UCLA, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota, my Hawkeyes, and Northwestern all looking competent and throwing punches against the big dogs has made B1G play so entertaining this year. Normally I usually only watch Iowa games. This year the level of competency is so much higher and makes more games entertaining. Loving watch the collapse of Oregon to UCLA right now. IMO B1G football has never been healthier.
Let me start by saying I ENJOY THE COMBAT. I've been in the Elden Ring subreddit, I know how rabid some people get when they the slightest whiff of criticism for their favorite game. There were just some parts of remake combat that felt kind of annoying and some pieces that felt outright useless. I found my playstyle though and enjoyed playing it my way. I just want to be able to engage with the full system and I'm wondering if those pieces were improved in any way in Rebirth.
The Big One: Basic Attacks/ARPG mechanics - My only major complaint is that the game tried to mix action elements with turn-based, but then seriously neutered the action parts. I understand the point is to switch characters often, but playing a character for more than two seconds felt detrimental. There is already an incentive to switch characters since they charge almost no ATB while not being played, so why did they make it so damning to hang out on one character for a bit? Essentially, are there improvements to the ARPG side of things that make playing a single character for longer than a couple seconds, more enjoyable?
Basic Attacks and Combo's - I was so disappointed with the state of basic combo's. They look cool as hell, but rarely does a full basic attack combo prove beneficial and more often than not is downright detrimental, especially considering the staggering low damage output compared to spells and abilities. One button press on cloud's punisher mode for multiple swings that can't be cancelled? I just don't even use punisher outside of countering. It felt like a completely irrelevant piece of his kit besides the counter. During enemy stagger doesn't count either because anything is valuable when an enemy is literally frozen in place. It felt like many pieces of the action elements of the game were high risk low reward. Why use basic attacks when an enemy can whip out quick skills and spells that will stun you before the animation of your skill or spell finishes? Why use low ATB generating, slow basic attacks on Barrett or Aerith at all when they leave you so vulnerable? There was no need to force players into this switching game where one or two presses of the attack button was all you really had time for. Imo, it made actually playing a character not feel good, expect for Tifa, who can fly around the map at mach fuck you, throwing basic attacks in as needed.
Standing with guard held down was the just the superior tactical choice for the majority of interactions. Little to no risk of being launched and comboed, reduces damage massively which is especially useful when pelted by multiple enemies, can immediately retaliate to interrupt enemy attacks without waiting for an animation to end. I understand it is a hybrid turn-based ARPG, and I don't mind the stand and block playstyle, it felt like turn-based+, but I was blocking A LOT due to the high volume of enemy attacks, which I'll get to. Basic attacks and other rudimentary gameplay elements should be really be universally adequate for each character.
The Dodge - Is dodging actually serviceable on all characters now? In remake it felt like the dodge button really only helped Tifa and Cloud. Those two were mobile enough to where it could be used as intended, a repositioning tool. I mainly used dodge to quickly move those characters to safe positions for big attacks. However, Barrett and Aerith felt like trying to move cement trucks by hand. They are ranged characters, so they shouldn't need a high distance dodge, but that doesn't work in practice. Both characters when not controlled feel the need to move in close to attack the enemy when they have INFINITE RANGE. Then, I would switch to them to move them away only for the enemy to aggro and move in closer to them anyway. Then I would have to switch to Cloud or Tifa and run to the other side of the arena to then create that distance I desired. It felt like a baby sitting simulator at times, trying to keep 3 year olds from sticking their heads into the oven. Do Aerith and Barrett have acceptable mobility at all in Rebirth? The lack of mobility in such high pace combat made them feel like liabilities more often than not.
Volume of Enemy Skills - Some enemies don't seem to adhere to the same rules as we do regarding the turn-based portion of the game. Most enemies have no need to use basic attacks or block before using another skill. Some enemies are worse than other's. It get's to a point where you spend a huge portion of your time blocking when multiple enemies are in play.
Magic Loss for Uncast Magic/Limit Loss - This is just a minor annoyance. If I'm interrupted while casting a spell, sure, I lose the ATB since I initiated the action. But why do I lose the MP if I never got the spell off? Doesn't make any sense to me. Also, my limit breaks being interruptible, unlike the enemy cut scene attacks, also just feels wrong. Limit breaks are few enough in number to where they really should be incapable of interruption like enemy supers. Losing limits during cutscene transitions that are entirely unpredictable the first playthrough is also annoying.
Aerial Combat - Straight ass. That's it.
Camera - Also ass. That's it.
Visual Effects - This goes along with the camera. Many times there was so much shit going on that it was hard to actually see what enemies were doing. The screen was flooded with smoke and sparks and flashes that made me blind to telegraphs. Is this toned down or is there at least a setting to reduce special effects?
That's about it. The graphical upgrades and fleshed out story compared to OG is well worth the play through.
Quickly summarizing my thoughts on Elden Ring Combat: Enemies are far more dynamic than the player character and that bottlenecks combat.
Basically, Elden Ring bosses are very dynamic in attack combinations and movement patterns. Our toolbox feels very limited in comparison. Our options seem to boil down to buff, cast magic, basic attack (jump/heavy/light), AoW, or evade. This loop, while satisfying at times, leaves little room for creativity. Many enemies have few punish windows that allow for an actual combo; that leaves a couple light attacks, an ash of war, a jump attack, or a heavy attack. Getting in damage in a punish window feels lack luster.
Run towards boss, evade flurry of attacks, run at him again because he jumped across the arena, get in one or two attacks, repeat until death, is not an overly fun gameplay loop.
My proposed solution is to expand Ash of War significantly with a heavy emphasis on movement options. Instead of the Ash of War button being a single bind attack, that button acts as a modifier. The modifier gives access to ashes of war using the 3 basic combat buttons.
For example (obviously these aren't necessarily good AoW's): L2 + L1 could be quick step with L2 + R1 being spinning slash and L2 + R2 being impaling thrust. With a relatively low windup time you could move fluidly through AoW's to combo the way bosses can.
Another example using only movement AoW's: Your three ash of wars could all be related to covering ground quickly. One could allow the player to bound quickly towards the boss. Another could be an equipped feint attack like the thrusting sword class has to position away from the enemy you just rushed into. The last can be a basic quickstep. You'll be highly mobile with the tradeoff of slotting zero or maybe 1 strong attacking ash of war.
Obviously they would need to be balanced around FP or cooldowns to be balanced. The core concept of freedom of movement and a large toolbox would allow FromSoft to continue expanding the movesets bosses have, like in Elden ring, without stagnating player interactions with that boss.
Thoughts?