wow - even the minibosses in Elden Ring are like three steps up in difficulty from the most difficult boss in Dark Souls 1. I don’t know how anyone can play this game unless they’ve trained on every single FromSoft game before this point

also they nerfed the shit out of parrying and blocking T_T

@kasdeya a friend in my circle is playing Elden Ring as his first fromsoft game

he's picked it up astonishingly fast; the rest of us souls veterans are really impressed lol... (and a little perplexed)

ER is "panic roll: the game" with how long some of the enemy attack windups are

@liese hm maybe that’s a part of my problem lol because in Dark Souls 1 I never learned how to dodge-roll properly

but also, all of the tougher enemies in Elden Ring seem to really like to do devastating combos with their attacks and their animations seem deliberately designed to be hard to read. even some of the basic enemies seem to have attacks like that too - it feels like the animators are deliberately fucking with me most of the time lol

but yeah I don’t like this game. it makes me feel like a complete beginner all over again because so few of my skills have transferred over and the combat is so much faster and more frantic and chaotic. I’m sticking with Dark Souls 1

@kasdeya totally understandable :) my favorite of the set is DS3 -- it feels like the most polished version of DS1, while DS2 has weird hitboxes/rolls that i never understood, Bloodborne is far more aggressive, Sekiro is all parry all the time, and Elden Ring is... well, open worlds make me anxious.

DS1 is still an absolutely amazing game, i don't think i have any complaints for it

@kasdeya i tend to play a single dex-heavy sword-and-board build, with very few parries -- mostly dodge-rolling and taking hits on the shield. i tried to keep my weight down to a medium roll at most. I used this build from DS1 through to ER haha

rolling *is* a fundamental skill, but you can avoid it with heavier builds, taking high poise in exchange for a nearly useless heavy-roll. i think this holds for most of the games, but heavy builds didn't feel good to me, so i avoided them

@kasdeya my friends say my build is boring, but it lets me enjoy the games, so :)

@liese omg I’m glad to hear that you like DS1! I always got the feeling that nobody really liked that game or felt like the later FromSoft games were just strictly better

tbh I might give DS3 another try at some point, since I’ve played so much DS1 that I’m actually getting kinda tired of it, and not even my new sorcery build is helping me rediscover my love for the game. I remember it having faster combat, nerfed blocking, and bosses that like to combo, which are three things that I never like in Soulslike games - but I also remember enjoying it a fair bit, and it’s been a long time so I might just be wrong

@kasdeya you can do it!! i personally remember ds1 as being harder (though it was also my first souls game) -- i suspect the difference between it and ds3 is mostly subjective (and probably has a large component of familiarity)

i'd be happy to advise at any point if you need :)

@liese aw thank you! I appreciate it and I might take you up on that if I get stuck