I love that her quest takes much longer and is pretty obscure at times, but is by far the most commonly achieved ending. FromSoft apparently knew that waifu is the strongest motivator in gaming.
Hell I haven’t done her ending but I’ve still done the quest each time. There’s cool stuff in there. I want to poke about in Nokron and fight Astel and Alecto
Sorry, you actively want to fight Astel? I don’t know how to feel about that :D The first time around I had the displeasure of experiencing that fight, I must have had to try beating them for hours on end. That bullshit teleport grab attack was the bane of my existence. It came to a point where I looked up cheese strategies, like scarlet rot, to have a fighting chance. On repeat playthroughs, it’s usually fine but still such a slog
I will admit it’s more just because the design is so wild than the actual mechanics of the fight, but I didn’t find the mechanics too bad! My first run through was str/fai melee and I managed to get it after a few attempts. I don’t mind the bits where you have to run after it because they usually present some interesting dodging challenges and it still hangs about in one place long enough to let you get some good hits in (looking at you, every red wolf). The teleport grab is definitely one of the nastier ones but I figured out the timing and just counted down for a blind dodge after it did the initial teleport. The biggest frustration I had with Astel was actually on my second run through simply because the weapon I was using really struggled to actually hit all those spindly limbs high off the ground
The design is pretty awesome and otherworldly - I’ll give you that. But yea, gameplay-wise there are definitely fights I enjoy more. But also some which are wayy worse lol (Commander Neil or Niall or whatever can go step on a Lego and his other Commander friends too)
The commanders bug me a bit because I really enjoy fighting the actual commanders themselves, I just can’t be done with their backup squads. I found Niall (Castle Sol) way less troublesome since there’s only the two knights, so I can just nuke down the dual wielding one as it gets summoned and handle the spear & shield one while Niall edgywalks in the background. I know there’s the bewitching branch option but I have the RPG player allergy to consumables, especially if it’s a very rare one that I can’t easily replace when Niall lightning-dropkicks me in the head and I have to start the fight over. O’Neil over in Caelid, though, I just kind of resign myself to the fact that I’ll be getting chipped by arrows for the entire fight. If he wasn’t a mandatory obstacle on the Millicent quest I’d probably skip him more often than not
I don’t like either of them. The rot one is awful because of rot and because his attacks deal way too much damage for how much reach they have, and the Castle Sol one is awful because of that lightning drop kick and because, you guessed it, his attacks deal way too much damage for how much reach they have :D
I think by the time I got to Niall himself, the rest of Castle Sol had already fully desensitised me to watching 90% of my healthbar disappear in an instant. At least he isn’t that one goddamn banished knight. Everyone knows which banished knight.
I know which one you mean, but I actually found the castle itself ok overall. I just didn’t bother clearing it fully and mostly just ran by the enemies at some point. Niall was a huge nuisance, though
I played though Elden Ring blind (with a couple beginner tips someone online gave me, like what stats to level and some good early weapons)
I went through the whole quest basically accidentally. I didn’t realize it was supposed to be obscure, I just thought it was normal parts of the game that everyone did. Elden Ring is also my first Souls game I really got into (I beat two bosses in PS3 Demon’s Souls before quitting.)
I didn’t know until now it’s tied to an ending! I never beat the final boss. I got pretty okay at the first form, but I could never finish off his last form.
Yeah FromSoft has a long habit of telling their stories in the most obtuse ways possible. They’re perfectly capable of doing normal storytelling (see Armoured Core, for example), they just choose to do it like this for their Souls-like games
That said, I actually think that a blind playthrough is a good idea for the first time! The world is meant to be mysterious. It’s okay if you don’t see everything
I kind of prefer when they do just tell a straightforward story, sekiro is one of my favourites for that reason.
I don’t mind the incomplete story when the world is done well ahead of time. I think that after seeing dark souls 3 tack on a bunch of stuff to the original story, it mildly soured me on the concept. Elden ring is fortunately a lot better about it.
