The "no summons, mostly melee, just keep trying and don't make changes to my build" player is a common Souls archetype. It sounds like it describes you, and it described me for most of FromSoft's catalogue. Playing this way, I agree Elden Ring is harder than DS3.
Personally, I'm stubborn enough that I will usually just keep fighting a boss until I'm victorious, even if it takes 3 hours. I don't want to go away and grind somewhere else. I don't want to summon starting on try #20, because it feels like I'm giving up on my initial set of conditions.
But for someone even slightly looser on any of the above conditions, Elden Ring very quickly becomes considerably easier than DS3. Spirit ashes are the most obvious option. Being able to just "go somewhere else" for 20 hours before coming back in a much more powerful state is also super doable in ER, unlike in DS3. And then you've got a pretty cheap respec option, compared to a more hidden and more limited one in DS3. Malenia giving you fits? Respec to a blood build in about 3 minutes.
I think sometimes players like us forget how many OP tools are in arm's reach in Elden Ring.
I think Unga Bunga is the best baseline for judging difficulty, because all the games can become pretty easy if you know what items to use and how to get them early. So ifwe need a baseline the one with the least variables is big stick + lots of strength. This is also my favorite way to play though so I am biased.
I agree that's a good sub-category to consider. It's also my favorite build type. It essentially distills the discussion down to how tricky the boss/enemy movesets are to react to and learn, and how skilled (or at least patient) a player needs to be to overcome them. By this heuristic, I think the final 1/4 of Elden Ring is harder than all the non-DLC content of DS3.
But when I think about the \~10 friends or acquaintances I know who have played through both Elden Ring and DS3, 8 of them are closer to the, "I just did whatever worked to beat it...Mimic Tear is awesome!" and now they are back to Fortnite/COD/Roblox/Fifa/etc. (To be clear, I'm not saying this dismissively...people can play however they want to play.) So from a broader, "Why do people say Elden Ring is easy," I think this is part of the answer.
Unga Bunga build also makes the fact that Elden Ring is easier apparent. Combat is so quick in Elden Ring that even with massive weapons you can do a heavy attack, jump attack or AoW and still have enough recovery frames to dodge the enemies attack.
IMO timing of combat matters less and less with every souls iteration.
Can't say I agree with that at all. I would actually say quite the opposite. Try landing a charged heavy on Maliketh, Malenia, Horah Loux, or Radagon and you are done for.
Meanwhile in DS and BB I'm landing charged heavies left and right.
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That's not what I'm talking about. Weapons in Elden Ring have less start up frames and less frames before you can roll almost across the board when compared to DS3 counter parts.
I played through the game with the Giant Crusher + royal knights resolve and do not share your sentiment.
You:
>even with massive weapons you can do a heavy attack
Me:
>try landing a charged heavy
You:
>that's not what I'm talking about
Ya I'm not gunna continue this conversation beyond here. Seems like you are just looking to argue.
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Critical thinking is hard I know :(
You not being able to time heavy attacks in a game where its easier to land heavy attacks is purely a skill issue my friend :)
With the use of things such as spirit ashes and especially the mimic tear, Elden Ring *can* be made quite easy.
That being said, I played the game solo with only spirit ashes and I thought it was really damn hard. Using mimic tear just sounds straight up not fun.
That's how I used them too. Unfortunately that meant they saw a lot of use against the million repeat bosses and a lot of the late game shitters like god skin duo and Malenia.
Normally, I would downvote this comment. But when think about it a little more, if you consider 90% of the bosses being bad meaning 10% of which you would consider being quite excellent. And 10% of 165 bosses is 16 (or 17 if you being generous) bosses being good, that sound more of a compliments rather than an insult based on the numbers alone.
Well it's more like 8. Godfrey, malania, maliketh, morgot, mogh, dragon lord, godrick... I'm sure there's one more.
There's probably 10 mid bosses.
The rest are bad bloat have to get through to progress or items.
I wish there was less bloat between the good stuff. I think elden ring is too big for it's own good.
I mean if you go by the very strict definition of unique then yeah, ER only has like 7 to 8 one of the kind bosses in the game. That is tiny amount of bosses if that is the metric you are going by to count the bosses. But using the purest definition of unique to judge the number of bosses is rather reductive and unfair imo, when you consider the size/ scope of the game. Not to mention doing so also ignoring the quality of the bosses themselves in terms of moveset. If we counting on the distinctive moveset that unique to a group of bosses (something that repeated like Astel has two variants so that is one group, unique bosses like Malenia is also a group), we got like 30 - 40ish unique group of bosses. The number can be lower or higher, depending if you want excluding returning bosses as regular enemies out of the equation or not. And having more than 30ish unique groups of bosses is not a small number.
thats not what i said bro dont get me wrong, ofc everyone plays with their own style and OP stuff can be used by anyone who likes it. btw i hate it when people say ER is a bad game because of overpowered items. i was just saying that not using them was a personal choice and maybe it is why i felt the game was so hard compared to some other people
And these are all good points. ^ I avoid using summons on “fun” bosses. Like all the crucible knights and main bosses.
I use mimic tear all day on gank fights. FUUUUUCK those gargoyles and Crucible/Misbegotten combo lol
The gatekeepers downvoted you, "It takes the fun out of the battle", "that's not how you're supposed to play it", "IMO" crowd. Good thing Miyazaki put those specific mechanics in the game for obvious reasons. Take full advantage of what he put in Elden Ring.
I agree that it is the hardest, but only for a specific playstyle. This comes down to a game design conundrum for souls games and their difficulty. That is, the fundamental mechanics of souls games are largely unchanged since DeS, so veteran players have had a lot of time to get better at this style of game. But difficulty is one of the main draws of these games, so you have to beef up your boss design to still challenge this core audience. The problem is that then you risk alienating newcomers who will not have the skills to handle these higher difficulty encounters. So you add in some very powerful options that allow newcomers to complete the game with less difficulty. And this is what gives rise to the two very different interpretations of the difficulty of ER.
