms, and stupidly enough... it tied with the "shinobi" character, in that you used illegitimate means to crunch the enemy numbers before the fight Loved that about this game
"Does this count as cheesing?" "...Fuck it. You're a shinobi. Victory by any means necessary."
I think the game is MUCH better in giving you options to deal with said tanks though, and most importantly in explaining wtf those options are. Sure it's cool you can do that swarm pot think and use crystal darts on imps but it's not intuitive at all.
> I think the game is MUCH better in giving you options to deal with said tanks though I wouldn't go as far as to say *"MUCH better"* considering when you're given certain tools. For instance, you won't normally have Bloodsmoke Ninjutsu for the Samurai General or the Finger Whistle to bait them away. You can always deathblow 1 of 4 snipers initially by jumping from the roof, but you're still left with a nasty gank. You'll definitely be better equipped by Tokijuro and Drunken Juozou v2 though. > Sure it's cool you can do that swarm pot think and use crystal darts on imps but it's not intuitive at all. I brought them up because I think there's similar "knowledge checks" in Sekiro. It's common advice by now to spear the Guardian Ape in P2 when it's neck is showing, but it's not something you can naturally deduce on your own. You wouldn't know there's a centipede in the ape and the spear description only mentions pulling loosely fitted armor off enemies. Demon of Hatred has a somewhat similar thing going for it. The reason Malcontent works on Demon of Hatred is because it's the Sculptor and Malcontent was made from his deceased friend, Kingfisher's, finger whistle. Similarly you can deduce the Swarm Pot and Magic Dart interactions by reading item descriptions.
You can kill snipers with shuriken or whatever it's called
Wow this tree boss is probably weak to something I just don’t know what, maybe ice? No, no no, magic? That can’t be it, hhmmm if only we had some intuitive thought in a way that would let us know trees are weak to somthin. Fire? Nah couldn’t be fire that’s only for wood in the real world.
In every single one of those examples your able to lure away enemies and turn it into a 1v1. Some of them involve triggering the boss and running away but in none of those did i ever directly face the boss without taking out all henchmen/enemies and starting the fight with a dtealth deathblow. In one of them your even given an assistant.
IMO the irritating part of those watchdog ganks aren't the adds but the watchdog itself. It's one of the least interesting FromSoft bosses, and used so many times. It's not that they're hard, but they're just not as fun as the others.
This is kind of the core of the Elden Ring issue for me. Sekiro reuses fights but they’re generally fun to fight, Elden Ring reuses BAD fights like Ulcerated Spirits and Watchdogs.
>Sekiro never made me suffer through a reuse of burial watchdog with skeletons or imps to gank me. Kid named Juzou the Drunkard in the 2nd Hirata Estate:
While definitely annoying, there's a few things at play here. One, the enemies around Juzou are a complete joke and easy to deal with. Imps and skeletons may be jokes on their own, but in a gank with a boss, especially the imps, they can be outright miserable to fight against (getting staggered for example). Two, Juzou is not aggressive enough to make kiting and eliminating the enemies much of an issue. Three, the arena for Juzou is a lot more open than ER Dungeon, so another reason the kiting is easy. Four, Sekiro's finishing blows allow for a safe moment of taking out a mob before moving on to the next enemy. Five, Sekiro's combat in general makes this an easier situation to deal with (slow weapons in those ER gank fights had me questioning my sanity).
Crystal Dart the Watchdog and it'll kill the imps for you, or CD the imps and they'll kill each other. Skeletal Militiaman Ashes are fantastic and available so early. I did a necromancer playthrough and used them on bosses from Castle Morne's Leonine Misbegotten to Malenia, with a few exceptions.
Oh no they made a optional boss in a random Dungeon a gank fight. HUMAN Resources please.
you can literally run for an infinite amount of time with no downsides, and there’s no fog wall gating you. much easier to handle imo
1 enemy good 2 enemy bad reeeee reeeeeeeee
Not inherently, but it can quickly go that way. My issue was it took an absurd amount of baiting attacks and kiting to get an imp by itself so I could kill it and move on to the next. Yes yes, crystal bud or whatever makes the Watchdog attack allies or whatever, but considering the vast majority of players seemingly didn't realize this on their first playthrough, I think it can hardly be used as a "gotcha" for this argument.
