this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2024
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I really wanted to like ER. It's fucking beautiful and seems to have a lot of depth, but the a appeal to difficulty doesn't really hold any water, cuz the only thing that makes it difficult is unnecessarily clunky controls.
Maybe there's a mod or something now that makes the combat more fluid... I should give it another visit.
One could accuse Elden Ring of many things, but clunky controls is definitively not one of them.
It's probably one of the best combat systems I've ever played. When you die, you know it's your fault (usually because of greed), not the system cheating you. It's very fair, unlike many others.
I mean, bosses input reading my heavy attack to suddenly turn their three move combo into a four move combo 50% of the time feels a bit lame. For instance the dancing lion suddenly going into the spray carousel after it would have exhausted its combo and rested otherwise. My main issue is on the inconsistency.
Don't get me wrong, that fight was really fun and I overcame it, but there are many such cases where it feels overtly like the game just threw in the extra attack as a "fuck you" while trying to learn the mechanics. There might be a subtle cue to the boss's body language I didn't see but there's also the issue of the camera in encounters with large enemies.
On the whole though, as frustrating as it may be at times, often there's still an underlying pattern. The only fights I think are explicitly unfair are the ones with adds or multiple enemies that add a lot of uncertainty especially if some are off camera. The twin gargoyle fight comes to mind, as does the Godskin duo where you explicitly have to kill both around the same time or the other respawns.
What are you even talking about? In what way are the controls clunky?
soulslike mechanics probably feel clunky to people that don't really play soulslike. That said a bunch of things totally are clunky like cycling through spells and items which hasn't significantly changed since dark souls, and for people that would rather take their time browsing the items walking while the menu is up is probably pretty jarring. Probably other things. It really has come a long way from demon souls but I honesly kinda prefer the jankiness of the older games.
It's been a while, but I recall most attacks having an obnoxiously long animation, and that animation being set in stone once you trigger it. There is no aborting a sword-swing midway through to dodge or block. And if you make the mistake of pressing the attack button twice, apparently there's a built-in ability queue that can't be disabled, so you have to wait for the first animation to completely play through, then wait again for a second animation to play from start to finish.
It makes it extremely unresponsive. That unresponsiveness seems to be what most folks are talking about when they're applauding the game's "difficulty"... but you could make any game that flavor of difficult by obstructing the controls.
The whole point of the animations being set in stone is to force the player to be mindful of their actions. Don’t commit to an attack unless you’re sure it’s safe to do so. Otherwise you’re going to get caught out.
The slow animations are a deliberate drawback to the more powerful weapons. Being able to swing an UGS around like it’s nothing would make for a fairly unbalanced weapon. If you want a weapon with quicker animations you probably want something more DEX focused. Just look at the Falcion’s animations compared to the Zweihander’s animations in Dark Souls for example. Zweihander puts out bigger damage numbers and thus attacks slower. Pretty basic balancing concept to have thing that does big damage be slower.
The lack of being able to abort moves is simply a way for the game to punish poor decisions. If you get caught out by a slow animation then you probably need to work on picking when to attack. A big part of the game is that it teaches the player through punishing mistakes. That’s why it forces you to commit to actions.
These only come across as clunky if you’re not learning from your mistakes and working around these deliberate limitations. Pick different weapons or pick better moments to attack/use an item so you don’t commit to something at the wrong moment.
The input queue is another thing that lines up with this. I believe the whole point is to, again, push the user into being careful. Dark Souls isn’t a hack and slash like DMC. You don’t want to go into fights button mashing. The game wants you to take your time. The button queue kind of reinforces that by punishing button mashing and being too hasty. I do also find it useful in queuing certain actions like attacking straight out of a roll or following item usage.
All the things you describe as clunky each have a purpose. The game expects you to work with those limitations and when you do you get a better experience. Going against them is when you run into issues. Since youre attempting to doing things the game is trying to discourage. Like button mashing (input queue) and getting too greedy with attacks (Being locked to actions/Longer animations).
I understand the reasoning behind it all, but those design decisions add up to it being clunky. Being intentional and with purpose doesn't change that.
It's one of the most fluid, responsive games I've ever played.
Making you commit to moves when you make them isn't clunky.
What is it?
It's cool if you don't mind the clunk; apparently it's a selling point... but that doesn't mean it's not there.
It's standard practice. In fighting games, monster hunter, and a bunch of other games, really similar rules apply; you hit the button, an animation you know the duration and length of plays. This game has animation canceling, meaning you actually don't have to wait for the return to idle animation to end before you can queue another attack or straight up cancel the animation with another (like a roll or parry). It's literally made less clunky by letting you skip out of these committal attacks.
