#watchign someone else struggle through it (that being said my sis has been totaling these bosses so)

[castleinthemist]

anyway continual complaining about ring of eld below - i've got grief with the combat in this game and watching sis also really exemplifies that because her playstyle is different to mine:

dude.poise means fuck all in this game. get staggered by rats and dogs while wearing full plate armour. lol. lmao even. seriously what the fuck

idk what the point of having that stat is anymore when certain moves from a variety of enemies can stagger you to shit regardless of what you are doing/wearing and then have certain moves they can poise over yours in an inconsistent manner....like....what????

maybe if it was phrased as 'stagger' rather than poise it would make more sense i suppose because it does act more like a sekiro style stagger but like also there's poise and stagger but htey are doing different things and the only tell for stagger is the stance break animation.

anyway all this is to say this game gives me the shits to play because it leans so fucking heavily into combat and the combat is just. real fucked up feeling. Everything is faster and moves around too much (part of my issue with ds3 as well as it's in response to the prior 2 games of that series), dlc has vfx blocking your screen half the time and clarity for a lot of bosses is just straight out of the window (prioritising spectacle but spectacle is only great the first couple of times ... no? i think it's works better on something like the ice worm ac6 boss where that's the most notable aspect of the fight...more to that thought but i'll end it here)

i feel like the back and forth of prior games is kinda gone in preference for smaller and smaller windows of opportunity between combo strings that feel like they last forever and distance the boss can keep zoning you about from - couple that with the fact you're choices are 'burn the boss down into nothing asap or perfectly follow simon says to complete these fight (effectively trying to do a nohit version lol) and well. I guess that was my issue with artorias in the 1st souls game dlc and that's the thing that's gotten stronger with each subsequent game in this style