in the end, most of what I hate about Elden Ring and its difficulty can be summed up thusly;
most combat in Soulsborne is about two things: spacing, and timing. knowing where to be at any given moment in a fight, and what actions to take and when. those take some learning, but once youâve got them down, they stay with you, and partially carry forward into the other games as well. once you know what an enemy can do, and what you should do in response, all thatâs left is to execute it well enough that the bossâ hp bar runs out before yours does. know when to roll, where to be when you see the windup for the AoE, when to back off and heal, and when to close the distance and get a few hits in. once youâve learned the rules, remember to follow them and that should get you through most of the game.
however, Elden Ring regularly breaks these rules.
enemies are hyper aggressive, and can often either start another attack string almost immediately after concluding the last, or straight up opt to continue the combo based on what youâre doing. enemies have ranged attacks that come out instantly, or can close a gap in a fraction of a second if they so choose, so no amount of space you put between you and them can guarantee even a secondâs reprieve. a bunch of enemies have what I deride as âbeybladeâ attacks, where they just turn their entire model into a hitbox and throw themselves at you with pinpoint tracking for several seconds, rendering rolling almost futile and (presumably, I havenât played with shields much) tearing through stamina when blocked.
and thatâs shit!!! it feels like absolute shit when the game actively resists your attempts to master it. when I played Bloodborne I got destroyed many, many times by Vicar Amelia because, as I later realised, I was still trying to play the game the way I played Dark Souls. when I played Bloodborne the way Bloodborne intended, I had a great time, and now Vicar Amelia is a boss I can tackle with ease.
on the other hand, it doesnât matter how âgoodâ I get at Elden Ring, thereâs nothing I can do if I run in to punish Margit after avoiding a seemingly complete attack string, and he decides to counter with a sudden lightning fast conjured dagger combo. I have no answer for when I try to back off and heal, and crucible knight responds by crossing the arena and undoing all the hp I just restored in less time than it takes for me to recover from my drink. I bashed my head against Malenia for hours straight and even after all that whenever I dodged even one hit of her Waterfowl Dance it felt more like a fluke than me actually learning to deal with her.
so much of what youâre up against in this game feels like it straight up comes from a different game, with different rules, and for all the amazing and fun and sometimes outright broken new tools this game throws at you, youâre still not quite equipped to deal with it on a very fundamental level.
