The Lost Soul Arts of Demon's Souls
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- čas přidán 21. 06. 2017
- Some thoughts on the merits of Demon's Souls.
Patreon: / matthewmatosis
Sources:
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Demon’s Souls was considered a failure internally.
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Bosses were designed to be different.
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Player feedback helps drive the series. - Hry
What I want back from demon souls is being able to climb 3 foot ledges again.
And jumping a ledge one time in the whole game.
Lazy Veteran have you heard of dark souls 3
Lazy Veteran I was replying to YOU, in regards to your comment on poise. Jesus Christ
@Lazy Veteran why are you so angry? It's not healthy to be so aggressive. Do you need someone to talk to?
now we got jumping anywhere
I love this line: "Games are more interesting when they're unshackled by expectations of a narrow-minded fan-base or the financial whims of a publisher."
I agree and I am especially exasperated with fan-bases. "Narrow-minded" hits it on the nose.
Floppy so true
Floppy Indeed. The fanbase ends up being the game's worst enemy, ironically enough.
Man I just want a Sonic game that understands what made the series good: 3D gameplay and lots of edgy characters. Is that too much to ask?
Tell me about it, man. No warping from the beginning and the interconnected world is what made Dark Souls 1 so special, but you wouldn't believe the number of people that prefer fast travel from the very beginning just because it's more convenient.
Narrow-sided is right, yeah. They don't see how immersion and the sense of adventure gets so much better with no warping allowed until the Lordvessel.
I wounder if they will ever do blue sentinels right
"The most reasonable line of thought is that the arrow will have a certain amount of travel-time, so if you change direction after you hear the shot you'll be safe. Wrong. The arrow magically curves in mid-air because this is no longer a series where you outsmart your opponent; it's a series where you press the roll button at the right time."
A perfect thesis statement, reduced to three succinct sentences.
Now every nearly every archer character in this Elden Ring has arrows that literally curve in a way you can see
you can stop the arrows by talking to the guy who shoots them, but of course he didn't mention it since it wouldn't fit to his narrative
@@ehrtdaz7186 It's easy to see how that's a contrived solution, though, much like the curving arrows are a contrived means to make that section challenging.
@@siphillis what?
@@ehrtdaz7186 You have to run through that area before you can talk to him. But even if you didn't have to, it wouldn't invalidate the point, which is that something that should work (feinting to throw off aim) doesn't actually work. IIRC though, even as far back as Dark Souls 1 there were physics-bending arrows, most notably the famous Anor Londo archers.
"It seems to me that the actual origin of the series has actually been forgotten"-Matthewmatosis refrerring to Demon's Souls
*Cries in Kings Field II*
not the same series
@@BinaryDood Well a bunch of people call it the "first Souls game". Because there are surprisingly many similarities. But yes technically not.
@@BinaryDood And you could still say that Kings Field 2 is the "origin" of the "Souls series" as many ideas that ended up in Demon's Souls and subsequently other "souls games" came from Kings Field II or at least were likely inspired by it.
@@sirexilon49 really stretching the meaning of "series" there. But I see your point. Thought I can't call Symphony of the Night part of the Metroid Series because it uses the same map. Or Bioshock apart of the System Shock series because it uses the same... everything. Really, series has less to do with the contents and more to do with the perception.
@@sirexilon49 and then there is the inspiration of the king's field series itself called ultima underworld the stygian abyss which received a psx remake in japan...
edit: As for symphony itself it's gameplay is a remake of Simon's Quest and the original Vampire Killer for MSX
I kinda feel it's disappointing how Demon's, in a way, has retroactively been thought of as a Dark Souls Prototype.
It's sad, especially considering Demon's Souls did a few things better.
100% correct. It’s a shame.
Cause it is, dark souls was suppose to be the original. Demon souls was a test to see what works so in that regard it's basically a released alpha of dark souls 1. Everything after dark souls 1 went down hill. I do not agree with what he said about bosses in ds1 defensive mechanics. Shields are still more than viable and parrying gwen is possibly the best way to beat him so he is wrong here.
@LeadFaun dark souls 2 was a content packed game but was a mess. Bloodborne I love but not as an RPG just a action game. Alot of stuff in there is pointless honestly, you can LITTERALLY start the game with the strongest weapon and never need anything else. R1 is the best way to play, you don't need to party, back stab is complicated for no reason, shield is garbage I mean it's basic at best but I love the atmosphere. Dark souls 3 is nothing but phase 2s that you expect the ENTIRE TIME with no creative freedom or creativity in different builds. Demon souls is one of the worst in the series but it's unique and I think dark souls 1 blew up for all the right reasons and demon souls did not for all the right reasons
@LeadFaun that makes it unusable bro. That's like giving someone a gun but they can't shot it until they are up close. Why would I wait till I knock him out before I can back stab em? That's ruining your chances and you have to really give up on your beliefs at that point. Just cause he found it as an improvement doesn't mean we all do and obviously not from soft sense it's simple change and it still didn't come back. Might as well not had it at all by that point. You litterally sit there charging up something behind some on then you get to stab em smh a better fix would be to not allow back stabs if someone was moving. This would make it so they have to have been in recovery frames or unaware of the person behind them. If not that just remove it entirely and just do parrying only or just reduce backstab damage to a normal heavy damage
This is why I hope Miyazaki is working on something new and surprising.
Same here.
one can only hope, but from the gameplay shown of the new game its just anime darksouls
That's not a fromsoft game
Bandai Namco is developing Code Vein in house, because it seems that From Soft is not currently developing a souls game. A while ago it was confirmed they were working on Armored Core 6, I'd be incredibly happy if Miyazaki were the director, since his last foray was a very new direction for the series. I don't know how everybody else feels about that though, I imagine most don't wanna play a mech game.
ISneezeRazorBlades They are working on 3 games at once. One is armored core, another is a traditional souls game and one is "something weird"
There is one unforgiving thing from Demon's Souls: we can't wear the Penetrator armor
omg yes
Armors designed to appear on massive imposing bosses have no business being available for the player
You're not as cool as Ornstein when you wear his set, you look like an ugly midget
Nautilus makes the art more revered
IKR I'd kill for that set even just for fashion souls!!!! T.T
@@nautilus2612 same for all the artorias running around lol
Demon's souls bosses work so well because they seem to be designed concept first. Probably as a result of it being the first game in a new series where they weren't always sure what the final gameplay could be like. You can reduce almost every boss down to an abstraction of what it's like to fight them and you find that concept works almost anywhere. This a list of demons souls boss concepts, but imagine I'm describing a D&D encounter or even a scene from a movie instead of a video game.
>a blind giant that needs to use sound to find the hero
>a large creature protected by a swarm of smaller versions of itself, with the twist being that the big one is actually helpless on it's own
>a flying creature that takes almost fighter jet like strafing runs at the hero
>a 25 foot tall suit of armor held together by magic essence which can be made to leak out of the suit by opening up the armor in it's thinnest areas
Notice how almost every boss in demon's can be beaten, in a wholly practical sense without rolling. Demon's can be beaten by a normal player without using a single invincibility frame. Compare that to so many later bosses that do some big string of attacks only when you're close enough that you can't just run out of the way, and worse yet the only thing that makes them unique from the last guy is what that string looks like.
Yeah it feels like there's a samey element to a lot of boss fights in later games. There are no clever tricks or unique strategies for beating a lot of those bosses in the newer games.
It does seem like some of the bosses in Demon's Souls were designed with more of a D & D mindset.
@@asiamatron If you are talking Old School D&D, then yes.
It’s funny because the Souls series has pretty much turned into what D&D is now. Elden Ring is basically 5e at this point. There is no real strategy to it.
@@theatheistbear3117 Yeah sure looks that way.
@@asiamatron It’s funny that both franchises went into the same route. They kept the same basics but didn’t equate that the game they were making was completely different.
@@theatheistbear3117 Yeah that happens sometimes. Both franchises are so different but took the same route.
I keep my ps3 literally only for Demon's Souls, was just such a masterpiece.
Just got a ps3 just to play DeS =P only reason to get one afaik ( happy to be proven wrong)
@@sf3testvids Red Dead Redemption is a good reason for purchasing it as well
I have it on disc for my ps3 but I wish the servers were still online. Good thing there's private servers. Just sucks cause i dont have Wi-Fi.
If you have a good pc it's fully emulatable now
I got a PS4 just to get Bloodborne. First game I've played in the series, it was amazing.
This is my favorite mattosis video
Up untill this video I enjoyed his manner of speaking more than i found his ideas exhilarating, but here matthew quickly and efficiantly explains something that no one before him has put so well into words or even adressed to my knowledge. The editing is better, and the delivery is genuine, and the manner of writing is as great as ever.
Good job man.
Yeah this is definitely one of his best videos. I'm always glad to see him look at a game nobody else has, or a new angle on a game everyone knows (that's why I love his "Abe's Odyssey" video). I've seen many people make similar criticisms of the Souls series but never with the context provided by DeS.
I agree. I typically agree with mathewmatosis, but mostly because he's explicitly stating things I already think and examined myself. This video legitimately brought up concepts and criticisms I have never really considered to such a degree. As someone entrenched in game design as a passion, this type of experience of being completely thrown and surprised is uncommon. Most people reiterate the same sort of game design philosophies. Which is fine as those standards were set for a reason, but it does mean that conversations can become stale when you have heard those opinions already or you have examined those things yourself. This video has given me a lot to think about from a design perspective.
Exactly how I feel! He's just got a good delivery and pace here. Plus it's bite-sized compared to other videos. Well done on everything.
The thing about improvements not being carried over game to game starts to make a lot more sense when you remember that all these games have had overlapping development cycles.
And some of them different publishers, with potentially varying levels of ownership over IP and software implementation
@@MikePatterson8831 Bandai-Namco has got to be a big part of the problem at this point. The games made under Sony and Activision publishing (Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro) are far more cohesive and consistent than the Bamco-published ones (Dark Souls 1/2/3 and Elden Ring).
This is now all more relevant due to the DeS remake and how people want changes in it to streamline it and make it closer to Dark Souls.
tbf I think that if they made some changes to Grass, it could really improve the game. Also, I think that the visual changes are overall pretty great, excluding Flamelurker. That being said, if they change World Tendency too drastically or change really anything regarding level/enemy design, it would change the experience too much for me.
@@edgali I also thought vanguard looked pretty generic. The original felt like an eastern interpretation of a western demon. Whereas the remake just looks like western demon.
@@JKSmith-qs2ii Now that the game is out we can see how "western" the game became. The fat officials and vanguard being the biggest changes. Stockpile Thomas now looks like a total wanker.
we simply wanted 6th archstone cause it was initially intended to be in the game but it was removed due to low budget
@@digitalintent in the original he looked like a aging, but still somewhat young father/husband. In the remake he looks like James Corden wearing a shitty fake moustache. Facial movements are also extremely unsettling.
This mad lad bodied Elden Ring 4 years before it existed.
So is the game a disappointment? I didn’t buy it because I really didn’t want another medieval fantasy game from FromSoft anyways. I was very satisfied with that ending with Dark Souls 3 six years ago.
@@SaberRexZealot Someone else on here said "peak 6/10" and I'm inclined to agree. It's probably better than a lot of games in its genre, but I fucking hate open-world games and it was NOT able to overcome that for me, so yeah. Haven't been this disappointed by a game since Xenoblade Chronicles X.
I think if I'd waited til the game was on sale for like half off and we'd gotten past the point where the entire internet was gushing about it simultaneously, I wouldn't feel nearly as bad about my purchase.
I also think that if it were back at the start of the pandemic, where I didn't have a job, unemployment was good, and I had absolutely no social obligations or artistic aspirations, it would be a perfectly acceptable way to keep my hands occupied while I watched youtube videos on a separate monitor. I've spent a lot of time doing just that with other, worse games (MGSV and FFXV come to mind). But I also don't really remember my experience with those games fondly, and it's sad to think of FromSoft making a "podcast game" as opposed to something that actually engaged me.
@@SaberRexZealot It's pretty much what everyone expected, Dark Souls 3 but open world. It's not bad by any means but I am kind of baffled by the immense praise it's getting. It's like... come on guys, we all played this game years ago. Back then the areas were connected by a hub world or in a sort of Metroidvania style rather than by big open fields, but otherwise it's the same thing.
@@SaberRexZealot you were listening to the video, right? it's basically the same old and more of it, as well as, a "roll at the right time to win" simulator.
This would be fine by me, but where I think FromSoftware dropped the ball is on Matthew's criticism of the combat forgetting the improvements of the past, like, locking Rallying behind a great rune, or forgetting that Trick weapons ever existed, or magic still being very much a glass cannon build, ranged and defensive builds being very limited compared to melee combat, or other stuff like this, as well as the combat needing to grow and evolve with the times, instead of remaining largely the same as it was in 2009, with only something as simple as a weapon art added in that really wasn't even that good or utilized that well.
This is an especially big problem because of them trying to reach more challenging aspects and the way this game formula is going, it's heading straight into a wall, they're going to eventually reach a breaking point because that difficulty has a limit and that limit is called the human limit, ie, what most humans are theoretically capable of.
Didn't think I'd see my favorite Arc The Lad reviewer here. It's amazing how well a lot of these points apply to Elden Ring.
Despite this video being so melancholic, it's nice to come back to after each new "Soulsbourne" release just to remind myself I haven't gone mad.
Exactly the same. This video has so much to think about despite being pretty short
Elden Ring is their most soulless game yet
@@arisumego agree. I’d rather play DS2 no cap
Ah, yes. Confirmation bias. The best form of objective reasoning. I too only search for things that agree with my viewpoint instead of realizing it is me that has different taste.
@@bin5803 lmao good job what a man of reason and cleverness you are
The worst thing that happened to these games, is the removal of any psychological elements to their gameplay. No fast travel in Dark Souls 1 was an inconvenience, but it was worth the tradeoff, because it furthered the immersion of the player. The world felt very dangerous, getting into a new, unfamiliar area was legitimately frightening. You are getting further and further away from home (Firelink Shrine). How are you going to go back? It is scary. This really forced you to map out the world in your head and use the environment as guidance as to where to go. Eventually you knew Lordran like the back of your hand. When you got back to Firelink Shrine after a big adventure in Blighttown or the Catacombs, it was an incredible sense of relief that simply cannot be replicated when there is fast travel. In the later games, especially in Dark Souls 3 just the abundance of bonfires completely destroys this sense of danger the world had before.
In Demon's Souls the health reduction mechanic was not simply there to screw over the players. It was there to evoke a sense of dread and tension in the player. If you were in human form in the world, it was genuinely dangerous and nerve-wrecking. It really incentivized you to play carefully, because you were actually afraid to die, because death had serious consequences. (ruining the world tendency, making the game harder and harder, locking yourself out of Pure White Tendency items, questlines and more). In contrast Dark Souls 2 completely missed the point on this, and the hollowing mechanic is simply there to make the game harder because you lose some maximum health after death. Also all of that can just be solved by popping another Human Effigy which is way easier to come by than in Demon's Souls, and it didn't even solve the problem in Demon's Souls anyway, since World Tendency remained the same.
All of this just comes down to the fact that the majority of gamers nowadays simply don't care about immersion. It is no coincidence that From Software is leaning towards this gameplay of roll and stab basic boss design, fast travel, no consequences for actions, barely any penalty for death anymore, checkpoints at every damn corner. It is successful for them. People nowadays only care about the mechanical aspects of games and not the psychological ones, I bet most people never even think about the latter. Any kind of hassle or inconvenience or interesting mechanic that is there to evoke certain "negative" emotions such as tension or dread, are deemed terrible hassles by the community. They just want to get to the next rollspam boss and get the next shiny loot. These games have simply turned into fight big boss 164 times experiences. It is a real shame. The lore is cryptic not to match the theme of mystery and danger the world encompasses, but simply for the sake of it. Same for the NPC's fates.
