My biggest critique of Elden Ring so far

First and foremost I would like to make this clear, I am absolutely in love with the game. Started on the souls games back on ds2 and have since put many hours into every single one. This has been by far one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences I’ve ever had. That said, I have been getting some thoughts on it.

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I’m about 70 hours played so far and I’ve gotten to the last boss (didn’t explore as much as some, was waiting for the second play through to try and 100%). But some of my “issues” come from the summoning. There are a lot of bosses that go from feeling nearly impossible, to pretty easy just by using the spirit summons.

I guess this is probably an even bigger issue seeing as I’ve been doing a full strength build. Sometimes in late game it feels like using a maxed out great sword with 50 strength still just isn’t doing the kinda damaged I hoped it would. The spirit summons nearly feel like an idea that came in a bit later to try and balance out the difficulty. I switched to a magic build around mid game for a bit, but after using strength for the most of the game, magic almost felt too easy. Really not trying to knock the magic users out there, I understand how dope the spells look and how cool it is to be able to go full mage. I just felt like it did too much damage sometimes with the added benefit of being at a range.

Personally I think the game could benefit from having faster casting times but a little less damage from the magic. And maybe beef up the damage on strength builds a bit? I mean I haven’t even found a weapon/ ash of war with an S scaling for strength (let me know if I’m doing it wrong) but a big thing too was a lot of the windows to get a hit in on bosses are so short, that using a colossal great sword seemed like you could never get a hit in without trading damage.

I would’ve liked to see spirit summons be attached to their own stat, maybe scale off another stat. Something to make a build almost focused around spirit summons more. (A summoner build would be sweet). I’ve heard of other people managing to totally solo almost every boss, but using this pure strength build it seems much more difficult.

I would love to hear any thoughts on this!!! Like I said I consider this to already be one of my favorite games of all time so even with all this I absolutely love it.

i like how you clarified "i love this game, one of my fav games of all time" to avoid the toxic Elden Ring fanbase waiting to jump on the neck of anybody who dares critique their perfect game.
I agree with the summoning issue, summons are pretty broken here

its the same with every single fromsoft game. if you ever dared criticize sekiro for anything, the fanatics would immediately jump at you and say "filtered by the ogre huh???".
the "le prepare to die" for marketing for ds1 really did a number on people, its created one of the most obnoxious fanbases on the planet.

this game is definitely balanced around spirit summons but summons themselves aren’t really that interesting outside of mimic. I think the only time I ever used summons were on Malenia and gank fights

>50 str
aren't the softcaps 60 this time around?

The hardcore soulsfags don’t like to hear but the truth of the matter is that the games are designed with summoning in mind. Jolly cooperation, don’t hunt alone, quests tied to summoning, etc. the self imposed rules of try hards don’t invalidate the core gameplay intentions.
So I think Miyazaki is simply dabbing on no summoners here. He’s letting you know; yes, you need to summon for this game. And If you’re not going to summon another human then you’ll need to summon spirit. That’s why Radhan is in the game. He’s like a wow boss. You need to summon 20 people for him. Tryhards will now mog me claiming that they did it no problem without summons or it’s easier without them, don’t care.

Also yes str builds need some sort of buff there’s no reason not to go magic in this game

Well then maybe they should've balanced fights around summons properly instead of just being able to kill the boss in 30 seconds while it ping pongs aggro between you and your summon.

It's not the summons that are broken, they do nothing in terms of damage or staggering in my fights.
It's the fucking dogshit AI which is only good for reading player input. That's why rock sling hits AI every single time while they dodge every pebble, that's why AI goes retarded when fighting summons with multiple bodies.
The game literally reads your inputs which makes playing a pure caster close to impossible, I have no hesitation in abusing summons to get even.

My biggest issue is the creeping in burnout caused by the repetitive design of their open world. I can only enjoy clearing so many catacombs and ruins.