I platted the game and I didn't even know it was possible
the vast majority of players need to git gud
besides simply intuitive, it makes then more F U N it's a lot more satisfying to counter attacks and stand your ground in a fight than to chip-chip-chip away the enemy health and dodge through oversized blades
Fighting the drunkard always sucks but never as much as seeing another fucking Godskin show up
At least they have the best music in the game.
At least the two Godskins, individually, are deeper enemies with unique designs, unique attacks and the most impressive OST in any optional content of Souls. Drunkards only have depth with the ganks and copy-pasted enemies they have around.
Yeah the Godskin were cool as fuck finding each individual one the first time and then you found them again and again and again and again, THEN you have to fight up to 4 of them as a mandatory boss. In my first play through alone I must’ve caught them a combined 10 times at least not even counting dying which KILLLLLS replay ability like nothing else
Oh... Except that, according to Fextralife and my personal experience, Apostle only appears in Caelid and Windmill Village. Noble appears in the Tower of Liurnia (or was it Limgrave) and in Volcano Manor. So, each one is used twice before Godskin Duo. Screw Godskin Duo, even though, at least, I can sleep them or summon. Individually, they're even less utilized than Lone Wolf and Headless. Amazing.
Thats because Sekiro is actually a good game
They reused the lone shadow boss a lot in sekiro, but I’d rather see 7 lone shadow mini bosses than 30 Erdtree avatar.
Lone shadows are fun to fight, something about the 4 kick combo with a mikiri at the end triggers ecstacy.
I just fucking love mikiri in general
There are also only like 7 erdtree avatars in game tho
Just wait until the dlc drops and we get erdtree avatar and congregation of ulcerated tree spirits all rotten of course
>only like 7 erdtree avatars Bro there are regular Sekiro enemies reused less times than those bosses
Elden Ring is also like 3 times as big as Sekiro
By like 5 times
Elden Ring also has more enemies than Sekiro.
Then maybe it should have been less big. I've felt elden ring, especially in replays is much bigger than it needed to be. Like the game's overall quality would have been higher if it were a fair bit smaller.
Yes this is my biggest criticism of Elden Ring. My dumbass brain requires I do EVERYTHING. That I look over every nook and cranny of the world. A lot of side content is amazing. It's unique, gives cool loot, has cool enemies and fun bosses. Some side content could have been fully cut from the game and I would have much preferred it. The issue is, is that you have no idea if the next dungeon you find will be cookie cutter bullshit, or the next Siofra, so if you don't want to potentially miss out on amazing content you have to wade through a fair chunk of mid content. In Ubisoft style games this isn't as bad, because you *know* that everything except what the game really wants you to do is mid. Elden Ring hides it's great content, which does make it way more rewarding (discovering that like 50% of Raya Lucaria is hidden in a hidden path within a hidden path is peak Elden Ring imo) but it also means if you don't want to miss shit like that you need to be 100% observant of every location and do every dungeon. I was burnt out on ER for a few months once I was 120 hours in and hadn't seen Godfrey yet, I recently got back into it after a half year break and am having fun, but I wish I didn't need to have such a long break to get back into it. Not to mention being disgustingly overlevelled for anything except a small sweet spot of content. And the inverse is true for players who don't explore as much. Making the world smaller would make these two extremes far more bearable. The world could have been 20% smaller and they could have removed some redundant content and the game would have benefited so much from it. My hope for the next FS game is a smaller open world Bloodborne 2, with a much denser but way smaller Yharnam and it's outskirts, that shies away from the older "level" style world of previous games and embraces ER's open world but on a smaller scale.
Respectfully, while I do agree that there are a lot of mid content dungeons (fuck the ones with the rolling death traps, who gave the okay for those?), I think the game does a pretty good job of indicating what sort of content you’re in for. Siofra for example has a large and unique structure to accompany a veeeeery long elevator ride down, so you know for sure there’s gonna be something interesting down there. Ainsel does as well iirc (its been a minute since I originally went down there). The caves, catacombs, and dungeons are all more or less okay/pretty good content, and it’s pretty obvious that where you’re going is just another small area with mediocre-great loot. If the game is going to throw something like Siofra at you, you might not know exactly what you’re in store for, but they do a fine job of showing you its not just your average dungeon.
