"Added new feature to summon spectral steed during the Elden Beast battle" Patch notes 1.12

43:03 "I stumbled upon Siofra" with 5 giant arrows sticking out of his body was hilariously relatable.

Not only did they add the horse to the Elden Beast, almost every criticism he had for the base game is back for the DLC.

Considering what you said in this video, I feel like your review of Shadow of the Erdtree will be very angry and very entertaining.

Oh my God it's 2024 already, we have been blessed

"You can blissfully loot things while on horseback, and I hope whoever pushed for that at From gets a statue in the lobby.. of themselves.. on HORSEBACK.. PICKING. UP. THEIR. CROWN." Absolutely amazing work and I completely agree.

I SUFFERED WITH THE ELDEN BEAST LIKE 1000 TIMES AND NOW THEY DECIDED TO PUT TORRENT 💀💀 fromsoft what the fuck, you should have done that 2 years ago

This dude explained why Shadow of the Erdtree kinda sucks two years before it came out

The way they made the map seem like the full map is exactly how I always said they should do maps. The true journey of discovery, not knowing how much more is out there is amazing!

"Why doesn't she attack the air in front of her to heal as well" This definitely didn't age well lmao

I cannot explain how far my jaw dropped when I opened that transportation chest in the weeping peninsula and got teleported to the very north side of the map…

It took From 2 and a half years to make the horse playable for a boss fight in a big empty room. Truly the best video game developers of all-time.

RETURN OF THE KING

"Why doesn't she just attack the air in front of her?" AS OF PATCH 1.04 SHE DOES

this aged well

This man is going to have a FIELD day on the DLC the final boss of the DLC is a re use and he's on roids man and you can't punish him because he never stops his combos

I love that whenever Joseph shows a chest in-game, he first hits it with his sword, because the distrust the other Souls games sowed runs deep.

No way. 2 years Joseph, and we get an elden ring video? Man I'm just happy that you're back

Funnily enough, the most fun I’ve had with Elden Ring was on a NG+ “speedrun” I did. The goal was to just hit the bosses and finish the storyline as quickly as possible (I’m not actually a speed runner with actual strats. Just a man who ran to the next boss as soon as the previous one was defeated). I had a great time because I essentially ran from legacy dungeon to legacy dungeon with a character that had everything they needed. No exploration or side tracking was required. No wading through random locations. It was great fun because it gave me the cream from the top of what the game had to offer.

1:35:18 They finally did it, you can now summon Torrent for the fight against Elden Beast. This is the first video I thought of after seeing the update, I can't believe it took them this long to implement...

Getting teleported to Caelid was one of the scariest moments I've had in gaming, and getting teleported to Leyndell was one of the most astounding.

It's funny how apologetic Joseph gets whenever he goes off-script, like we're gonna crucify him if he says a certain amount of words that aren't on the video script that we'll never see

more relevant than ever

Something that genuinely upsets me about the fan base for these games is that they conflate "doable" with "good" in terms of game design. Yeah, sure, you *can* do a full no-hit run of the game, but that doesn't mean it's *good.* I love the game, played through it again just because I saw a friend playing it. The community just seems so horrifyingly allergic to criticism. Criticize Malenia? Well *I* beat her at level 1 after dozens of hours of attempts, so that means there's absolutely nothing wrong with her fight. It's a dick measuring contest at this point, and any criticism just means that yours isn't big enough.

Finally, a new video to rewatch 8 times over in the next 6 months :)

When he said “lack of punishable attacks”… I felt that.

“Elden beast is the worst final fight in this series” Looks like fromsoft took that as a challenge lol

You must feel so vindicated after the update today lol

I would have much preferred if Elden Beast was tied to a secret ending, much like Moon Presence in Bloodborne. That way players can be rewarded for exploring and getting a final surprise as they end their game. As well as making Radagon a proper final boss, because as much as I agreed with your problems with him, I think that he's still a really good boss to end the game on.

“I finally finished Noah’s 5-hour Dark Souls essay, now I can go outside” How naive I was.

They actually added the horse to the final boss. Madlad joseph

They added Torrent to Elden beast. You were right

This would explain why my favorite boss fight would be Godfrey, he felt like a Ds3 boss and had the simple and easy to punish movement to boot. (Edit: this comment now irrelevant after patch)

If eldin ring had one more tree spirit only then would i call it a masterpiece

I rushed here to say that in the new patch they added using horse in elden beast fight

Absolute torrent of Torrent being usable in the final boss room now comments, you love to see it.