Yeah, the Souls style works for me but I totally get why it would be offputting to others. I love worldbuilding and lore theorising, so getting heaps of that with very little in terms of character development is fine by me
Tough bosses ruining the end of a game are a pet peeve of mine. Thankfully I’ve suffered enough Soulslikes that ER wasnt too bad for me (Sekiro on the other hand…)
Danni’s quest isn’t so obscure, but it is a little more hidden than just rushing to the Erdtree and fighting the boss as directly as possible. I think that she’s the most compelling (and best written) character in the game, which probably contributes a lot to her ending being more popular. She helps you early game, obviously has her own agenda but doesn’t really act like she doesn’t, which pulls off the fun trick of making the character both mysterious yet also trustworthy.
I almost started Sekiro today, but I felt too sleepy. I really need to play it. I own every souls game except Bloodborne now and really need to branch out hahaha
Welp I started Sekiro today. Verrry different playstyle. I got gakked by the second mini boss like 15 times. Im now at a giant and he’s kicking my ass. I went back into the past after finding a lady and got fire, but that only seems to stun him for a couple seconds.
Ranni’s quest line is one of the least obtuse quests in the game. While Mlicent’s is the most esoteric; especially the final part because why the hell would you expect that and not to summon her to help fight Melenia?
Millicent’s actual quest is almost un-failable, it’s just a touch weird that you can’t summon her for the two most obvious fights that you would think you could summon her for. I imagine the Malenia one is basically a gameplay-based decision in that literally the entire point of Malenia’s boss fight is for her to be an optional extra-tough challenge, so having any NPC available to summon diminishes that. It’s really confusing that she can’t be summoned for Niall though, especially when Niall gets summons of his own and you even get to summon one of her sisters against O’Neil
I think Sellen has to be my pick for the weirdest quest progression. Why can’t I ask her about her apparent duplicate if I find it early? Why do I have to go all the way to Mt Gelmir to get Jerren to show up in the Weeping Peninsula to advance the quest? Does anything ever hint at where you get her a new body or am I just meant to stumble across it and make the connection? Who the hell progresses through the game in an order that lets them actually use Sellen’s summoning sign for the red wolf of Radagon in Raya Lucaria? Why is she then not available as a summon against Rennala? The whole thing is baffling
With Jerren’s BS: You can actually complete Sellen’s quest in a way that the only time you would even know that Jerren is involved is when SHE tells you he is after her. You never actually need to talk to or encounter Jerren to get her all the way to the end of her quest. I almost always skip his parts because I forget about them lol
The weirdest thing with her to me is something I just noticed this last time through the game where I paid attention to the dialogue again since it’s been a while; When you get her back to Raya Lucaria after defeating Jerren, she claims that Rennala and all her loyal knights are now dead and defeated, leaving her in charge of the castle. But then you reload the area, Rennala is back and Sellen is a Graven Mass in a corner. What the hell’s up with that?
It does feel awfully abrupt, doesn’t it? I generally explain it to myself as that Sellen really did succeed in taking control simply because Rennala was too broken to meaningfully fight back, but she gazed a bit long into the abyss and got graven massed. When the rest of Raya Lucaria saw what happened to her they then collectively said “welp guess we were right to ban that primeval current nonsense, lets just pretend none of this ever happened”
It really could have done with an intermediate stage where Rennala is visibly imprisoned somewhere, Lusat and Azur actually are moved to the academy, and Sellen begins to show signs of turning into something else
Ranni on the left (the blue witch with four arms), Goldmask on the right (the mute guy who points at the Erdtree, Corhyn follows him around). They’re the characters associated with the two most popular endings
Oh I kinda remember her. She showed up once, said a bunch of nothing, and never showed up again.
Goldmask I ran into a couple of times, but found him boring and dumb. I just ignored him after a while because I didn’t find anything interesting about a dipshit pointing at a tree.
Yeah Goldmask is basically not a character when you actually meet him, he’s essentially just a plot point for Corhyn and a reason to examine some of the nature of Marika and the Golden Order. He’s the one that enables my favourite ending, but it’s my favourite for the mending rune that Goldmask makes rather than Goldmask himself. Ranni’s quest is pretty fun though. It has some good characters and takes you to some cool places, and it’s nearly impossible to accidentally lock yourself out of it
If you want to go find it, go to Caria Manor (the mansion full of the hand monsters in the north of Liurnia). Get all the way through that and beat up a dragon and she’s there
![[ER] 🌳](https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/69987857-d112-4cce-839a-f37e12ab02b1.webp){kind=link}
I love that her quest takes much longer and is pretty obscure at times, but is by far the most commonly achieved ending. FromSoft apparently knew that waifu is the strongest motivator in gaming.