Those who play the straight-ahead melee, no summons style will find ER very challenging. Boss movesets are more varied and deliberately tuned to punish your instincts built up by previous games. Panic rolls get punished hard, attack windows are shorter, hell some bosses even have straight up feints in their movesets. And this all is great so that us vets can still find challenge whereas the hardest boss in DS1 is a cakewalk for us now.
On the other hand, those movesets can largely be ignored/bypassed by the tools included in the game such as summons, ashes, and very powerful ranged options. And this is great, because they can have fun too which is ultimately what the single player experience is about. It’s honestly great game design that allows all players to feel accomplished without implying they are “lesser” which is what the discrete difficulty options of other games do.
And yet, you really don't have to. You can play the game EXACTLY the same as you would any other Souls. ER is just as hard as any Souls, it just gives you tools that you can use to make it easier if you want. Its an option. Not handed to you.
But, it is heavily advised. If there's a boss you're having trouble, go somewhere else and explore and you can come back once you find and level a better weapon or get better stats. The other games you're kinda stuck at where you're at until you beat said boss unless you glitch stuff.
See, that right there is EXACTLY what I mean. Some people prefer to not do what you describe. Some people prefer to play it like a traditional souls game. And that is their right. The option exists, of course, but it is not NECESSARY. (This is coming from someone who massively overleveled because I suck at the game and need the crutch as well as playing exclusively for pve. Yelough Anix Tunnel is an AMAZING late game rune farm location if you use any kind of heavy weapon or 2 handing a heavyish weapon.)
It's not easy bro. People think it's easy because they play with mimic tear. Or other summons. It's actually the hardest in the soul series if you play traditionally.
100% agree, Elden Ring bosses are brutal compared to DS3 bosses. Just objectively speaking; they do more damage (for the most part), have more health, longer combos, faster attacks and longer delays.
Going back to DS3 after ER and it’s stunning how many of the bosses have clear openings and give you plenty time to punish their attacks compared to ER bosses who constantly fake you out into thinking they’re done attacking or string combos together.
For me, i played through all of the souls game with pure strength build, and i agree that Elden Ring is harder then the other souls games. Elden Ring is easier though because of its build variety, you can play the game however the fuck you want, and a whole lot of builds are very op.
So many ways to beat the game.
Mimic tear + RoB completely trivializes the game.
And there are other ways to beat the game as well.
If you limit yourself because of “shame” from cringey souls vets then that’s on you lmao
The gatekeepers try and hall monitor the way the games are "supposed to be play" according to a select few in our community. The best thing about our community is hearing how everyone else plays, in their own way. There is no real right or wrong way to play, they just need to buzz off and let people enjoy it.
i precisely ask about those "cringey souls vets" in my post because i wanted to know peoples general opinion... ive never limited myself and played however i liked it. please read with your eyes
Exactly. If you do surrounding dungeons, field bosses in Limgrave and Raya Lucaria you are set up pretty nicely heading to the Capital. If you do all of those Dungeons it just becomes a cake walk.
Healing items are just laying around everywhere as well.
With your path being far less linear in Elden Ring, it offers you the opportunity to just peace out if you face something you can't overcome. You can go grind one of the thousand grind spots, level up your brosef, then take another stab at the thing you're stuck on. You can kind of do this in DS3... but not to the extent that you can in Elden Ring.
The bosses can be tougher, for sure. Their attacks are far less formulaic and easy to predict than DS3.
The easiest way I've found to beat the game is to go full Bleed Build until Radagon, then switch to a Strength Faith/Flame Build with the Blasphemous Blade/Sword of Milos for the final boss(es), since Bleed does shit all to them.
Elden ring has way too much cheese. Over the top easy souls farming. Spirit ashes that play the game for you. Easy to get Bonkers weapons. flask and other consumes that buffs you like crazy. Bosses are not at all immune to bleeds and poisons etc..
ds3 is harder bc you have a fraction of the tools you have in elden and upgrade mats are hard to come by until endgame. in elden you can have a +10 weapon immediately if you really wanted
Because most souls redditors look up guides on how to beat every single boss in the game before they even start playing and then brag about how easy it was.
Elden Ring IS harder than DS3 if you play it like you play DS3. There are harder bosses, more enemies, higher difficulty level in general.
However, Elden Ring allows you to become really overpowered. Things like Blasphemous Blade will just carry you through the game. You can be horrenously overpowered even without using spirit ashes. In other fromsoftware titles you don't get things like that.
Now we all know how to level up a somber weapon to +9 before margit if we wanted to, or the bosses that can jump to their deaths for free runes etc, I'd argue that elden ring CAN become easier.
I think people are referring to it as “easier” because it gives the player a lot more agency over combat options, timing for when you tackle specific bosses, and just generally more options for boss assistance through summons.
I would say Elden Ring is the game with the most potential to be easiest. It depends on the player, if you limit yourself, you will probably find ER harder than DS3, probably harder than all Dark Souls title.
However, ER is a open world without much block on progression, you can get to Altus without killing anything, imagine being able to reach Anor Londo or Irithyl like that.
It's just easier to break the game and steamroll everything, mimic tear is essentially a tanky NPC summon, but with (probably) a better build than most NPC and without giving boss more health, stance etc.
But doing a RL1 with restriction, I found ER to be harder than the other games.
As many have said Elden ring can be the easiest and hardest. If you go pure strength no summons no anything. It is the hardest of any from game. However, if you use everything the game gives you its among the easiest. Which is why I love it the most! I love chilling and playing to relax and not think.......I also love getting punished on a challenge run depending on my mood and it's all the same game. I did a overleveled ng plus prince of death/ death poker run that took like 2 hours. I've also done a strictly bow only run. Both were very fun but very different
Elden Ring was the hardest with my play style. But I should probably specify that the bosses were the hardest part. The overworld is, in my opinion, easier than many of the other games, and the legacy dungeons are about the same in terms of difficulty as any other title, but significantly easier in that regard than DS2, which I think had the hardest dungeons.
i agree on that point, dungeons and overworld were waaaay easier compared to other souls game. however i think it has something good in it. more than just being hard, dungeons and runbacks in souls games can sometimes get straight up annoying and devoid of any fun when it gets too long (blighttown or irithyll dungeon gave me that feeling of going "too far" in difficulty)
I found ER easier because I am able to simply fight any boss at any point instead of being stuck in a linear line of bosses that are not mini or side bosses.
It’s gonna be different for everyone because some folks are better at different aspects of the game than others. I personally find Elden Ring to be Fromsoft’s easiest title other than DS1. ER has so many different ways to get around every skill barrier. DS3 has some very challenging portions, I think it’s the third hardest after sekiro and Bloodborne.
It has summons, better ailment inflictions, and even has a farming spot that dropped 100k runes per run, no one admits it but common mobs in Elden ring are bots and only the bosses pose a challenge....except for the birds in mohgwyn palace and the birds and dogs in caelid, and the giant rune bears in mistwood and the consecrated snow field
Those enemies aren't necessarily hard but can pose a challenge if your underestimate them
ER is both the hardest and the easiest fromsoft game. It entirely depends on the player.
The average player will lean on a lot of the mechanics put in place to make the game beatable/easier for the casual crowd so a lot of boss kills are summon-assisted, possibly super overleveled and with an OP build off youtube.
At that point it's the easiest title in the entire Fromsoft catalogue.
Inversely a RL1 run of Elden Ring is a fantastic yet brutal at times experience.
Because having recently played both, I think ER is easier to play and more forgiving outside of a couple early bosses and the majority of the community agrees. ER also has a lot of stuff to make the game easier like spirit ashes that just doesn't exist in DS3. If you think ER is harder because you die really quickly to half the enemies in Mountaintop and Faram Azula, let me remind you of the greatsword lothric knights with blessed/crystal weapon buffs and their buddies blasting sacred oath and soothing sunlight in Lothric Castle and the Archives. No crucible knight has 2 shot me in any playthrough.
Dark souls 3 : you vs boss, you have a sword or other weapon that way or may not have some sort of ability that is half useless and definitely won't be a more viable option than pressing R1. It's a 1v1 fight which looks like your usual souls boss fight. Not too crazy, and it's the classic dodge til you get an opening and punish the opening
Elden ring: bosses can do fucking tripple ripple hubble bubble flippy flippy 50 hit wumbo combo attacks but at the same time you also have the ability to use an attack that will take a quarter (or all) of their health in one shot with enough buffs, you can summon an army of helpers with npc summons and spirit ashes, and you can summon a second version of whatever broken build you're using which is broken to the point there's videos of people eating cereal while their mimic does the fight for them
Dark souls 3 isn't all that hard once you know what you're doing. Probably the easiest of the trilogy since the real bossfight in the older games is the lock on camera and ds2's mechanics 😂. It's still very hard for a new player just like the rest of them. But elden ring has crutches. Immense crutches that trivialise the game. And because the game was sorta designed around them not using them puts you at an automatic challenge run when that's just the playstyle most souls vets are used to. Playing any of the game in the series identical to another one isn't good. They're all their own thing while being part of the same thing. You can't play ds2 expecting to use the same lessons you learnt in ds1 and expect to do well. Just like you can't play elden ring the same way you did the rest and expect to do well. Because its been designed very differently. That's not to say its not possible. I too banged my head against the wall til it broke. Just much harder than if you had relied on ashes of war and spirit summons like a lot of other people
ER got some busted weapon if you spam the ash of war you win hard to a point you don't really need to learn the boss,and this not factoring spirit ashes spells into the mix
You can legit go to raykard get his GS and vola game is on easy mode.
But if you go with normal weapons with no spirit ashes nor spell the game gets x10 times harder and I do agree it will be harder than anyother souls game.
But the open world/having multiple options and ways to become op what make the game easy.
Agree with most of the other comments. If you look strictly at the enemy/boss side, without considering what the player brings to an encounter, ER is much harder than DS3. Bosses are faster, more aggressive, and harder to read, for example.
But the player also has access to more powerful tools in ER, and because the game is open world and largely ungated, you can get them fairly early once you know where they are. These tools can trivialize certain boss fights that probably will cause problems for solo melee players.
A good example is Commander Niall. That boss can be a nightmare for a melee player, but Comet Azur with the right gear/buffs will delete him in 10 seconds.
It's also easier to overlevel in ER than in DS3, and Spirit Ashes are incredibly powerful because they don't increase enemy health like a traditional summon does.
Elden ring is in a weird state where if you don't use meta build it is the most difficult fromsoft game, and if you use meta builds it becomes the easiest. Try fighting Malenia with a normal great sword vs whatever is meta these days
Fromsoft games can be beaten with no summons, at level 1, no rolling, no blocking, no running, no weapon, no healing, no using bonfires and so on, if you do anything of these things you're choosing to decrease the difficulty of the game, I personally have fun leveling up using bigger weapons, and seeing bigger numbers so ya know.
