I like Elden Ring but second half is awful

The Cartographer said:
It's mainly two things.
Most open world games have worlds with a definite sense of progression, but Elden Ring brilliantly throws that away or mostly sideline it in a way that doesn't make the player suffer at all.
The world traversal and landmark placement operate in tandem on a bigger scale than any other titles previously released.
And just to be clear, I never claimed that Elden Ring ''evolved'' open field games, just that FROM accomplished some great things in it.
Click to expand...
I dunno at the end of the day your still clearing icons off a map. The difference is in elden ring the icons appear after you've been to them.

Elden rings biggest advantage is its staggeringly high amount of unique content and its solid souls gameplay slotted neatly into an open world. ( Which is amazing)

Ironically without any main narrative it is just doing the content then moving on to the next location. Dare I say ubisoft like...
 
Come to think of it, I may have preferred going right to Faram Azula after beating Morgott. And somehow put Halig Tree on Critical path. Something like that at least. Outside of being a nice change of pace visually, the snow area did nothing for me, and the Fire Giant is one of my least favorite bosses in the game.
 
The Cartographer said:
Dark Souls 3? The best Miyazaki game? This is literally the first time I saw someone saying this.
But I'm not criticizing your tastes, to each their own.
Click to expand...
I actually almost agree, but second best after BB IMO. DS3 has the best roster of bosses in the genre. They are almost all consistently great vs all the throwaways in ER or DS1/2. Friede, Nameless King, Pontiff, Cinder, Watchers, Gundyr, and Gael are all up there with Ludwig, Orphan, Lady Maria, Martyr Logarius, Maliketh, and Malenia as the best soulsborne bosses IMO.

I love ER, but the fact that only Malenia and Maliketh are up there in quality with BB and DS3s best to be speaks volumes to me.

EDIT: Also, I think I actually prefered ERs second half. I liked the more focused levels like Azula and the Haligtree vs the tons of open land like Limegrave or the plateau. The second half also had better and more challenging bosses.
 
Last edited:
Arachnid said:
I actually almost agree, but second best after BB IMO. DS3 has the best roster of bosses in the genre. They are almost all consistently great vs all the throwaways in ER or DS1/2. Friede, Nameless King, Pontiff, Cinder, Watchers, Gundyr, and Gael are all up there with Ludwig, Orphan, Lady Maria, Martyr Logarius, Maliketh, and Malenia as the best soulsborne bosses IMO.

I love ER, but the fact that only Malenia and Maliketh are up there in quality with BB and DS3s best to be speaks volumes to me.
Click to expand...
As you said Dark Souls 3 has some truly great bosses but it also the worst and most boring level/area design in the series.
It's way too linear and safe for me.
 
I want to like ER, but the difficulty spikes are all over the place and fucked up.

This is far from the smoother progression that other Fromsoft Souls games do.
 
Last edited:
March Climber said:
I'm convinced that people who say DS3 is the best have refused to play on a console. Thus they have never played his actual best souls game, Bloodborne.
Click to expand...
Let's not get into this!

I love BB. But no game that runs at a janky 28fps is the same as one running at 60 plus. Especially considering Souls combat.

BB does get slightly overrated because it's a PS exclusive.
 
I feel like if they just cut the snowy portion down to the Fire Giant and made the Haligtree fit in more naturally, the pacing would be a lot better. Everything after the Fire Giant felt right to me.
 
Last edited:
I also don't like how it's so loose with what you're supposed to do. Ragnarok does this aspect perfectly, not too much of what you need to do but a list of what you haven't completed.
 
Mountaintops of the Giants and Consecrated Snowfield are the least enjoyable, because the game throws multiple pathways at you with very difficult enemies, so you feel obliged to explore because you know there are going to be items dotted around dead ends but also it's a massive chore because the enemies aren't enjoyable to fight.

A lot of the locations in this area are telegraphed poorly because of the very low visibility, as well. People tend to avoid these areas for co-op as well, so that part of the game feels removed entirely. However there are some pretty cool areas dotted around and a very memorable boss fight.

