this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
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Personally I have been enamoured by Elden Ring mostly because it applies the Dark Souls narration formula to high fantasy. It ends up presenting a story involving mostly demi-gods and gods with the mystique that religion does and it's very fun to navigate it.
In my opinion it wasn't until DS3 or Bloodborne (I don't recall which came earlier) that the balance of difficulty shifted from extremely annoying levels to tough boss fights. In my opinion DS2 and the ones before it feel terrible to play because of the annoyances I mentioned. I think DS3 and its DLCs struck a good balance where the boss fights were difficult but doable with the mechanics that the game afforded you.
With Elden Ring I think the boss fights have gotten a lot more difficult but there is a mechanic where you can summon a computer-controlled ally to make the fights easier, which balances it out. Some people are brimming with self-loathing and don't take advantage of this mechanic.
With the DLC though I think the bosses are very difficult with these summons too which is a bit of a bummer. I just wanna get done with this last fight so I can start diving into the game's text dump to decipher the lore.
I personally feel that the From style of telling a story doesn't really fit with a complex and intricate story that Elden Ring is trying to tell. Even if you aren't scrounging every item and npc dialog for lore, you can understand the underlying story of Dark Souls through it's themes and setpieces. I can't say the same for Elden Ring.