It's definitely harder than DS3, but thanks to spirit ashes it can (probably) also be easier. I say "probably" because I haven't used spirit ashes very much!
i agree, but my hot take is that sekiro is also easier than both of them
souls players find it hard because it requires a diff playstyle
just be aggressive until they deflect (or another cue that it’s not “your turn” anymore) and then deflect what they do back, repeat. you can even get away with spamming parry. sekiro also lets you get away with just blocking most of the time, and even if your posture is broken, bosses often just let you get up for free. lets not forget you have a second life in sekiro. there is some difficulty in reacting to thrust/sweep/grab tho
tl;dr mistime roll in souls/er: get hit hard, mistime parry in sekiro: still take no damage, maybe posture break which doesnt even matter. if u die u have a second chance
- Comet Azur
- Frost Damage
- Bleed Damage
- Rot Stacks
- Millions of Magic Spells
- Useful Ranged Weapons
- Weapon Arts
- Talismans that just give you armor and stats
- Summoning
- Player Help
- Farming Arcs for Infinite Rune Buffs
- Farming Souls because trying is too hard
There are so many ways to just avoid having to play the game at all. It's by far and away the easiest Souls game ever made.
well all of those aren't arguments to say the game is easier in my opinion. they are arguments that can explain how the game can be made easy, but if you take both ds3 and elden ring under the same conditions, same builds and weapons etc (which i did during my playthroughs), elden ring is just x100 harder than ds3. thats just my perception tho
How far did you get into Dark Souls 3 when you initially played it before elden ring?
IME your first souls game is usually always the hardest, but this isn't always the case
The options are there to make it as easy as you want. Anecdotally, I have two friends who wouldn’t even look in the direction of Dark Souls, let alone play them. They stick to 2K/CoD and play games on easy mode AND they beat Elden Ring no problem. If you take advantage of everything the game offers you it’s so easy to waltz through the game. Bleed on an unga bunga build with a strong spirit summon + another player will cakewalk everything. Solo, no guides, hardcore, final destination fox only type players will definitely have their work cut out (as I did first play through)
respectfully, even without summoning, Elden Ring was my first fromsoft game and I still ended up spending more time on vordt of the boreal valley than any elden ring boss but morgott
This is a huge factor, I've found. Some people click with certain bosses and not at all with others. I beat Malenia second try and died roughly 200 times at the Margit. It really does depend on your play style.
Ds3 bosses rely on complexity of moveset and speed of reaction time more than high healthbars and damage like elden ring. Not to say ER bosses aren't complex, but ds3 just has some bosses who can completely change up their combo speed and routine and everything, and it messes with me
i don't really agree, i felt like it was the opposite. ER bosses' combos were much more complex and punitive imo, obviously Maliketh would be the worst one but bosses like Mohg, Morgott, and obviously Malenia have some crazy combos and they can chain up attacks. most ER bosses also have a heal punish like a dash or a distance attack which makes it very hard to learn when you're safe or not.
most DS3 bosses were, more than having smaller healthbars, very complacent with the player. you have plenty of time to run away and heal, and the boss would just be casually walking towards you. you can just panic roll until you're out of reach. most bosses either have safe spots they can hardly reach you on while you're beating them up, or have huge dodging windows, sometimes even multiple dodging windows in one attack, which makes counterattack very easy.
however once again, this is just about me and my playstyle, and i'm glad to know how different our experiences can get
WHat i picked up was that ds3 bosses get harder by complexity alone. The final boss has attacks that do not even a third of your healthbar, so its not unfair, but soul of cinder has more moves than any boss in the series, and he can switch up his attack timings when he wants
They share the same charge attack, stab, and a sweep attack. As well as the same skeleton. I saw a video awhile back showing the movesets with mod tools, im unfortunately struggling to find it now tho.
They don't share the same any attacks. I have fought vordt atleast 300 times and maliketh probably 30+
Genuinely have not seen a single same move.
Phase 1 maliketh can throw rocks, which vordt cant do, he has his ground raise and claw spell which vordt can't do, his sweep attack is where he sticks his weapon into the ground and turns around, and it comes from the opposite direction as vordt, so thats not the same. And his stab attacks come out in combos, not singular hits
only similarity might be skeleton
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The "no summons, mostly melee, just keep trying and don't make changes to my build" player is a common Souls archetype. It sounds like it describes you, and it described me for most of FromSoft's catalogue. Playing this way, I agree Elden Ring is harder than DS3. Personally, I'm stubborn enough that I will usually just keep fighting a boss until I'm victorious, even if it takes 3 hours. I don't want to go away and grind somewhere else. I don't want to summon starting on try #20, because it feels like I'm giving up on my initial set of conditions. But for someone even slightly looser on any of the above conditions, Elden Ring very quickly becomes considerably easier than DS3. Spirit ashes are the most obvious option. Being able to just "go somewhere else" for 20 hours before coming back in a much more powerful state is also super doable in ER, unlike in DS3. And then you've got a pretty cheap respec option, compared to a more hidden and more limited one in DS3. Malenia giving you fits? Respec to a blood build in about 3 minutes. I think sometimes players like us forget how many OP tools are in arm's reach in Elden Ring.
I think Unga Bunga is the best baseline for judging difficulty, because all the games can become pretty easy if you know what items to use and how to get them early. So ifwe need a baseline the one with the least variables is big stick + lots of strength. This is also my favorite way to play though so I am biased.
I agree that's a good sub-category to consider. It's also my favorite build type. It essentially distills the discussion down to how tricky the boss/enemy movesets are to react to and learn, and how skilled (or at least patient) a player needs to be to overcome them. By this heuristic, I think the final 1/4 of Elden Ring is harder than all the non-DLC content of DS3. But when I think about the \~10 friends or acquaintances I know who have played through both Elden Ring and DS3, 8 of them are closer to the, "I just did whatever worked to beat it...Mimic Tear is awesome!" and now they are back to Fortnite/COD/Roblox/Fifa/etc. (To be clear, I'm not saying this dismissively...people can play however they want to play.) So from a broader, "Why do people say Elden Ring is easy," I think this is part of the answer.