From Software needs a hard reset. Elden Ring was a good game despite its big flaws, but the series is desperately stretching itself too far at this point. They need new ideas.
From Software clearly found their gold goose formula and are sticking too it, but that's not something you can really blame them for I suppose. When you haphazardly rehash ideas with new coats of paint and they only get more popular with each release there is very little reason to stop. As someone who loves open world games, one of my favorites being Morrowind, it irks me a bit when I read discussion about Elden Ring and people raving about how the open world design is "revolutionary" and "game changing" when it fails basic world building concepts present in a 20 year old game. Like you point about Dark Souls 1's lack of fast travel, Morrowind's fast travel is very limited. You can only fast travel through predetermined routes via terrestrial creatures called Silt Striders, Mages Guild teleportation, or boating services. The player had to learn how to navigate the island of Vvardenfell which added greatly to the immersion of the game. Caveats existed in the way of Intervention scrolls, but you had no real control to which shrine they sent you to. This and a plethora of other reasons including: fleshed out history, fleshed out racial culture in and outside Vvardenfell, numerous villages and cities with their own secrets to discover, and crazy lore is why Morrowind is still fondly discussed 20 years later.
On the flip side, Elden Ring is another romp as the Chosen Undead through another Lordan to kill the big bad guy because someone else told you to do it while having no ability to interact with anything or anyone other than killing because it's a Dark Souls game. While some parts of the Lands Between are visually striking and very pretty, it still does not offer much outside of combat and is essentially one big arena rather than a 'world'. As someone whose been playing video games for a long time, on some level it irks me a little to see videos with millions of views calling From Software's rehashed ideas "revolutionary" and how they "changed everything". It genuinely feels as if games that came out before 2009 simply do not exist anymore.
To make a point, 15 years ago today Ninja Gaiden 2 came out on the Xbox 360, easily one of the most difficult and brutal Stylish Action games ever released. However, an ARPG with incredibly sluggish, shallow, and barebones combat became the poster-child for difficulty in video games. That is the power of marketing combined with the reality of millions of new video game players coming into the 7th console generation. To Matt's point, why would I not just play something like Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, or Monster Hunter if From Software is going to continue to make bootleg action games? I don't think Melania was the hardest boss fight of 2022. She's difficult, yeah, but Rodin from Bayonetta 3 I found to be far more difficult. A large part due to Bayonetta 3 being a pure action game. There are no builds, there is no coop, and the fight itself has its own restrictions to increase the difficulty further like no healing items. The pace of the fight is also significantly faster and Rodin can and will kill you from full health in the blink of an eye if you aren't on top of your game.
To me the Souls games have run their course, I don't think From Software is able to provide games like Demon's or Dark Souls 1 anymore whether it's due to running out of ideas or a shift in their philosophy. In my eyes, you'd never get something like Sif from modern From Software. If modern From Software made Dark Souls 1 Sif would mutate into some kind of horrific meat creature, grab all the swords on Artorias' grave, and start spinning at you like a helicopter to start phase two of the boss fight asking Artorias to forgive him. Even NPC questlines have become predictable to a point. It makes it difficult to form connections with characters when you know they're going to die anyway, what's the point? Solaire stuck with people due to Dark Souls still being unpredictable at the time, seeing a character you formed a bond with fall so far from what he once was had an impact. It's impossible to recreate Solaire today because you expect him to die, because NPCs largely always die because it's a Dark Souls game.
@@viewtiful1015 I completely agree, particularly in regards to the action gameplay. What I always loved about the first two Souls games was how they made you inexperienced and clumsy in the face of overwhelming odds. You had to observant and cautious, not hyper-skilled or completely familiar with the enemies' movesets.
It's like Matt said, it places you in the position of a novice adventurer, and lets you experience the atmosphere from your character's eyes.
No games have ever made me feel more like a Knight Errant looking for glory, a Novice Mage in search of knowledge, or a Devout Priest trying to make the world a better place than Dark Souls 1 and Demon's Souls, including much more in depth or story heavy RPG's.
The very beginning of Elden Ring, skulking through the woods trying to ambush or sneak past enemies I was too weak to fight came close to replicating this, but I quickly encountered that feeling of 'big arenas' that you described.
In the first two games (and Bloodborne, to a lesser extent) I felt as though the normal world was just outside the bounds of the game.
Bolitaria was sensibly arrayed and encased by demon fog, the objective was to stop this spreading to the rest of the world. Of course villages and mills and ordinary life existed beyond, it was a logical conclusion.
Lordran was less sensibly arrayed, but travelling on foot gave it a sense of scale, and the constant references to outside lands like Carim and Astora painted a picture of a huge fantasy realm, all of which was affected by the linking of the fire.
Instead of the feeling like a decayed and dangerous pocket of a world which was receiving crusades and expeditions from far away lands, The Lands Between felt like a big Fortnite island entirely populated by zombies. Where was the normalcy, the background of my character? What could I hope for at the end of this adventure? It's hard to feel invested in a world populated by people who are 99% mad, and where the only sane ones have nebulous origins and are almost exclusively encountered in an external pocket dimension.
It's a shame, From Software's games keep getting more impressive in scale, and more bland in flavour. I hate to criticise Elden Ring because it really does feel like an immense project, but I can't see much interesting in said project.
The only thing I can help but think about From Software is "Oh well, they made two really great games.", and while it's a shame that it seems like we won't get that again, more than anything else I'm just glad that they were made in the first place.
@@viewtiful1015As much as I really enjoyed Elden Ring and all of their other Souls games, I agree that the formula has definitely reached it's limit. Miyazaki has talked about having other directors make their own games, so hopefully they'll start branching out to make some unique experiences like Demons Souls was back then. In my opinion, they were sort of going in that direction with Deracine and Sekiro and Miyazaki is directing another game that apparently doesn't fit with the usual Action RPG stuff that they do. Also considering they pivoted to Armored Core after the sheer success of Elden Ring, and it's being directed by Yamamura (lead combat designer for Sekiro), I'm pretty excited for whatever Fromsoft does in the future.
Lack of consequences in Elden Ring is one of the most jarring things. At one point you can join the Recusants, a group that is implacably opposed to the Erdtree and Roundtable Hold and whose mission is to assassinate tarnished. You would expect that this would cause a rift where the Roundtable hold would kick you out but in reality it doesn't matter at all and no one in the Roundtable Hold even acknowledges that you've done this. Another big choice is the Frenzied Flame, where accepting it will cause Melina to abandon you. Since Melina is necessary to burn the Erdtree this should force you to find an alternate path to getting past the Erdtree's thorns. Instead it's just the exact same path with you instead of Melina doing the burning. I'm not expecting CRPG levels of depth here but it would be nice if any of your choices made any difference at all.
This is exactly what happened to Assassin's Creed. AC1 was bold, experimental and had unique ideas that were not universally appealing. It's successor abandons some of those ideas and streamlines things while refining to a T. Game receives overwhelming success and acclaim, leading to a refusal to deviate from what is now the norm. AC2 is praised while AC1 is seen as outdated and an inferior older brother, rarely recognized for it's unique qualities that are still unlike a lot of games even today.
It's just the matter of gaming now being dominated by a casual audience. Anything unconventional is immediately seen as bad and unmarketable. Triple A Games have to tick a certain amount of boxes or else they aren't even considered. For example, open world games must have fast travel or else it will be seen as a chore to play. The game must a ridiculous amount of content or else it will be accused of having an "empty world." (Look no further than Elden Ring's incessant amount of samey dungeons and boss arenas)
This is such an excellent video, not just on the Souls games, but on game design as a whole. It's probably like my fourth time watching this, but I feel like I'm just now truly understanding everything you were trying to convey here. As I've thought about game design over the years I keep coming back to the conclusion that the best design moments in games that prioritize immersion come from adapting from real life directly, and then cutting down from there to arrive at the most sensible mechanics to express that complex experience, rather than starting with an established genre or framework and then stretching it to fit the experience you're trying to provide. The very few games that achieve this are so groundbreaking because they start with no design bias and built their foundations from the ground up. Demon's Souls is one such example, as are games like Thief: The Dark Project and the first Legend of Zelda. Each of these games have the designers on record describing a specific and personal real life experience that they wanted to adapt into a game, and I don't think it's a coincidence that each of these games fucking nailed the thematic framing of their respective mechanics, and are still unequaled in many of those ways. They are each a wholistic mechanical adaptation of a complete emotional picture, a picture that is based on the most necessary elements of a deep and nuanced real life experience.
This is a cool observation. I think part of the reason Breath of the Wild surprised me so much was my expectation that it would work more like a video game than reality.
This is why SH4 is a misunderstood masterpiece, it has no dissonance between gameplay, characters and story and world which equals chunkiness, unfairness and the core of survival horror difficulty and often frustration, it's like a mature cheese not everyone can appreciate it but those that do will see that it is actually team silents most artistic game
IMO there's still a lot of quirky and unique fights in the rest of the games, but it's obvious where the focus lies. Something like being able to knock down the Iron Golem off the arena, Duke's Dear Freia having two heads on each side as weak points, High Lord Wolnir being basically an advancing wall of death (which has a different death animation if you don't hit his weakpoints), and all the other quirks the bosses in Bloodborne have (like being able to stun Gascoigne with the music box, or The Which of Hemwick being basically powerless if you fight her with no insight).
I do hope that Elden Ring bring some of that back. A good balance is always good.
Sekiro perfected the "quirky" bosses, as seen in the dragon fight. And i guess ER will be similar to Sekiro in many ways.
@Mohito Non-alco Sekiro was a bland and boring game.
The Levels were astonishingly easy because of the weak grunt enemies and the stealth + mobility systems at hand. The world was also extremely dull. I remember playing through the first part of the game, wondering when the interesting areas and varied enemies would come. Then when I got to the abandoned dungeon, I thought I would finally enter a new interesting location. However, this section was incredibly short and led to the Senpou Temble instead, another boring unvaried location.
The bosses were hard, in the sense that you had to press buttons in a specific pattern. Matthewmatosis mentions in this video, if he wanted action, he would play a better action game, but at this point you might as well rather want to play Osu!. It also continued the trend mentioned in this video. If ER "will be very similar to Sekiro" it will be as disappointing as that game. I can't help it but have low expectations for Elden Ring, given that I doubt they will stop following the trend.
@@Qlaid_ omegalul i feel sorry for you if you think that sekiro was boring
@@Qlaid_ but they said they're going back to more DS shit for ER
@Yujiro Hanma nice bait bro
It was actually kind of heart breaking to have seen the reception of the „Demon‘s Souls“ remake got by the people who started their „souls“ journey with „Dark Souls“.
„Man, this swamp level is the worst level in the entire series, the game would be better without it!“
„Why do I always have to re-play the final level again before re-fighting False King Alant again? The newer games knew to give you a bonfire just before the final boss fight!“
„The Bosses are so easy. I mean, the only reason why a boss like the Fool‘s Idol is hard because you might not figure out imediatelly to kill the guy in the balcony! That‘s just an unfair gimmick, the boss itself is really easy!“
Because the most mainstream popular game up to that point was „Dark Souls 3“, which is the lost conveniently game-y one, most people kind of missed the point of why „Demon‘s Souls“ got famous and why it was considered „hard“.
The community loves swamp levels that's why there's atleast one in every soulsborne game. Agree with the rest
If there’s anything I’ve learned over the years, it’s that “gamers” (meaning the general gaming public) sees any kind of gameplay that isn’t explicitly entertaining as being “bad design”.
@@pramitpratimdas8198
The community absolutely does NOT. What they do love is making MEMES about swamp levels.
@@ImortalZeus13 And neglecting that purposeful "bad" design can enhance a games immersion such as Silent Hill 4s gameplay systems which were sorely misunderstood and criticized with SH4 remaining the consistently lowest rated of team silents creations, despite being their least dissonant game.
Understanding this is the difference between being a "gamer" and "one who plays games", one who plays games want to kill xx amount of hours with minimal frustration neglecting the artistic component of the medium over playability or other barriers of entry.
So many people missing the point of the video. Try reading the description.
"Some thoughts on the merits of Demon's Souls."
He is NOT saying that Demon Souls is the best entry, he is explaining it's merits, while showing some of the other games' faults.
Well said.
But he's saying not being held captive by your level is a fault.
Yeah but in a really one minded way that can come of quite whiny...
He is wrong about somethings like defensive mechanics not being used in boss fights outside of roll. Yes it can be true about dark souls 2 and up but not 1. High poise, shields, parrying are great ways to fight bosses alongside roll. I have a better chance against o n s with shield and high poise than rolling the whole time cause I rarely get a hit in that way and gwen I parry the life out of em.
True, but it is the best entry. I know I’d argue that, personally, even if he isn’t.
Here's a wonderful quote i found in regards to the DeS Remake and the overall modern view of videogame remakes:
"This kind of flippant treatment of original works as if they’re just inherently “not good enough” for contemporary tastes just lends credence to the idea that video games are not art. If they’re this disposal and easily replaceable, they’re nothing but toys."
Great quote.
I do have one counter argument. The same can be said for any piece of art. Someone can "remaster" Starry Nights or make an animation look better with new frames or computer animation. Literally anything that has been made before can be remastered.
@@HonsHon this is painfully ignorant.
Starry nights was made with clear and full understanding of the medium, any alterations would be one that the author did not want to or could not make.
Same with animations.
Akira for exemple, plays with frames per second to add emphasis and such.
A 60 fps remaster would absolutely destroy the movie.
Hell, rendering toy story at an extremely high resolution might show the inner working of shaders and textures to a point so severe it breaks immersion.
@@HonsHon obviously they CAN be remastered. But the quote insinuates that doing so destroys some artistic merits of the work.
Eh, I dunno man. That quote makes sense when you think of art like paintings, writings, and music but that’s just because those pieces are usually expressions from one single person.
It doesn’t make sense to “remake” the Mona Lisa because what good would that do? It would just be another person trying to copy a painting and would lead to a separate piece of art. When you switch to collaborative works like movies or games it becomes different, because of all the different facets that could fail to express the original intention in the way they wanted.
Either way, you’re not destroying art by deciding to remake a movie or a game. The original art still exists, the remake is a separate piece of art expressing similar things but using the advances in technology and technique that came after.
Jesus Christ this video is essentially prophetic given what Elden Ring has ended up as. From Software essentially make games that have more in common with Guitar Hero than Demon Souls at this point and that's such a shame
I love FromSofts games but oh my god this is the best comment ever, so fucking true lol.
Remember "Sekiro is a rythm game"
@@Lastninjaxoxoxoxox I actually don't hate this about Sekiro just for the fact that it's at least different. There's a lot I dislike about Sekiro, and the final boss alone was just hair-pulling enough to make me never replay the game, but I came away from every boss feeling like a boss myself.
Of course, that doesn't really translate to Elden Ring, because the bosses have evolved (as they have continuously done with each Dark Souls) yet the player character's abilities have hardly changed.
@@lorangemagnifique3001 And that's fine if that's the type of bosses you prefer, it seems in the community a lot of ppl shares this notion which is why they want "learn the moveset" bosses and not so called "gimmick" bosses. But you can get the same feeling from a boss-rush game. Infact they might even have more fleshed out combat than the souls series and makes you feel like even more of a boss. I'd like to think the souls series went for something different, atleast in the beginning.