Your take is uninformed and you obviously don't play much of the genre, ER is extremely generous outside of specific bosses in letting you just hit the roll button repeatedly after every action.
In many cases, yes.
...which makes those games clunky. I disliked monster hunter for the exact same reason.
I don't play much of the genre... because it's clunky. I'm sorry that description offends you.
Lmao, enjoy missing out on the nier titles, the devil may cry series, every fable game, kingdom hearts, the whole god of war franchise, asura's wrath, and the new final fantasies. Hell, even skyrim has more committal animations. You're talking about a lenient and forgiving version of animation mechanics that are present in basically every action RPG.
In the fighting game community at large, we have terms for people who blame the mechanics when they can't come to grips with them, Scrub being the main one (as new players wildly hitting buttons at random on an arcade cabinet looks akin to "scrubbing them clean"). This is you. Your refusal to treat the game as it is, and expectation that it behave a way it doesn't, is confounding to anyone who has put any effort into the title. The rules will not change just because you refuse to learn them. Stay furious though, I guess.
I'll give him that dead spots can be clunky.
But if and only if they're not thoughtful and predictable. When people can count frames and tell you exactly how long a move commits you for every time (with specific gear), that's just well designed.
When did I say I was furious? Or that I couldn't come to grips with the mechanics? Or that I couldn't treat the game as it is? I adapted to ER just fine, and made it to the Malenia fight waiting for the game to rise up to bar the community holds it at. I 'got gud', but the game never actually got fun, cuz it never stopped being clunky.
If you find satisfaction in managing the clunk, more power to ya - clunk away. But it's not my cup of tea.
Idk why folks get so defensive for that game... just in this thread, we've post after post getting all heated about how it's not clunky because [describes how or why it's clunky]. It'd be like the Minecraft community getting up in flames if I said I didn't like it because it's pixelated, and jumping to the defense of their infallible title against such heresy, explaining how it's not pixelated, the aesthetic was chosen on purpose and carefully made that way!! ...vs just advising against playing games that look like Minescraft... because it's pixelated.
Yeah none of those are really on my radar. Fable maybe, for nostalgia sake - played the hell out of the first one when I was in highschool, but haven't touched the franchise since. I don't recall getting the impression that it was clunky in the way ER is, but definitely so in other ways... though I wouldn't hold a game from 2004 up to today's standards; the entire industry was janky as fuck then.
Bruh that's what mods are for, hence my first post here. Don't like something about a game? Change it. Idk if there's one that can mod the clunk out of ER, but if I get the itch to revisit that world via a more fluid combat experience, then that'll be high on the to-do list.
So literally no game avoids you labeling it clunky in or out of its' time bubble. Got it. You are literally the definitive unsatisifiable customer and you're loud about it lmao
Never said that either. Y'all are great at refuting the words you put into my mouth... maybe try a little less strawman?
Maybe you should reread what you wrote.
Maybe you should reevaluate what you projected?
It’s good game design.
If you wanna button mash to victory go play assassins creed lol
Correct design.
Clunkiness is when precise execution doesn't matter. Elden Ring is the polar opposite. The skill ceiling is extremely high as a direct result of how smooth and responsive the mechanics are. It just requires strategy instead of stupidity.
Get the fuck out of here. Absolute troll post.
Post your steam account stats, I dare you.
People are allowed to not like games you like ...
I also find souls likes to feel janky. Elden Ring is playable for me, Dark Souls 3 I just rage quit rather than dealing with its UI.
They have the same UI and flow between each element...
They couldn't even be bothered to report the correct keys if you use anything but an xbox controller or allow custom key binds in Dark Souls 3. I will never understand the praise the Dark Souls 3 PC port got.
They actually do let you rebind most keys, and they do also have a setting that changes the button prompts to keyboard buttons though I recall it being sorta hidden.
This is true. The only game to automatically detect my controller and display the correct buttons without going into a menu to change them in recent memory was Remnant 2. Extremely rare afterthought type quality of life is what we're seeing complaints about now.
Which stats? I put over 100 hours into ER if that's what you're looking for. Like I said, I really wanted to like it, and 'got gud' (learned to time the control's clunkiness) enough to progress a decent way through the game. But it never actually got fun, nor did it live up to the wildly positive feedback it was getting from the gaming community. ER is an okay game. 5/10. It's not bad by any stretch, but it's not the posterchild of a perfect game that it was/is lauded as.