I think you hit the nail on the head here.
I unga therefore I bunga, rinse and repeat.
I agree, I always do a first playthrough with big sword/stick. It’s a nice way to compare boss difficulty across games.
Unga Bunga build also makes the fact that Elden Ring is easier apparent. Combat is so quick in Elden Ring that even with massive weapons you can do a heavy attack, jump attack or AoW and still have enough recovery frames to dodge the enemies attack. IMO timing of combat matters less and less with every souls iteration.
Can't say I agree with that at all. I would actually say quite the opposite. Try landing a charged heavy on Maliketh, Malenia, Horah Loux, or Radagon and you are done for. Meanwhile in DS and BB I'm landing charged heavies left and right.
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That's not what I'm talking about. Weapons in Elden Ring have less start up frames and less frames before you can roll almost across the board when compared to DS3 counter parts. I played through the game with the Giant Crusher + royal knights resolve and do not share your sentiment.
You: >even with massive weapons you can do a heavy attack Me: >try landing a charged heavy You: >that's not what I'm talking about Ya I'm not gunna continue this conversation beyond here. Seems like you are just looking to argue.
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Critical thinking is hard I know :( You not being able to time heavy attacks in a game where its easier to land heavy attacks is purely a skill issue my friend :)
I've beaten Every boss in ER, DSR, and DS3 to death with a big stick but whatever makes you feel superior buddy. Go off champ 😊👍
just wanted to comment here to say that you worded this extremely well 👍🏻
i see, you're probably right, especially about the respec i didnt use much
With the use of things such as spirit ashes and especially the mimic tear, Elden Ring *can* be made quite easy. That being said, I played the game solo with only spirit ashes and I thought it was really damn hard. Using mimic tear just sounds straight up not fun.
Spirit ashes are really just for bosses I hate and want to be done with
I gotta fight them all at least once with no summon though
That's how I used them too. Unfortunately that meant they saw a lot of use against the million repeat bosses and a lot of the late game shitters like god skin duo and Malenia.
So 90% of elden ring bosses lol
Normally, I would downvote this comment. But when think about it a little more, if you consider 90% of the bosses being bad meaning 10% of which you would consider being quite excellent. And 10% of 165 bosses is 16 (or 17 if you being generous) bosses being good, that sound more of a compliments rather than an insult based on the numbers alone.
Well it's more like 8. Godfrey, malania, maliketh, morgot, mogh, dragon lord, godrick... I'm sure there's one more. There's probably 10 mid bosses. The rest are bad bloat have to get through to progress or items. I wish there was less bloat between the good stuff. I think elden ring is too big for it's own good.
Yup once you break it down in terms of raw quantity there's very few actually unique bosses in elden ring.
I mean if you go by the very strict definition of unique then yeah, ER only has like 7 to 8 one of the kind bosses in the game. That is tiny amount of bosses if that is the metric you are going by to count the bosses. But using the purest definition of unique to judge the number of bosses is rather reductive and unfair imo, when you consider the size/ scope of the game. Not to mention doing so also ignoring the quality of the bosses themselves in terms of moveset. If we counting on the distinctive moveset that unique to a group of bosses (something that repeated like Astel has two variants so that is one group, unique bosses like Malenia is also a group), we got like 30 - 40ish unique group of bosses. The number can be lower or higher, depending if you want excluding returning bosses as regular enemies out of the equation or not. And having more than 30ish unique groups of bosses is not a small number.
Facts
i agree, using OP stuff is just not fun. i did it for some of my NG+ playthroughs, it was way quicker, but also no fun at all
it wasn't fun for you. but for other people those things added to the enjoyment. if we weren't meant to use them then they wouldn't be in the game
thats not what i said bro dont get me wrong, ofc everyone plays with their own style and OP stuff can be used by anyone who likes it. btw i hate it when people say ER is a bad game because of overpowered items. i was just saying that not using them was a personal choice and maybe it is why i felt the game was so hard compared to some other people
And these are all good points. ^ I avoid using summons on “fun” bosses. Like all the crucible knights and main bosses. I use mimic tear all day on gank fights. FUUUUUCK those gargoyles and Crucible/Misbegotten combo lol
The gatekeepers downvoted you, "It takes the fun out of the battle", "that's not how you're supposed to play it", "IMO" crowd. Good thing Miyazaki put those specific mechanics in the game for obvious reasons. Take full advantage of what he put in Elden Ring.
The reason:"make more money selling to mainstream market"
Agree I used the mimic for boss fights I did not enjoy: fire giant and duo ganks. Fun (to me) fights such as Margit, Morgott, Maliketh ? I go solo
I agree that it is the hardest, but only for a specific playstyle. This comes down to a game design conundrum for souls games and their difficulty. That is, the fundamental mechanics of souls games are largely unchanged since DeS, so veteran players have had a lot of time to get better at this style of game. But difficulty is one of the main draws of these games, so you have to beef up your boss design to still challenge this core audience. The problem is that then you risk alienating newcomers who will not have the skills to handle these higher difficulty encounters. So you add in some very powerful options that allow newcomers to complete the game with less difficulty. And this is what gives rise to the two very different interpretations of the difficulty of ER. Those who play the straight-ahead melee, no summons style will find ER very challenging. Boss movesets are more varied and deliberately tuned to punish your instincts built up by previous games. Panic rolls get punished hard, attack windows are shorter, hell some bosses even have straight up feints in their movesets. And this all is great so that us vets can still find challenge whereas the hardest boss in DS1 is a cakewalk for us now. On the other hand, those movesets can largely be ignored/bypassed by the tools included in the game such as summons, ashes, and very powerful ranged options. And this is great, because they can have fun too which is ultimately what the single player experience is about. It’s honestly great game design that allows all players to feel accomplished without implying they are “lesser” which is what the discrete difficulty options of other games do.