Unfortunately I don't even share this feeling of feeling like a boss. When I beat "learn the moveset" boss #10 in a row (like there were so many of in ds3) I don't feel like a boss, I feel like I just wasted my time learning this AIs moveset with no other real experience to be had from this.
@@lorangemagnifique3001 tbf, sekiro is an *extremely* sastisfying system to learn and master and it's a different IP with a different approach. Elden Ring has literally no excuse since it's basically just Dark Souls.
It's weird how people mistake difficulty for depth in souls combat
Difficulty has a lot of depth when your enjoyment from it comes from gatekeeping and bragging rights.
And it's weirder still when Dark Souls kinda has a pitiful lack of difficulty. It's telling about a game's balance when before you start the game, everyone tells you which builds to avoid due to them trivialising and breaking the game. Deaths only get less and less meaningful too, as the more rapidly you die, the fewer souls you build up between deaths, lowering the incentive to avoid dying. As such, there's no real penalty to endlessly dying to work out a boss' attack patterns, memorising them outside of the boss room and then steamrolling them once you're there. The game's difficulty comes purely from how well you can rote learn a very basic rhythm, effectively.
It's the reason I prefer to make a clear distinction between "challenge" and "difficulty". To me, "challenge" is how much I have to understand the game's mechanics, the current situation, be observant, etc., while "difficulty" is just how mechanically hard something is; i.e. how narrow the window to press the roll button at the right time is and stuff like that. Souls games, especially the later ones, are pure difficulty with very little in the way of challenge.
my biggest issue with souls has always been the conversation surrounding it. I dislike that its considered "the hard series" when that really isnt the case. Souls games push discovery and the players actions to the forefront and make you feel like you are in its world more intensely than any other game series I've seen. With that sense of immersion comes a sense that you have to react to the world in a realistic and not half assed behavior. In short, I feel that you cant make a compelling souls experience without it being punishing, but that isnt what I think the games' biggest emphasis is.
@@matthewmuir8884 I find this seperation to be somewhat limiting with certain games. After reading your comment I was trying to think of games I played that fall into either category...one I was stuck with was Megaman games...are they more challenging or difficult? They (the bosses specifically) are notorious for having a set pattern you have to memorize to beat them...sounds kinda like dark souls, except sometimes they are pretty cheap...forcing you to analyse the nature of thier attack patterns and the guns you have before you memorize the exact attack pattern via muscle memory. So in a sense its a bit of both...but I guess that depends on where you draw the arbritrary line between "strategy" and "skill" since objectively strategy is just skill in slow motion. (People who perfer strategy games over skill tend to like taking their time to plan things out where as skill is usually the opposite.) This doesn't even take into account reacting to things...what if your reacting to things that you aren't used to? Then its adaptation? What if a boss was so well designed that it started to change its pattern the second you adapt? Is that more strategy or skill then?
I suppose not being pertentious about your defenition and just looking at the general message your saying...I guess I can conclude (with the dark souls games anyways) that the problem is that the combat inofitself is not very complicated. This lack of complication prevents nuanced "challenge" as you put it so since its not improved upon you either rely on gimmicks or design the bosses with skill in mind. The solution would be to make the combat more in depth so that there's a more balanced mix.
Maybe the souls games are just 3D megaman games in design philosophy now that I think about it...hmm...
You briefly touched on it but part of the appeal to me going from Demon's Souls to Dark Souls was that both games had different settings with their own themes and imagery. Demon's Souls was a melancholic low fantasy setting with Abrahamic-esque imagery and themes, while Dark Souls was a dark reflection of high fantasy with a more overtly themes of doom. Each game felt different because they weren't constrained by the same setting and had a finished arc where the setting's story was complete. That's why Dark Souls 2 and 3 felt like they lacked the same impact, because they were retreading older ground and had to work around a setting that was already closed within its own story, instead of making something new to work with. This is why Bloodborne interested me from day one, because it's a new setting with a completely different tone and influences and isn't limited to previous games as to what it can do with its setting or story. The fact that it presents itself as gothic horror at first and then turns into cosmic horror is an example of what they can do when the developers are allowed to try something new.
I do wish I didn't know this last detail, though, because I feel like when I finally get to play Bloodborne I would have liked to experience the twist myself.
I don't think you know what low and high fantasy means.
@@ArilandoArilando Low Fantasy: _"A subgenre of fantasy fiction in which magical events intrude upon an otherwise-normal world."_ This does fit Demon's Souls, as the soul arts (the source of magic in the setting) is not a natural part of the setting, but instead is something that is released upon the world whenever someone awakens and makes a deal with the Old One, as King Allant did. The kingdom the game takes place in was a mundane one until magic was reintroduced and corrupted it.
High Fantasy: _"A subgenre of fantasy fiction defined by the epic (in the literary sense) nature of its setting or by the epic stature of its characters, themes or plot."_ This describes Dark Souls very well.
@@matthewmuir8884 Magic, dragons etc are an integral part of the world. What you're saying is nonsense.
@@ArilandoArilando No, not in Demon's Souls. Dragons and magic were introduced by the reintroduction of soul arts to the world; this is explained to the player at the very beginning of the game.
@@matthewmuir8884 I do not remember the particular details, and Demon's Souls lore like all Souls games is vague, but what you're saying cannot be true as the shrine of the Dragon God is implied to be very old. There are of course also faith based miracles in the game which are not based on soul arts.
This video just keeps on giving especially with Elden Ring being what it is.
This is why I love Darksouls 1 and despise Darksouls 3.
Anyone remember Taurus demon on the bridge? The moment you realised you could lure him to the tower and drop down, killing him that way? I sure did and I felt smart for figuring it out.
Now take Pontav Sullivan (thats spelled correct right?). I didnt feel any relief finishing that boss, nor did I have the feeling I figured the boss out. I just spammed roll and block, hoping for the best.
Darksouls 3 is about KNOWING the boss, rather than figuring it out. Discovering that using the destroyed pillars during Smough and ornstein made it easier, adding to the fight. Not because it was an easy mode option, but because you learned and adapted. No boss in Darksouls 3 has an enviremontal mechanic. None, the only thing you need to figure out is when to roll. And that in itself says enough.
alturius4 Man, I feel the same way about ceaseless discharge. I felt so clever when I hide in one of the crevices in the rock, then proceeded to beat the hell out of his arms/tentacles when he tried to hit me. Kind of cheesy, but clearly intended by the devs.
Dark Souls has a few of those Things. For example i remember how amazing my first fight against the abyss watchers was, when i noticed that the third one attacked the other 2 watchers. You can use the area against a lot of bosses like aldrich, Crystal sage, ancient wyvern, yhorm, twin princes.
“Timing and memorizing animations”
Pontiff Sulyvahn is a bad example to use because he has the shade in phase 2 that does what the real Sulyvahn does in advance and you can use to your advantage if you figure out how it works
@@dkDolphino You prove my point. DS3 bosses are all cases of "Bash your head against the boss wall and be sure they crack first" rather than using the environment to create strategies. DS3 bosses are for 90% "Simon says roll" fights.
And those kind of fights are okay, but Sulyvhan is rolling and wait for a chance to strike. While some of the bosses in previous game gave you the chance to CREATE your own oppertunities
17 hours and 2 major bosses into Elden Ring thus far, and I can't stop thinking about this video. You were always my favorite youtube video essayist and my favorite games critic period, but it's shocking how you've managed to predict just about everything I can't stand about the game. Everyone I know is having the time of their lives, but I can't get over the fact that they've copied and pasted the Firelink Shrine theme across the entire overworld. I can't get over the fact that magic is still separated into the three genders of Fire, Holy, and Blue. I can't get over the fact that every boss thus far has been a roll and punish skill check, how every cave has been an Oblivion-tier gauntlet of goblins with a throwaway miniboss at the end, and how even the opening cutscene felt like a cover of Dark Souls'. I genuinely hope the game improves for me, but so far, even at its best, it's been Dark Souls 3, complete with every single issue pointed out in this video made half a decade before the game's release.
It's fitting that FromSoft has become obsessed with games about once-great and mysterious lands trapped in a cycle of death and rebirth, decay and stagnation.
So, nothing was improved after DS3? Hard to believe. I still haven't played it yet, only watching reviews
Couldn’t have said it better myself. I’m so disappointed with ER.
It’s just dark souls 3 with a bit of running around in between the same bosses we’ve had since artorius.
@@aldecotan I wouldn't say NOTHING's been improved, but it REALLY does feel like a soft reboot of Dark Souls in a more commercially safe genre. The new parts are boring and the good parts are old. It's still better than a lot of other games, but for me at least, it's a disappointment. Dark Souls 3 was explicitly about moving on from endlessly repeating cycles of stagnation and decay, and yet FromSoft decided to go ahead and link the first flame again.
@@GreavesEc as someone who really disliked ds3 because of the linearity and over abundance of simple action bosses, I've enjoyed Elden Ring a lot and have found a lot of the bosses, though not all, to be at least less of a roll fest and simply more straightforward. there are apparently some puzzle like bosses as well. And it's not a bootleg bloodborne like 3 so I'm more than satisfied lol i think it's to just let ER be it's own thing. We have Demons Souls and the remake, it would do FROM no use to just repeat that exact formula for a new game.
@@aldecotan the combat and build variety is better
So true about Bosses delaying their attacks to throw you off guard...that's literally the only reason Nameless king was challenging...i would roll too early
One big thing this video doesn't touch on is the music. Even if the composition quality can be low, it's very unique for almost no tracks with vocals and much more atmosphere-driven than any other game in the series. Then, I played the Demon's Remake, where they ruined the OST by filling every track with bombast and chanting (the Dirty Colossus having an "epic" theme feels like self-parody) and it made me realize that this issue extended across all of From's output DaS2 onward. Like, it feels like almost every single boss theme since had to have a choir of some kind, and while I can't speak for Sekiro (the OST was so boring none of it ever registered to me), this problem really peaks in Elden Ring, even if I do find some of the songs to be really cool.
The Sekiro OST uses a lot of Japanese instruments to evoke the feeling of the setting it is in. The bombast is not lost on bosses that deserve it, such as Isshin, Gyoubu and Genichiro. The the more somber or atmospheric tracks still exist however, with examples like Emma's being more melancholic instrumentation, and the track "Apparitions" used for ghost enemies evoking a feeling of other-worldiness with the traditional whistling and low humming of the arrangement.
souls games literally dont have soundtracks
this.
"just put together chanting and le epicness"
@@SurprsdPenguin A lot of fans hated Sekiro OST, I think it was the best FromSoftware OST since Demon's Souls & Dark Souls 1. Sekiro isn't exactly a "Soulsborne" game, but it had an understated OST for a FromSoftware game.
@@kageakiminato8536 Ur literally wrong but aight
I used to heavily disagree with this video but looking back on it, especially with the release of Elden Ring, I agree with almost all of your points
Good on ya
Elden Ring is super boring, and the GRRM writing threw away what I loved about From Software writing / world building.
@@drbuni GRRM didn't write any of it
atleast elden ring kept the ashen estus system, the best healing system theyve done so far
@@pollertry4003 he wrote the backstory and lore, essentially everything that happens up until your tarnished arrives. the actual player storyline is all FromSoft
I just got to play Demon's Souls for the first time and it's a real shame people don't give it the credit it deserves. It's just as good as Dark Souls and in a few ways even better.
The real shame is that it is so unaccessible being locked behind Ps3 while DS has gotten a remake that it didn't need, since it still was easily available on steam, (and with a fanmade patch that solved it's problems) and even worse ds2 got one that nobody asked for just a fucking year after it's release.
I didn't have a Ps3 back then, had the 360, so sadly I can't give it the credit it probably deserves because I haven't had the opportunity to fucking play, even though it's been on the top of my list for a long time now.
It seems that even From doesn't give it the credit it deserves, and it's kinda disgusting.
I always loved the world much more than Dark Souls. My only gripe is that it's too short. Once you are through your first time, it will never be the same again running the game. :(
Also I really want them to finish the 6th archstone. The props they already made for it and the enemies are fucking amazing.
Guys, THE REMAKE IS A' COMIN'!!
I disagree, and I ultimately would rank it among the lower entries. It pains me to think this way, but I actually do agree with the consensus of it being a "Dark Souls Prototype" of sorts.
@@craylik5589 To be fair it's not FromSoft's decision how Demon's Souls is appreciated. Sony owns the IP. The PS5 remake was completely Sony's decision, with no input from FromSoftware.
After having watched your entire Legend of Zelda review series, your critique of Dark Souls 2, and now this, you are my absolute favorite reviewer on youtube. Not only does it feel like your reviews touch on every single important element in the game, but you always manage to touch on things ive forgotten about, or made me rethink something I didn't realize was so important to me. Also, sometimes, I didn't have the same negative/positive outlook on something you did, but I can ALWAYS understand where your coming from thanks to well implemented evidence and/or footage.
Finally, your way of stating or emphasizing certain points is remarkable.
The best example I can give is your phrase towards the end of this video, "enjoyed by everyone, but loved by no one."
Such a concise and eloquent way to sum of the potential negative side of mass appeal.
Agree with so much of this after trying Elden Ring. I'm just not enjoying Fromsoft design anymore. Unfortunately for me, Fromsoft has continued with their enemy design of the last few games, and go for SPECTACLE and SPEED over everything else. There are obviously people who want that, who want constant action and to constantly be pushed to their mechanical limits. I like that SOMETIMES. I like variation. I like fights to feel contextually appropriate. Not every being in a world would like be a whirling dervish that never lets up.
Maybe there's an older warrior that can do bursts of attacks but needs lots of time to rest. Maybe there's an animal that needs to be tricked into revealing a vulnerable spot. Maybe there's a wizard that you need to get behind by running through a series of buildings or rooms, so it's a test of your memory of the combat arena. Maybe the fight is more for an emotional response and not a test of mechanical skill.
Maybe, just maybe, the overarching design goals for a boss don't have to be: will people die a bunch before winning? Was it constant adrenaline?
Good, it's not just me. Elden Ring has such a unique world to explore but it plays it so safe with the boss fights. I'm at the end of the game now, right before the final fight and I'm just sick of it. Almost every boss feels copy and pasted with a different skin and some actually are just that.
The problem is that Souls combat is basically solved, so any boss that isn't a twitch reaction test full of tricky timings is going to be laughably easy.
@@mattweber2512 Flamelurker, Fume Knight, Sir Alonne and Darklurker are still hard even if you know what they do so I disagree with that assessment.
But if it is solved, then why not dramatically change how these games are played? Why not do what FF7R did and alter the combat?
@@theatheistbear3117 I agree, that's what they should do. I thought Sekiro was a step in this direction, but Elden Ring seems to have regressed back to the Souls mean.
@@mattweber2512 I personally hated Sekiro but you are right. It was very different from the other games.
"A game where you press dodge at the right time."
Perfect description.
Every game can be simplified into a statement like that
@@lucasandrescosta391 nup
Lucas Andres Costa
The quote was about what the series has become.
“It went from a game about outsmarting your opponent to a series where you press dodge at the right time.”
He described his preferred experience the same way, one simple sentence. It’s just that the former is of far higher quality.
@@lucasandrescosta391 Not really. You can play tetris, and if you try to play the game by focusing on hitting buttons at certain times, you won't get very far at all.
In dark souls, if all you do is focus on rolling at the right time, and attack when you don't roll, you'll be able to beat the entire game quite easily.
The fact that all digital games result in pressing buttons at certain times does not mean that all game-play revolves around pressing buttons at certain times.
@@La0bouchere What i meant by my original comment is that anyone can reduce a game into a simplistic statement about it's gameplay removing all nuance about it in the process.
