Sprawling soulsborne
Elden Ring was one of the best games I played this year. It took the crown at
The Game Awards, and was probably our team's most-played game of 2022. This great game also introduced us to the greatest gamer of 2022, a Good Samaritan who put his life on the line a thousand times for total strangers in The Lands Between.
Let Me Solo Her, the naked Elden Ring player who wears a pot for a helmet and wields two swords, helped heaps of Tarnished defeat the game's toughest boss, and did it in the most impressive way. His prowess spawned tons of fan art, memes, imposters, and praise across social media. As Wes Fenlon said when his name started to gain traction back in April, he was Elden Ring's first "
legendary player(opens in new tab)," and since then, absolutely nobody has taken his place. (Though
MissMikkaa(opens in new tab), a streamer who played two instances of Elden Ring simultaneously, one on a DDR pad, certainly deserves a nod for foot-eye coordination.)
To understand how ridiculously good Let Me Solo Her is, you need to know how the
Malenia fight works. She's located pretty deep into the game's second half, down in the roots of a failed attempt at a second Erdtree; an optional fight that resembles FromSoftware's previous punishing duels with Bloodborne's Lady Maria and Dark Souls 3's Sister Friede.
Malenia wields a long curved sword and the scarlet rot that's infected her since she was born. Unlike the status effect you can encounter in the swamps that drains your health, Malenia's scarlet rot affliction is beneficial to her. Any attack that she lands on you (or a summoned player) gives her back large chunks of health. FromSoftware has made you confront bosses who could heal before, but it's rare they're this aggressive. Malenia's infamous Waterfowl Dance attack is a tornado of sword swipes. If it hits you, you're probably dead, but even if it doesn't end you it'll likely heal back all the damage you did to her.
Because so many boss fights in Elden Ring are about utilizing your healing and damage resources before they run out, getting hit by a Waterfowl Dance that doesn't kill you is often just as bad as dying—it effectively restarts the fight.
Only in a FromSoftware game would a guy in his underwear be praised as a god. Reddit user
spacemanticore(opens in new tab) went into the game's animation files and demonstrated how unbelievably small the window is to dodge it. If you know the trick it can be avoided, but on top of her other attacks it's still a brutal fight. And that's only the first phase. After you down Malenia once, she gets back up and blossoms into the goddess of rot, grows wings, and quickly darts around the room.
Malenia quickly gained infamy as players started to encounter her back in late February. While most fights in Elden Ring can be solved by summoning in other players, given Malenia's sheer difficulty and self-heal mechanic, even co-op didn't necessarily guarantee an easy win.
Unless you managed to pluck a legend from the summoning pool, that is.