i got the ending in elden ring last night. fia's, specifically-i really liked her, and i hated most of the boss fights i had to do for that quest, so i might not do it again for a long time, lol
this game feels like a culmination of the stuff they've been building since demon's souls, and since that game is coming up on 15 years old it kind of feels like there's not a lot in common between the two of them...which isn't really that true of course, and if anything the team's commitment to weird mystery shines as bright as ever in this game, which is really impressive given not just the state of game design these days but also the fact that i still felt like they could surprise me a lot, given that DS3 is the only one i haven't played at all by now. not that they always got me-by around leyndell i started to feel like most of the "there's going to be a boss/miniboss" ambushes were not very surprising, and in a couple cases i said something like that about two steps before it happened.
i really hated all the hero's graves i went to, the red light green light encounters have never been my favorites and they all just felt so long and frustrating. and most caves were forgettable or only memorable for bad reasons...my favorite is actually the one where just like the bottom 2 floors are just all shallow poison water. out of all the small dungeon types, i thought catacombs tended to be pretty fun, with lots of weird gimmicks or tricks that made me laugh, either because they were just silly and i couldn't believe the commitment to the bit (there's one where the linear route forward is a dead end and you have to go through like 8 invisible walls in a row to reach the switch), or just like, doing something and then realizing i got tricked. got got. something like that. and some of the random platforming and overworld puzzles were really funny for similar reasons. and the main dungeons are really good and intricate, and also hilarious in the way you can really just run through a lot of them if you're in the know
bosses are...well this probably isn't that surprising after what i wrote last time, but i really do feel they're getting pretty overdesigned for the mechanics by now, like they've put a lot of thought into what makes difficult fights (attack speed mixups and long/convoluted combo chains) that can't be cheesed (ranged attacks to prevent people from running and kiting easily while also having good space making options so you don't get so many opportunities to wail on them for free) and then just apply those concepts to basically everything. and even when you get miniboss type enemies who aren't so fully rounded as opponents the game doesn't wait long before pairing them up with somebody else so that they can still just totally fuck you up. it just becomes a little arduous knowing you're inevitably going to have to spend a while just getting used to what everything looks like at the very least, or just get kind of lucky handling a really annoying add, and it means a lot of the boss fights are just like, big slugfests between you and another guy. which i think is why the two super large boss enemies late in the game were probably my favorite bosses, because they felt less like another test-of-your-reflexes duel (even if the second one also has some crazy combos and godlike zoning). especially the one where you can ride the horse
but then the game also has the most powerful and versatile version of the npc summoning systems for boss fights, including a thing i guess lots of people use to literally become twice as powerful when they already have a super-powered build, and tons of strong buffs in general, so it feels really easy to overwhelm a lot of the bosses once you give up on doing them perfectly (however long that takes). i guess this is a good way to give people a very high challenge ceiling while still clearly making things manageable for a broader range of people, but i still feel like it's kind of just...a lot. it's just such a huge game! and that does mean sometimes things are just so easy bc you come back 50 levels too high, but...sometimes things could still be easy. i think
but i still really liked it, and want to play more and figure out more things and try some ideas i had. it's pretty good