"Why doesn't she attack the air to heal as well?" prophetic lmao

I realized that we basically had Sekiro bosses but we were limited to a Souls style moveset when I saw a meme on the subreddit that asked "Who would win: Wolf or Malenia". I thought about it for a sec and came to the fairly obvious conclusion that it would be Wolf simply because he could just deflect and contact poison himself to victory... Somebody seems to have misunderstood that the design of the bosses needs to fit with what we're capable of as the player.

THEY ENABLED TORRENT IN THE ELDEN BEAST FIGHT LMAO

My main problem with this game is that I dread replaying it. I get excited once every twelve months to sink my teeth back into bloodborne or Demon Souls, Dark Souls 1-3. Once conquered these games can be enjoyed in bitesized portions, or if you’ve been replaying for a while like me, you can finish them in a couple of days. Elden Ring is just incredibly time consuming. And unfortunately a lot of that time is spent on a mixed bag of stuff that doesn’t quite work.

I'd be surprised if it isn't revealed some day that Malenia's moveset was originally designed for a Sekiro DLC boss (maybe Tomoe?): --- She wields a katana, moves around insanely quick, almost exclusively has sword-based moves (like most human Sekiro bosses), and has visually stunning attacks that straight up would be fun to deflect in Sekiro and would complement that game's mechanics (as mentioned in the video) --- Her healing from blocking makes way more sense in Sekiro, as it would be a way to punish bad deflection timing, making her an ultimate challenge that requires complete mastery of deflection --- A lot of people have pointed out how she mirrors Wolf in many ways, wielding a katana, having a form of rot, having a prosthetic arm, and even being able to resurrect once (!!!). Malenias die twice, indeed --- There is dialogue in Sekiro implying that Tomoe is in some way connected to a dragonrot outbreak, further connecting her to Malenia in my tinfoil hat world as a mirror version of Wolf --- Not unique to Sekiro, but she does have all the attack types that define the combat of that game, including: sweeps that could be jump countered, stabs that could be mikiri countered, and of course a brutal grab that'll mess your day up. The second phase attack where those ghostly beings attack you, would be fun to learn to deflect before mikiri countering Malenias follow-up stab Data mining has revealed that the version of waterfowl we got in the final game was likely one of the last moves made for the fight. Before that, it appears she had a different version where she danced on the ground and covered much less distance. It appears they went out of their way to make waterfowl the most oppressive, unfun attack in the entire series. Boggles the mind. On the topic of Elden Beast, Joseph definitely nailed it. Why can we not ride Torrent? It not only makes sense from a gameplay perspective, but also from a thematic one. Here we are, at the final challenge, conquering it together with our steed who has been at our side all along (insert Ludwig neighs). We were able to take on Radagon alone, but to defeat the ultimate being in the lands between, we need our trusty companion, almost as if both Melina and Ranni knew we would have no chance of becoming Elden Lord without Torrent. And of course, almost all of Elden Beast's moves seem to be designed around horse combat, including: --- Tracking projectiles that can be outrun on horseback (fear the orb) --- Sweeping attacks and long range sweeping beams that can be jumped over --- The holy elden rings that you're meant to jump over, but can't dodge through (as if the attack was designed for a horse that can't dodge) --- Large AoEs that could be fun to ride away from on horseback --- The boss moving around a huge arena, meaning you have to chase after it on horseback, as you've done countless times against the game's dragons Truly only leaves two explanations. 1: As proposed in the video, Daenerys -- er, I mean, the devs kinda forgot about Torrent. 2: At one point in development they tested the fight without Torrent and thought the added (albeit unfun) challenge enhanced the fight and scrapped the idea of using Torrent, even though the boss was designed around this. Hopefully it's option 1, as 2 makes my blood boil.

0:00 Intro 2:15 World level design 21:30 THE NEGATIVE 23:05 recycled content 27:20 Boring shire style dungeons 35:03 disappointing rewards 42:10 lack of Level Scaling 46:56 late games Bosses design 1:14:14 misc negatives 1:27:57 misc 1:38:18 Conclusion

The bosses look like they're having more fun than I am with their mobility and 10 hit combos.

we have been vindicated, Elden Slop patched in the horse

Certainly wasn't expecting another video before witcher 3, can't wait to watch!