I wouldn't say the second-half is awful though, apart from the difficulty spike. Miquella's Haligtree, Leyndell Catacombs and Crumbling Farum Azula are all fantastic areas, for example.
 
I'll never understand this criticism. I can understand criticism toward MToG, but Haligtree, Leyndell Catacombs and Farum Azula were pretty great.
 
Last edited:
It just doesn't have enough content to support the size of its' world and that's not saying it doesn't have a ton of content. It just feels like there is a ton of recycling going on and that takes away from the overall Soul experience in my view. Tremendous game, but pretty far down the list of FromSoft's Souls series.
 
It makes me wish it was all jsut one big interconnected map liek previous Fromsoft games. I'm literally playing it right now, the open world makes it tedious to replay
 
I wasn't phased by such a thing, I honestly enjoyed it just the same all the way through. One of the very few games I've ever 100 percented.

I think the only Souls game that was hard to finish for me was Dark Souls 2. Felt like such a chore to me.
 
Second half, are you skipping Haligtree and Elphael? Great and unique areas.

Worst area for me is Crumbling Farum Azula. Too many annoying enemies and Godskin Duo sucks, I just force myself through it and run past as much as I can.

I don't like Mohgwyn Palace either but it's needed to get the 2+ Haligtree Talisman.
 
SantaC said:
Second half feels rushed and not very focused. I am loving the legacy dungeons but as soon you enter the forbidden lands it turns to shit. The snow area is big and vast with too much traverse. There is barely and coop action here. It is downright boring imo. I have made countless builds but i always lose focus when i get to mountaintops of giants.

Also, i liked the catacombs the first time i played them but i have not revisted them because the rewards are 90% summon spirit ashes. Meh.

Stomveil castle is fucking fantastic though.
Click to expand...
I agree but find the first half awful as well.
 
I really wasn't jazzed by it at all after the first 10-20 hours. I remember the underground area being stunning, something River I think? That was genuinely a moment where I was like "ok, this game is going to be amazing".

But then, like usual with From's games, the pretty, entertaining, rewarding areas are quickly replaced by nasty, dull, frustrating areas and mean-spirited difficulty. "Oh look, it's the swamp that I have to slowly trudge through while getting poisoned and peppered with projectiles". Boring…

Their games are just too difficult for their own good imo, the slider from "challenging but fun" gets pushed too far past "spirit crushingly difficult" every time for me.

Dark Souls 2 and 3 are the only ones I've ever managed to actually finish.
 
Last edited:
Snow level (whatever, it's the snow level, come on) is definitely the most boring part, wouldn't say awful though. Even yourself OP just admitted you've made "countless" build in this game with an "awful" 2nd half. Can't be that bad.
 
ANDS said:
It is easily the most bloated of HM's work so far. Hands down. I will be forever stunned at how little critique this game gets in terms of design approach. Maybe once we're a few years outside of the game.

. . .and for what its worth, I came to this opinion at the exact same point in the game you did. I legit blurted out at one point "Oh god. . .more of this?"
Click to expand...
You could say that about BOTW, yet it sits at 97MC.

Maybe people enjoy samey shit if its fun to play?
 
Last edited:
NinjaBoiX said:
I really wasn't jazzed by it at all after the first 10-20 hours. I remember the underground area being stunning, something River I think? That was genuinely a moment where I was like "ok, this game is going to be amazing".

But then, like usual with From's games, the pretty, entertaining, rewarding areas are quickly replaced by nasty, dull, frustrating areas and mean-spirited difficulty. "Oh look, it's the swamp that I have to slowly trudge through while getting poisoned and peppered with projectiles". Boring…

Their games are just too difficult for their own good imo, the slider from "challenging but fun" gets pushed too far past "spirit crushingly difficult" every time for me.

Dark Souls 2 and 3 are the only ones I've ever managed to actually finish.
Click to expand...
I don't know how you managed to beat DS 2/3 but couldn't stick it out here. Elden Ring is very easy for an experienced player until the end of the game.
 
I left Elden Ring halfway through and have no inspiration to pick it up or start anew.

Dark Souls/Bloodborne definitely has a more cohesive design.
 