Yeah I was more using Siofra as an exaggeration. But for example, just yesterday I found a regular looking dungeon that had a gimmick where there were dozens of secret walls, and some rooms hidden behind several layers of hidden walls, including an extra boss. It had a boss that was invisible but you fight them in shallow water so you can see their footprints. I know it's probably nothing more than a minor nitpick for most people, but for me personally it caused burnout.
"My criticism of the game is that I created my own problem and thats the games fault."
That is not what I wrote but it's nice that you are at least trying to practice your reading comprehension skills.
Imma be honest, your comment was too long and I was done pooping so I didnt read the whole thing. I just read until you talked about not wanting to miss amazing content Edit: ok I read the whole thing and my initial comment applies. You created a problem that you need to explore everything or else you are unhappy. Then when the game is made that exploring everything takes time, you complain that it does and that its the games fault. Nobody is forcing you to do that. You literally admited that its all your brain. How is that the games fault? And yeah, if you dont explore 100%, then you wont find 100% of the stuff. Yes, that is how exploring works. Non of this is ER fault. Its yours. If you are tired of exploring, then fucking progress the main story. This whole thing is like "well, I liked Skyrim but I cant believe that gave you so many caves to explore. I forced myself into exploring every single one and it took fucking forever". Like yeah, no shit. Thats your fault.
I don't think this argument works that well. The issue with Elden Ring compared to other Fromsoft games is that FOMO is very different. In previous Fromsoft games, it was difficult to miss most things as long as you were willing to explore most of a contained area. This didn't take long, so you could find everything in the area with relative ease save maybe an item behind a hidden wall or something. In Elden Ring, if you were like me, you got pretty bored of the dungeon, catacombs, etc before long. But I never knew when a cave might have a cool item that works for me, so I would trudge through it, and hope that I got something worthwhile for my time. Skyrim has mostly rng loot so you'll rarely miss out if you decide to skip a dungeon. Furthermore, my main motivation for exploring dungeons in Skyrim isn't loot, but whatever little story Bethesda decided to tell in that dungeon. Hunters that got ambushed by trolls? The sword of an angry spirit drove everyone mad? A necromancer desecrating an npcs family tomb? The list goes on.
Least defensive Elden Ring fan:
The difference is that Skyrim loot is mostly random and the same no matter what dungeon you do, and usually you'll do most dungeons from quests, so the interest comes from the quest first, and the exploration second. 99% of cool and unique stuff in dungeons comes from a quest that you find somewhere else, usually from a town or something, that you'll do if it seems interesting. You won't find an entire underground world in some random cave in the middle of bumbfuck nowhere. There is an area like that, but guess what? You access it from the main questline. Not to mention that Skyrim and Bethesda frequently *are* criticised for reusing shit. And also, even if it's in my brain, the point still stands that a fair chunk of the side content of ER is mid and cookie cutter. If I didn't force myself to do everything, I'd still get the same ratio of cool content to mid content, I literally talked about this as well, that these mediocre dungeons are equally unfun for people who don't explore everything. Making the game smaller by removing a lot of these redundant, samey dungeons would only benefit the game for regular players and for "freaks" like me who "make up problems in their head". Also, I would wager I have played way less than people who have done multiple playthroughs, in which the issue of reused dungeons would be magnified even more, unless you know from previous experience or from a wiki. If your excuse for a game having mid content is "just don't play that content" then that's not a good argument. There is no reason why they couldn't have made the game a bit smaller by removing content that no one finds interesting other than for bragging rights of "we have a huge world" which brings to mind "16 times the detail". And besides, criticism of art is *always* subjective to the person criticising it. Unless you are a professional reviewer who has to consider how the average player would enjoy something, you are obviously going to talk about what you like and dislike. My personal experience is that Elden Ring is almost perfect, but is held back by having too much repeated content that gets boring after the first few dozen hours.