I love how even though there are no mimic in this game, he NEVER not hitting a chest before opening it. The sen fortress ptsd is real

2 years later, they added the horse now lol

afaict the lack of indication about what is/isn't jumpable (and surprises resulting from it) is because attacks aren't coded as jumpable or not, but rather that jumping gives you specifically lower-body invincibility. Which sort of works on paper, but means there's a lot of fuzzy edges about exactly how high an attack's hitbox reaches and where you are in your jump arc.

“Lack of punishable attacks” this was it. This nailed it on the head

I like how he beat Dark Souls 3 with the slowest weapon he could find out of spite.

And shadow of the erd tree has managed to feel samey even before im half way through

30:00 The first dragon fight was the best boss fight experience in the game for me. Playing for the first time, I died like 10 times trying to own that dragon, but I was still coming back to try again. Like you said, it was an epic movie scene.

"Bosses in Elden ring will do anime acrobatics for a whole episode including attack chains that involve them taking off into the air, landing into an attack that explodes, and then taking off again into the air, because they're still not done." LOL This describes my experience playing the game so well.

“If you’re having fun, your playing the game right.” Thank you I feel like a lot of people forget that’s the main reason we game. To have fun.

1:35:19 HE WAS RIGHT

One of my favorite moments in DS3 was when a boss did it's big explosive/combo attack and when the attack was finished and I had dodged it properly or survived it, the game rewarded me with a big enough window for me to punish. Best examples are vordt's breath attack, demon prince's laser attack and most notably midir's breath attack, who would be weakened after it. It felt really awesome and rewarding, and going into elden ring I expected some variation of that in a more epic scale, but no. Bosses like Maliketh, Malenia, Placidusax and Elden beast have these flashy big moves they can do, but your reward for dodging them is more combo attacks the second the big attack is over. There is no room for punishment and for me it not only ruined that attack but the boss fight in general. They had done it masterfully in DS3 which is such a shame because we could have had it in elden ring as well.

I love this game but wholeheartedly agree with your criticisms about the endgame bosses. A lot of them felt very haphazard and in need of rebalancing. Constantly waiting for massive unpredictable, hard to read combos to end over & over to MAYBE get a hit in just wasn't fun for me, especially when they can kill you in a couple of hits. Summons made things more manageable and 'difficulty' is a different, subjective experience for every player, but personally I kinda missed the good old 1v1 tough but fair endgame boss fights from Dark Souls 3.

Torrent for elden beast actually makes so much sense and would have made elden beast a fun fight

Revisiting this video after the DLC released, and nearly all of the major bosses feature the issues laid out here to some extent. Absurdly long combos, lack of retaliation windows to attack or heal, unnecessary fluff like status ailments and AOE's that feel artificial in their inclusion. With the inclusion of the Revered Spirit Ash's, it feels like From Software fully expects players to use summons. I feel like I'm being punished for respecting the game's combat system by playing solo and without a fancy weapon.

I will cry real tears if Joseph ever makes a proper video on outer wilds, the best game of all time

Absolutely agree that the horse was meant to be used against the elden beast, first thing I did when I got into the room was try to summon torrent.

Back again to commemorate Torrent being added to Elden Beast fight. Joe was right.

1:35:28 YOU CAN NOW SUMMON TORRENT FINALLY

I feel so validated that someone else is actually criticizing the "boss does 15 moves while I roll-dodge over and over and once they're done I have no stamina to attack". It was the most infuriating on Maliketh because after his insane Devil May Cry Bitchin' 10x in-air combo, he lands 50 feet away and is back to attacking by the time you reach him. So many late-game bosses just made me ask "is it my turn yet?"

I agree with the movesets of the bosses being excessive. They aren't unconquerable, they aren't even totally difficult to dodge or outright avoid, but they are absolutely excessive. Their windups are unclear at best, downright impossible to read at worse, and they often inflict unavoidable damage to you despite your best efforts in rolling and reading their acts. A perfect analogy I have for this is that boss fights are more like a mugging then a proper duel in Elden Ring. Either the boss is mugging you, or you're mugging the boss.