For Tetris it would be something like "A game where you place bricks in the right spot", that statement doesn't say anything about the strategic value of the game and how hard it is to actually think about where you place the bricks in advance, to plan ahead.
Same thing for the Dark Souls statement, there is much more to the game than just rolling at the right time. The statement does not say anything about how hard it is to actually dodge at the right times.
What about how timings vary between bosses, how the game tries to trick you into panick rolling... You have to be smart in the way you roll, in different directions depending on enemy pattern, sometimes you would end up too far to counter attack if you roll the wrong way, the stamina management side of it, etc.
Plus, Dark Souls is much more than that simple statement, what about build diversity, items enhancement, exploration, etc.
You are doing the same with your statement: "In dark souls, if all you do is focus on rolling at the right time, and attack when you don't roll, you'll be able to beat the entire game quite easily."
You can do the same thing with any game and make it sound easier or less complex than it actually is.
"In football, if all you do is focus on passing the ball at the right time, and score when you are close to the goalie, you'll be able to win games quite easily."
"In Dota 2, if all you do is focus on farming at the right time, and killing enemie heroes when they are in range, you'll be able to rise your ranking quite easily."
etc, etc.
Man, after Elden Ring, this video hits even harder
He got the estus drop wrong, not to mention Elden Ring boss enemy's delayed attacks absolutely rekts veterans, who roll at any change in bosses starting frames
@@jaaxc1036 Dark Souls 3 did already the delayed attacks so you are wrong
@@FatalFatalisFtFts DS3 delayed attacks are not even close to Elden Ring
@@FatalFatalisFtFts While DS3 has delays they didn’t have these ridiculous delays as in ER, nor as many as Elden Ring’s bosses. They literally hold their attacks for four entire seconds ffs. I really disliked DS3, but that’s something that isn’t nearly as bad as in Elden Ring, which says something considering in DS3 it was really bad already.
Finished Elden Ring after 130 hours. Exploration and open world design is engaging. However, everything else is so flawed. Legit might be the most overrated game I’ve ever played. 6/10.
I'm curious about your take on the combat in Sekiro.
At least in Sekiro it is possible to combo ninja tools, into combat arts, plus there are all the new defensive options you need to be mindful of.
now that I've played sekiro I agree with this video even more, it's funny
@Donald Anderson He seems kinda... Cynical to me.
Sekiro combat is all about pressing the block button at the right time, in quick succession.
I could see him liking Sekiro for what it is. It’s a very competent action game, and it actually has mechanics that work better with its action system than DS3 or Bloodborne did. Its combat is definitely more complex, though still nothing approaching Devil May Cry, for example. I think that I don’t like Sekiro just because it’s not my thing, and DS is. I like RPG mechanics and progression. Sekiro doesn’t REALLY have these. Don’t forget, Matthew has beaten Devil May Cry on the hardest difficulty while taking no damage. He definitely likes twitch action games. I can’t be sure what he would think, but whether he agrees with me or not, I can be sure he’d have some good insight.
This video aged like fine wine. Literally everything you said is correct and still holds true.
The only way we get something like Demon Souls is if Miyazaki leaves the company and joins a bankrupt one.
Matthew was the greatest game reviewer that CZcams ever had. Why? Because I think he never made a video just to please his fans, or to put a NordVPN ad in between, or to make the recommend algorithms happy.
An Irish with the most dry sense of humor, and the purest heart of a gamer.
I keep searching for another critic to take up the mantle and achieve the same level of quality analysis. Some can match him in one aspect or another, but nobody can make such insightful observations with such tight pacing with such consistency with so much humor.
I’m sad to report he’s a singular talent. We won’t see his like again.
@@siphillis I agree. Matthew obviously has talent and he didn't overstay his welcome. This video was exceptionally well made and nothing more can be said about Souls games, to be honest.
lol
@Lightstream He decided to not make his old-schooled analysis/critique videos anymore(maybe Bayonetta because dude is a Kamiya fanboy but I doubt he can pure platinum that game lol) He hates to repeat himself and in his last meta video you could tell he was done with video essays. He is also making his own video games now. Check out his Matthewmatosis Extra channel if you are interested. He streams occasionally on CZcams. In a sense, we can all consider ourselves graduating from the Matthewmatosis academy. You no longer need Matthew to tell you how to think about a game since everyone has his own frame of reference as he said in his (former) last video.
I keep coming back to this one. Phenomenal video. Would love more editorial style stuff like this.
This video really blew up over the last week. It's been interesting seeing all the new comments.
This video is prophetic and spot on, especially now with Elden Ring.
The open world has still that spark of adventure the series is well know for. However, most of the encounters present you with the same, repetitive scenarios: ambush-infested, 'pull-the-lever-to-unlock-the-boss' dungeons - and spam-party boss fights of delayed, 360 tracking string and sudden input-reading "gotcha" attacks designed to punish you for going in after their 'big-stompy-aoe-10-hit -combo-finisher'.
It reminds me of DS2 in a way, it being still an above average game despite its (many, many) flaws.
But goddamnit, man.
Just... goddamnit.
And... how many of them has "big-stompy-aoe-10-hit-combo-finisher"?
Just curious, I'm in the very beginning of the game right now
@@aldecotan Embrace your adventurous spirit and find out. Enjoy!
DS2 has an excuse and can be forgiven because of it’s horrid development cycle and that Yui Tanimura had to make some agressive changes to make the game even playable on third generation hardware. That the game came out as great as it did is a miracle. Elden Ring doesn’t really have that, plus, DS2’s DLCs really helped make the game an absolute gem.
Can’t wait for the Flames of Old mod.
Hey hey hey, check it out. A person who is not a paid shill or a brainwashed mob that praises Elden Ring as 10/10 masterpiece? I hope you share my depression because every time I watch this video I am more dead inside than I was before. I miss Demon's Souls so much.
I swear the AoEs that just about every single boss has exist has a lazy counterbalance to ashes.
They still can't figure out a way to make the AI any better/it still sucks balls at dealing with multiple targets. So "why not just have every boss randomly explode the ground after their 12-hit combo!" to hit all the spirits.
As a die-hard Souls fan, I hate how completely right you are.
he's not right
giant dad He is.
nah. he has some good points, but he's mostly blinded by nostalgia. especially since many complaints he had can be easily applied to at least dark souls 1. so no he isnt right :)
He isn't. Seems more like he has a very specific idea of what a Souls game should be, so he didn't take well to the more focused, less gimmicky and less experimental way the series took after DeS.
No one cares whether you think he's right or wrong, nerds. He made a video sharing his personal subjective thoughts on the Souls sequels, nothing more.
It must be hard, having a diehard fan base which doesn't actually appreciate the most unique things about the game.
I’d be inclined to agree but it seems the developers themselves don’t even appreciate the unique aspects of their game
I imagine some people come back to this video after ER like i did. It kinda explains the emptiness one leaves with when finishing ER. Its like a fantasy story i remember reading fondly but i cant really remember the specifics. I remember it was beautiful.
It’s a shame MatthewMatosis doesn’t have millions of subscribers as no one else on this site even comes close in terms of writing and perspective. The sheer foresight of this video is uncanny. Discourse over these games and CZcams criticism in general are still playing catch up.
Give Noah Cadwell Gervais a watch. His writing and perspective definitely matches Matthews.
@@amysteriousviewer3772 not to sound rude but I don't think they are even comparable
@@ShadowedAgony To each their own, I personally find Noah very insightful and well spoken.
@@amysteriousviewer3772 My (admittedly limited) experience with NCG has been that he mostly just says a lot of flowery words that ultimately mean nothing, or are outright incorrect.
@@EmberBright2077 Couldn’t disagree more but as I said, to each their own. Noah just has a very different approach to other creators. He looks at games more holistically and how they fit into the broader canon of media and pop culture that influenced and inspired them and less from a game design perspective like Mathew does. I can see why some would find this boring and “meaning nothing” but I personally find it fascinating.
I feel sorry for Demon's Souls. The game was dubbed a failure and had very low expectations from the developers while it was on project. And despite its surprising success, the game was heavily overshadowed by other PS3 titles during its time, and its successors in the later years. I have met and played with, many Souls fans who have not even heard of Demon's Souls, and only credit on its successors. To this day, I still wish FromSoft can shift their focus on the game that started it all.
It's world was just that much more magical, felt more tragic. Maybe it was because you entered the world right after tragedy and everything looked like Order had just recently fallen apart.
In Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3 it seems like the new way of the world has long been established. You arrive centuries after all the important stuff has happened, to the point that even the big bads have hollowed away. It feels more abandoned, but not in a good way. I guess the lack of changes from World Tendency also give that feeling.
For what it's worth I bought a PS3 to play Demon's Souls back in the day. For me it was the system seller.
I was super stoked for Dark Souls when it came out after that, but even that isn't as good as the original I don't think.
To be fair, a lot of that can be blamed to the fact that Demon's Souls was a PS3 exclusive in a time where the PS3 was still playing catch up to the 360 and the PC was emerging again. Not only that but Sony was afraid to advertise it, sort of what they did to Gravity Rush this generation. And the cherry on top of the pie was that Dark Souls 1 released a year and half after so most people who heard a few positive things about Demon's Souls just went straight to the sequel instead, especially 360 and PC players for obvious reasons.
It was hardly dubbed a failure. When it was released it was getting high review scores in a lot of gaming magazines/websites, with a Metacritic of 88. Even IGN gave it a 9.4/10. It may not have taken off in the mainstream like dark souls, but it was critically acclaimed from the start,
This video has aged incredibly well with the release of Elden Ring.
While I adore Elden Ring, I can't help but feel like I'm being forced to cheat the system when so many of the new bosses have attacks that are specifically meant to catch me rolling and bowl over the entire arena rather than provide me with an interesting and memorable experience. I'd say most bosses in Elden Ring are harder than most bosses in Dark Souls, but there isn't a single boss experience I've had that I'd compare to Gwyn or Artorias.
I agree that it's tough sometimes to fully appreciate a boss fight in Elden Ring because of how crazy the bosses go on you with constant attack strings full of delayed swings and AOEs. I think this issue started with DS3 when they somehow thought that Bloodborne style bosses and their manic second phases would be something that the less nimble Dark Souls player character could handle. The temptation to resort to cheese has been overwhelming ever since.
I do think that Matt heaps way too much praise on Demon's Souls though (giving it credit for being different with its poison swamp and criticizing subsequent titles for having a poison swamp...I guess he doesn't know what a Fromsoft staple those have been for years before Demon's Souls, lol) and shortchanges the original Dark Souls in terms of its "soul". Demon's Souls is also a refinement of previous Fromsoft ideas, and ironically, its combat is certainly the most innovative thing (and the thing which I believe enabled people who weren't into slow paced dungeon crawler RPGs to develop an interest) about it compared to Fromsoft's previous games like the King's Field series.
He also says that Gwyn's piano music was effective simply because it was different, but that's really underselling it. The sad piano music works brilliantly in the context of the game's story and lore. Not just because it sounds different. In other words, it works because of all those glowing adjectives that he invoked near the end when talking about Demon's Souls. Whether he realizes it or not, a lot of people feel that for Dark Souls and so they may not agree with him that Demon's Souls has more soul than the original Dark Souls (or Bloodborne). Does it have more soul/immersiveness than Dark Souls 2 and 3? Yeah, I think you'd get less argument there (DS2 is polarizing and DS3 is a direct story sequel to DS1).
I think it really comes back to the fact that Demons' Souls (and, theoretically, Dark Souls), were explicitly not made with the intention of being hard. Miyazaki's said over and over again that difficulty was not the point, but you CANNOT tell me that's the case anymore. When I see a boss do a crazy attack combo, I no longer thing "wow this boss/character is so cool," I think "wow, the designers are really trying to kill me with this one," or "well this pattern looks tough to learn."
I love arcadey, game-ass games, Platinum is arguably my favorite studio, so I should theoretically like it when FromSoft makes something more explicitly gamey, but they're just straight-up bad at it IMO.
There's many memorable Elden Ring bosses, like Godfrey or Maliketh
They are difficulty and made you butthurt but doesn't mean they aren't memorable
Honestly I feel like the Ashes system didn't go far enough despite being so heavily pushed. I like the idea of a distraction system to make bosses this fucking unwieldy more manageable, yet still a threat if you're not careful. As of now it's pretty basic.
@@antobatta1551
Just because my comment made you butthurt doesn't mean I think Elden a ring doesn't have good bosses
Do you ever get tired of being so correct all the time? Based takes
So glad I'm not the only one coming back to this video after playing Elden Ring. Exploring the world and dungeon crawling in the game is wonderful, probably the best time I've had doing so in any game, but it gets exhausting when every boss fight feels the exact same.
I wouldn't say so, if we stick to the analogy that ds3 only has 1 type of boss, than elden ring has at least 2, since it has a lot of visually interesting fights, instead of mechanically interesting
Not only are the boss fights mechanicaly the same, they're copied and pasted in a different part of the map.
the comment about anime hits home after finishing Elden Ring too. anime sucks
The comment about bosses having attacks that hold their wind-up just a half-second longer than you'd expect feels about 15 times as accurate about ER.
the samey fights are more of a result of content bloat with repeat fights instead of actual lack of variety. Elden ring is WAY more varied than ds3 was but it can feel the other way because of the sheer amount of bosses and the natural bias of remembering negative experiences better.
I am so glad that I am not the only person who enjoyed Micolash. It pisses me off how so many people judge a boss entirely based on how hardcore difficult it was
Personally I felt that Micolash was interesting, but hindered by his attacks. He would constantly spam Augur and Call Beyond which made the fight portion boring since you’re just strafing or dodging the same two attacks, unless he tried an occasional punch which didn’t exactly require any strategy. On the contrary, the running sections were a unique twist, I liked that if you were keeping pace with him you could slip through the gate at the end, though finding the path around from above was also enjoyable. Yet a slight mistime in dodging in the attack phase could result in a one-shot and thus running through the same path again became tedious.
Funnily enough my only issue with Micolash is actually that he can be hardcore difficult on higher NG+ cycles. At a certain point, his A Call Beyond spell legit one shots you. You have to move in close to him quickly so he doesn't use it, but that's usually hard to do when you've just dropped down for phase 2. He usually gets off at least one cast of A Call Beyond, and if you get hit, you're dead, unless you have insane HP and insane Arcane resistance.
People don't like Micolash because he's cheap.
I found him somewhat entertaining the first time, every other time he’s an annoying time waster.
Or maybe it's the fact that the Gehrmans & Marias reiterate upon an old, successful-- or at least non-broken formula, where Micolash is a new, experimental concept of which From doesn't stick the landing.
You don't need to be partial to difficulty to recognize Bed of Chaos & Dragon God's shortcomings. Personally I think Micolash fails in most of the same ways Frenzy does.
Grounded.
I've got back and forth between all the souls games trying to figure out why Dark Souls appealed to me in a way no other souslike has quite matched.
Grounded is a good word for it.
Good video; glad it's not just me thinking about these sorts of things.
Oh man Elden Ring doubled down on so much of what he critiques here. Especially fights being all very samey and just being a test of memorizing a series of oddly timed combos and punishing AoEs. It starts to make boss fights feel exhausting because you know each one you get to is just going to be the same process as the last 20 with few exceptions.
i'd rather have the "roll and punish" bosses most of the time because whenever fromsoft tries to do a gimmick boss you just get shit like micolash, rom, bed of chaos, witches of hemwick, etc.
but elden ring didnt even have "roll and punish" bosses as good as any in the previous games so whatever
@@solomon2466 than go play Devil May Cry or Bayonetta
@@solomon2466 That’s only the bad ones. Good ones are like Tower Knight.
@@hellomadet ok i will
Except they want you to stop rolling constantly, that's why they structure attacks that way. You're basically doing it to yourself. Stop that and start thinking, in Matthews words, "like an adventurer"...
They hated him because he spoke the truth
Matthew is right.
Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 always felt very inspired by old school Survival Horror games to me. The combat is actually pretty similar to Silent Hill but more complex and refined, and the combat was always just a means to experience the world and it's harsh environments. The different weapons and builds were just there for extra variety and replayability, but the games after Dark Souls 1 seemed to think they were Devil May Cry and the world was just a backdrop to experience the combat.
I think that's not giving 3 enough credit, though. Because it is also very intricate in it's level design, although I agree that a lot of things are just in there because they are a "staple" at this point. LIKE THAT GODDAMN SWAMP!
the first castlevania game too
@Nosferatu Zodd What are you talking about, no one even likes Dark souls 2 nowdays it seems and alot of stuff was removed in DS3 and brought back to DS1 Style. Also not sure about your interpretation of the world hated you in DS1, i felt more like the chosen one and everyone tryed to help me... somehow and went mad at some point. Gothic 1 has a world which shows you that everyone hates you :D
High quality comment, I completely agree.
82 hours into Elden Ring...just wanted to come back and watch this video again. Always make great content mate
In so many ways, not only is the video relevant to newly released Elden Ring on the front of the whole "shonen anime" and "this is a game where you press the dodge button at the right time", but it's even worse than Dark Souls 3 in the latter half of it, and even then arguably before that, too. Because now, not only do enemies have these same problems from Dark Souls 2 and 3 (excessive tracking from DaS2 and cutscene attacks you have to dodge constantly before getting one strike such as DaS3), but they're escalated. You're quotable line, "this is the part where people would start listing off all the attacks you can do" which remains hilariously on point even moreso for Elden Ring, applies more than ever from the defenders of the late-game laziness. Not only did Elden Ring add more moves, but most of them are more useless than ever before, because enemies are back with more poise, faster attacks speeds that some dodges literally can't even evade (but still eat through shields, too), but also have excessive tracking, semi-random retaliation moves that sometimes even animation cancel, massive AOE, and monstrous damage. So we're staring at a HUGE number of boss fights that all play the same with slightly different timings, with a bunch of game mechanics that don't even work because if you're not dodging most of the fight you're dead, then you MIGHT be able to get ONE swing in (especially on slower weapons) before having to resorting back to mass-rolling.
So all those game mechanics? Down the toilet for a lot of major boss fights. And everyone keeps bringing the posture breaking up... which is hilarious because some of the smallest weapons break posture easier than the heavier ones despite them being claimed, even in the damn game itself, to be MUCH better at dealing posture damage... except you get safe hits so infrequently on bosses that you MIGHT get one posture break, if you're lucky. And even the longsword style weapons (been the best default choice since DaS3, sadly, just because of how combat works now) good luck using even half of your combos or special moves. They take too long and you MIGHT get a long enough window to recover or they might just animation cancel and smack you before the game even allows you to input another action. So prepare to grind like fucking crazy. Because now, with Elden Ring, this isn't even a game where you press dodge at the right time... it's now a game where you bust out max damage and max hp or the boss busts on you and you die, particularly late-game. Shit literally reminds me of some goofy ass MMO tropes.
Amen. And don't forgot a -SPOILER- sudden mandatory dungeon before rhe final boss. Which, I feel it's just there for padding.
one of the things I rarely see people bring up is the lack of tank builds allowed in Souls games beyond Dark Souls 1. I loved wielding a giant hammer with a hulking suit of armor, you aren't mobile while doing it, so you take lots of damage, but the amount you take is severely reduced which allows you to be very aggressive, albeit very slow as well. this is practically impossible in the future games, especially ER, good luck using a giant strength weapon against most any boss without having to intermittently spam rolls away from their massive attack chains or god forbid try and tank through them with heals. now you HAVE to be super mobile and you HAVE to be doing insane damage, every build must be a glass cannon if you don't want to spend 10 minutes or more on just one of these horrendously boring bosses.
Don't make farting noises with your mouth
@@smwg4187 Don't climb ladders you didn't goddamn fawking earn Winnie!
Desmond Brown It's comical how fanboys constantly bring up the posture breaking as a justification that Elden Ring's bosses are COMPLETELY different from Dark Souls 3's bosses, when really both game's bosses are two sides of the same coin. On my RL1 NG+7 playthrough, I tried using charged R2s and jumping R2s to break the bosses' poise, but the poise numbers on NG+7 are so absurdly high that poise breaks rarely happened, if at all.. At that point, the bosses were literally just Dark Souls 3 bosses with even less downtime and even more blatant input reading, as if Dark Souls 3 wasn't already guilty with that stuff. The only bosses I managed to poise break on NG+7 were Margit and Godrick, and that's only because those bosses had opportunities just long enough for me to get in charged R2s and jumping R2s.
The issue with Elden Ring's bosses is that even though poise breaking does allow them to be approached somewhat differently to Dark Souls 3's bosses, it still has the same issue of bosses feeling same-y and homogenised. The only difference is that instead of every boss being about pressing the roll button at the right time, it's now that every boss is about piling on poise damage and hoping to Gwyn that you get a poise break, due to the baffling omission of a poise bar...
Its weird how Matt pointed out the issue with Dark Souls bosses but no one cared but now that Elden ring is out all of sudden people now agree with him
It’s what happens when you’re a gifted writer, have immense foresight but not much actual influence lol. Matthew is wonderful but he’s also not that big in the grand scheme of CZcams. Even if he was it’s doubtful it would have changed much as people still look at Demon’s Souls as a prototype and DS3 as a direct improvement.
Also I highly suggest sorting by new if you want to be reminded of the ignorance people still have towards this video
This is exactly what I think of Soulsborne. However, I'd like to add, that in many cases, the game you play first makes the biggest impression on you. The order I played the games was: Dark Souls II, Dark Souls, SOTFS, Bloodborne, Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 3. Even though DSII is considered by most to be the worst of the series, I really liked it (and still do) because it was my introduction to the series and I have so many great memories from that game. Yet, I have to say, that Demon's Souls by far is the best ADVENTURE (as was brilliantly pointed out in the video). The overall atmosphere, the sounds, the silence, Flamelurker's and Manhunters boss themes that add to the feeling that the boss is going to be a big challenge... It's all there. The game makes you FEEL. Not only anger and frustration from a defeat or joy from a victory, but also despair and anxiety (Tower of Latria, Swamp). Fucking hell that moment when I saw that red phantom heading towards me from the darkness at the swamp... The ONLY time in Soulsborne I got scared. Also, in my opinion the game has by far the best endings. They both seem so final, you kind of know what is going to happen and there's no need for a sequel. The only regret is, that one broken archstone...
I completely agree, I played DSII and Bloodborne first, but Demon Souls is the first one I finished so I really wanted that level of detail in other games in the series. I do still like all the entries in the series tho, idk what people think about Sekiro but I'm a sucker for over the top action so I love it
I went DaS1->DaS2->BB->DeS->DaS3. Demon's Souls is probably my favorite overall, followed closely by BB and DaS1, both who do some things better, but lacks in other areas.
that Demon's Souls by far is the best ADVENTURE (as was brilliantly pointed out in the video). The overall atmosphere, the sounds, the silence, Flamelurker's and Manhunters boss themes that add to the feeling that the boss is going to be a big challenge... It's all there" all these things are done better in new gen souls games. frankly this whole video can be boiled down to nostalgia.
I was really hesitant to play Demon's Souls as I knew it didn't have interconnected world. After finally trying it out for the first time this year via emulation, I'm suprised to say it even surpasses Dark Souls 1 for me. So no, it's not just nostalgia. There's a lot of things Demon's Souls simply did better when it comes to level design, world building and atmosphere.
I love DS2 the most but DeS has absolutely the best atmosphere out of all the games. Flamelurker’s theme still gives me chills.
My personal list is DS2 > DeS > BB > DS1 > DS3 > ER.
Demon's Souls boss fights have the creativity of a good Zelda boss, in a game with genuinely dangerous levels leading up to them. It's a big damn shame the series steered toward throwing nothing but fast-paced blenders at the player.
What? No. Zelda wishes it had bosses as creative and unique as Demon's Souls. Are you for real? 90% of Zelda bosses are about shooting a big monster in the eye.
I personally think that the less gimmicky bosses fit the soulsborne franchise better. Demon's Souls bosses to me are always either decent challenges or MASSIVE pushovers (cough leechmonger cough adjudicator)
But instead of getting one or the other type of boss design, I think From should try to balance it out. Get a few good bosses testing your dodging, stamina management, and healing, then throw in a well designed gimmick boss to mix it up.
@@drbuni That's just not true at all; have you played a Zelda game?
@@matthewmuir8884 how is that not true? Shooting a big monster in the eye is code for the dungeon item being the key for every boss. It's obviously uninteresting and everyone knows it but they've never changed it
@@kie2 What wasn't true was the claim that anywhere close to 90% of the bosses operate that way; when it does appear, it's usually for the tutorial boss and only the tutorial boss.
Well done. This video has aged well. I clicked for DeS and got my unpopular opinion on Fromsoftware's entire post-DeS arc articulated back at me. The special appeal of these early games is in exploring and presenting immersive novelty, and more developers should take inspiration from their spirit rather than the specifics of i-frame spam, character action-lite implementation.
The lack of warping in Dark Souls 1 can seem tedious and inconvenient, but it makes for memorable situations. When I went for the platinum trophy I got to Anor Londor in new game plus only to realize I didn't kindle any of the bonfires up to 20 in the previous run. So I had to go backwards through Sen's Fortress to go kill Pinwheel. It also made Homeward Bones more impactful. I would purposefully avoid resting at bonfires so I could warp back to Firelink when I achieved certain goals, like defeating Sif or ringing the Blighttown bell. When I made it to new game Plus 2 I needed to get the Sunlight Medals from Anor Londo for the sunbro covenant. I opted to not use any bonfires after resting at Parish so I could Bone back with the Medals. It made the rafters in Anor Londo some of the most stressful moments in gaming I've ever had. Yes I did fall from them once and had to do Sen's fortress again.
Why did you have to do Sen's Fortress again? Did you not open the elevator shortcut with the cage key?
yes, I feel like I know the map of DS1 like the back of my hand, but not as much in the later games because i feel exploration was punished more lightly with the greater amount of bonfires and instant fast travel
I believe that the best thing I ever did regarding bloodborne was
reading Redgrave's The Paleblood Hunt after finishing the game. The
story of the game drew me in and made me stay. While the gameplay is
great I felt that Bloodborne placed story and lore above gameplay using
the established souls formula to tell a story.
Its the reason why blood vials are used, why insight makes enemies
tougher and why you never see a single alien like enemy until the later
half of the game.
I also enjoyed Micolash but rather than enjoy its break from the usual
gameplay I enjoyed the way the fight was shaped to show how Micolash
fits into the story. Caring how the character would fight with its magic
attacks and puppet enemies. Its all in service of the story
My favorite boss had to be Father Gascoigne. It was the point where
gameplay and story meet. It shows the eventual end of all hunters which
in turn adds a transformation to the fight, it encourages exploration by
adding a weakness to a music box. Overall the fight expands on the
story greatly while creating a great fight. It's a showcase of the best
bloodborne has to offer.
thunderingnova Yeah, the Paleblood Hunt was a great read.
"The story was good because of fanfiction that I read after playing it" - Dark Souls "lore" fans in a nutshell.
its not fanfiction but rather someone trying to piece together what happened before and throughout the game. Redgrave talks about only what is in the game before delivering his opinion on what it all means. I assume you did not read it since you truly believe is fanfiction and i really recommend you give it a try.
Bloodborne is not like other souls games when it comes to lore. In dark souls you can clearly piece together what happened to someone through in game item descriptions and environmental clues but in Bloodborne there is a lot unexplained things due to the secrecy of the hunts and the unknown lovecraftian themes. Its hard to piece together what happens in a single playthrough but that does not mean that the story is bad. i hope you can reconsider your view on the lore of the series....
The critique of the Souls Lore is more-so about how weak it feels to learn anything about it 40+ hours AFTER you've completed it and still have it all be superfluous/ irrelevant to what you actually did.
You're not really involved in it, you're just a murder-hobo who blows through everything in your first playthrough and kills all their acquaintances in the end for their stuff in the end for your next time loop bc you don't know anything about an area until you're done with it and will never return.
Basically having a novels-worth of backstory replace the actual story doesn't work for most people.
I think thats what souls or bloodorne was going for, indifference of the world to the player. Its not about the player or the "hero" more like hes just a skilled hunter or warrior who is exploring the desolate world. Firstly, its different to anything else with the focus not being on the players narrative but the worlds and characters. Secondly i think theres no way to make a hero like story that gives the player significance while also making it nuanced or secret as well. if the player has legendary status, then its inevitable that youd find out which defeats the purpose of making an effort to find out through a soulslike way also that it wouldnt really matter, since the player isnt a character with a personality or story. Also what you said about area lore being revealed only after the first encounter can make for a great replay chance, where going back you piece what you learnt together.
I'm glad someone's finally criticizing the combat of these games. Its always been satisfying but it has no depth. It seems like the Souls community is constantly praising the combat when it amounts to as little as holding L1 and occasionally pressing R1 and O to attack or dodge an AOE. The level design, atmosphere, and npcs were always what drove me to the games.
I think that the enemies and bosses made this combat fun; If I think back to my favourite bosses in the series, all I did was dodging and light attacking, but I still love them, because their design compliments this simple combat system, by them doing the complex things
@@gottdashochstewesen4902 fully agreed. he says he could just play a better action rpg but outside of monster hunter i cant think of a game that isn't a soulslike which has the sort of boss quality bloodborne ds3 and elden ring have and even if they do the player also feels more overpowered.
The lack of depth is what makes it great imo. I don't need 100+ different moves and combos for a combat system to be fun, the simplicity is what makes is engaging.
@@livingfailure He said better action game not action rpg
@@livingfailurehe said action game. DMC etc have way better action for example.
After beating Elden Ring maaaaaaan this video aged well.
Like fine fuckin’ wine if I say so myself.
Agreed about the combat. By the time you hit DS3 bosses are basically a glorified skipping rope. You learn the I-Frames for a boss and the brief moments when you can punish.
For all the fanfare of epic orchestral music and giant armored badasses it is a combat system where only 2 buttons really matter, R1 and Dodge
That skipping rope analogy is genius, I gotta remember that.
I definitely agree with you on the music especially. Too much of the music in the later games are grand orchestral musics that on their own are good but really not memorable
yeah but at least in ds3 you can consitantly avoid damage by jumpingh on the rope. In the early games you pretty much must have a shield or the whole game crumbles into nothing
@@HoneyDoll894 I dunno man I never used a shield for Dark Souls 1. I can't speak for Demon's Souls because I sucked too much at that game when it released.
@@MrCompassionate01 in my experience ds1 feels very inconsistent and even with very low weight the roll still always feels too slow and clumsy
This video hits harder after elden ring
Just wanted to say I really like the point you make about how later games in the series have become closer to action games, and therefor feel weaker since it becomes natural to compare them to more fully fleshed out action games. This is something I've thought about Fallout 4 for a while. So many people say that Fallout 4 improves on the combat at least, despite its many regressions from what games earlier in the series do. But to me that's not good enough. The closer it get's to feeling like a typical first person shooter and strips away the RPG elements that made the series in the first place, the more sense it makes to stop comparing it to RPG's and start comparing it to properly made first person shooters. And in that case it fails spectacularly by having very watered down and basic FPS mechanics compared to so many games in that genre.
You make a good point and Joseph Anderson talks about this in his CZcams critique on Fallout 4 ( the second video he did on the game).
When Fallout 4 focuses more on the action it will be compared to other games which focus on action. It will look quite watered down by comparison. The funny thing about Bethesda's Fallout is it seems incapable of doing both: it either has decent combat but crap RPG mechanics or decent RPG mechanics and crap combat. Even when it has decent combat that combat still pales in comparison to other action games.
Matthew's point about how other action RPGs do the same thing is valid.
@@asiamatron Joseph Anderson is a complete tool but he brings up a lot of good points at times. I really enjoyed his DS2 videos, though I am even more positive than he is on the game, which was still very positive.
@@theatheistbear3117 and why that exactly?
@@shrouls Because he doesn’t take criticism very well when people point out that he uses subjective and objective statements interchangeably (for example calling *SOMA* not a horror game, or saying horror games “aren’t scary”), and when confronted about it he made an entire video doubling down on “subjectivity being implied,” and generally misconstruing the arguments people were making.
@@theatheistbear3117 this is not enough to call him a "complete tool". His videos are subjective, same for matthewmatosis and every critic whether they admit to it or not. I do not see the issue with this and outside of his horror games don't scare me video his work is on par with the best on this site
with every new souls game the core thesis of this video gets more and more relevant
Man I was wondering why I was feeling bored of Elden Ring even after changing my build 3 times. After the novelty of the open world wears down you are left with bosses that are just gael on crack or gankfests, and copypasted minidungeons with mediocre rewards. There are no surprises or anything.
Legacy Dungeons were the highlight of the game for me, the verticality adds a lot to exploration and Stormveil castle is just as good as boletaria, despite the high amount of bonfires and teleporting instead of making the level cycle on itself.
And maybe I exaggerated about there being no surprises. Those crazy chariot dungeons despite being unfair and rage inducing were fun in the end, just because they were different, a new challenge more similar to a puzzle/plataforming section that was a nice break from boss-with-a fifteen-seconds-long-attack-chain-and-input-reading #27, which is regrettable since those dungeons end on another boring bossfight with a mediocre reward
@@bobsnob9246 You're right about the lack of surprises, personally the worst disappointment I had with Elden Ring was how completely static and boring the open world is. It was a golden opportunity for FromSoft to create interesting traversal challenges and instead they just copypasted the usual poison swamps (which can be completely trivialized by using the horse) and nothing else. Even Dragon's Dogma has more interesting area gimmicks like Windworm Valley. In fact ER does absolutely nothing interesting or creative neither as an open world game nor as a Souls game.
At the 50 hour mark you will get bord mostly because the game just decides to throw boss after boss after anoying enemy back to back gets stale fast.
@@sagejay9816 yeah I thought the world was the best since ds1 but once you run out of stuff to explore its apparent the mechanics of the series haven't gotten any better. The final stretch of bosses are particularly cheap.
@@AldricJFL When I got to the "Super Saiyan 4!" poison swamp I just sighed really hard and the weight of my disappointment with from's lack of restraint (and it seems originality at this point) collapsed on me like a structurally compromised brick house.
I think the most crucial point of DS1 was the disability to warp from the beginning. If you were stuck in one area the only way out of it was to press onward, or awkwardly fight ones way back. I remember being stuck in blighttown and it was scary, because at the time there was no going back for me.
I think Elden Rings exploration would actually have been meaningful if you couldn´t teleport through the entire map all the time.
Especially the teleportation traps would have gained a lot by that. Other than a cheap "gotcha, heres a visual spoiler for you" it would have been terrifying to fight ones way out of Caelid for example after being tpd there...
I do like the ER endgame bosses though, they´re mechanically fitting (being demigods and all), but I really hope from will do something else by now. Since Bloodborne all the games feel like more of the same, with slight variation but having different visuals each time :/
For the first few hours of the game, I didn't realise that you could fast travel- so when I got caught in the teleportation trap to Caelid, I had to find my way back to Limgrave through an area for which I was massively underlevelled. It may have been a mindboggling show of obliviousness/stupidity on my part, but it gave me a sense of adventure and danger (like that of earlier Fromsoft titles) that was woefully absent once I discovered fast travel. Because of that, it was probably the highlight of the game for me.
Fast travel is truly a detriment to this game. Elden Ring has a huge and beautifully crafted world, but you can never appreciate the scale and diversity of it because, once you've trotted around for long enough, every location in the game is two button-presses away. It completely triviliases the aesthetic experience, and you have less incentive to fully explore areas before moving on because you can just teleport back there whenever you want; but that's only the least of it. Along with the ridiculous frequency of Sites of Grace, you never have to make plans or consider how you're going to get somewhere, as, besides the generic dungeons where fast travel is disabled, there is no risk and no consequence to pushing through an unknown area: as long as you're not in combat, you don't have to worry about how you're getting back. Even dropping runes is far less nerve-wracking than earlier titles. And since the stakes are always so low, that wonderful feeling of relief once you get to a safe area (which, as far as I'm concerned, was the best part of Dark Souls) is practically non-existent.
The worst part is that I'm not sure there's any quick, moddable solution to the issue. Enemy and level design is balanced around the ability to fast travel, so replacing it with a system more akin to Dark Souls 1 (with fewer Sites of Grace and a limited, more diegetic warp system) would probably make the game very boring and frustrating; boss runs would be absolutely out of the question, for a start.
I think the dumbest part about the teleportation traps is that they teleport you most of the time near a site of grace; so instead of getting the feeling that I actually got trapped I end up getting spoiled about 3 late-game areas instead which just removed any fun of exploring new things I had lol
They also should've changed a lot of filler dungeons into the cool ones in late-game; the looping one was fun, teleporting chest dungeon was nice and the invisible floor one reminded me of the crystal cave in a good way. Instead you end up with 50+ dungeons with only 4 unique ones while the rest is super formulaic where you can predict the outcome of each type of dungeon.
If Elden Ring endgame bosses means Malenia I disagree because I hate that boss but if it means Godfrey then I like that
And Elden Ring is everything that Matthew just illustrated that is wrong with the series cranked up to 11. Think I'm done with Miyazaki.
OMG all you people do is bitching and complain!
What do you want?
For Honor mechanics implemented in FS games?
Why?
They found the formula, and people love it, these games are always going to be about "timing" and fair challenge.
Elden Ring is a great game about journey and exploration of unknown.
You are the one who is missing out.
I respect him because he is not following trends of other game developers.
I blame people like you for ruined series like Assassin's Creed.
Why does a boss fight has to be a puzzle game?
Since when action RPG games became puzzle platform games?
If Meadzaki wants his games to be roll simulator, he fucking has right to do so!
Understand one simple fact
There will be never a perfect game
A perfect game of the genre? Yes!
ER is a perfect example of that.
They are making a good games that sets the limits of genre.
Because it won't make much sense to add football in Elder Ring
It would be cool
However totally unnecessary!
Sekiro was experimental!
And turn out to be awesome.
Perfect game is all the great games ever created put together in one single game, which is impossible because it take centuries to make that game!
You are asking FS to expand the limits they set for themselves, why would they need to be doing that?
Life is not perfect
Can you be perfect? No
Can you be perfect human being? Yes, absolutely
See what I did there?
I putted a limit
Because in that certain pool area of perfection
You can be the best of the best.
First step is enjoy great games to be inspired by them to make your own Perfect Game.
@@TheNether333 i want more interesting fights and mechanics. More fights like Rykard in Elden Ring and less like Margit. For how giant the world in elden ring is, the amount of things you do with it is very limited. All bosses of a certain weapon type do the same shit and it's just lame.
They brought Ashen Estus back though. 10/10 Matthew approved!
This video aged like fine wine. I've always told people that Demon's Souls was an Adventure-RPG, and that the newer FromSoft games are Action-RPGs. It used to be that the focus was exploring the environments, and combat was an element of that overarching experience. Now the combat is the focus and the environments are just a setting for the action to occur in. It's why Elden Ring's world is designed like a Bethesda open world game; an amusement park where you go from one generic ride to the next.
If Elden Ring were more like Demon's Souls, all of Caelid would be a gigantic poison swamp with ruined wooden structures scattered around for safety and no map to assist in navigation, forcing the player to recognize landmarks to find their way. Liurnia would be almost completely water and all navigation would be jumping from partially-submerged rooftops to the next, taking measured jumps to take advantage of the new jumping feature. All of Gelmir would be an active volcano mountainside with molten rock falling from the sky. Altus would something besides a yellow-tinted Limgrave. Leyndell would be lined with soldiers and ballistae and cannons to force the player to navigate the city using dark alleyways and a complex sewer network to avoid patrols. And everything after Leyndell wouldn't exist because the effort would have gone into refining the existing areas rather than padding the game out with nonsense.
Elden Ring's world is incredibly open at the start, but it doesn't help the experience much when all of the environments in that world are uninteresting.
You're giving Demon's Souls way too much credit if you think FROM would've gone with the refinement of existing areas. they tend to just leave them be which is why demon's souls doesn't really have the best areas in their games.
@@LN.2233 I’d disagree, honestly. Each area is pretty great. There is a lot of interesting ways to travel (such as the long or short way at the Flamelurker Level that you can use). But that’s up for debate. There are certainly areas in each game that do things different or better than the other.
@@ephemeralsolidity1004 I kind of hoped that jumping would’ve been the main way you’d dodge attacks. I don’t know if you’ve played *Salt and Sanctuary* but that game allows you to air dash around the first third of the game and then a second use later on, which is very handy against the later bosses in the game. Given that Torrent can double jump this mechanic wouldn’t come out of left field, as it already kind of exists.
Just imagine how much cooler Maliketh’s fight would’ve been if that was in the game, let alone the wall grabbing. Swinging around in the air as you go from pillar to pillar. Now *that* would’ve been a great fight.
Dude, apply to From Soft now, all of those are such cool ideas
If Snowy mountaintops were more like DeS, you would need to move in the vast landscape with blinding snowstorm that could potentially freeze your character to death and destroy your armor.
You would need to find shelters scattered in the area to keep your character warm.
Kind of like frigid outskirts from Ds2 minus the snowstorm that could ruin your character. (Actually, the ice reindeers kind of work as the element in the snowstorm that hurts the player and you need to be inside a ruined building for them to not attack and spawn on you)
"This is no longer a series where you outsmart your opponents, it's a series where you press the roll button at the right time."
"When it's a foregone conclusion that every fight is a dodge and punish affair, they lose their impact."
"A little restraint would go a long way, as has been proven in a few other instances."
"Problems are regularly solved in one game only to be undone in the next one."
Oh boy... It's hilariously sad coming back to this video and seeing how much of it echoes in Elden Ring as well.
"When it's a foregone conclusion that every fight is a dodge and punish affair, they lose their impact."
I really don't understand why this sentence is repeated throughout the video. I didn't play Demon souls, only DS1/2/3 BB Sekiro ER. But i can barely count on 2 hands the number of bosses that are not that.
@@lenain3932 That's exactly because you didn't play Demon's Souls, most bosses in that game are puzzle/strategy bosses. Only four bosses are strictly speaking "usual Souls affair", those being Penetrator, False King Allant, Maneaters and Flamelurker.
As a lot of examples of what I mean by puzzle/strategy bosses, Phalanx is about using the throwables you've scavenged throughout the level to defeat it's legion, Tower Knight is about defeating the archers shooting down at you and then hitting it's ankles, Dragon God is a stealth boss where you have to hide while it's searching for you, Old Monk is fighting a player that gets summoned as the boss, Adjudicator is resistant everywhere in his body but on his weak spot, which knocks it down to be vulnerable, Storm King was the first of the "get weapon in the arena to fight the boss" trope that's followed by Yhorm in DS3 and Rykard in ER, Maiden Astraea doesn't even fight you and is just guarded by her knight.
Demon's is just full of cool little unique experimental moments you won't find anywhere else in other Souls games. Hence why the title of "Lost [Soul] Arts" of the video.
@@arkaua ah ok , thanks for explaining
To be fair, Elden Ring is a masterpiece on so many levels. Although I do feel like the boss fights have become more of a rhythm/memorization game rather than a strategy game.
@@arkaua I would even add that because most fights in Dark Souls 1 didn't have excessive tracking you actually could outsmart bosses enough to where you hardly if ever had to evade, so you could find openings for big attacks, charged up moves/spells and/or combos. That's a distant relic of a bygone age since Dark Souls 2 since everything has excellent poise, you don't anymore (not a meaningful amount anyways), and most things now track and do massive combos faster than anything in the first two games of the series. So yeah, as you said in the original post... it's really sad how things turned out.
I remember a friend asking me what my favorite boss from Bloodborne was and I told him Micolash. He was extremely upset 'that I said that and told me "he isn't a REAL boss" and I got really sad. I'm glad you bring up this idea that weird bosses somehow aren't "REAL" in your video, makes me feel better about loving dumbass bosses. Micolash is still the most memorable fight to me.
I have the same feeling when people shit on Bed of Chaos all the time. That's actually one of my favourite bosses of DS1 at this point.
DeliciousDishes problem is it's done with Dark Souls' clunky movement and makes it an absolute pain to play against. You don't feel like a heavy knight, you feel more like someone who has been smothered in peanut butter.
+DeliciousDishes
How is that even possible? Lol. Micolash I can understand, but Bed of Chaos? I can't even conceive of anything likable about that boss.
+Rayne looks cool, sounds cool, mixes things up and I really like the idea of the area being the enemy and not the boss itself. Legitimately the only problem I see with it are random firestorms on the branch or inside the tree that you can't dodge (also maybe the checkpoints).
+happy joker that might be the case for you. I like to fight Bed of Chaos more than I like acclaimed bossfights like Artorias or bossfights that I think are atrocious that get hyped for some reason (Ivory King and Friede are the worst fights in the entire series).
While I’m enjoying Elden Ring a great deal, and really liked Ds3… this video is extremely on point and hard to argue with.
"...this is no longer a series where you outsmart your opponents; it's a series where you press the roll button at the right time."
lol at all the people that call demons souls bosses boring
Mathew always out here just spittin pure unfiltered facts
@@dc7981 most boring and easiest. ds2 was worse though. i did enjoy demon souls but the bosses where way too easy
only old king allant was hard
@@elyasshussain5988 at least they are unique unlike the bosses in 3
It’s to the point where some long time CZcamsrs put out videos basically complaining that too many bosses in ER aren’t easily defeated with just well timed dodge rolling and they had to engage with the other mechanics.
This video holds even more true with release of Elden Ring. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game and possibly one of the best we got in recent years and a clear GOTY contender, but it suffers from all of the flaws Matt lists in this video.
Shame because sometimes you get some of that Souls brilliance shining through it in some places and encounters. The sense of wonder caused by open world at the start is great. Limgrave, Weeping Peninsula and Stormveil Castle are greatly designed areas. Ranni's sidequest leading you to exploring vast ancient undeground cities and taking 10+ hours alone is one of the best things they have ever done in the series. Some bosses have interesting, memorable mechanics like Radahn being a raid boss, Rennala having a "gimmicky" first phase and "normal" second one (so both types of players get something out of the fight) or how they finally made the Storm Ruler gimmick good. Figuring out on your own you can strip down naked to significantly reduce the strength of Mimic Tear boss fight and make it a total joke all feel like those moments where you are an adventurer in a strange land, trying to overcome a difficult challenge.
But at the same series double down on the flashy shonen anime boss fights where enemies do insane wombo combos, cancel their animation, read your inputs so they punish you drinking flasks frame-perfectly, have insane tracking and the attack delays get so obnoxious even first time casual players joke about them.
Some of the later areas have obnoxious design with traps being just absolutely insane. While a "trap" or "dangerous area" in DeS or DaS meant 1 or 2 archers shooting slow arrows at you, in Elden Ring there is an re-used boss as a regular enemy while two ballistas shoot bolts at you that explode in nukes while you move slowly through a poison swamp. They tried way too hard instead of coming up with a new interesting challenge. Rarely you get an area like Depths or Sen's Fortress which forces you to completely change your pace and playstyle.
I think i agree. The Remembrance Fights are mostly cool, but a lot of the catacombs and stuff are lame and they start to reuse bosses fairly early. Ranni's quest was really accessible even for someone not looking stuff up and has a really satisfying ending and implications for the finale.
Even stuff like gideon having more spells if you did the optional legacy dungeons is neat, but while numbers are up, boss fight uniqueness are down. And a lot of these little side dungeons, while optional, contain important upgrade items or bell bearings to level your stuff up so you can deal with the boss rush difficulty spike at the end (I like these bosses mostly, even if half of them are only roll skillchecks.
I had a lot of fun with it, and it seems like the different magic color builds feel pretty fresh (swapped from dex stuff to int/str once finishing ranni's line for the sword),and I spent ages in Limgrave, Peninsula, and Liurnia just hanging out, but everything past that is a little less charming.
What on earth are you talking about in the last paragraph? There's no such area.
holy fuck this is the video the souls community has needed for a while.
It’s not bland and repetitive you just need to get good. /s
So glad that I'm not the only person who got sick of all DkS3's CUHRAZY MOVESET WITH 7X COMBOS (SPAM ROLL TO WIN) boss fights. It's only exacerbated by the fact that the majority of the game's enemies seem to behave the same way.
I'm not here to say anything about your comment, I just really like your Max Payne picture.
Underrated quote.
That was clearly lifted from BB but they overlooked one important aspect: that game has a built in counter to those attacks, namely THE GUNS! If an enemy starts going ham then you shoot and punish them.
So they decided to bring over a major aspect of BB gameplay without considering how it would fit in DS . Baffling!
Nailed it. BB's dodges were also fast as hell, had almost no recovery time, and cost very little stamina. DS3 basically has dark souls 1 stamina consumption and Demon's Souls rolling, so you aren't equipped to deal with it.
the biggest part of that problem for me were bosses and outriders, as well as things that went way farther than necessary.
for instance, I didn't mind Lothric Knights being as tough as they were, that was fine, they added a fine challenge. but then you had Cathedral Knights, better, stronger knights that fear nothing and no one. Then you had Irrythil Knights... That's where things got way out of fucking hand fast...
and then you had Pontiff's beasts. that's when the game went from sort of like Bloodborne, to 100% Bloodborne.
@@toxicitzi357 The Ringed Knight with straight sword is another example, but is less painful since there are very few of them. They have a slash combo where a couple of swings occur so fast that you can't dodge one if you dodged the other, unless you were able to roll backwards and get out of range.
Edit: But yeah, the GS Cathedral knights and their never ending swings that can still hit you behind them. The Pontiff beasts and their immense damage coupled with speed and poor telegraphing. And the Outriders, who attack so much and so fast that you sometimes have no stamina to attack with despite efficient rolling. They're not unbeatable or very hard, heck, if you get a large weapon you can trivialize them by preventing them from attacking. They're just cheap, especially with the increasing amount of enemies that magicaly get out of any and all recovery frames when you hit them, making them recover and attack faster WHEN you hit them. Case in point: try attacking the grave wardens with something fast, like a dagger. They will sometimes perform a swing that is so fast that it will hit you between your attacks despite the warden having to recover briefly. If you're unlucky, they'll do this several times inside your combo, costing you a large portion of your health through something you couldn't prevent (except by dodging and spamming magic).
Coming back to this video after playing Elden Ring makes me deeply worried for the future of the souls games. Mathew may as well been a souls prophet for the implications this video foreboded.
Its a real shame since Bloodborne and Sekiro showed that they can do something different, especially with Sekiro being so recent. (Derascine too but don't think that turned many heads). They need to let the Souls series sleep unless they plan on returning to their roots. Hopefully Armored Core gives them a chance to do something new...
@@hdo4ever ngl I agree. I really liked elden ring but at least the game had the open world to make it feel a bit fresh. But another souls game with no substantial changes would be a bit disappointing. Either mix the gameplay again while keeping the same souls skeleton but with a new setting or make a new game entirely
elden ring is already the depressing 'future' of souls games. It's over
@@ignotumperignotius630 mattew fans try not to be overly-cynical challenge (impossible). Also there is a long way(hopefully) until what fromsoft makes will become comparable with the souless western studio garbage that gets pumped out every year despite your personal grievances with the game
@@ignotumperignotius630
I think “the end of souls games” is actually the best case scenario. Let Fromsoft make some new and innovative games.
"At their worst, they're camera eating monstrosities with infinite stamina that blatantly read your inputs, cancel their recovery animations and have nonsensical tracking"
Every boss in elden ring.
I've tried to find some weak spots or some gimmick, but as far as I can see - the only thing I can do is magic. Should I keep searching for more?
@@aldecotan Well Margit kind of has an item that is his Kryptonite, but that’s about it.
@@theatheistbear3117 if that would be at least interesting to find, but for some reason Patches has it, with no real connection as to why he would. it's basically the Gascoigne music box, except nonsensical
@@riggedycat It’s really hamfisted for sure.
Gotta love how From stacks you against enemies like that while the combat has shit input buffering and a plodding flow to it that feels out of place when compared to how fast paced and manic many enemies/bosses are.
Mikolash isn't annoying because he runs away. He's annoying because of his bull shit AOE magic spell.
Jeff The Wizard Exactly. Having a long chase segment with virtually no gameplay in it isn't a problem on its own, but when it's followed by a moment where you can be OHKOed by an unexpected attack unless your health bar is large enough is pointlessly frustrating. I like the chase section but I replaying it after being instakilled is not a fun experience.
I don't understand why everybody seems to say this. Did you guys forget to level vitality or something? I've played through bloodborne over 15 times and I have never once been oneshot by A Call Beyond (the aoe)
On one character I leveled it a fair amount and still would get still get destroyed.
I tend not to level vit much in any souls game, I end up relying on it too much and enjoy playing glass cannons x bloodborne is the game I level it the last as it so easy to avoid damage
Slance On later NG cycles you get one-shot, regardless of your health. It pretty much ruins the boss.
Elden Ring still suffers from many of these problems. The addition of the jump button, the reintroduction of powerstancing, the way that many ashes of war are designed to integrate into combo attacks, it's great to see. I think that the customizable flask also adds a lot of potential to the formula.
But it's a shame that they somehow managed to make the multiplayer experience worse. It feels like the original intent was for Rune Arcs to work exactly like Embers in DS3, and tying multiplayer to the use of finger remedies instead was a late in development change. It is so frustrating that the reward system for multiplayer content makes so much more sense if rune arcs were equivalent to Embers. You could imagine an improvement, even, where the player would only be able to activate a rune arc and thus enable multiplayer from the safety of the roundtable hold.
The ability to teleport anywhere most of the time continues to serve as a crutch for the level design.
The copypasted catacombs and frequent enemy re-use is disappointing, but I think that dungeons like the teleporter dungeon and the leyndell catacombs ONLY work as well as they do because of the repetitive and predictable nature of those types of dungeon throughout the game. And it's a strange situation. There was ample opportunity to experiment with the abundant optional content in the game, but only a small handful even attempt anything novel.
Horseback combat is a potentially interesting addition but I can't recall a single encounter in the game that seemed to be designed to be fought that way. You absolutely can fight a number of bosses on horseback, and occasionally it's true that hopping on torrent is a convenient way to avoid a particular attack, but you could remove torrent completely and the only way in which you would maybe suffer from his absence in combat is the lack of a double jump for hopping over dragon breath.
I think the very first encounter with the dragon on the lake is the perfect use case of the horseback combat. The Dragon gets to do dragon things like fly around and you get to follow/avoid him at a similar pace thanks to Torrent.
Unfortunately From Soft somehow thought it was a good idea to not let you use Torrent in a fight with Elden Beast, a creature that is big, moves around a lot and has huge AOEs.
Video was great when it was released and even better now that Elden Ring has become a hellscape of delayed animations and boss combo strings.
I was looking for this kind of comment. Can you say a little more about Elden Ring? I can't play it by myself and gameplay seems to be unchanged after ds3
@@aldecotan I haven’t finished it yet but Matt’s video is spot on about the problems with the combat. The bosses have gotten a lot more extravagant and have various ranged moves, gap closers, etc while player options have not meaningfully improved. Plenty of bosses have “gotcha” animations that are just annoying and needlessly pad out fights where you’re often only able to take two or three hits before needing to heel. As for combat, you’re still cycling through magic, items, etc clumsily and it becomes deflating when you go know that you’re going to have to hunker down and eventually memorize the boss move set. They feel far less satisfying to beat now probably because we’ve played all this before, now with just more bullshit. The animation delays oftentimes fly in the face of physics itself and make many bosses look like Dancer of the Boreal Valley.
Moreover the open world is not well justified either, as fighting enemies becomes extremely tedious and unrewarding, traversal is not unique or challenging, and you’re not exactly dealing with the elements or random encounters. The exploration doesn’t always reward you either and at times it saps joy out of going places. This would be less annoying in the other games because you don’t have to run around as much, but Elden Ring is stuffed with padding and becomes a slog if you’re not an ultra hardcore souls fan. I hope Matt makes a review of Elden Ring because he would have a lot to say about the open world design.
@@5ifth you are just stating random things and/or repeating what matthewmatosis said in the videoa and applying it to elden ring, like for example you say that the players' actions were not meaningfully improved when ER has far wider viable moveset than any souls game, because in dark souls as a melee character you were pretty much limited to like 3 viable actions: R1 attacks, rolling and sometimes blocking, which became weaker in next titles, but still pretty reliable. Most R2s were useless, because spamming R1s did more damage anyway, especially during bossfights and parrying or backstabs didn't work on bosses. Elden Ring actually uses all of those mechanics and adds a few more. Pretty much every move you have is useful (besides backstep why was it ever in any souls game?) because you can break enemy's posture with heavy attacks, guard counters, jump attacks and parrying can be used more often on bosses/minibosses. You also have dozens of switchable weapon skills. Mathewmatosis had a problem that the game supposedly focusing more on action while not deeping the combat, but ER has better and deeper combat, so what's the problem with that?
Radhan is basically everything wrong with Fromsoft's boss design
@@5ifth I disagree that player options have not changed. Heavy attacks stagger and are optimal for aggressive play, but require smart timing. Weaponarts/skills have been buffed to be viable, allowing for more potential combos, not to mention sleeping debuff, or summoning trash mobs that deal no damage to the boss but take agro from the boss for a while, but not long since you hitting them makes them target you again. If you are smart, you can cheese lot of the bosses in the game, but some might consider it cowardice. Overall the combat is slightly deeper and more complex in classic other action game ways and rather then being copy of ds3 as everybody is talking about, it is rather the equivalent to ds3 as Dark Souls was to Demon Souls. Not much innovation, increased size of the map, combat polish and so on. Though the lack of gimmicky bossfights is kinda sad. One of my favourite bossfights in the game are the Crystallian dudes in mines, because they have very smart gimmick to them where you cant damage them with normal weapons, and have to use blunt weapons to shatter them, which imo was really well done gimmick unlike most of ds3 gimmick bossfights.
This video turned out to be prophetic
You have a heart of gold MM, don't let them take it from you...
Mike Your Mic Umbasa
Bowser from Sonic o fuk u got me
basterds
Easily one of the best deconstructions of the series on CZcams, seems to be even more relevant with the looks of Elden Ring.
This man fucking destroyed Elden Ring's boss design 5 years before it came out
What's wrong with ER boss design?
@@Reez22154 16:06
@@Reez22154 A lot. There are already a bunch of videos going into it but to sum up: overuse of delayed attacks, overly long combo strings, inconsistent follow-ups, blatant input reading and minuscule attack windows.
@@amysteriousviewer3772 Its sort of funny because all of those reasons are why I love the Elden Ring bosses. In real life people won't do the same telegraphed attacks, they will feint a blow and then follow up with a swift cut when you can't react, they will delay their attacks to put you off, they won't stand around to let you hit them and they won't let up on their attacks until you are dead. Of course it is a game, it has crazy magic and dodge rolls and limited parrying and such, and the bosses still give you too much time to attack them, but I want an enemy that can keep me thinking and on my toes, not one who does the same 3 move combo. Elden Ring has some of my favourite bosses for those reasons.
Kinda ironic that its not an accurate representation of what many people and developers think. ER may have the most versatile and varied boss design in Fromsoft catalogue, and the focus on action only shows that they are not one trick ponies satisfying the opinions of a group of people expecting to play exactly the same on every game.
Teleportation has been the worst addition to the games in my opinion. When you venture down into Blight Town you better make sure you're prepared, because once you're down there there's no teleporting out again with zero consequences. It made the shortcuts so much more important, finding one an immense relief. You're lost in an unfamiliar place, probably with a bunch of souls and only so many heals.
Pretty much why in Elden Ring Lake of Rot (and Swamp of Aeonia to some degree although you could either go around the swamp anyway or traverse with a horse through it without consequences which is bad in a different way) felt nowhere as "scary" as Blighttown; if you're almost dead you can just warp back to the checkpoints if there's no enemies nearby (and there's barely any of them) so the entire dreadful feeling about searching for the nearest bonfire to survive is pretty much gone.
@@ToastieMcMuffin Yeah definitely. I also think having a map indicate exactly where you are also takes some of the fun away, you're not inclined to really think about where you are and remember the routes back to safety.
@@saysolmao to be fair, the map is basically useless for the legacy dungeons and only helps with the giant open world
That's why I actively try not to use it.
After my 2nd character (I'm on my 5th by now) I started not using the warp mechanic as much I could.
Rather walk/ride my way to whatever objective I have in mind.
Exceptions made to the Roundtable hold, and Ranni's church (up in the other Plateau)
The cumbersome mechanics of the series are, in a way, the things that used to make it special. Weapon durability meant you had a chance to bond with the Blacksmiths. Lack of fast travel made the world feel huge and cohesive as if you were just a small piece of a grander puzzle. The intricate placement of bonfires/lamps allowed the levels to feel truly labyrinthian ( a feature mostly gone in Elden Ring).
it’s not that he was prophetic, it’s that the contemporary issues he identified have only gotten worse with time
Since when? What fromsoft games released since this video aired? Elden Ring had obviously a different focus but still showed some great unexpected ideas
@@pawlogates There was Sekiro, which leaned very heavily into action part of action RPG. The light stealth mechanics and movement were new and cool, but the main combat boils down to "press attack and block with good timing" far more than before.
@@pawlogates Since Dark Souls 2, arguably. Elden Ring may have different focus, but the template it used is literally the exact same as Soulsborne with slight changes, hence why it still falls under the same criticisms.
@@slinger8839 I don't think it's fair to drag Sekiro into the equation. They never advertised it as an RPG or Souls games, the game is too different to be criticized in the same manner as Soulsborne.
Besides, those who think that its main combat boils down to "press attack and block with good timing" definitely didn't care enough to explore all the other options that the game actually offers, and it's not in the same vein as Bloodborne's transforming weapons, hence I'm questioning people ability to truly assess the game's quality.
@@slinger8839 i think thats way too oversimplified. Sekiro has very complex combat with few simple systems.
I came back to this video after elden ring because:
- Teleport whenever you want, from wherever you want
- Full respec available after the 3rd boss
- Bosses full of animations designed for roll-catching and nothing else
- Tons of dual bosses and hordes of enemies that don't fit the combat system at all
- Long combos and spamming galore
- 0.1% bosses that aren't bland roll-timing memorization fights
- Bonfires everywhere
- Extra checkpoints in front of every boss, even after opening shortcuts
- 5,209 doors that can only be opened from one side
- Hundreds of new spells, attacks, and weapons added, R1 still the only thing you need to use
- Highest starting stamina in the series, lowest cost roll
- Backstabs still 2014 DS2 mechanic and not BB or something better
- Bosses designed to be fought on horse have attacks that can't be avoided when you're on the horse
- Horse platforming
- Character can single jump, horse can double jump => randomly getting on the horse to get over a wall then getting off it again
- Inputs randomly blocked during the horse turning animation
- Same bland upgrade system that makes it so you can only use 3 weapons the entire game unless you grind
- No improved blood gem system used to replace said bland upgrade system
- Combat flow feels worse than BB and DeS
- The lake of rot 'level design'
- Inconsistent input queuing
- Meaningless crafting system
- Needing to mash triangle while you ride around the map for the meaningless crafting system
- Lock on breaks randomly
- Lock on prioritizes closest enemy instead of whatever is closest to the center of the screen
- Stepping off a 1-inch ledge fully cancels all attacks and clears input queue
- Phantom summons completely break boss AI
- Preventing you from summoning phantoms in random bosses, making them feel like a waste
- Poison/curse timeout still not exponential so you just have to stand around and wait for it to deplete
- Message system used nearly exclusively for trolling and jokes
- Hidden wall system still in the game so you waste time testing every possible wall out of fear of missing something
- Full damage during un-cancelable get-up animation
- Resummoning horse requiring an unskippable menu prompt
- 90% of the fan base has only played bland AAA games so this seems like a flawless masterpiece to everyone
btw, if you're disappointed with the recent souls games, checkout Exanima.
you forgot to mention that half of the NPCs are protected by a no-weapons allowed zone so players don't "accidentally" kill them
great to see that fromsoft has no faith in players taking normal human like decisions
I agree with most of what you said but few. -Early respec is kinda good in game that has so much stuff to try out, starting from begining is alot slower this time around -No bosses are designed to be fought only on horses, but horse does make alot of fights stupidly easy -You can be damaged on flour only when getting kicked of horse -Crafting is alright, its like shoping but on fly, but collecting stuff is bad since you just spam the button, it could of had been automatic.
My big complaint is that bosses play most unfairly, heavy weapon build is torture since they recover from attacks in instant. They play with different rules and it shows, infite stamina and mana, so fight are RNG, you have to get lucky for them to throw easy moves. Co-op is shit, just a copy pase from ds which doesnt fit elden ring. Npc questlines are just wikipedia searches for basicaly 90% people and no improvements were made in that regard. And bosses are reused for fear of missing them out.
I would argue that the most people who don't think its a masterpiece are people who never played souls games. Most people complaining are the ones who are not used to fromsoft games.
Hit the nail on the head with the last point. The state of AAA games as a whole nowadays is just... ugh
You forgot to add that slower weapons effectively handicap you (like greatswords) and only makes the dichotomy between Dexterity and Strength based weapons worse.
And I’m one of the people who likes Dex weapons, by the way.
Mikalash in Bloodborne, the host of the nightmare... this tells me it's an allegory to nightmares of being chased... however, now you are doing the chasing. It's just another way of making you feel like a monster in a way. This isn't your nightmare, it's his; and you are the one pursuing him.
Nah, I remember hearing him laughing his ass off, and I never tried to kill him, he just didn't give me a chance.
I knew I wasn't chasing a prey, it was all pure show.
This video continues to age well after every new game in this series is released. It's beautifully written but I'm sad that it's so true. I think it all started with the prepare to die marketing of dark souls 1 which brought millions of people to the series for reasons that demon's souls wouldn't have. It's back to being stagnant.
In fairness to Dark Souls 1, "prepare to die" was the marketing and subtitle for the PC port that came out almost a year after the original Dark Souls. And so I don't think the developer or publisher originally intended to market Dark Souls in such a way, but as a response to everyone talking about how difficult (but also rewarding) the console game was, they tried to take advantage of the notoriety in their marketing of the PC port.
@Maldito Mur Exactly. Sometimes marketing speak cam infect the series itself, and influence what fans think that the games _should_ be in spite of what they were. Just look at the Sonic series, whose marketing revolved around speed and blast processing to the point where the design philosophy of the Genesis trilogy has been obfuscated, with people often pointing to "going fast" as the entire point of Sonic games. The proliferation of the boost formula was proof enough of SEGA leaning into this marketing perception, as they created a gameplay style that was unsustainable in the HD era, with huge environments that took huge amounts of time and resources to create, only for the player to blitz through them in under 3 minutes.
@@megavolt67 The original console versions were also marketed with the 'prepare to die' mantra (See the Bartholomew Trailer for an example). Even the official site and forums were on the domain name preparetodie
Dark souls 1 with the pc release started the marketing focus on difficulty, DS2 was the first one to actually start designing the game intentionally to fuck with people for difficulties sake.
You know, when I first played Dark Souls 3 I felt like something was gone. I was so hyped for the 3rd game but playing it felt different than the other two... And this video finally explained to me why it felt so different. My mind finally became starved for the variety which made me fall in love with this game to begin with... The variety that came with the first game I played... Demon's Souls. I was so hyped by this series and it's punishing nature, but that high finally wore off due to a lack of suitable content which once kept it fresh. At least now I know it wasn't me.
I really appreciate coming back to this comment section just because it's the only place I can organically find people disliking Elden Ring without being willfully toxic assholes about it. Every single person I know who has played it cannot stop gushing about it, and they have very valid reasons to love the game, it's just SUPER SUPER SUPER not for me, in large part due to all the things this video enumerates. But holy fuck has it been isolating seeing a ton of my friends on a discord call together playing it, and knowing I can't jump in because I WILL be asked why I don't like this game AGAIN, likely multiple times, before having someone try and pitch a late-game section to me.
What's that? You're telling me there's a Berserk reference? In a FromSoft game? My god, I haven't been this excited since the last time I held my keyring in front of my face and jingled it around a little.
Again, super happy for my friends. But I really appreciate having all of you around to commiserate with.
"Bro, why don't you like Elden Ring?"
"Because I've beaten it four times already."
I had a friend threaten to block me for harassment because i shared my less than stellar opinion of the game while i played through it. Said he refused to ever talk about this game with me ever again unless it was more positive. He was pretty normal until this game came out. Im honestly perplexed that a series that was once quite reflective and solemn has attracted such a cult like appraisal for all the things it no longer is.
@@TheEnigmaStyle YO FORREAL THAT’S TOXIC AS FUCK.
I saw someone say that “people harp on the reused animations because it’s one of the only valid criticisms of the game” and like, I get that the game has a lot of polish, but the hype train has really poisoned the discourse HARD.
I avoid talking to my friends about it because I’m paranoid my miasma of depression will become contagious. Your friend telling you to stop talking to them about it is some utter toxic bullshit though and I’m so sorry you have to go through that.
Keys?? Jingling??? Where?!!!
@@phirmth I had a similar experience yesterday evening while watching a Souls streamer play Elden Ring on Twitch. I got dogpiled on not just by the people in chat, but the STREAMER as well, just because I brought up things I didn't like about Elden Ring. They erroneously jumped to the conclusion that I hate Elden Ring, when I wasn't even that harsh on the game. I had to clarify that I like the game, I'm just critical of its flaws. Apparently that wasn't good enough for them though, since some dumbshit Souls fanboy replied to me saying "Who cares about the flaws?". As if I'm somehow an idiot for bringing up major flaws that tarnish the memorable experience you're supposed to have playing these games.
The fact that I can't even go 5 seconds without being barraged by Souls fanboys for being critical of the game is absolute horseshit. A lot of people say "it's just a vocal minority, the Souls community are actually really helpful!", but I find that harder and harder to believe, with all the incidents I've seen with other content creators regarding the Souls community. If I didn't already hate the Souls fanbase before Elden Ring, I certainly do now thanks to the discourse surrounding this game...
the fact that a vast portion of the community deflects this criticism as "dumb rose-tinted nostalgia for demon's souls" is quite saddening to watch
That and the propensity to consider criticism of game design as a skill issue, apparently unironically.
Arcane Kinship’s response video basically.
It's even worse when you go and watch any of Matthew's videos on Dark Souls. There are loads of things he praises about DS1 while drawing direct comparisons to how they're better than what DeS did. But yeah, no, totally just blind nostalgia.
Personally I think it’s a pointless video that he tries to justify by making up false points that don’t exist. Like, when he said “something soul players don’t want to admit is the combat is rather simple” but this is the sole reason why ppl like these games, this isn’t a bad thing and no one claims that dark souls combat ISNT simple. It just seems like he’s tired of the souls textbook design which is fine but don’t try and drag others and what they think for the sake of ur boredom.
its insane how well this aged after the release of elden ring
About the only thing in the video that doesn't still hold true is Demon's Souls being the most open-ended game. All the other points still hold up remarkably well
@@reperfan4 agreed, this video is ahead of its time save for that
16:06
@@yaboi6997 The truest of truths that stayed more true than ever lol
@@yaboi6997 right on the money, after the 5th boss in a row i fought did that, thats when i shut the game off. i beat about 15 bosses in this game on my first try, its all so tiresome
This video still holds up for Elden Ring.
Especially his comments about the combat and boss design
@@scandalouspanda7489 This may be true. But I still felt so exhausted the moment the first few serious combat encounters started. Again we have little more than hp sponges that delay their attacks to punish players that roll to early and are only safe to attack once they exhausted their combo attack. I can't see how this can hold up for a huge open world game with dozens of hours of gameplay. I hope there are more enemies for which this doesn't hold up but I fear the opposite.
@@finsterfaust4723 three things:
1- shield
2- barricate ( ash of war that buffs your shield)
3- enjoy being a tank and make the game be about managing mana, stamina and knowing the right time attack/counter the enemy.
@@scandalouspanda7489 Sorry if I failed to make myself clear. What I meant was that the combat and encounter design in this game feels too similar to earlier installments of the souls series. I know that Bloodborne and Sekiro tried to mix things up a little but it still feels so much like the combat from Demons' s Souls. Combine this with the an enemy design goes for difficult rather than interesting and it all feels like I have been playing the same game for over ten years while there is still so much too improve about the formula. I know I over simplify things here but the topic concerning the lack of innovation in souls games vastly exeeds the limits of a CZcams comment.
@@scandalouspanda7489 Yeah, the atmosphere combined with lore and visual design is what drew me in in the first place and in my opinion have been the greatest strengths of the souls series. Also I still enjoy the game. Just wanted to point out that there was much that could be done, so that myself and many more would enjoy it even more. But yeah I get your point
Lets hope Bluepoint has this video on repeat at their offices
The remake has already massively missed the mark on the lighting engine, just like they did with Shadow of the Colossus. Flamelurker doesn't even look like the same enemy.
@Nosferatu Zodd jesus fucking christ, give the game a chance. jeez where is this cynicism coming from.
@@Gadget-Walkmen welcome to the internet, where everything good about the world is behind us and ahead is only disappointment. Trust me. /s
Pedro Scoponi just a bunch of overly pessimistic gamers who love to whine too much.
I’m all for contrastive criticism but this is nonsense.
Nosferatu Zodd Jesus fucking Christ, do you really believe in the bullshit that you just wrote right now?
These companies are gamers just like anyone of us and they just want to remake great games in a new way, people love the original and I’m sure they love it as well because that’s why they’ve taking it upon themselves to carefully reconstruct it in a new way. And even if they didn’t do a not so great job you would have to wait intill outside reviews are out intill any they say any non biased reviews toward the product.
“Sonyggers”?
“70” ?
“You people are beneath”?
Bro wtf are you talking about? Your talking about video games for fuck sake and this is how you want to approach this conversation.
This is one of those reasons why people consider the gaming community a joke and for children because of responses like that.
I’m so glad people like you aren’t running the show on anything because than nothing would get done with your pissy attitude and shitty uncalled for name calling towards a hard working company.
Seriously get off the internet and get some fresh air if this the attitude your carrying.
18:58 After hearing the sales numbers of Elden Ring I couldn't but think of this moment...
You know when you have a really vague grasp on an opinion you hold but you just can't seem to put it into words until someone else manages to perfectly articulate your thoughts?
That's one of the biggest reasons why I always find myself coming back to this video after trying out DS3 again, to make myself feel less crazy for having a seemingly unpopular opinion.
Genuinely getting tired of dodge spammy enemy encounters and boss fights, its just so boring to me now.
Though I've never played Demon's Souls (really wanna tho) I feel like even DS1 had that grounded feel and aesthetic with its world, enemies and bosses that I genuinely miss a lot in future entries. The dark introspective experience is just something I just don't get from DS3 at all. Seeing those big fat armored knight enemies moving at the speed that a DEX build player would have (and with the whole rolling into attacks thing that the game is plagued with) just looks ridiculous to me, I just can't take it seriously. (Haven't played Elden Ring yet but from the hours of gameplay I've of seen and from comments here, nothing seems to have changed)
Feeling like you've outgrown one of your favorite game series ever just feels depressing :[
@BrotherChef2355 Might play it that way if I end up getting a gaming PC before a PS5 :b
@@violet5188 please stay away from the Bluepoint's Remake, it has some of the worst changes I've ever seen done to a game, absolutely baffling stuff, I love DeS so so I'd be sad to see the Remake rob somebody of a potentially immersive experience. Ideally you would play it on the RPCS3 emulator since that has online functionality and the original doesn't anymore, but even the original on PS3 is miles better than the Remake.
@@violet5188 You could probably play DeS on an Emulator with a potato PC. It’s not that demanding.
And please don’t play the Remake. It’s the same exact gameplay with worse art direction. They butchered it.
PLEASE do play Demon's Souls! I share the exact same sentiment and I ended up absolutely loving Demon's when I got to play it on a PS3 back in 2019. It easily ended up being not only my favorite Fromsoft game but also one of my favorite games of all time, easily being in the top 3 spot for me. Demon's is the culmination of that grounded, aesthetic and experimental Souls game, it only got less and less after each entry. Like the others have said, please play the original and the not the Bluepoint remake as your first playthrough, the remake is *fine* for subsequent playthroughs because it's gameplay faithful and I think that's one of the most IMPORTANT aspects for Demon's Souls, but the aesthetics and music have been wholly sullied by the remake. There's quite nothing like Demon's Souls, and I wish Fromsoft didn't move on from it's tenants.
Also DeS does NOT run on a potato PC on an emulator, the commenter above me is nuts, I have a low tier rig (used to be mid tier back when I bought it but alas, time flies) and it runs at 4-5 fps for me. This same rig can run every single Fromsoft game on PC, including Elden Ring. You need a beast of a PC to emulate DeS, people who say you don't are the kind of people that have beast rigs. I even have a friend that has a 1080TI and DeS on RPCS3 does not run well for him. Just get a PS3 and a copy of the game, you won't regret it. I always urge people who love that side of Souls games to play DeS, it's barely talked about and acknowledged despite being one of the most important games that have ever come out.
@@arkaua I thankfully already have a PS3 but I have to get my controller replaced cause it just stopped working a while back.
But other than that it seems like I'm set, I'll make sure to get a copy when I can (hopefully as early as mid to late 2022)
Ty for the advice! :]