Elden Ring
(Featuring several screenshots from Fextralife’s Wiki)
Excellent!
ENEMIES: Snail-snakes, Warhawks, & “Tyrannobirds”
The second these serpentine gastropods waddled towards me with a wide-mawed hiss, I fell in love. Snakes and snails create a brilliant fusion! The regular variety spits poison, while the crystal ones jut deadly lines of their namesake stone from the ground.
There are two rare variants of snail-snakes, but I’ll save them for my Character Critique articles.
Warhawks have knives for feet. I presume Godrick is responsible for grafting these onto the poor birds. Then again, they seem proud of their new prowess. They soar until the perfect time to swoop with a calculated slash, and it’s both amazing and terrifying for budding adventurers to deal with.
Fextralife calls these feathered brutes “Giant” or “Monstrous” Crows, but screw you, Tyrannobird sounds awesome-er.
Tyrannobirds don’t seem too crazy to handle from a distance… until they peck with their massive serrated beaks and stomp with their lanky yet heavy bodies. Even on horseback, they can keep up the chase for a solid minute or two.
ZONE: Lyndell, Royal Capital
FromSoft loves their architecture to be imposing, and Lyndell is a perfect example of this. I love how the Capital envelops the player in its sheer scale. Becoming lost is a given, but there are a few major landmarks to keep the player on track.
Lyndell appears frozen in time (possibly literally, if I followed the story correctly). What seems to be the killing blow to the towering dragon is petrified in place, with the rubble in their wake never sifted through.
Either parts of the Capital sunk from massive shockwaves, or the slums positioned at the bottom (naturally) got the short straw, as most of the damage can be found there. It creates a fantastic slice of where the Capital stood before and after the war.
On top of all this, some of the largest roots to the Erdtree are exposed, and you climb them higher and higher, to the heart of the Capital as well as the mystical tree.
GEAR: Reduvia, Dragonbreath, Bloodhound’s Step
As mentioned previously, my build pivoted around the devastating status effect that is Bleed. The instantaneous raw damage when it pops is simply amazing.
Normally, players gravitate towards Rivers of Blood, a katana so busted that it was a staple of PvP when I played. However, I was more fond of Reduvia - two of them, actually. Vel was kind enough to trade me a second until I later swapped it out for a different dagger to experiment with Ashes of War.
Something about the close combat meshed so well with me. As frustrating as it could be, becoming keenly aware of each enemy’s movements was a satisfying challenge. Reduvia has an added bonus with its secondary ability, in which a short-ranged arc of blood is thrown. This offered me a little breathing room with enemies (provided I timed the windup correctly). Even better, this attack drains from your FP, not HP like I later learned with other Bleed attacks. I was so confused when I tested out a couple Ashes of War. The FP option is safer and better!
The only downside to this strategy is being useless on the final two bosses. Seriously, don’t fight the Elden Beast with knives in general.
And if I needed better range, I had a couple Dragonbreaths in my arsenal. When the windup is timed just right, they can quickly lay waste with their billowing clouds. My favorite rotation was the Scarlet Rot breath to trigger damage over time, then switching to Frost so I could trigger Bleed by another name.
An instantaneous panic button to escape an attack is awesome. Bloodhound’s Step is superior to the regular dodge roll, and it was a gamechanger for my build.
Margit’s fight in front of Stormveil Castle might be too brutal for an early-game boss, but I think that’s the genius behind it. Margit quickly humbles new players with unforgiving speed and precision. If you don’t have a build in mind, he will slaughter you. I eventually used summons for this fight, but at least I have photographic proof that I sliced him to “The” on his HP bar without them! Hooray for half-credit bragging rights!
By the time I clashed swords for round 2 with “Morgott,” it seemed too easy in comparison. However, that made the catharsis all the more powerful.
While Elden Beast was anticlimactic, Radagon’s challenge beforehand was perfect. My dual daggers forced me into close combat. And because Radagon can’t be bled, it was a long methodical “dance” that I had to master. I’ve got my winning run (+ Elden Beast) highlighted on my archive channel.
AWFUL
ENEMIES: Revenant, Crucible Knight, all regular dragons
There are a lot of awesome character designs in this game, but I’ll be writing articles highlighting them later. For now, I’ll list 3 that I found highly flawed (there’s a good chance I’ll be repeating myself for a couple of these).
Crudely put, Revenants are bum rushers. They’re relentless, flail around with their multiple arms, rapidly exhaust your guarding stamina, and can even teleport just to spite you. For my dagger build, their poise was too high to reliably stun. I had to constantly dodge and pray I could slap them from behind before they either whipped around or teleported for the 50th time.
I have a bias against Crucible Knights because - yet again - they’re anti-dagger enemies. I had the powerful Rotten Dragonbreath as a backup strategy, but the tradeoff is a long windup that’s easy to interrupt. It was somewhat a dice roll whether or not I could Scarlet Rot them to tick away their health while taking a passive stance.
