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So Nightreign and FromSoft
3 months ago
DragonStuff.exe has begun.
Oof.
I have 77 hours and all achievements (A core system is entirely bugged so if you beat every major boss, it won't ever spawn for you unless someone else HASN't beaten them all yet, and it's 25% then lol).
Anyway.
The game has potential and does have fun moments.
Except of course if you go with randoms, who will ignore you, act idiotic, braindead, not look not listen not anything and cost you 45 minutes because either one or all of those or they simply can't dodge for shit.
It's Elden Ring in a group, on crack. Run around, with classes - and they mostly all feel nice (Except the Guardian lol. Shame).
The problem is, FromSoft has peaked - in a bad way - with boss design.
You have 8 major bosses , and you're required to tackle the first one before you can unlock the others. That's all good.
What's not good is that, off the top of my head, four of them don't fucking stop moving, and \ or like to be OUT OF MELEE RANGE in the air if they do - to some extent. Um. Out of the current playable roster, 2 can use ranged attacks naturally. Out of 8. So if you don't have at least one ranged unit (And the caster, the "Recluse" is clunky AF), well. Good fucking luck.
Anyway, let's break down the boss issue and bad design.
The first boss you're meant to fight is Gladius. A cool three headed Cerberus type fire-spitting wolf who periodically splits his 3 heads off into a single-headed wolf body. But there's three of use now, so you have to dodge a whole lot more. It also has a chain on its back that can slam down or do moderately large aoe swings 1 or 2 times - these are readable, intuitive and well telegraphed. It has a reactable grab attack, comfy delays (no bullshit fakeouts) and is generally a fun fight, even if sometimes it also gets the fucking zoomies and won't stay still for melee LOL. If doing 3 players, this one and *every single boss* has way too much health, especially given their damage windows being so fucking small, so keep that in mind.
The second on the literal list is Adel, the "Gaping Jaw", a gross tumoresque dragon who uses Gravity (Explains his dog shit grab hitbox lol) and whose weakness is allegedly poison. I say allegedly because all that does is when poison procs, he stops for 5 seconds to retch it out, which is often barely enough to catch up to him, since he loves to do 2-3 bite chains, headbutts, aoe slam his damn feet and his movements are all total ass. Unreadable, undulating, infuriating mess with some "good FromSoft camera action" thrown in - if you get close to him to melee, the lock on point is high up on his feet, meaning you will be looking up and miss more than you hit due to the awkwardness because your position is bad. He is very prone to "STOP FUCKING MOVING!" syndrome, and in phase 2 loves to up the aoe range and damage and just spam the shit out of it. Annoying, but very moderate compared to what comes soon. Here, the bad design is that he's basically fucking unreadable and the grab hitbox has a bastard delay on it so 85% of the time you will get caught.
Third up is Gnoster,Wisdom Of night. It's the Moonlight Butterfly but faster and more annoying, aligned with poison and dealing magic damage, weak to fire. Oh, I lied. It also comes with a rando new big ass bug that harasses you with ground based attacks, swipes, etc. Think of it as weird ornstein&smough. Not too bad, although you have to dodge most of the relatively well telegraphed attacks or they hurt. Phase 2 the moth lands on the bug's head and they unlock some new attacks, one of which is 2-3 charges right across the (MASSIVE) battlefield, all the while shooting large magic bolts at you in a dodge-able rhythm. Actually not too bad if you have at least ranged unit and people can dodge. Focusing on the ground bug is annoying though as it likes to harden its shell (Attacks bounce) or spam short range aoes.
Fourth, we have Maris, Fathom Of Night. It looks like some weird space jellyfish that likes to float in the air to move and attack. RARELY he will come down for 2-5 seconds before flying off again. He loves to put you to Sleep, which for this fight also saps your hp&MP. 2nd time harder, 3rd time harder. Hitting this guy for melee is totally miserable, and his attacks suck. He can jizz 1 or 2 waves of splashy water at you which *look* like you can dodge *now* but actually no, it's a split second later. He may summon dozens of homing jellyfish that stop near you and explode 1,5 seconds later. He may also run slightly away, go to the floor and charge up sleep on people in a huge area unless interrupted by most - but not all - ultimates. So have ranged or get fucked. Finally, when really annoyed, he may drop an egg from very high, very slowly. If this lands, you take MASSIVE damage and MASSIVE sleep bar damage. So if you survive the impact, you are put to sleep and sapped to death. If you have no ranged, fucking GG . You can run the fuck away outside of its GIGANTIC fucking aoe area, and technically anyone can use bows but um. Most people don't. Oh and did I mention the targeting system is complete dog shit and refuses to target the tentacles he will repeatedly summon in the fight that will bitchslap you from behind for 50+% of your hp and interrupt you constantly? Because that too. I think he's weak to lightning.
