This was my first souls game, and I went from hating it to respecting it to liking it enough to at least beat it once. I don't know if I want to go back to that well of suffering, but it was more enjoyable than expected. The co-op was cool and the invasion mechanics weren't as enjoyment-killing as I expected. I might've gotten off easy, I've seen some dastardly videos of invaders being sneaky.

If anybody likes the lore of Elden Ring, there's a channel called Zullie the Witch (sp?) on youtube that does pretty relaxing text-only lore videos where 3d assets and stuff from the game are examined onscreen. A lot of the lore is hidden in the character and world design, which is neat.

Yeah people saying Git Gud are frustrating and unhelpful. What you really want to do is Suk Moar. Practice until you can't complete any games, defeat any bosses or exit any starting areas. Once you reach this level of skill you won't even realise Souls games are meant to be hard.

The idea of "going hallow" to avoid all multiplayer was great. You could stay a zombie and never have to worry about invasions, but you also couldn't take advantage of co-op. Turning human enabled other players to invade you, but it also enabled co-op to help you through the PVE. Your co-op pals could also help you against invasion. It was a brilliant system.

BUT they hid it behind ridiculously broken, hidden, and obtuse mechanics of having to join covenants (guilds). Invading anyone required an extremely rare consumable. One covenant was impossible to find without a guide, only let you invade people who had met some specific conditions, and never actually worked because the target pool was dead and you'd almost never find an invasion target. Another let you invade anyone, but you couldn't join it until you beat an area that most people wouldn't get to until near the end.

That left the Forest Covenant, the easiest to find and execute, but so broken it was pointless.

And From Software just keeps pulling this shit, game after game. It's not even a difficulty thing. Just cut the shit and serve up the multiplayer straight up.

Thanks for turning me on to Zullie, Gmork.

I'll never play Elden ring but I'll sure as shit watch others pontificate on it. Great channel.

The stat system is cool because regardless of how little damage an enemy does, it's always knocking down your poise meter behind the scenes. Once that gets low any character human or npc will start getting staggered. There's probably other stat things happening too I'm not aware of.

Poise is one of the prime examples of them insisting on making important mechanics hidden and obtuse. They tell you poise exists, but never say what it actually does, or how each weapon affects it.