I'd say it was more like the last quarter and it wasn't awful but only decent.

Definitely fell off by a good amount. Overall still a great game though.
 
It either needed a huge legacy dungeon in the snowfield to just drive the size of the game even further into the extreme or make the snow area one smaller area overall.

It does wear out its welcome in some areas and the Godskin Duo should be retroactively entered the bible as one of the deadly sins.

Haligtree is wonderful though and I love how it's entirely missable.

I barely do anything in the snow area now, Just run through.
 
Last edited:
The difficulty spike when you hit the fire giant was pretty uneeded, other than that I thought it was pretty solid the whole way through
 
That "awful second half" as you put it is still a lot better than 99% of games out there, talk about being hyperbolic! Yeah it's not as good as the first half (like most games and movies and tv shows, let's be honest), still gripped me to the end.
 
Mephisto40 said:
The difficulty spike when you hit the fire giant was pretty uneeded, other than that I thought it was pretty solid the whole way through
Click to expand...
For me, this was one of the few bosses I knew I could beat with a couple of tries because of his slow and predictable attacks and not one of those ultra endless "what the fuck is stamina?" combos some bosses have and throw at you, giving you only a window of one or two strikes to hit the smallest chunk of their seemingly 100k hp bar making many boss fights tedious.

On the other side, I still haven't beat that searpent in that volcano. The fire around it costs constantly HP, no matter my fire resistance stats, and by the time I hit the second phase I'm already down to like 3 flasks and the boss goes full insane and shits all over me. Tried it like 15 times but even the last boss fight in Sekiro was easier and that one was the hardest thing I've ever done in a game for the last two decades; took me 3 hours + uninstalling the game + letting it rest for a year + returning to it, learn the game again in 4 hours + another 2 hours to finally beat that fucker. Never felt I so exhausted after a video game session or beating a game.

So compared to that fucking searpent in ER, the fire giant was OK. His main attacks can be dodged easily, thrown fireballs can be out-sprinted, and fire pillars coming out of the earth can be avoided since it some warning time and has gaps.
 
Filben said:
On the other side, I still haven't beat that searpent in that volcano. The fire around it costs constantly HP, no matter my fire resistance stats, and by the time I hit the second phase I'm already down to like 3 flasks and the boss goes full insane and shits all over me. Tried it like 15 times but even the last boss fight in Sekiro was easier and that one was the hardest thing I've ever done in a game for the last two decades; took me 3 hours + uninstalling the game + letting it rest for a year + returning to it, learn the game again in 4 hours + another 2 hours to finally beat that fucker. Never felt I so exhausted after a video game session or beating a game.
Click to expand...
Do you mean Rykard? if I remember correctly in that mansion there is a NPC that asks you kill Rykard for him and he gives you special spear in boss room that Makes the fight much more doable.
 
Danjin44 said:
Do you mean Rykard? if I remember correctly in that mansion there is a NPC that asks you kill Rykard for him and he gives you special spear in boss room that Makes the fight much more doable.
Click to expand...
Ah, yes, that was his name. Yeah, the spear was right at the boss fight's gate. I already thought that MAYBE I should be using this, but IIRC it needs STR and I'm running a DEX build as of now. Still have 7 larval tears, so I COULD respec, but I'm not sure if I want to do that now. But I think if I ever decide to return to him (thank god he's optional) I will consider it. Thank you!
 
Last edited:
Variety is what I love about From's games, and build variety in ER is freaking insane. The sheer amount of gear/spells is nuts, and giving you like 10 larval tears per game cycle means you can tinker pretty easily.

Bloodborne is my favorite From title when it comes to the story and setting, but I was massively bummed at the lack of build variety in the game.

A Bloodborne sequel in a ER-style open world with a whole lotta gear has become a dream game for me.
 
Filben said:
For me, this was one of the few bosses I knew I could beat with a couple of tries because of his slow and predictable attacks and not one of those ultra endless "what the fuck is stamina?" combos some bosses have and throw at you, giving you only a window of one or two strikes to hit the smallest chunk of their seemingly 100k hp bar making many boss fights tedious.