Fifth is Libra. He's cool. Starts the fight by offering you a tainted deal. You want more Estus flasks? Sure, but each time you use one, YOU LOSE A LEVEL. You want a strong weapon? Cool, give me 2 levels. You want more stamina? Ok, but lose 10% HP. That kind of deal. He looks neat after this and transforms. "Mode 1" is him in smug caster mode, where he can conjure up Madness inducing pellets, machine gun pellets, aoe impacts. He has some basic melee attacks in this form and can seal himself up for about 15 seconds to buff, where he spawns sigils that need to be dashed through, attacked or shot. First time it's 4 and on the ground, 2nd time it's more and some in the air, etc. If you interrupt this *or* inflict Madness on *HIM*, he loses his shit, drops his staff, goes absolutely feral for a solid 30-40 seconds and becomes a simple melee beast. This is absolutely what you want. This is a really, really neat fight, but if you let him buff, some of his attacks upgrade to cover more ground, rotate, etc. He also has a somewhat unintuitive move where he will massive aoe force Madness bar fill at a rapid rate while spawning yellow "coin" looking things on the floor that slightly heal you and *HEAL YOUR MADNESS BAR* so you are forced to run around picking them up until he stops this or get chunked and stunned. Neat fight.
Next up is Fulghor, Champion of Nightglow . Shithead centaur. Tall, infuriating. *Constantly* moving, big ol sweeps, swipes. Aoe spam, large aoe spam. Has an extremely fast dash back and forth along the stupid arena. People literally call him harder than the final boss of the game *and they are right*. A total mess that perfectly exemplifies FromSoft's "We give up, we are out of ideas lol" Boss design philosophy which was already peeking in Elden Ring : BIg stupid target with camera issues. Won't stop, huge health sponge, massive damage, weird tells, aoe, aoe spam, aoe range spam. Oh and hits like two trucks having hate fucking sex too, because *of course*. Cunt. Weak to lightning - like a lot. Good luck if the main gameplay rolls you ZERO lightning drops though.
Following him is Caligo, Miasma of Night. Ice dragon. Absolute cunt. Shit camera, huge, can stay still randomly but never too long. Massive AOES and ice breaths. His weakness is fire, but it doesn't do much either. He loves to fly around, wasting your time, making you chase him. He has a mechanic where walls spawn you have to hide behind or get slammed. Another mechanic is he vanishes with - as far as I can tell - ZERO TELLS inside a heavily fogged up arena and you're meant to ???? I don't know. If I randomly find him it seems like he stops charging up to drop the frozen ceiling on you, or I'm just miles away and I'm out of range. Unfun to chase, unfun to fight, supposed to be easy but if you have mostly melee, you're not gonna be near the bastard very long. So yet again, spongy spammy get back here bullshit to waste the player's time.
Finally, the NightLord, the big one. He starts like a weak humanoid with some slashes and whatever. About half of phase 1's health over, he starts rushing, dashing, having more swings and harder damage output. He can get annoying but mostly fine. A waste of time until phase 2 starts.
In Phase 2, he will do very quick stabs, dashes, medium aoe slams until you annoy him enough. Then he flies up, simply rips the universe open to draw on one of the other defeated Nightlords properties and some of their gimmicks, then lands with the absolute biggest AoE in any FromSoft game ever released. The scale of it is insane. For those who played Elden Ring, it easily runs from one end of Stormveil Castle to the other, and the actual damage spots it generates are about 1.5 to 2 Malikeths big. EACH. Dodge-able but has a "ha, gotcha!" cuntbag delay because OF COURSE it does.
