I quit somewhere around level 40. Not my kind of game. I got too frustrated early on and I never could drum up any desire to play it and had to force myself. Once I have to force myself to play a game I quickly quit it.
Did you stop because of a specific boss?
This will be a long post, kind of a summary of my struggles as one of those who’re not among the git gud group of gamers. Read if you want.
I went into Elden Ring thinking about it like Ikaruga. I’ve never finished Ikaruga but still hold it as one of the best shmups ever made.
I thought I need to stop thinking it’s not worth playing if I can’t finish it. I kinda said to myself that I won’t ever finish it but thought
I could enjoy it until I hit a boss wall at least, like Ikaruga with level 4.
First such wall was Margit, stumbled there at about level 20. Almost no added points in vigor.
Took me 2.5 hours to beat him…
I literally dissected every move he made and planned out where I should roll, step back move in and attack. It was insanely frustrating but it was also where I truly learned the game, learned to experiment with the gear and ashes and in the end that helped me throughout the whole playthrough.
Then I had a minor difficulty wall in Stormveil castle with the
Banished Knights. I died so many times. Eventually learned to do jump attack there.
Second wall was Tree Sentinel early on in Limgrave. That’s when I learned to do slow and methodical mount combat, rode away, rode forward for one attack, rinse and repeat.
Could use that for a
Night Cavalry fight too afterwards.
Third serious wall was Godrick. Took me 3 hours… I hated that boss fight so much! But it was also awesome with his second phase and all. Learned to use dual weapons at that boss fight. Slow powerful weapon in one hand and fast weapon in the other and I learned to take it easy sometimes and get some distance until things are safe with the fire and all.
After that I knew the basics and could use what I had learned for pretty much everything there after.
I had some minor struggles for maybe 1.5 hours at worst but
the really big difficulty wall thereafter was actually the final boss fight. I think I was way up at level 130 at that point. Maxed out weapon. Should definitely be enough I thought.
But nope I had to rethink everything. Went back to level up, max out a second weapon. Didn’t work. Went back to level up more, max out a third weapon. Closing in on level 140 now. Hmm now we’re talking. But Nah, still too difficult. Went away to explore some more and got a new talisman that was perfect. Went back and it wasn’t easy peasy but I did it in like the third attempt.
All in all it took me possibly 6 hours during 3 days…
After that I dropped the score from 10 to 9…
FROM needs to learn how to use difficulty options. That was my final thought when seeing the credits roll. While I loved so much of the game I’ve literally finished whole games during the same time I struggled to bring down one boss in Elden Ring. Not okay.
But it’s still my GOTY so far and it has ignited my interest in Souls games.
I just installed Bloodborne again for another test after hearing the talk in this thread. I’ve stepped out many times because of the framerate judder, makes it look so incredibly unpolished imo, but since Sony refuse to give me any hint when a 60fps remake by Bluepoint might happen I can dabble a bit with the original for awhile. Need to see if it’s just people being nostalgic or if it truly stack up well to Elden Ring.