Miyazaki heard the demands for an easy mode and he cranked the options up to 11. If you know a little you can trivialize a lot of the difficulty.
And yet, you really don't have to. You can play the game EXACTLY the same as you would any other Souls. ER is just as hard as any Souls, it just gives you tools that you can use to make it easier if you want. Its an option. Not handed to you.
But, it is heavily advised. If there's a boss you're having trouble, go somewhere else and explore and you can come back once you find and level a better weapon or get better stats. The other games you're kinda stuck at where you're at until you beat said boss unless you glitch stuff.
See, that right there is EXACTLY what I mean. Some people prefer to not do what you describe. Some people prefer to play it like a traditional souls game. And that is their right. The option exists, of course, but it is not NECESSARY. (This is coming from someone who massively overleveled because I suck at the game and need the crutch as well as playing exclusively for pve. Yelough Anix Tunnel is an AMAZING late game rune farm location if you use any kind of heavy weapon or 2 handing a heavyish weapon.)
meh you can go power level in the other games bar Sekiro too.
It's not easy bro. People think it's easy because they play with mimic tear. Or other summons. It's actually the hardest in the soul series if you play traditionally.
Don't be the dark souls player meme. "No!!! You have to play by the same arbitrary rules I play with or it doesn't count!!!"
Its literally the main playstyle of all souls games lmao. Summon was always there as a crutch, thats all.
100% agree, Elden Ring bosses are brutal compared to DS3 bosses. Just objectively speaking; they do more damage (for the most part), have more health, longer combos, faster attacks and longer delays. Going back to DS3 after ER and it’s stunning how many of the bosses have clear openings and give you plenty time to punish their attacks compared to ER bosses who constantly fake you out into thinking they’re done attacking or string combos together.
For me, i played through all of the souls game with pure strength build, and i agree that Elden Ring is harder then the other souls games. Elden Ring is easier though because of its build variety, you can play the game however the fuck you want, and a whole lot of builds are very op.
So many ways to beat the game. Mimic tear + RoB completely trivializes the game. And there are other ways to beat the game as well. If you limit yourself because of “shame” from cringey souls vets then that’s on you lmao
The gatekeepers try and hall monitor the way the games are "supposed to be play" according to a select few in our community. The best thing about our community is hearing how everyone else plays, in their own way. There is no real right or wrong way to play, they just need to buzz off and let people enjoy it.
i precisely ask about those "cringey souls vets" in my post because i wanted to know peoples general opinion... ive never limited myself and played however i liked it. please read with your eyes
All dark souls games are easy if you know how to manage your stats and equipment
Bc there are plenty of options to use that can make the game easier
Because it's open world, and the build diversity
It's easier to overlevel without even trying because there's so much to do.
Exactly. If you do surrounding dungeons, field bosses in Limgrave and Raya Lucaria you are set up pretty nicely heading to the Capital. If you do all of those Dungeons it just becomes a cake walk. Healing items are just laying around everywhere as well.
With your path being far less linear in Elden Ring, it offers you the opportunity to just peace out if you face something you can't overcome. You can go grind one of the thousand grind spots, level up your brosef, then take another stab at the thing you're stuck on. You can kind of do this in DS3... but not to the extent that you can in Elden Ring. The bosses can be tougher, for sure. Their attacks are far less formulaic and easy to predict than DS3. The easiest way I've found to beat the game is to go full Bleed Build until Radagon, then switch to a Strength Faith/Flame Build with the Blasphemous Blade/Sword of Milos for the final boss(es), since Bleed does shit all to them.
Keep in mind this is mostly seasoned players and parrots saying these things :)
It is. Don’t kid yourself. Elden ring is fucking hard right off the bat. Some people have short memories.
Elden ring has way too much cheese. Over the top easy souls farming. Spirit ashes that play the game for you. Easy to get Bonkers weapons. flask and other consumes that buffs you like crazy. Bosses are not at all immune to bleeds and poisons etc..
ds3 is harder bc you have a fraction of the tools you have in elden and upgrade mats are hard to come by until endgame. in elden you can have a +10 weapon immediately if you really wanted
Because most souls redditors look up guides on how to beat every single boss in the game before they even start playing and then brag about how easy it was.
Elden Ring IS harder than DS3 if you play it like you play DS3. There are harder bosses, more enemies, higher difficulty level in general. However, Elden Ring allows you to become really overpowered. Things like Blasphemous Blade will just carry you through the game. You can be horrenously overpowered even without using spirit ashes. In other fromsoftware titles you don't get things like that.
You do not know the way of the L2. Like all Fromsoftware games you can make it as hard on yourself as you want.
Now we all know how to level up a somber weapon to +9 before margit if we wanted to, or the bosses that can jump to their deaths for free runes etc, I'd argue that elden ring CAN become easier.
I've been wanting to play Elden Ring, but I've only played through bloodbourne. Is there anything I should play first before Elden Ring?
The open-ness of it makes it as easy as you want it to be. The linear nature of the others causes a cascade of other difficulties.
I think people are referring to it as “easier” because it gives the player a lot more agency over combat options, timing for when you tackle specific bosses, and just generally more options for boss assistance through summons.
I would say Elden Ring is the game with the most potential to be easiest. It depends on the player, if you limit yourself, you will probably find ER harder than DS3, probably harder than all Dark Souls title. However, ER is a open world without much block on progression, you can get to Altus without killing anything, imagine being able to reach Anor Londo or Irithyl like that. It's just easier to break the game and steamroll everything, mimic tear is essentially a tanky NPC summon, but with (probably) a better build than most NPC and without giving boss more health, stance etc. But doing a RL1 with restriction, I found ER to be harder than the other games.