Hell I haven’t done her ending but I’ve still done the quest each time. There’s cool stuff in there. I want to poke about in Nokron and fight Astel and Alecto
Sorry, you actively want to fight Astel? I don’t know how to feel about that :D The first time around I had the displeasure of experiencing that fight, I must have had to try beating them for hours on end. That bullshit teleport grab attack was the bane of my existence. It came to a point where I looked up cheese strategies, like scarlet rot, to have a fighting chance. On repeat playthroughs, it’s usually fine but still such a slog
I will admit it’s more just because the design is so wild than the actual mechanics of the fight, but I didn’t find the mechanics too bad! My first run through was str/fai melee and I managed to get it after a few attempts. I don’t mind the bits where you have to run after it because they usually present some interesting dodging challenges and it still hangs about in one place long enough to let you get some good hits in (looking at you, every red wolf). The teleport grab is definitely one of the nastier ones but I figured out the timing and just counted down for a blind dodge after it did the initial teleport. The biggest frustration I had with Astel was actually on my second run through simply because the weapon I was using really struggled to actually hit all those spindly limbs high off the ground
The design is pretty awesome and otherworldly - I’ll give you that. But yea, gameplay-wise there are definitely fights I enjoy more. But also some which are wayy worse lol (Commander Neil or Niall or whatever can go step on a Lego and his other Commander friends too)
The commanders bug me a bit because I really enjoy fighting the actual commanders themselves, I just can’t be done with their backup squads. I found Niall (Castle Sol) way less troublesome since there’s only the two knights, so I can just nuke down the dual wielding one as it gets summoned and handle the spear & shield one while Niall edgywalks in the background. I know there’s the bewitching branch option but I have the RPG player allergy to consumables, especially if it’s a very rare one that I can’t easily replace when Niall lightning-dropkicks me in the head and I have to start the fight over. O’Neil over in Caelid, though, I just kind of resign myself to the fact that I’ll be getting chipped by arrows for the entire fight. If he wasn’t a mandatory obstacle on the Millicent quest I’d probably skip him more often than not
I don’t like either of them. The rot one is awful because of rot and because his attacks deal way too much damage for how much reach they have, and the Castle Sol one is awful because of that lightning drop kick and because, you guessed it, his attacks deal way too much damage for how much reach they have :D
I think by the time I got to Niall himself, the rest of Castle Sol had already fully desensitised me to watching 90% of my healthbar disappear in an instant. At least he isn’t that one goddamn banished knight. Everyone knows which banished knight.
I know which one you mean, but I actually found the castle itself ok overall. I just didn’t bother clearing it fully and mostly just ran by the enemies at some point. Niall was a huge nuisance, though
I played though Elden Ring blind (with a couple beginner tips someone online gave me, like what stats to level and some good early weapons)
I went through the whole quest basically accidentally. I didn’t realize it was supposed to be obscure, I just thought it was normal parts of the game that everyone did. Elden Ring is also my first Souls game I really got into (I beat two bosses in PS3 Demon’s Souls before quitting.)
I didn’t know until now it’s tied to an ending! I never beat the final boss. I got pretty okay at the first form, but I could never finish off his last form.
Yeah FromSoft has a long habit of telling their stories in the most obtuse ways possible. They’re perfectly capable of doing normal storytelling (see Armoured Core, for example), they just choose to do it like this for their Souls-like games
That said, I actually think that a blind playthrough is a good idea for the first time! The world is meant to be mysterious. It’s okay if you don’t see everything
I kind of prefer when they do just tell a straightforward story, sekiro is one of my favourites for that reason.
I don’t mind the incomplete story when the world is done well ahead of time. I think that after seeing dark souls 3 tack on a bunch of stuff to the original story, it mildly soured me on the concept. Elden ring is fortunately a lot better about it.
Yeah, the Souls style works for me but I totally get why it would be offputting to others. I love worldbuilding and lore theorising, so getting heaps of that with very little in terms of character development is fine by me
Tough bosses ruining the end of a game are a pet peeve of mine. Thankfully I’ve suffered enough Soulslikes that ER wasnt too bad for me (Sekiro on the other hand…)
Danni’s quest isn’t so obscure, but it is a little more hidden than just rushing to the Erdtree and fighting the boss as directly as possible. I think that she’s the most compelling (and best written) character in the game, which probably contributes a lot to her ending being more popular. She helps you early game, obviously has her own agenda but doesn’t really act like she doesn’t, which pulls off the fun trick of making the character both mysterious yet also trustworthy.
