Commander Gaius is the worst boss From has ever designed. Radahn is close behind. So many of the bosses just arent fun.

The right way to play is getting stuff, then use the stuff to kill stuff. Ezpz

I found the first crucible knight before Magrit and I upgraded my character to the point I could defeat him, I was obsesed and felt great when I did it, then I found Magrit and maul him in the first try.

I am one of the least talented Souls players. I can't swap strategies mid-fight, I lean hard on crutches like shields and leveling, and I occasionally end up having to look up details like boss resistances/weaknesses. As hard as Elden Ring is, though, the tools the devs included (ashes, weapon arts, magic, etc) and the broad, active wiki community have allowed me to reach all bosses and defeat most (all base game ones, still working on DLC). I adore these games.

Instead of being unbeatable, Souls games make you unkillable. Meaning: If at first you don't succeed? Try, try again.

Awesome sentiment, great script and presentation. Hope your channel grows more and more, man!

Who knew ds2’s biggest stat would be the key to overcoming shadow of the erdtree?? 🤷🏻‍♂️😉

9:47 Best part of the video 😂

Great video!

Well no there Is no right way to play it. Like from soft put all the shit on the game for a reason like if you don't like using it we'll thts one way to pksy it but don't judge anyone who uses the stuff games gives you. It's more so wht is the right way to play for oneself. If you want to use all the shit at your disposal go for it, don't let anyone dictate your experience, but if you feel a sense of regret in killing the boss tht way or a sense of missing out, welcome to the club buddy you are doomed like the rest of us to die to the same boss for hours on end

I cheesed the final boss with Fingerprint Shield and Antspur Rapier at level 125.

I've fought 4 remembering bosses in the dlc. I'm stuck on 1 of them and it's the only one I'd consider unfair. Their attacks are just all over the place and the fire effects make it hard for me to follow. I'm basically just white knuckling it through the whole fight and attacking when I think there's an opening. I'm sure I'll get it but after about 2 hours I don't feel like I'm anywhere closer to beating it.

Being an objective based gamer myself I completely agree with this. It's the reason why I'm not a Pokémon scarlet and violet. You can do anything and go anywhere so I feel lost without directions

I found Maliketh one of the best too. But I didn't find him very difficult, he reminded me of a Bloodborne boss, which is the Souls game I've got the most time in (next to Elden Ring now).

Everyone: "Omg dlc too hard" Me: *Erdtree Bow + Golden Arrow 95% of the enemies in the dlc*

Skeleton boys got me through some tough bosses on my first playthrough 😂

Appreciate your take as a fellow forward thinking gamer. Subscribed 👍

Elden ring enemies don't punish your mistakes they trick you into making them which leaves players feeling cheated, rather than defeated. Two VERY big differences. People like challenge and they accept defeat. They do not like being mind-gamed into dying it does not make them want to try again. I hope fromsoft move away from this style of combat, I've beat all of shadow of the erdtree apart from the last boss and I just cannot bring myself to die 90 times until I eventually perfect the fight. It's too much of a slog.

Dope that you specifically highlight Guard Counters. Its a really powerful slept on mechanic that in my observations the majority of players simply ignore. You get the full posture damage of a fully charged heavy with faster recovery, and you dont even need to risk missing your dodge roll because you can just hold block. Incorporating it into your playstyle can double the amount of posture breaks you get in a given fight.

if the CEO of the game says he uses all the tools the game offer, who are you not to use it too? im perplexed that people frown upon people using spirits or summons. most casuals just wanna get through the game and enjoy it at their pace. not everyone has 5 hours spare to defeat a single boss.

welcome to input read

For me it’s cmdr gaius, I just do not enjoy the ultra tiny windows to punish, and the amount of dodging necessary for a tiny window to poke, really annoying boss fight.

It’s unbelievable how much Fromsoft got right in their very first open world game.

I think if you use spirit summons you might have a harder time in this dlc. It’s objectively true that spirit summons make the game easier, however I was watching some people play and they were having a lot of trouble where I wasn’t because the an element of randomness is introduced when you’re not sure if the boss’s attacks are targeting you or not. I also see people fundamentally unable to calmly control and read inputs when they are facing enemies that do not allow summons. Yes I am in fact a strength build guts greatsword bonk man with a superiority complex 🗿

11:35 and some brainrot knights said that it’s the easiest souls game😭It’s clearly not

The mentality thing is so true. I beat Elden ring and went back through the souls games and I beat Ludwig in bloodborne in 5 attempts. How I beat him was by unlearning Elden ring lol. I had to tell myself, he wont hold his attacks, just dodge when you see him move his hands

I started playing Elden Ring 6 days ago as my second from software game and I gotta say when I get stuck on smthn it's cause I have been under prepared almost every time. Go explore and come back to whatever you're stuck on and use all the game mechanics an it's a breeze tho

Yeah I play it with YT guides on the side. Dark souls doesnt even have this issue, but in Elden Ring there are many moments that made me glad I watched a video vs figuring it out myself.

