As a casual bystander, the Elden Ring discourse is puzzling to me. Evidently, Shadow of the Ertree is really hard and some people are pretty frustrated about it. My social media is filled with complaints, I’ve seen a few streamers having meltdowns about, and Asmongold quit playing it, saying he could beat it if he wanted to, but it’s so𒆙 hard that it’s not fun.
Again, I don’t go here, but I k🌃inda thought the difficulty was the whole point. You’re supposed to struggle, fail, die,💝 suffer, then push yourself to get back up and try again. When you finally succeed you’re meant to think about all the times you could have given up but didn’t, making the success that much sweeter. This is basic Souls psychology that Elden Ring players, who I assume must be approaching this DLC after having beaten the game, surely understand. So what’s the dilemma here? Is it really too hard to be fun?
From talking to other FromSoft experts, I’ve gathered that E🌟rdtree’s fights aren’t as easy to brute force as other fights. In our discussion video last week, reviewer James Troughton explained that their plan to stagger enemies with blunt weapons wasn’t as effective as they’d hoped, but when they switched to a more hybrid build with magic options, they had a lot more success. They also used the Mi🍰mic Tear Spirit Summon to distract bosses, and when they weren’t strong enough to beat a boss, they farmed Scadutree Fragments until they were.
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Maybe some stubborn people just don’t want to engage with the game’s RPG mechanics. Maybe they got used to hammering away at a fight until they perfected it and didn’t need to spend time grinding levels or tailoring their builds, and now they resent having to adapt to a fight rather than o𓄧vercome it through sheer will. I don’t know, I’m just a touris🌊t, but what I do know is that if you’re unhappy with Erdtree’s difficulty, you need to stay far away from Black Myth: Wukong.
I’ve been watching a lot of Elden Ring clꦰips this week, especially the ones that include commentary about the player feeling frustrated or demoralized. What I’m seeing most often is bosses that chain together multiple attacks that force you to dodge with perfect timing over and over. It feels like you should be rewarded with an🎉 opening to counter attack when you time a dodge perfectly, but Erdtree’s bosses like to dance around, striking repeatedly, and force you to dodge three, four, sometimes five attacks in a row before you have a chance to counter.
I haven’t played Elden Ring, but I played two hours of Wukong earlier this month, and these long combos look very familiar. I took on four bosses during the preview and every one of them came at me with the same long strings of attacks that were difficult to read and almost impossible to dodge. Dodging early or late was almost certain death as the attacks just kept coming, and even when I managed to avoid the entire barrage, the opening to retaliate was much smaller than I would have liked. For most fights the cadence was🥀: Boss lunges across the arena and makes five sweeping attacks at me, and if I perfectly avoid all of them, I’m allowed to respond with two light attacks, three at the most.
Wukong also doesn’t have a parry, so dodging is your only means of avoiding damage. There are different kinds of dodges, though. One of the stances allows you to climb on top of your staff and sit ꧅there out of range while the boss leaps ar♊ound, then leap off the staff and come down on the fiend's head with one big strike. That will work against some bosses, but more commonly you’re just expected to dodge, dodge, and dodge again.
I’m not trying to talk anyone out of playing Wukong (though I do recommend you at least inform yourself about the allegations of discrimination an🌠d harassment at Game Science). It’s a Soulslike throu💟gh and through and I expect it will be popular with fans of the genre. But if Erdtree is too hard for you because the bosses are relentless, I’m sorry to say it, but Wukong isn’t going to treat you any nicer.
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