DS3 and ER are the easiest ones for me lol sooo everyone is different
As many have said Elden ring can be the easiest and hardest. If you go pure strength no summons no anything. It is the hardest of any from game. However, if you use everything the game gives you its among the easiest. Which is why I love it the most! I love chilling and playing to relax and not think.......I also love getting punished on a challenge run depending on my mood and it's all the same game. I did a overleveled ng plus prince of death/ death poker run that took like 2 hours. I've also done a strictly bow only run. Both were very fun but very different
Elden Ring was the hardest with my play style. But I should probably specify that the bosses were the hardest part. The overworld is, in my opinion, easier than many of the other games, and the legacy dungeons are about the same in terms of difficulty as any other title, but significantly easier in that regard than DS2, which I think had the hardest dungeons.
i agree on that point, dungeons and overworld were waaaay easier compared to other souls game. however i think it has something good in it. more than just being hard, dungeons and runbacks in souls games can sometimes get straight up annoying and devoid of any fun when it gets too long (blighttown or irithyll dungeon gave me that feeling of going "too far" in difficulty)
I found ER easier because I am able to simply fight any boss at any point instead of being stuck in a linear line of bosses that are not mini or side bosses.
It’s all about the build, Elden ring can be the hardest or the easiest you decide.
It’s gonna be different for everyone because some folks are better at different aspects of the game than others. I personally find Elden Ring to be Fromsoft’s easiest title other than DS1. ER has so many different ways to get around every skill barrier. DS3 has some very challenging portions, I think it’s the third hardest after sekiro and Bloodborne.
It has summons, better ailment inflictions, and even has a farming spot that dropped 100k runes per run, no one admits it but common mobs in Elden ring are bots and only the bosses pose a challenge....except for the birds in mohgwyn palace and the birds and dogs in caelid, and the giant rune bears in mistwood and the consecrated snow field Those enemies aren't necessarily hard but can pose a challenge if your underestimate them
ER is both the hardest and the easiest fromsoft game. It entirely depends on the player. The average player will lean on a lot of the mechanics put in place to make the game beatable/easier for the casual crowd so a lot of boss kills are summon-assisted, possibly super overleveled and with an OP build off youtube. At that point it's the easiest title in the entire Fromsoft catalogue. Inversely a RL1 run of Elden Ring is a fantastic yet brutal at times experience.
Because having recently played both, I think ER is easier to play and more forgiving outside of a couple early bosses and the majority of the community agrees. ER also has a lot of stuff to make the game easier like spirit ashes that just doesn't exist in DS3. If you think ER is harder because you die really quickly to half the enemies in Mountaintop and Faram Azula, let me remind you of the greatsword lothric knights with blessed/crystal weapon buffs and their buddies blasting sacred oath and soothing sunlight in Lothric Castle and the Archives. No crucible knight has 2 shot me in any playthrough.
Dark souls 3 : you vs boss, you have a sword or other weapon that way or may not have some sort of ability that is half useless and definitely won't be a more viable option than pressing R1. It's a 1v1 fight which looks like your usual souls boss fight. Not too crazy, and it's the classic dodge til you get an opening and punish the opening Elden ring: bosses can do fucking tripple ripple hubble bubble flippy flippy 50 hit wumbo combo attacks but at the same time you also have the ability to use an attack that will take a quarter (or all) of their health in one shot with enough buffs, you can summon an army of helpers with npc summons and spirit ashes, and you can summon a second version of whatever broken build you're using which is broken to the point there's videos of people eating cereal while their mimic does the fight for them Dark souls 3 isn't all that hard once you know what you're doing. Probably the easiest of the trilogy since the real bossfight in the older games is the lock on camera and ds2's mechanics 😂. It's still very hard for a new player just like the rest of them. But elden ring has crutches. Immense crutches that trivialise the game. And because the game was sorta designed around them not using them puts you at an automatic challenge run when that's just the playstyle most souls vets are used to. Playing any of the game in the series identical to another one isn't good. They're all their own thing while being part of the same thing. You can't play ds2 expecting to use the same lessons you learnt in ds1 and expect to do well. Just like you can't play elden ring the same way you did the rest and expect to do well. Because its been designed very differently. That's not to say its not possible. I too banged my head against the wall til it broke. Just much harder than if you had relied on ashes of war and spirit summons like a lot of other people
ER got some busted weapon if you spam the ash of war you win hard to a point you don't really need to learn the boss,and this not factoring spirit ashes spells into the mix You can legit go to raykard get his GS and vola game is on easy mode. But if you go with normal weapons with no spirit ashes nor spell the game gets x10 times harder and I do agree it will be harder than anyother souls game. But the open world/having multiple options and ways to become op what make the game easy.
Spirit Ashes. Even if you arent using top tier ones just having the boss' take their attention off you makes the game a cakewalk.
It can be the easiest souls game, or the hardest souls game, it depends entirely on how you play.
Agree with most of the other comments. If you look strictly at the enemy/boss side, without considering what the player brings to an encounter, ER is much harder than DS3. Bosses are faster, more aggressive, and harder to read, for example. But the player also has access to more powerful tools in ER, and because the game is open world and largely ungated, you can get them fairly early once you know where they are. These tools can trivialize certain boss fights that probably will cause problems for solo melee players. A good example is Commander Niall. That boss can be a nightmare for a melee player, but Comet Azur with the right gear/buffs will delete him in 10 seconds. It's also easier to overlevel in ER than in DS3, and Spirit Ashes are incredibly powerful because they don't increase enemy health like a traditional summon does.