Do ppl actually care if a basement dweller tells them that they're playing wrong? Just ignore those chronically online ppl

What are you? Casul? Back in my day we just pulled up our gamer girl panties and got gud /j

Its the kind of DLC that needs to be experienced much like the base game. I think people are finding it too hard because theyre rushing into bosses. They dont adapt builds, read item descriptions, they dont explore other solutions, they dont think about the weaknesses of enemies and then they keep dying. Ofc if you play this way you’re going to have a hard time. You need that level 1 mindset.

Play the game in whatever way is most fun for you.

"Pain is temporary, glory lasts forever!" Good video man!

pov: me after trying to hit 2 light attacks on DLC radahn after dodging for 2 mins non stop

I used the NPC summon "Igon" to fight Bayle and it totally changed the way, I look at the game. From a narrative perspective, it made so much more sense for me, because his questline intrigued me so much. His voicelines gave the bossfight a completely different vibe. I liked Malenia and how she gave you space from time to time so you could anticipate her attacks -- the DLC-bosses on the other hand were so fast in their moves that you could barely memorize their moveset imo. Sometimes I can't see the fun in memorizing one attack pattern while dying to it 20+ times, but that's just me. :)) loved the video! Cheers from Switzerland 🤗

I agree, I also set similar basic rules for myself of no summons but pretty much any weapon or skill is fair game (those I still avoid the cheesiest of them) as that’s just what makes the game fun for me now. My 1st playthrough was all magic, all summons, all bleed, etc. etc. and the game was still hard but a blast and I spent hundreds of hours playing that way. Eventually I tried a playthrough with a melee build and found it a different type of challenge that was almost more fun. And then went without summons and just a dagger and parry shield and found that even more challenging and exciting. Now I’m trying to strike a nice balance to keep it challenging and engaging but not missing out on too many of the fun new toys. One thing about spirit summons which is why I am pretty stubborn about not using is that they are basically like a drug. Once you start playing around with them, it’s extremely hard not to binge them and end up fully upgrading your mimic to cheese every slightly difficult encounter and never really experiencing the battles yourself. Bashing the back of a boss’s head while they beat up your summon is just not the elegant dance of trading blows that make these boss battles so fun and unique. IMO of course.

My first playthrough was ROUGH, then i started my second, man did I breeze through. You're so right to call it a mindset change. I think the number one thing is that you need to look up a map or something of the scadutree fragments and get them all, after that defense and stamina are so important. Vigor is still big, but it's shifted. You have to buff yourself, you have to be aware of armor values and defense percentages, and you have to be ontop of your stamina and level it as much as you can. And thrn it just works. If you rely on dodging and blocking in the DLC but don't have the stamina or defense to compete with the faster bosses who do a lot more stamina damage, then you're dead in the water

My satisfaction in these games is using overpowered builds and strats to turn bosses into jokes. The challenge is buildcrafting for me. I don't really care about the integrity of the challenge by not using cheese, although sometimes the demolisher build requires me to use things that take a good amount of skill for a big payoff like parrying for Rellana and Radahn in the new DLC and Pontiff Sulyvahn in DS3.

the game is trying to spoon feed people solutions too, and they still complain about them. You get RoB before the fire giant where it's most useful to finally give a try at bleed; you obtain the mimic at a point when bosses are more serious now and you might need a partner for a coming fight...they even give you spells that are the solutions to problems two meters before said problem shows up to be as thick as possible with the players. You get to first try Golden land in the undergrounds with incredibly far targets to teach you: hey, this can snipe from very far. Have fun. Just to name a few examples that come to mind...

God damn man you beat Sekiro 5 times in 3 days?!?

I much rather prefer sekiro, I know it's really tough but the Perry mechanics doesn't make you feel " powerless" you can just Perry anything.. I don't like any other souls like game... I mean I don't want to come home after work and grind again.