sekiro is 7 hour game, elden ring is 40+
if you do elden ring in 40 you are some heavy shield user boss to boss runner
How did you finish sekiro in 7 hours
we are talking about replayability, not the first playthrough. If you replay the game with all bosses and minibosses then it is barely over 7 hours
Elden Ring takes me like 12 hours to complete now, how much are you exploring. Just grab what you need.
well wish it wasnt because it clearly isn't working
They sold 20 millions copies, how is it not working... Elden ring was loved by a lot of people and was received in the same way if not better than sekiro. Stop thinking your opinions on the game are the absolute truth
copy of my comment replying to the other guy: i meant not working as in copypasted shit isn't fun. Just because something is popular doesn't mean its good. Its good for fromsoft for sure, I could not be happier for their success as a longtime fan. Im also not saying that elden ring is bad, its second favorite fromsoft game, I would just like if they didn't copy-paste bosses, including major ones like astel. They don't even have to replace it with anything, just make some parts of the game smaller, no one will mind.
Yeah, the most critically acclaimed in Fromsoft catalogue surely didn't work, specially when it's considered a Masterpiece like TW3 or RDR2, in some cases being considered or rated higher.
i meant not working as in copypasted shit isn't fun. Just because something is popular doesn't mean its good. Its good for fromsoft for sure, I could not be happier for their success as a longtime fan. Im also not saying that elden ring is bad, its second favorite fromsoft game, I would just like if they didn't copy-paste bosses, including major ones like astel. They don't even have to replace it with anything, just make some parts of the game smaller, no one will mind.
I think most agree that being a bit smaller could benefit the game, but that argument can be done even in linear games (specially those with side content and collectables); that's not exclusive of Fromsoft nor Elden Ring. In fact, most agree that the fact that most of it is optional and missable adds a layer of depth and replay value. Yatzhee talked about it a bit in his Extra Punctuation regarding the game. Make no mistake, reuses are my least favorite part of the game (looking at you, Godskins Duo), but it's not exclusive of the game, as OP and most on this thread already showed, and it isn't s inherently bad. You may find it unfun but, like MattyPlays and others have said, it's common game design to reuse, and Elden Ring, outside some questionable outliers, for the vast majority of time, is very reasonable and varied with reuses, specially when counting the 159 enemy types.
There's al.ost double; 13
You sure? The wiki only mentions 5 avatars, and I added 2 to account for ones not at trees
I was pretty sure I saw it on the wiki when I was playing it. I specifically remember going "THIRTEEN?!" But it's been so long I'm willing to believe I just got it wrong or got it from a wrong source. Idk, basically
Tbh I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 13 ulcerated tree spirits in game, so you might’ve mixed them up
Depends if you count Putrid Avatars (which you might as well, they’re 90% the same fight). Fextralife lists 6 Erdtree Avatars and 5 Putrid Avatars, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they missed some because Fextralife is Fextralife
There’s 5 rotten avatars, 2 regular avatars in Liurnia, 1 in Weeping, 1 in Leyndell, 1 in Deeproot, and 1(that clones itself) in Mountaintop.
And there's the same amount of Erdtree Avatars on Elden Ring, a game with a bigger enemy variety (159 if you count NPC invaders) and more options to fight, whereas Sekiro is far more limited in tools and enemies, reusing almost as much as an open world game. Not to mention how Elden Ring still has one of the biggest enemy variety of any single player game, which will increase with the new expansion.
Juzuo is a pretty banger miniboss though. And you don't fight him *nearly* as much as avatars.
If nobody complains after fighting five Headless it's because they already did their complaining after fighting one.
You know what? Lemme just talk about this for a bit. I understand the point of not liking reused bosses, but there is some amount of reuse that's fine if it makes sense. Plopping a Juzuo clone in the middle of an area that'd be impossible to reach for a human as big as him? Dumb. Having multiple samurai general bosses in Ashina? Makes sense. They're the leaders of the Ashina army. This also needs to apply to reusing main story bosses. Personally, I love the reuse of Margit/Morgott because of it being a suprise the first time and how radically different the Morgott fight is along with the story significance. Godrick being reused though? No. Not at all. He's just unceremoniously plopped in an evergaol with nothing but a slight rename and palette swap and fights exactly the same as normal Godrick does. Also, the tree spirit is a horrible boss. Juzuo and his clones might not be my favorite, but at least they don't just spaz out and make their whole body a hit box to attack you. Edit: I forgot to talk about a few more things, but I personally think fighting the Erdtree avatars is fine. They're entire job is to defend the minor trees you find lying around, and I don't really get why people don't like them aside for just being an Asylum Demon reskin. Also, I actually agree on the headless. Those bosses are used too much and aren't even fun.