HE WAS RIGHT LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO THE HORSE IS HERE

It's really funny how much I agree with this review even after my 5th playthough. I know its a good game, and my first playthrough was amazing but after that all that stands out is how bad the bosses are, and maybe even combat in general. Sometimes I wonder if I even like this game but I knew I DID...anyways basically... JOE COME BACK REVIEW THE DLC I MISS YOUR CONTENT :d

I think the issue with the bs movesets from the bosses always lead to me barely ever leaving a bossfight feeling accomplished. In the back of my mind I always had the feeling that I only won that fight because I got lucky and didnt get too many unfair moves thrown at me.

He did it. The madlad actually did it.

I know Joe is going to play through the new DLC at some point. I can't wait to hear his thoughts. "Yo dawg we heard that elden ring was too easy so we did more stuff." We added hyper aggressive 1-3 shot bosses. Camera bosses are back. You like boring fights so here's fire golems that fall down after 10 years and you have to do it twice and there's a bunch of them. Tree fragments you gotta collect them or stay being 1-3 shot. (Mostly 1 though as you go further get them idiot or just don't get hit lmao.) F R A M E D R O P S are back. (I never got any in Elden ring after the patches but I get them in this DLC especially around Renellas castle.) Recycled dragons? RECYCLED DRAGONS YAY! You hated falling star beast in the mines? BOYS UNLEASH THE GOLD HIPPO! You wanted sekiro? Messmer and the last boss have you covered. DLC is still good but man it does have some pretty low points. I will each give it each encounter a fair shake until the bullshit gets me then I do whatever to get on to other content that might not be bullshit.

I know this is a year old but I still have one point. I agree with almost everything you say, besides that. When you started using magic and summons in your 2nd playthrough, you started to wonder if this is the intended experience and everything else is just an artificial challenge you impose to yourself such as a fist only run. And I think, the way you described to play your first run through these games is kind of that. If you damage the enemy, you must be exposed to the risk of taking damage yourself and so on. Which pretty much boils down to a meelee only run. And with the amount of tools you have at your disposal (while still ignoring summons and cheesy magic strats) limiting yourself to only melee is making things harder than they actually are. And what I mean is that I think the game WANTS you to go hybrid in some way towards the end of the game. Not full on glass cannon that never gets near the enemy. But giving you more options against what this game throws at you. You start to reach soft caps and weapon upgrades and the last part of the game has that difficulty spike, that even through spending more points into whatever you've been putting them all along doesn't make you that much stronger against what you're facing. You don't need to abandon a melee focussed action/reaction heavy playstyle to incorporate some options into your build. You said it yourself that some bosses practically ask for you to use spells from afar. And yes it does get boring when that is the only thing you do. But there is so much else that you can be doing while still trying to do melee as much as possible. Figuring out what status a boss might be weak to and using consumables to inflict that status to aid you in your melee fight. This would admittedly be better if the game made it easier to upgrade a lot of different weapons or refund the upgrades you invested into one, so you can experiment more with different weapons, or have one for each element/status. Still I think there is a lot you can incorporate into a melee focussed build such as items or ocassional use of spells or ranged weapons for situations that almost require it.

Your videos always have very valid critiques of things that don’t really proportionately ruin the same experience for me but I still love how these still manage to bring me down to earth

I knew he'd bring up the ringed city at some point. When I was playing through the capital I was thinking "damn, Joseph probably loves this".

He killed Rykard without the gimmick weapon. Good lord

People say to git gud but playing normally isnt what most of these people actually do lol, in dark souls things are reactable, Elden ring plays tricks like unrollable moves (Waterfowl dance kills you if you're close when malenia decides to use it). "get off me" moves like Niall's unavoidable blizzard persistent hitbox circle when up close, Excessive attack + dodging like Maliketh, etc. Not every boss is like that, but many of the required ones are. I'd say Godrick and Rahdahn are fair, Radahn is literally meant to be a raid boss. Thing is Radahn is the most important lesson for the latter half of the game which highlights the problem. If you do NOT CHEESE radahn with a high damage strategy and go sword/board on him or later bosses, each one will be long, boring and excessively against your favor. So what does the game teach the player? It teaches them to respec to a bleed build.

The way you described the boss combos and punish windows was so spot on.

