There are not the only issues with the game - the character progression is kind of weird, it looks unsatisfying and the upgrades don't seem too helpful until you've already learned a boss's attack patterns through and through, which means it doesn't alleviate any frustration. What is a bit annoying is that you don't get any invincibility for the end of your dodge, so if you evade into a position where you clip a boss's attack with your toe, you don't get any extra moment of invincibility to slightly adjust before instantly taking damage.

Now, how does the game treat your dodges? You get no dodge equivalent of 'coyote time', so you can't be at all late, which isn't too bad. Well, the hitbox of the explosion turned out to be bigger than the area where the craters appeared, so what I assumed was the effect reaching upwards into the air was actually the explosion happening slightly behind the boss instead of being centered on it. Another attack was confusing due to the perspective - it was an aoe explosion that left behind craters on the ground. Some attacks also didn't have a clear edge to them, which made it impossible to tell for sure where their hitbox ended at a glance. The problem with those was that things that needed to be avoided were very transparent, which made them hard to spot. Speaking of attacks, one of the bosses I beat mainly used magic/projectile/aoe attacks, not physical swings. It's not too egregious, but why are they given more of a helping hand than the player? That means lunging attacks, which are a huge part of your kit, will never go in exactly the direction the sprite is showing.Īt the same time, the game gives you no attack magnetism (despite being a game about fighting bosses, so you're very unlikely to run into issues where you attack the wrong target, since usually there won't be many more than a single enemy on screen) and demands you hit the enemy exactly, without much room for error.Īs for bosses, their attacks can hit around the sides of where the game indicates. This is what I call 'asshole design'.Įxample one, the game doesn't bother to have enough character rotation sprites to exactly communicate where you're facing. Rather than increasing the challenge, it makes sure to fuck the player over on slight details while they deal with a seemingly more manageable task. If you pressed jump at the exact time your character was displayed as being on the edge of a platform in Celeste, your actual input will be too late to perform the jump, but the game will still give it to you because it feels bad for your input to fail when you could visually see that you were on time, and it could be argued that the timing of the jump was off not due to your fault, but as a result of shortcomings of the technology youre using to play the game.Įldest Souls fumbles on that front - the game punishes you for mistakes while simultaneously asking you to forgive it its own. I find that games with the absolute best game feel tend to follow a simple rule when it comes to the strictness of their challenge: if the situation is at all ambiguous, make the result favourable to the player.

If Guitar Hero just dropped some of your notes sometimes, that would be an absolute disaster, because the ultimate goal is to play through a song without missing once. If GTA doesn't register you trying to get into a vehicle sometimes it's fine - there are rarely consequences to that, so at worst it's a bit annoying. See, to me a game has to earn its difficulty - if it demands perfection from the player, it should itself be perfect. I have issues with many games that set out to be difficult. Didn't think the name was that similar to Elden Ring, but I guess yall disagree, so here's your reminder. EDIT: Uh, Eldest Souls is a top-down boss rush game that's vaguely inspired by soulslike games, but isn't one.

Eldest souls upgrades