🧀🧀🧀

I've been saying stuff adjacent to this in regards to Elden Ring in general since day one. Margitt already teaches you tha in ER bosses have their own complex behaviour system regarding their moveset. - There's going to be 1-2 attacks that you have to perfectly fit in your s, because if you don't roll at the right time you roll through the first swipe but not the second - Jumping is useful, whether to dodge or to punish with a R2 - R2s are more improtant than they used to be, since it's your primary way to stack posture damage - R1s are more for pinging the boss, as well as ranged options, to keep the posture bar from regenerating and for those short openings where an R2 is just not possible - Sometimes there's not enough downtime to strike, so you HAVE to create your own openings, knowing by heart the boss's combos lets you know when the risk you're taking going in will pan out or not. Attacks being flashy and flowy make it the best defense in some instances where your hitbox becomes just low enough for some attacks. - Positioning is as important as it ever was, but now even more, since all the rest is based upon it, even nailing that risky attack that sometimes trades and sometimes it's free. - Can't stress enough the importance of learning the bosses' moves, but also how they can connect. Part of what makes Malenia so insane is the fact that she spends so little time in her idle pose, she's always chaining a ton of moves in her moveset. And phase 2 increases how she can chain them, and adds new attacks on top. Relanna is a good example. Phase 1 you get guaranteed openings for most attacks except slow ashes of war whenever she does a two-sworder attack. Always. Except that one slow heavy two sword combo. But even that can be punished early with good positioning, you can keep hitting her on the back, exploiting her poor tracking. Phase 2 is the same, but she can chain with her new special moves, the longwinded two sword dance attack, the flame tornado or the carian sword flurry that I never got the hang of even after having beaten her. That, and the speed of certain attacks changes, as well as the fact that she can end a combo or two with an extra move if I'm not mistaken. Then other bosses, like Maliketh, Radagon, Hoarah Lux, Malenia, Placidusax and I'm sure there are others, teach you another important lesson. Sometimes the bosses have a gimmick that's sort of exclusive to them, always justified in lore somehow, always trying to SWITCH IT UP. Like Sekiro did with its myriad minibosses and bosses alike. They tried to introduce factors that switched it up somehow. Maliketh has the deathflame, Radagon has weird teleports mid combo, Hoarah Lux has these wrestling grab attacks that don't look like grab attacks at all and like the worst grab attacks they have a lingering hitbox, along with the strongest version of the ground stomp, Malenia can recover HP, and Placidusax can turn into a storm cloud at will. I think the DLC has more of the same tbh. Each boss for sure has their own gimmick. Even reused ones. EDIT: You said it best. And it sums up what I've been thinking. You have to think of them as enemies. As a puzzle to figure out in in of themselves. You can't apply the rules just the same for them all. This isn't Dark Souls. This is Dark Souls AFTER Sekiro. Each boss with its own thing (or things!) that makes them unique. For instance Bayle the Dread for me felt like a Dark Souls boss. I felt encouraged to roll through everything. Some AoEs are so big and with such short notice that I felt forced to them, because the tell wasn't clear, there wasn't any last second "let's see how fast you react" attacks, it was just timing, like in Dark Souls. I felt compelled to run whenever he did that firebreath at least until I lowered his health enough for it to become predictive, thanks Elden Ring lol. Turns out I had to start running towards him so that his tracking prediction was off when I changed directions. I want to add to your very good assesment, Elden Ring is about adaptability. They want you adapt to the challenge (or more accuately I guess adapt the challenge to your skill) through whatever means necessary. The real "Improvise Adapt Overcome" mentality. And oh boy have I improvised not only with my builds but trying to get in right after attacks with my own so that the boss wouldn't know what him 'em. And boy have I died doing so haha! But I feel like I'm a better Elden Ring player because of it.

It definitely requires a different mindset if you go into the DLC expecting to be satisfied with any kind of lore you find. This was my most anticipated release of 2024 because I was so ready for the lore answers/expansions we would get after learning so much in the lands between. Don’t bother playing if you’re a lore-nut who does nothing but read, this story went from 100 straight to like 5 to me.

Beautiful video

Instead of thinking "what's the roll timing to dodge that attack", I've started thinking "where do I need to be to not get hit by that attack". The final boss of SotE has some insane moves but you can avoid the majority of them by just walking behind or sticking near him

13 minute video of him bragging about himself😂😂

good video but you did not beat sekiro in 3 days foh

Well said.

I would love to hear you do more long form podcast style stuff, your videos are so good to just throw on in the background while I play the game