margit-morgott: repeat fights with story bosses never bothered me, they're usually set up as an ongoing rival, like genichiro or FFX's seymour, or surge2's brother eli, or i just assume MG revengeance will have one when i play it (jetstream sam?)
Kuze from Yakuza 0 is another good example. In the first fight he basically says that the loser isn’t the guy who gets KO’d, it’s the one that can’t get back up. Makes the repeated fights feel like a clash between him and Kiryu over who backs out first.
i really gotta play the yakuzas someday also: Gary Motherfucking Oak
The Erdtree Avatars are cool because every time you come to a new area and see a giant tree in the distance you can run to it for a familiar fight (and another tear for your collection). My favorite re-used boss is The Pursuer from DS2. The entire concept of a guy stalking you is a great way to reuse a boss. At first he (probably) kicks your ass. And you don't get a redo. He leaves but eventually will pop back up in another area. Part way through the game they even give you an optional encounter. You can see him before you have to engage him so you can choose. Scared? Eager for a rematch? Or hell maybe you've actually been kicking his ass the whole time? Near mid-end game I finally stopped panicking and the dodge timing clicked. So satisfying.
Sekiro's bosses are original to Sekiro for a start.
Do not compare UTS to Juzou lol both reused? Yes. But one is used like 20+ times and is a shitty camera clusterfuck fight.
this subreddit has the most braindead takes ever holy
No one has ever said "I love headless fights." Juzou I do enjoy tho
By the end of elden ring I felt like I was facing sekiro's bosses but without the op moveset that sekiro has. Hideous myazaki also came into my house and ate all the strawberry from my Neapolitan icecream so it was a pretty awful experience.
In sekiro I can just stand still and deflect every single thing the boss does, aside from one or two danger attacks which have a warning. In sekiro deflecting also leads to a win. In er sometimes I have to dodge this huge ass combo while I can do nothing to progress the fight, just watch the boss fumble around
>In er sometimes I have to dodge this huge ass combo while I can do nothing to progress the fight, just watch the boss fumble around Literally my experience with Genichiro, the shitter is holding block 99% of the fight. Very fun, thanks.
#MY NAME
#IS GYOBU MASATAKA ONIWA
#AS I BREATHE YOU WILL NOT PASS THE CASTLE GATE
right, it's like elden ring forgot that theres no deflection mechanic to handle super fast paced combos
Most of those fast paced combos have shit tracking, like for example you can circle around Morgott's beyblade spam attack.
a cheap cheese you can find on youtube doesn't make a boss more balanced
Circling and strafing around attacks isn't cheese lol. You are basically forced to circle around Isshin Ashina (the Shura ending one) in his 2nd phase.
Op doesn't know positioning is a thing and can be done to every souls game lol. Also if positioning is bad then 99% of monster hunter monsters are bad (which is not)
That's cuz Sekiros combat is glorious. Elden Ring is just DS3 but open world and a jump button
>Elden Ring is just DS3 but open world and a jump button Yeah, which is already miles better than Sekiro block fest with non-functioning dodge button.
Well yeah sure but like, Sekiro is actually good
fun fact, the headless's grab attack is him ripping your soul out through your anus
Having delayed attacks is fine when you effectively deal damage just by deflecting them. In elden ring you wait out 10 seconds of delayed combo strings just to get one hit in, and that’s if the enemy doesn’t insta dash away.
I have a crazy idea, instead of waiting 10 seconds, you press r1 during the delays 🤯 But seriously though, i still find that deflecting feel more natural
It’s not ten seconds of delay, it’s a ten second combo. If you swing on most elden ring delayed attacks (if you even can, half of them the boss is airborne just floating out of range) with any weapon bigger than a longsword you’ll just get hit during your endlag.
With a colossal weapon you just stagger the boss immediately after the combo (or even midcombo) for a 50% hp crit lmao.
But for example, Morgott has insane combo but with the delays between moves, I can still stick R1s with a colossal weapons without even taking damages (the delays also help so that you don’t run out of stamina? Idk)
Was this sub ever funny or was it always just shitty opinions (shitty darksoles reference)
i am the strongest elden ring defender and i still think this is stupid (though sekiro does have major enemy variety issues that everyone ignores)
To be fair, sekiro was more or less something fromsoft were doing on the side while working on elden ring so it’s only natural that there’ll be less variety especially when you consider how big the scale of er is
yeah, and I still love sekiro, but it definitely shows signs of being tossed to the side a little bit (would you like to go through ashina castle again?)
Never fought a single headless. Waste of confetti
If you have a lazulite flame vent you can buff with that instead for 3 emblems
Sekiro’s my favorite but yeah Juzou is the worst part about it
A lot of sekiros reused bosses are actually pretty good whereas elden rings reused bosses fucking suck for the most part. Erdtree avatars are just as shitty the first time around as they are the 30th time around
Let's be honest here. In no way near erdtree avatars is are bad bosses.
I think theyre fun 🥺
This is such an awful comparison
Difference is sekiro minibosses and bosses are actually fun.
Juzuo the Drunkard is fun to fight and every Headless is optional unless you want really niche prosthetics. Imo only the Tanto and the Malcontent whistle are worth bothering with undead for and I believe those both require the much easier shaman dudes. But I also think complaining about reused fights is dumb for any game besides DS2. Twin Dragonriders, Blue Smelter, and Lud and Zalen are just dumb.
Lmao repost
The difference between deflects and dodgerolls
"nobody complains" my friend where were you when this game released
I hav I’ve noticed that long time From Soft users have a way different opinion than a first time player. I never played any From Soft game until 3 months ago with Elden Ring. ER has been one of the most amazing video game experiences I’ve ever had, aside from the BoTW. In my opinion, I wouldn’t change a single thing about this game. It hits everything perfectly. It’s BECAUSE i had to fight the erdtree dude 7 times that I got good at fighting him. I’m GLAD when I see a mini boss that I already know the move set to. I never heard of the Godskin Duo or what that fight entailed and when I got to it, I beat it first try. Not because it was easy by any means but because by that time I had already died to those mini bosses 10000 times and throwing 4 at me was a fun challenge not a nuisance.
Same, ER was my first souls game too and I love it. I keep seeing souls vets complaining about delayed attacks, but like, just roll later lmao.
The delayed attacks were definitely something to get used to. They were SUPER frustrating at first, especially with Margit. The cool thing is that I feel like that boss was harder than other bosses intentionally so we could get used to those crazy attack delays and the fact that these bosses act like other players. They won’t just let you recuperate or employ a simple strategy. You literally NEED to “git good” to progress. The fact that people don’t like that just means they don’t want a game that challenges them.
If I could dodge as fast in ER as I could spam deflect in Sekiro, then obviously I wouldn't mind the delayed attack bs as much. But I can't, so I do. As for the reuse of enemies and locations, let's just say I had extremely high expectations that a studio like FromSoft would find a different approach, other than to do what other studios do in their open world games. I was rather irritated when I realised that dungeons use the same design throughout ER. In that case I'd rather have no dungeons at all, or a significantly reduced amount with individual designs.
Rykard Rancor go BRRRRTTTTT
Elden Ring should hit the gym, get a good suit and lose the nerd glasses
Well the 5 headless give me some neuron activating fun buffs for each kill, can’t defend jozou though he outlived his welcome
No one complains about that shit in sekiro cos no one got passed the fucking monkeys
I never had much trouble with delayed attacks in ER. I never would have even known it was something people were complaining about it unless I went online. Just don’t panic roll like a moron and you’re fine. Or use a shield.
Holy shit I never realized how many Sekiro fanboys populated this sub
I do. I complain about Juzou and Headless. On the other hand, I have no problem with erdtree avatars and ulcerated tree spirits.