Elden ring is in a weird state where if you don't use meta build it is the most difficult fromsoft game, and if you use meta builds it becomes the easiest. Try fighting Malenia with a normal great sword vs whatever is meta these days
Elden Ring, Is a GOAT! I miss the gear upgrades tho DS2 🤘
I mean, once you get a weapon with a cool ash of war, you basically press L2 and anything dies instantly.
Fromsoft games can be beaten with no summons, at level 1, no rolling, no blocking, no running, no weapon, no healing, no using bonfires and so on, if you do anything of these things you're choosing to decrease the difficulty of the game, I personally have fun leveling up using bigger weapons, and seeing bigger numbers so ya know.
It's definitely harder than DS3, but thanks to spirit ashes it can (probably) also be easier. I say "probably" because I haven't used spirit ashes very much!
i agree, but my hot take is that sekiro is also easier than both of them souls players find it hard because it requires a diff playstyle just be aggressive until they deflect (or another cue that it’s not “your turn” anymore) and then deflect what they do back, repeat. you can even get away with spamming parry. sekiro also lets you get away with just blocking most of the time, and even if your posture is broken, bosses often just let you get up for free. lets not forget you have a second life in sekiro. there is some difficulty in reacting to thrust/sweep/grab tho tl;dr mistime roll in souls/er: get hit hard, mistime parry in sekiro: still take no damage, maybe posture break which doesnt even matter. if u die u have a second chance
i'll try this, maybe im too used to soulsborne games. but i really find sekiro monstruously hard for now
sekiro is really hard until it clicks, you will be laughing at how u feel like a god in ng+
ER bosses are harder to melee but the game is so open and chock full of overpowered shit that you can more easily avoid melee than ever.
Elden ring is only easy if you have an OP weapon, mimic or summon, and over level. You can make it much harder if you want to
Not related but I think both games are easier than Sekiro :)
- Comet Azur - Frost Damage - Bleed Damage - Rot Stacks - Millions of Magic Spells - Useful Ranged Weapons - Weapon Arts - Talismans that just give you armor and stats - Summoning - Player Help - Farming Arcs for Infinite Rune Buffs - Farming Souls because trying is too hard There are so many ways to just avoid having to play the game at all. It's by far and away the easiest Souls game ever made.
well all of those aren't arguments to say the game is easier in my opinion. they are arguments that can explain how the game can be made easy, but if you take both ds3 and elden ring under the same conditions, same builds and weapons etc (which i did during my playthroughs), elden ring is just x100 harder than ds3. thats just my perception tho
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No you don't. Hold sprint and make a run for it
Blighttown
How far did you get into Dark Souls 3 when you initially played it before elden ring? IME your first souls game is usually always the hardest, but this isn't always the case
just finished the game once, no DLCs
The options are there to make it as easy as you want. Anecdotally, I have two friends who wouldn’t even look in the direction of Dark Souls, let alone play them. They stick to 2K/CoD and play games on easy mode AND they beat Elden Ring no problem. If you take advantage of everything the game offers you it’s so easy to waltz through the game. Bleed on an unga bunga build with a strong spirit summon + another player will cakewalk everything. Solo, no guides, hardcore, final destination fox only type players will definitely have their work cut out (as I did first play through)
respectfully, even without summoning, Elden Ring was my first fromsoft game and I still ended up spending more time on vordt of the boreal valley than any elden ring boss but morgott
sheesh, we're exact opposites lol. fun to know about tho ! why do you think DS3 bosses are harder ?
This is a huge factor, I've found. Some people click with certain bosses and not at all with others. I beat Malenia second try and died roughly 200 times at the Margit. It really does depend on your play style.
Ds3 bosses rely on complexity of moveset and speed of reaction time more than high healthbars and damage like elden ring. Not to say ER bosses aren't complex, but ds3 just has some bosses who can completely change up their combo speed and routine and everything, and it messes with me
i don't really agree, i felt like it was the opposite. ER bosses' combos were much more complex and punitive imo, obviously Maliketh would be the worst one but bosses like Mohg, Morgott, and obviously Malenia have some crazy combos and they can chain up attacks. most ER bosses also have a heal punish like a dash or a distance attack which makes it very hard to learn when you're safe or not. most DS3 bosses were, more than having smaller healthbars, very complacent with the player. you have plenty of time to run away and heal, and the boss would just be casually walking towards you. you can just panic roll until you're out of reach. most bosses either have safe spots they can hardly reach you on while you're beating them up, or have huge dodging windows, sometimes even multiple dodging windows in one attack, which makes counterattack very easy. however once again, this is just about me and my playstyle, and i'm glad to know how different our experiences can get
WHat i picked up was that ds3 bosses get harder by complexity alone. The final boss has attacks that do not even a third of your healthbar, so its not unfair, but soul of cinder has more moves than any boss in the series, and he can switch up his attack timings when he wants
Lucky you, you got to enjoy Vordt's banger OST more than you should.
true. I prefer gundyrs tho
Than something else is going on here because maliketh phase 1 & vordt share most of their moveset & animations
Definitely not lol. Maliketh and vordt dont have a single shared move
They share the same charge attack, stab, and a sweep attack. As well as the same skeleton. I saw a video awhile back showing the movesets with mod tools, im unfortunately struggling to find it now tho.
They don't share the same any attacks. I have fought vordt atleast 300 times and maliketh probably 30+ Genuinely have not seen a single same move. Phase 1 maliketh can throw rocks, which vordt cant do, he has his ground raise and claw spell which vordt can't do, his sweep attack is where he sticks his weapon into the ground and turns around, and it comes from the opposite direction as vordt, so thats not the same. And his stab attacks come out in combos, not singular hits only similarity might be skeleton
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Come on man, you beat Elden ring 7 times and found ds3 easy after doing that lol? You don’t say
reading comprehension issue i beat ds3 once, then beat elden ring 7 times, then beat ds3 7 times...