I LOVED Breath of the Wild and Skyrim and I read an article that says players of those games should feel welcome here.
I just have limited game time and a deep hatred for losing massive amounts of gameplay and having to re-do them. I’m glad to see that this game does reset you right outside boss rooms.
Oh yeah, I think people should play whatever makes them happy! I’m just wondering if the lack of a difficulty option is purposeful - to maintain that “only for serious players” mystique.
From everything I have seen this game is the wimp-mode version of a SoulsBorne game, I have watched a couple hours of streaming, and have never seen anyone die. Now that is obviously stuff that is opened for now, and may not represent everything about the game
I am not a big fan of the series at all. They use a veil of tedium to hide a try-hard kingdom glory-land as difficulty. It’s really only about putting the time in to learn, like your are in Grade school again. There are many videos of people taking their non-gaming neighbor/girlfriend whatever, through the previous games by just telling them what to do when.
It’s largely a series of traps and tricks to learn what to do, then the boss fights are QTEs with intricate and confusing prompts. Git Gud in these games means .“Put in hours of homework of tedious repetition, until you can follow the rules by rote”. Which is kind of the things I play games to get away from.
not a single qte in souls games.
Except for every Boss fight.
Seem him raise his right hand with a sphere? then dodge right three times and hold X for strong strike.
See her duck her head before double-handing the staff? Back up twice and throw a munge-ball with UP+Y.
etc.
If that’s your definition of a qte, every single video game boss fight in history is also a qte.
No, most games since 2006 actually bother to craft hit boxes so that avoiding the giant dragon tail swinging through your body is the point. These games have the tail swing through you anyway, you just have to be in the “sweet point” of your roll when the tail swings 5 spikes right through you anyway, but you take no damage because you spent the time to learn exactly when spikes in the head don’t matter.
Which is a lousy Quick Time Event, and poor game design
I’m not here to piss on the SoulsBorne, I find plenty of places to do that, and am happy too. Just wanted to respond to the OP about “do I want to play it” with a straight-up opinion that if you don’t find them fun, you won’t find this one fun.
But I’m out now. Good luck to OP.
I got on it last night and my gosh is this a beautiful game, it really is. Gameplay is super smooth - only did a two hour sesh so too early to draw any solid conclusions in that department. Co-oped an easy boss by the coast - so cool to see all the signs down and lit up. Also got minced by a couple of things that I was way under-levelled for (actually not figured out how to level yet).
I think the open world will give it an easier feel than Dark Souls - you can teleport to any bonfire like in Zelda BotW, but I’d expect the bosses to be tough following the trajectory from DS3. To the OP - I’d guess the majority of players aren’t enthusiastic about a sterile memorisation of moves to defeat any computer game boss, if you don’t care about it and just aren’t engaged with the story. What makes it meaningful is the Lore, the atmosphere, the emotion etc that the game creates. Dark Souls is good at this, ime, but if you’re not feeling the immersion then Elden Ring won’t be any different - just have to try it and see.
Separate jump button as default X on playstation feels super weird - might need a remap there. Guarantee every experienced Souls player will be jumping up and down for the first 15 mins by accident - vertical jumping like this is a new mechanic.
For the Souls vets - I was surprised to see how much it reminded me of the Bluepoint Demon Souls remake in some appearances. Menus, health bars, inv screen - some of the basic movement as well. Not sure how I feel about this - I did love DeS as a remake, I mean it was a triumph. But I didn’t expect it to influence future games.
Totally early days though - first impressions are fantastic but no real idea on gameplay yet beyond the superficial.
Seems to me the type of people who would stream this game a day after launch are the type of people who would be good at Souls games? Not surprising they wouldn’t be dying much.
I downloaded and started playing it today, on the Xbox Series X. I’m actually not a fan of Souls games, I enjoy them but never get very far. So far this has looked nice and been quite fun. Unfortunately the frame rate isn’t great on the Xbox, particularly in the open areas.
I’m actually considering this game for summer vacation(I’m a teacher).
My Lenova L340 Laptop has been a great gaming system for me. I do NOT care about top of the line grahpics, just that I can run the game even in “minimum” settings.
I only have 8GB memory…wondering how to upgrade it.
I’m not sure if the game will run if I put 16GB or 32GB in my machine.
The fact this runs on PS4 should be at least somewhat encouraging?
Looks as though it’s upgradable though you’ll have to open the back to do it and replace the existing memory with a 16GB card (only one RAM slot). The minimum spec’d processor is an i5-8600 and since the L340 says it sold with up to a 9th gen i7, I assume you have that covered but you might want to doublecheck for sanity’s sake.
For all the super-hype, I totally blanked on Elden Ring launching yesterday until 11pm and got as far as playing around with the character model editor and trying to make someone who doesn’t look one generation removed from Neanderthal stock.
Maybe. Console versions of games are designed for known, static hardware configurations. The PS4 version isn’t necessary identical to “Elden Ring locked on low settings.”
After you upgrade your RAM, your bottleneck will almost certainly be your graphics card. It meets the minimum specs, but just barely. In my experience, official “minimum/recommended specs” for games (especially chonky AAA ones), are an absolute crapshoot.
But Steam does have a refund policy, so I say go for it.
There have been complaints of stuttering on PC but, one would hope, they’ll have that sorted by the summer.
Bandai-Namco is aware of the issue and working on it but who knows how long it will take (history suggests a month or so but no way to say for certain…might be faster, might be longer).
I love the videos from this guy (Joel Haver):
Yes, I’m waiting at this point until June or so. I might even get sale price, even 5 or 10% by then.
It’s my risk, too. It might be WAY TOO HARD for me, but I keep hearing there are some ways to make it a bit easier. Summons, NPC help.
My method when unsure is to buy the game and then, just before I start the program, I set a timer on my phone for 1h 45m.
When the beeper goes off I stop playing and save the game and quit out of the program as fast as is reasonable.
Then I take a few minutes to decide if I want to keep it (go to the bathroom, make a sandwich, make some tea…whatever). If not, I start the return process (which Steam is pretty good about…no fuss and not much hassle).
Whether two hours is enough to decide if you like the game…debatable. But, at least there is a little cushion there.
Yeah, I’m waiting on three things.
Horizon: Forbidden West is going to be my main gaming squeeze for the foreseeable future, so I’m in no rush.
I pre-ordered Lego Skywalker Saga for Switch and that comes out April 5.
Elden Ring is much more of a “long summer game” where I have to really dedicate a couple hours a day to it.
Note: I must be the only one who doesn’t care if a game is set to “low” or “minimum” graphical settings. I legit don’t care at all. Hope they patch it a bunch by May or so.
I only notice primitive graphics when I’m replaying an old game years later (like Morrowind or GTA: San Andreas).
I played Witcher 3 awhile back and I thought, “Yeah, so I don’t need games much better than this.”
Breath of the Wild on Wii U is now 5 years old and honestly…it still is one of the best looking games I’ve played.