Just a note on 19:40: there's actually a fourth way to reach the plateau, I think I've seen a few speedrunners use it but beyond that it's extremely obscure. If you get to the Erdtree roots via Nokron, beat Fia's Champions you can then take the teleporter straight into the capital proper. I loved this sort of thing about the original Dark Souls and it's great that it's back. EDIT: There's a FIFTH way. If you take the tower trap teleporter to the capital, usually there's no way down as the elevator is locked. Thing is, it turns out that an invader *can* activate the elevator for you. Requires either luck or a friend. Probably unintentional, but it makes use of regular game mechanics rather than any glitch so I'd call it valid.

This game is the best, longest, most diverse, hardest game from software has ever made. It is also the worst, shortest, most repetitive and easiest game they have made

I took note of your praise for Outer Wilds when watching this years ago. Hearing it compared to Ds1 in that you wished you could forget everything and experience it again for the first time was perhaps the best praise possible, and all I needed to hear. Took me years to finally get around to it, and now I feel a profound need to return and thank you

The observation about the "natural" world being built on ruins struck me too. Mostly because by the endgame I had noticed that almost all the lifts in the game are rising pillars instead of platforms. This is unusual among from soft games. The column lifts in cylindrical shafts gave me the distinct impression of machine pistons rising from deeper machinery.

Glad some one noticed the extremely odd feeling of the combat of this game. Some times I'm blown away by how the hit boxes are so spot on, but have been killed many a times through walls or other "solid" objects because the enemies weapon is just so large it clips thru every thing. The game needs to make it that all weapons, enemies, abilities and magic respect the rules that the player is forced to. Nothing more jarring when an enemy is pushed by a cliff but some how just hover on the ledge so they don't fall. Also fuck crucible knights

I’ve beaten this game like 3 times now, and I’m working on my fourth. And this video explains every gripe I’ve had with the game perfectly.

1:14:45 - After the Elden Ring Poise video from Illusory Wall it's actually worse than not taking "stagger" damage. Malenia will just ignore being in the negative sometimes.

It took him 2 years to review a game that came out 2 months ago.... That's what I call dedication. WELCOME BACK!

I cannot express enough how much I love the idea of one of the caravans being a surprise mimic boss fight and how disappointed I am it's not a thing the moment I heard Joe suggest it.

I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I read somewhere that because both Sekiro and Elden Ring were largely in development at the same time, they didn't have enough time to implement a lot of the lessons they learned from Sekiro. Which might be why the combat feels all over the place.

in Dark Souls, you feel strong enough to survive a fight. in Bloodborne, the enemies feel strong enough to be a fight.

Playing Elden RIng makes me second guess the immense enjoyment I felt when playing Dark Souls 1 and 3. Those games' bosses definitely challenged me, yet I don't remember having to earn a degree in their combos just to land a single hit like in Elden Ring.

As a huge FromSoft fan, I am very glad I'm not the only one that took huge issue with Elden Ring's boss design.

Here 10 hours after the dlc has dropped to say, Joseph is gonna hate the DLC, they have doubled down on the terrible boss design, good luck out there

Dawm the DLC really proving this video right Edit: I will say tho, it does seem they learned and improved from base game in some bosses. Messmer has some wild attacks, that animation wise seem undodgeable like Waterfowl, but it actually is very and easily dodgeable. So they keep the spectacle but the attack is actually different to what you see so it can be fair. I was also surprised that he is hyper agressive, yet has a lot of punish windows and isn't always instantly trying to punish you when you heal.

When the world didn't need him most, he returned Without Witcher 3

Elden Ring Bosses felt like their 'vulnerable' animations and 'attacking' animations were completely separate. And random. if i were unlucky, i would get attacking animation after animation without any vulnerable state. With some trys being almost a cakewalk while others felt insanely relentless.

Now that I've watched it at least five times I have to say this is your best video for me, hope you'll do one about the dlc

Joseph has said "Head On" so many times now with such strong inflection that I am starting to think that he's gaslighting me into having the ad stuck in my head again. You know the one.

Ain't no way he disappears 2/3rds through a series and comes back on an elden ring video and in 14 hours he's top 24 on gaming. Legendary

I still don't believe this is real and it's an April Fools joke.

regardless of the future thank you for your videos bro whatever you do thank you fr

1:12:26 "Do you know what this means as a player, FromSoft!?!" 😂😂😂

When he said that this game made him felt like his play style was playing the game wrong, I lost it. I literally was explaining the same thing in almost the same exact words to a friend last night. Also I have realized that he and I have very similar play styles.