On the other side, I still haven't beat that searpent in that volcano. The fire around it costs constantly HP, no matter my fire resistance stats, and by the time I hit the second phase I'm already down to like 3 flasks and the boss goes full insane and shits all over me. Tried it like 15 times but even the last boss fight in Sekiro was easier and that one was the hardest thing I've ever done in a game for the last two decades; took me 3 hours + uninstalling the game + letting it rest for a year + returning to it, learn the game again in 4 hours + another 2 hours to finally beat that fucker. Never felt I so exhausted after a video game session or beating a game.

So compared to that fucking searpent in ER, the fire giant was OK. His main attacks can be dodged easily, thrown fireballs can be out-sprinted, and fire pillars coming out of the earth can be avoided since it some warning time and has gaps.
Click to expand...
It's weird because after I figured out you had to pick the sword up and use that against the serpent boss I beat it on my second try :messenger_tears_of_joy:

I suppose thats whats good about souls games, everybody has a different experience
 
The snow levels is worse for sure, but everything else (Haligtree, Farum Azula) was more than fine with me.

It's a long ass game so I can understand people feeling burn out by that point.
 
Filben said:
Ah, yes, that was his name. Yeah, the spear was right at the boss fight's gate. I already thought that MAYBE I should be using this, but IIRC it needs STR and I'm running a DEX build as of now. Still have 7 larval tears, so I COULD respec, but I'm not sure if I want to do that now. But I think if I ever decide to return to him (thank god he's optional) I will consider it. Thank you!
Click to expand...
It has no requirements. At +3/+4 it will melt the boss on most builds.

You can also get away with standing in the fire and going ham on him in his second phase.

Oh, also, don't bother with the weapon art. Spam R1 and then charge attack with R2 when he's stunned.
 
Last edited:
Danjin44 said:
Do you mean Rykard? if I remember correctly in that mansion there is a NPC that asks you kill Rykard for him and he gives you special spear in boss room that Makes the fight much more doable.
Click to expand...

Mephisto40 said:
It's weird because after I figured out you had to pick the sword up and use that against the serpent boss I beat it on my second try :messenger_tears_of_joy:

I suppose thats whats good about souls games, everybody has a different experience
Click to expand...

gaming_again said:
It has no requirements. At +3/+4 it will melt the boss on most builds.

You can also get away with standing in the fire and going ham on him in his second phase.

Oh, also, don't bother with the weapon art. Spam R1 and then charge attack with R2 when he's stunned.
Click to expand...
Okay, I still respeced on STR just to be sure (STR around 60), used that serpeant spear (+ golden vow) and killed him in one minute, doing like 8k damage with one strike. The really went from the toughest boss to the easiest hands down :O Thank you guys!
 
I feel like whenever people say "the second half is shit", they're really talking about the last like 10-15% lol.
 
Remarked on this before but a common flaw with FROM's narrative design approach is that its ambient nature stands against escalating dramatic tension in the third act or equivalent. As a result all that's left when building towards the climax is to ramp up the difficulty.

You must establish story and character identification first in order to create a dramatic pivot, just shading-in lore and world building is insufficient.

Another issue is that making areas and fights harder to survive as a climax only really works if the player's character-growth can reasonably keep-up, which is not a certainty across such a large (long) game and is likely to hurt pacing.
 
Last edited:
This "second half" thing is just a meme now imho, like saying it about dark souls when the only problem was that single part of izalith with the dragon legs. Elden Ring is top quality content from start to finish. One may get bored, like or dislike a specific area or boss but that's another topic. The quality is there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

LTTP: Elden Ring
2 3
118
5K
vodka-bull replied
Elden Ring Nightreign - Reviews Thread
2 3 4
194
3K
Azure Crystal Gaming replied
Alex Garland is on his 7th playthrough of Elden Ring
2
95
973
FoxMcChief replied
Son lost 700h+ elden ring save
2 3 4
183
2K
DeepEnigma replied
Elden Ring: Nightreign Official Launch Trailer
19
645
Schmendrick replied
Top Bottom