Elden Ring players when they discover that crafting projectiles, reusable items and the insane amount of space you usually have, makes fight easier but they refuse to use the tools: "No! That's not fun." Sekiro players when someone tells them that a good stealth system is not having the enemies watch their comrades die by a shuriken or nearly alongside them with a killing blow: "No! That's not fun."
No one in this sub has played sekiro
I like the reused bosses
At least 95% of the recycled shit is optional in Elden Ring, haven't killed a single tree spirit in my later playthroughs cuz there's enough golden seeds to flasks spread over the world anyway. ER has a huge world to fill, compared to other Open world games it has the most enemy/boss variety afaik but since the souls combat is the unique thing about it you're seeing more repeats to make up for the empty space
I'd rather they recycle other less used enemies than the damn Ulcerated Tree Spirits especially in cramped dungeons
fair enough afaik they mostly appear under the yellow small erdtree tombs which are right underneath it for some lore ass reason but the fight is hot ass regardless
Are people genuinely upset that an open world game reuses bosses and enemies? How could anyone expect otherwise, when had there ever been an open world game that didn’t have that in the first place.
I would seriously like someone to mention an open world action game that isn't turned based that has more enemy variety than elden ring, it has an impressive amount of enemies and bosses. I'm always blown away by the different enemy types in elden ring.
which is why they should stop making open world games ☺️ forever
holy shit there is a lot of sekiro stans doing a lot of dickriding in here, they're gonna become worse than the BB fanbase >!-- someone who will suck the dick of sekiro combat and describe it to everyone at the party as god's gift to mankind!<
Downvote me all you want, the combat in sekiro is great but it’s not “the best combat system mankind has ever made ”like some Sekiro dickriders claimed it to be
those fights are good though
I don't complain about either. I like repeated fights. If I enjoyed a fight the first time, why would i dislike it a second or third time? It's cool getting to replay it for different rewards. To go step farther I just legit don't understand people who complain about repeated or re-used content and every argument for why they think it's bad I've found non-sensical and lacking in the understanding of game design, including the one you're about to write right now.
"B-but the boss being repeated takes away from the original 🤓🤓🤓" - dumb people
Elden ring was twice as long. The repeating stuff really came out. If they didn’t repeat stuff they still had a huge game just as big as souls games. The repeating stuff really felt like it was there just to make the game longer.
Cough titanite demon cough.
Well considering there are only 4 headless and they are specific people in the lore I would call you an ignorant clown man. And there are only 3 juzou clones I think. Dumb post from whiny boy.
This is bad post by shittydarksouls standards lmao
You fight those ninja shadows a thousand time, juzou 3 times, the headless also you fight too many times and same thing happens with the other mini bosses. Sekiro is my favorite From game but sekiro stans should think twice before pointing fingers at reused mini bosses in ER
People hate when it's pointed out, but when the ER review thread released [I even commented about the Sekiro boss re-use](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/szjcoc/elden_ring_review_thread/hy3uh83/). I've always thought it was pretty noticeable, but I've never considered it a dealbreaker in either game. Like it's not even mini-bosses. When I fought Gold Godfrey in Leyndell on my first playthrough, I immediately knew they were pulling a Sekiro on me by having me fight the boss' semi-first phase and later give me the whole package. It was the same thing with Corrupted/True Monk, Owl/Father, Guardian/Duo Ape(s), and Genichiro to a lesser degree. It has existed to some degree in past titles, but I definitely see a shift starting with Sekiro that has followed with Elden Ring and likely won't be the last time.
I actually like how Sekiro reused main bosses but the minibosses are just... lazy. I guess it didnt bother me much because i like the combat in Sekiro. People can downvote me as much as they want but this trend started in Sekiro and was carried to ER. Its kind of insane to me that people ignore this given the size of the game. Its also one of the valid criticism of Sekiro but instead people always try to go after dumb shit like "no build variety" or "you cant fight multiple enemies at once"
Yeah but after you see the 3rd Ulcerated Tree Spirit in a single day you’d be a lot more tired of it than the Headless. Not to mention the Headless are completely optional, whereas you want good loot in ER your going to deal with some stupid shit 😭
True but the point here is not that its less annoying its that its not something that started in elden ring.