After that, he gets faster, with more wide ranging dash&slash aoe bullshit, and for a minute or so each slash creates fissues in the direction he swung near or behind you so if you dodge wrong, *you still get hit*.
He tends to have such fast and high range moves that , again, melee people have a lot of problems with him. Which is most of the cast. I think his weakness is meant to be holy?
It may be better to look up some boss fight videos to see what I mean.
But this all just sums up to me probably not buying anything FromSoft again if this is all they can do now. I've played Black Myth Wukong with reactive bosses, clever mechanics. I wasn't "Gotten" be a 3 second windup and a 0.10 slam like Lies Of P's badly designed bosses have, I wasn't "gotten" by a weird bastard delay built into attacks to catch you rolling what should clearby be the attack.
Nightreign can be fun, especially with friends and especially with at least 1 skilled friend - and while Libra is actually a very fun fight and like 2 of the other ones are "okay"...
..most of them aren't. Ignoring melee characters who still move like shit, attack slowly or have crap range. It's not great. There's a new "Storm Dash" for Elden Ring - pressing L3 or the left stick - and outside of combat it's zippy and will be you 98% of the time, costs no stamina. IN BATTLE however, if you press it, it takes about 30% of your stamina and eats it very quickly.
You could theoretically regular run with circle...but good luck fucking getting anywhere with that shit LOL. So as a melee character, you slow run and don't even reach the boss, or you storm run and you *may* reach the boss...only to have no stamina to attack (or at most once) before it leaves again.
There is disinterest in design and disdain for the player and I'm just, you know. DONE with it. I'll keep playing Nightreign until I get bored of it, but I don't trust them to design fun bosses any more, just "hard" ones through bullshit, bad and broken mechanics. Malenia was not a peak, it was a fucking warning of the impending failure. Remember her? 2 full health bars, loads of aoe slashes and swings. Inexplicably heals if she hits you (including shields, invalidating turtle builds, nice!). Has her Anime Bullshit attack that needs a martial arts lesson to learn how to dodge (Unless you're locked into an attack since if you don't react IMMEDIATELY, well...).
The thing is, the Ironeye - the ranger - can plink plink with arrows and do weaker but reliable damage to shit out of range. The other caster can generally cast stuff (depending on what you find in terms of staves as their spells are pseudo random within a set pool) , but the travel time is also generally longer. The magic caster is either stronger but slower damage or very good damage if you have the weakness castable.
Like, to the point where my 90-150 per R1 arrows are 33% to 50% the average swing from a *strong* melee unit. Except, you know. They can't get into range and can't actually DO anything.
It's a shame. But between the bad design infesting most of their bosses now and the whole Switch 2 exclusive weird ass bloodsuckers or whatever that was, at least for Souls stuff, pause and wait to see if they get their shit together because it's amateur grade shit now.
TL;DR : Enemies won't stop fucking moving for the 75% melee cast : Unfun, wastes time, awful *or* Enemies for the 2 ranged classes are much too fucking spongy and take too long to fight = not really fun either *or* fucking both. That's what it is. Unfun.
I have 77 hours and all achievements (A core system is entirely bugged so if you beat every major boss, it won't ever spawn for you unless someone else HASN't beaten them all yet, and it's 25% then lol).
Anyway.
The game has potential and does have fun moments.
Except of course if you go with randoms, who will ignore you, act idiotic, braindead, not look not listen not anything and cost you 45 minutes because either one or all of those or they simply can't dodge for shit.
It's Elden Ring in a group, on crack. Run around, with classes - and they mostly all feel nice (Except the Guardian lol. Shame).
The problem is, FromSoft has peaked - in a bad way - with boss design.
You have 8 major bosses , and you're required to tackle the first one before you can unlock the others. That's all good.
What's not good is that, off the top of my head, four of them don't fucking stop moving, and \ or like to be OUT OF MELEE RANGE in the air if they do - to some extent. Um. Out of the current playable roster, 2 can use ranged attacks naturally. Out of 8. So if you don't have at least one ranged unit (And the caster, the "Recluse" is clunky AF), well. Good fucking luck.
Anyway, let's break down the boss issue and bad design.