Unfortunately for dragons, no matter how flashy they look, they all play roughly the same. They can have different breath attacks or shoot lighting spears, but their Achilles heel is coincidentally their back ankles every time. The biggest threats they pose are AOE lightning (if they can even use it), spraying their breaths from a distance (flying or grounded), and hiding their upper body animations off-screen as you attack their lower half.
ZONE: Altus Plateau
Poor, poor Altus. It’s not your fault that I wandered around everywhere else first, causing you to feel samey to Limgrave by the time I arrived.
I will admit that the rich golden sky and foliage is a refreshing color palette against the dirty reds, deep blues, and lush greens in the other areas. I also like the Capital towering in the distance.
DUNGEON: Any with Chariots involved
One-hit-kill drive-by trucks are annoying enough to deal with. But FromSoft loves to take it one step further: they often pair these nuisances with their infamously clunky platforming. One of these Chariot dungeons even included lava just to slow down my tense escape route.
I distinctly remember one dungeon where I had to land on a series of thin support beams or else fall to my death. In the middle of my panic, I hadn’t noticed that a corpse slouched over the pit points towards the safest beam to first leap onto. Sneaky, FromSoft.
BOSSES: Mohg, Malenia, & Elden Beast (spoilers, obviously)
Overall, Mohg isn’t the worst boss to fight. The part I hate the most is his “Nihil” attack, which is basically an HP check. At certain thresholds, he layers 3 curse rings around you, then takes massive chunks out of your health. It can’t be stopped or dodged. You just need to have enough flasks to brute force through it.
Nihil is so obnoxious, that FromSoft has multiple items to deal with or circumvent the attack altogether. A magical “shackle” can be used twice in the battle to stun Mohg to give a competitive edge. Or you can mix your Wondrous Physick to literally become immune to its effects.
At least you’re given troubleshooting methods to begin with. But it’s the principle behind the concept that I hate.
The fandom’s assertion that Malenia is the toughest boss around is no joke. Her battle style is swift and overwhelming. Infamously, the Waterfowl Dance has an extremely narrow window to dodge, often laying waste to players who haven’t raised their HP to absurdly high levels.
One of the few trade offs about Malenia is her low poise, but don’t get too excited. She has several animations that power through the damage anyways… at least, in my experience she does. Daggers and whatnot.
Now, all of these factors would be marginally tolerable if it weren’t for the worst aspect of all: she heals if she hits you. FromSoft somehow made a worse Mohg mechanic. It doesn’t matter if she strikes you, your co-op buddy, or your Spirit Ash, it’s all fair game for healing.
On a related note, a major shout out to my Mimic Tear, who stood around endlessly chewing crab legs while watching me cry in front of Malenia.
Based on a single archived 4chan board that was shared to me, even many skilled “get gud” players admitted that Malenia was a disappointment upon mastering her bullshit. There’s a consensus that her AI has an element of RNG to obtain victory. No matter how good you are at the game, this lady is insane to deal with.
If you need a strategy, here’s a clip of what Vel and I accomplished together:
TL;DW you can in fact Scarlet Rot the goddess of trash, and the Blade of Death reduces her healing potential, even if slightly.
If you’re one of those players concerned about being too overpowered… don’t. She sure won’t extend a sportsmanship attitude. Show her no mercy.
In short: I hate Malenia.
With Dark Souls being my only other Soulsborne reference, FromSoft’s track record with final bosses is pretty lackluster. Fighting this noodle god was a chore.
For the Elden Beast’s monumental presence to be felt, its battlefield is excessively large. It’s to the point that most of the battle involves running to the other end of the room, because this amorphous phallus-head felt like swimming away. Again. It’s dead content, padding out the fight way more than is necessary.
The worst attacks I dealt with involved Holy magic: the Elden Beast rapidly slamming its golden sword into the ground, escaping the Elden Ring itself before it encloses and nukes you to death, and an orb that trails you while constantly spitting little projectiles. I never learned how to dodge that last one, as my winning run was surprisingly absent of the death cheese.
Honestly, the only reason Elden Beast is hard is because it’s phase 2 in a back-to-back fight with Radagon. The latter requires a lot of focus and skill to deal with, meaning this clunky boss pounces on players who might be mentally drained from the previous war they just won. And if you die, it means more time to dance with Radagon.
I haven’t mentioned that Elden Beast is immune to Bleed, forcing my dinky knives to slowly slice its health like the world’s largest cake that dried out. It’s one of the few times I regretted my chosen build.
From a design standpoint. Elden Beast is fine. Its blobulous shape makes it look like a primordial entity, an Alpha and an Omega. Several talismans in the game say this, too, being “vestiges of the crucible of primordial life.”
From an aesthetic perspective, this thing is beyond underwhelming. It looks goofy, it’s dumb and slow, and a joke of a final boss. Radagon has a commanding demeanor, while Elden Beast is a physical representation of the word “derp.”
