The demo features the Tree Sentinel, a giant golden knight reminiscent of Dark Souls 2’s Velstadt who’s a full-on boss fight, complete with the big health bar. On the other hand, From Software has added something to the Elden Ring Beta that couldn’t exist without the open world- roaming world bosses. Shrine of Amana lives in infamy for a reason, and it’s not because fans enjoyed stealth gameplay. I’m a mixed bag about the Open World- on one hand, the Camp combat is incredibly boring, trading the Soulsborne tradition of meticulously crafted encounters for generic sneaking around and backstabbing enemies if you don’t want to fight 10 of them at once. Gone are windy cobblestone roads, instead you have big open fields with camps full of soldiers. One of the biggest departures the Elden Ring Beta makes is its new open world, something not previously seen in Souls games, which had more Metroidvania approaches in their level design. They’re also restricted to areas marked with a little Rebirth icon, and feel more like a corrective measure to make up for the fact that if you don’t stealth your way through the camp, you’ll eventually get outnumbered by guards. This also applies to the game’s Ash Spirit summons, which are non-consumable items that cost FP to use. Obviously it wouldn’t do you good to bust out the horse in the middle or Stomrveil castle, so it’s best to think of the horse like the bike from Pokemon. That being said, the horseback combat is limited by the fact that you’re not always allowed on horseback. The wandering boss, Tree Sentinel, is practically mandatory to fight on horseback, since you’re dealing with what’s essentially a truck with a polearm that turns on a dime. Your speed increases drastically on a horse, but you lose the ability to do any kind of invincible dodge since your horse can’t roll. That’s not the only combat change though, you can summon your steed to fight on horseback, with all the ferocity of Lu Bu approaching. Only Do Cool Things When The Game Lets You It’s a lot of fun, and if that’s the direction Elden Ring plans to go with its fights then I’m all aboard. Heck, his phase two sees him bust out a massive hammer, where the only way to avoid it and still get to attack is to dodge it on time, since it creates an explosive radius. Margit is much of the same- he’s extremely aggressive, and employs a lot of tricks not seen in many starting Souls bosses such as delayed attacks and mixups that you’d see at EVO. I mean this in the best way- Gascoigne was an incredibly steep learning curve that served to check if you’d learned about the game enough- his boss stage was built to make sure you were always in close range of him, so you had to learn to dodge or parry his strikes. These fights are usually incredibly designed experiences, with fights like Ornstein and Smough forming cherished memories for every gamer who’s fought them.Įlden Ring’s bossfights feel a lot more Bloodborne in their design, with the main story boss Margit, The Fell Omen seriously echoing Father Gascoigne, the same early game boss in that game. One of the biggest appeals of the Soulsborne genre is its bossfights, naturally. Magic continues to be the game’s easy mode, and the spellcaster class, the Enchanted Knight, combines both the efficiency of previous games’ sorcerer with the melee effectiveness of the Herald to create a class that’s still potent in melee, while also having a great spellcasting array. Of course, if you don’t like being so close to a boss that you’ll be fined for breaking social distance protocols, long range options are in the game too. With Counter hits you do way more damage, meaning the chip damage you take off of blocking becomes worth it because you can do massive damage, or even better- get a stagger, leading to a second, more powerful critical hit to just eat chunks off of a boss’ health. It fixes a problem I never realized previous Souls games had- that two-handed weapons were underpowered sicne they had a terrible block, so you were forced to play evasively. I especially like the new Counter Hits- where you can do a heavy attack right after blocking to do big damage. Follow a result the combat of the Elden Ring Beta feels really good, building on the faster combat of Dark Souls 3 though never fully committing to going all out like in Bloodborne.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |