Elden Ring: The Meaty Struggle

 For most of January, I finally got around to playing Elden Ring. One of the hottest games of last year that most certainly had lived up to the hype. While the game has fantastic storytelling, world design, and overall exploration. I found myself being at a disadvantage many times due to the playstyle that I go with in FromSoftware games. That style is the good old fashioned, "Big weapon that hits hard while dodging everything" strategy. For most bosses this did not pose an issue because many of the enemies in this game can be taken to task by the colossal weapons. So, my weapon of choice for much of this was Greatsword, the weapon based on Gut's Dragonslayer from Berserk. A mighty weapon that made the Radahn fight very enjoyable for me. Just two people big sword swinging, and I even managed to get a riposte off on him. This lets you know that even the biggest fighters could fall to this strategy. Yet there were a few fights that necessitated the use of back-up weapons or even summons, which I was wary to use on bosses I felt did not need it. The three bosses that I felt negated my style the most were Gideon, Radagon, and Malenia. Three fights where I had to switch up my gameplan to specifically fight these bosses but not in the fun way that was presented to me in previous games. 

This piece of shit might be my most disliked fight in any FromSoftware game because I already was taking issue with the magic in this game being so fast on casting for some enemies and this bastard was just cooking me everytime I tried to get in on him with my big sword. Granted, this happens when you tell him too many things and beat specific bosses, but his cast times were still too quick for the slow swing speed. It didn't matter how much damage or stagger it dealt. Gideon could just blast you away and even heal in the fight. A true struggle for this meathead build. My counter to this was speed and bleed. Breaking out the Star Fist was how I decided to deal with such an annoyance as I knew it was possible to trounce this loser without a summon. He wasn't fun, he was annoying and I had to manipulate him into a corner as he was spamming high damage spells even then. When I finally trapped him, I went to town on him with rapid punches and high enough stamina and recovery to not worry about him slipping out. A strategy that I didn't mind employing, yet I just hated having to deal with such an awful boss fight. This was definitely one of the more questionable trials in this game that I feel could have been way better. Now I will be moving onto one of the final bosses of all time, Radagon. 

Despite not being a huge fan of this fight, the presentation of Radagon, throughout the game is marvelous up until the fight happens. Getting to the room, the cutscene that plays, and the music accompanying him is done so well. This feels like the fight to end all fights, and then you play it with a build like mine. His quick reactions and jack of all trades fighting style makes this fight extremely frustrating that you're just wanting his section to end because then you have space slug afterward. And let's be honest, Elden Beast is definitely not what I wanted to be waiting for me. My strategy switched up to my second weapon, Nagakiba, for it's speed and bleed properties. However, when I was hitting him, I noticed the bleed effect was not happening. I tested it for a couple rounds and then confirmed my curiosity to learn of his resistances to pretty much everything and immunity to bleed. Really funny considering that bleed is very good in this game and useless in the last fight of the game. So I had two useless weapons and now it was up to the Greatsword to come back out and finish the fight, but this time I would summon. 

My summon for this playthrough was Latenna, the Albinauric. And if you know anything about Latenna or Albinaurics in this game, you would know that they lose functionalliy in their legs after so many years of living  and are a heavily oppressed people. I would use the stationary Latenna to draw aggro (aggression) while I acted as her bodyguard because her volley of arrows were extremely good at disruption and could even chip down health bars. I truly had a great time using her in specific fights, and for some reason Radagon focused on her super hard. Felt targeted, but this made my gameplan focus on getting as much damage in before he killed her, as I had default FP and no FP flask because I don't really care about magic. The race to erase each other's health bars was real, but it took no time at all. And I moved onto the Elden Beast with my defense focused physick and promptly chased a swimming space slug for five minutes. The fight fell flat for me as it made me dislike some of the mechanics in this game that gave an upperhand to bosses more than usual. A bunch of them felt like they were cheating the player by recovering quicker or not staggering because they jumped. Enough about the let down and let's move onto the main course, Malenia.

This fight is easily the hardest fight I have dealt with in a FromSoftware game. She hits hard, recovers health, has two full health bars, and can status affect your character. Not to mention her speed is out of this world. Reminds me of Sister Friede in Dark Souls 3, beatable but fits better in a game like Bloodborne. So my Greatsword was proven to be atrocious in this fight due to its slow swing speed. It only felt doable if I only fought her for days on end, and I didn't want that. As I made it to Malenia before finishing Farum Azula, I decided I would wait and come back. That led me to acquiring and using Nagakiba, a sword with range and the speed I needed to outclass Malenia. But that was just phase one. I could consistently dispatch phase one and never sniff the end in phase two. Her attacks become hidden behind her wings and she is absurdly aggressive in comparison to the first phase. The order of operations had become me soloing the first phase and the dodging along with drinking a buff while summoning Latenna. I never wanted to have Latenna come out in this fight, but the learning curve of the second phase was just not worth the hassle. Constantly going through one health bar and losing out quickly on a second one felt awful. Making the executive decision to bring out the big guns was the only way I was going to beat it in my mind. That really annoyed me about the fight because the first phase is done super well, while the second one makes me not want to fight her again. A true shame for the face of the game really. After many retries, when I finally won, I was still elated but I felt it could have been so much better.

Elden Ring is still a very good game and well worth the price, but it definitely made magic way too powerful. It makes sense that there was such a focus on it given ashes of war and summons being so prominent, yet the bones were not thrown to melee builds. Stamina felt too low and scaled horribly while having one talisman that regenerated it a little too slowly. Those big weapons felt obsolete, especially with katanas. If you are a fan of the big sword builds, just know that you will struggle a lot and to keep back-ups of smaller, quicker weapons. It ain't easy being meaty.