I almost started Sekiro today, but I felt too sleepy. I really need to play it. I own every souls game except Bloodborne now and really need to branch out hahaha
I bought my PS5 specifically because I needed BB and DsS 🤣
Welp I started Sekiro today. Verrry different playstyle. I got gakked by the second mini boss like 15 times. Im now at a giant and he’s kicking my ass. I went back into the past after finding a lady and got fire, but that only seems to stun him for a couple seconds.
Neat game.
Ranni’s quest line is one of the least obtuse quests in the game. While Mlicent’s is the most esoteric; especially the final part because why the hell would you expect that and not to summon her to help fight Melenia?
Millicent’s actual quest is almost un-failable, it’s just a touch weird that you can’t summon her for the two most obvious fights that you would think you could summon her for. I imagine the Malenia one is basically a gameplay-based decision in that literally the entire point of Malenia’s boss fight is for her to be an optional extra-tough challenge, so having any NPC available to summon diminishes that. It’s really confusing that she can’t be summoned for Niall though, especially when Niall gets summons of his own and you even get to summon one of her sisters against O’Neil
I think Sellen has to be my pick for the weirdest quest progression. Why can’t I ask her about her apparent duplicate if I find it early? Why do I have to go all the way to Mt Gelmir to get Jerren to show up in the Weeping Peninsula to advance the quest? Does anything ever hint at where you get her a new body or am I just meant to stumble across it and make the connection? Who the hell progresses through the game in an order that lets them actually use Sellen’s summoning sign for the red wolf of Radagon in Raya Lucaria? Why is she then not available as a summon against Rennala? The whole thing is baffling
With Jerren’s BS: You can actually complete Sellen’s quest in a way that the only time you would even know that Jerren is involved is when SHE tells you he is after her. You never actually need to talk to or encounter Jerren to get her all the way to the end of her quest. I almost always skip his parts because I forget about them lol
The weirdest thing with her to me is something I just noticed this last time through the game where I paid attention to the dialogue again since it’s been a while; When you get her back to Raya Lucaria after defeating Jerren, she claims that Rennala and all her loyal knights are now dead and defeated, leaving her in charge of the castle. But then you reload the area, Rennala is back and Sellen is a Graven Mass in a corner. What the hell’s up with that?
It does feel awfully abrupt, doesn’t it? I generally explain it to myself as that Sellen really did succeed in taking control simply because Rennala was too broken to meaningfully fight back, but she gazed a bit long into the abyss and got graven massed. When the rest of Raya Lucaria saw what happened to her they then collectively said “welp guess we were right to ban that primeval current nonsense, lets just pretend none of this ever happened”
It really could have done with an intermediate stage where Rennala is visibly imprisoned somewhere, Lusat and Azur actually are moved to the academy, and Sellen begins to show signs of turning into something else
Who? I don’t remember any of the characters in ER.
Ranni on the left (the blue witch with four arms), Goldmask on the right (the mute guy who points at the Erdtree, Corhyn follows him around). They’re the characters associated with the two most popular endings
Oh I kinda remember her. She showed up once, said a bunch of nothing, and never showed up again.
Goldmask I ran into a couple of times, but found him boring and dumb. I just ignored him after a while because I didn’t find anything interesting about a dipshit pointing at a tree.
Yeah Goldmask is basically not a character when you actually meet him, he’s essentially just a plot point for Corhyn and a reason to examine some of the nature of Marika and the Golden Order. He’s the one that enables my favourite ending, but it’s my favourite for the mending rune that Goldmask makes rather than Goldmask himself. Ranni’s quest is pretty fun though. It has some good characters and takes you to some cool places, and it’s nearly impossible to accidentally lock yourself out of it
That’s a shame I missed Ranni’s quest then because nothing and no one I came across was interesting. Hence why I can’t remember anyone’s name.
If you want to go find it, go to Caria Manor (the mansion full of the hand monsters in the north of Liurnia). Get all the way through that and beat up a dragon and she’s there
It’s way too late for that and I’m not going to reinstall it. I did not enjoy ER.