The first boss you're meant to fight is Gladius. A cool three headed Cerberus type fire-spitting wolf who periodically splits his 3 heads off into a single-headed wolf body. But there's three of use now, so you have to dodge a whole lot more. It also has a chain on its back that can slam down or do moderately large aoe swings 1 or 2 times - these are readable, intuitive and well telegraphed. It has a reactable grab attack, comfy delays (no bullshit fakeouts) and is generally a fun fight, even if sometimes it also gets the fucking zoomies and won't stay still for melee LOL. If doing 3 players, this one and *every single boss* has way too much health, especially given their damage windows being so fucking small, so keep that in mind.
The second on the literal list is Adel, the "Gaping Jaw", a gross tumoresque dragon who uses Gravity (Explains his dog shit grab hitbox lol) and whose weakness is allegedly poison. I say allegedly because all that does is when poison procs, he stops for 5 seconds to retch it out, which is often barely enough to catch up to him, since he loves to do 2-3 bite chains, headbutts, aoe slam his damn feet and his movements are all total ass. Unreadable, undulating, infuriating mess with some "good FromSoft camera action" thrown in - if you get close to him to melee, the lock on point is high up on his feet, meaning you will be looking up and miss more than you hit due to the awkwardness because your position is bad. He is very prone to "STOP FUCKING MOVING!" syndrome, and in phase 2 loves to up the aoe range and damage and just spam the shit out of it. Annoying, but very moderate compared to what comes soon. Here, the bad design is that he's basically fucking unreadable and the grab hitbox has a bastard delay on it so 85% of the time you will get caught.
Third up is Gnoster,Wisdom Of night. It's the Moonlight Butterfly but faster and more annoying, aligned with poison and dealing magic damage, weak to fire. Oh, I lied. It also comes with a rando new big ass bug that harasses you with ground based attacks, swipes, etc. Think of it as weird ornstein&smough. Not too bad, although you have to dodge most of the relatively well telegraphed attacks or they hurt. Phase 2 the moth lands on the bug's head and they unlock some new attacks, one of which is 2-3 charges right across the (MASSIVE) battlefield, all the while shooting large magic bolts at you in a dodge-able rhythm. Actually not too bad if you have at least ranged unit and people can dodge. Focusing on the ground bug is annoying though as it likes to harden its shell (Attacks bounce) or spam short range aoes.
Fourth, we have Maris, Fathom Of Night. It looks like some weird space jellyfish that likes to float in the air to move and attack. RARELY he will come down for 2-5 seconds before flying off again. He loves to put you to Sleep, which for this fight also saps your hp&MP. 2nd time harder, 3rd time harder. Hitting this guy for melee is totally miserable, and his attacks suck. He can jizz 1 or 2 waves of splashy water at you which *look* like you can dodge *now* but actually no, it's a split second later. He may summon dozens of homing jellyfish that stop near you and explode 1,5 seconds later. He may also run slightly away, go to the floor and charge up sleep on people in a huge area unless interrupted by most - but not all - ultimates. So have ranged or get fucked. Finally, when really annoyed, he may drop an egg from very high, very slowly. If this lands, you take MASSIVE damage and MASSIVE sleep bar damage. So if you survive the impact, you are put to sleep and sapped to death. If you have no ranged, fucking GG . You can run the fuck away outside of its GIGANTIC fucking aoe area, and technically anyone can use bows but um. Most people don't. Oh and did I mention the targeting system is complete dog shit and refuses to target the tentacles he will repeatedly summon in the fight that will bitchslap you from behind for 50+% of your hp and interrupt you constantly? Because that too. I think he's weak to lightning.
Fifth is Libra. He's cool. Starts the fight by offering you a tainted deal. You want more Estus flasks? Sure, but each time you use one, YOU LOSE A LEVEL. You want a strong weapon? Cool, give me 2 levels. You want more stamina? Ok, but lose 10% HP. That kind of deal. He looks neat after this and transforms. "Mode 1" is him in smug caster mode, where he can conjure up Madness inducing pellets, machine gun pellets, aoe impacts. He has some basic melee attacks in this form and can seal himself up for about 15 seconds to buff, where he spawns sigils that need to be dashed through, attacked or shot. First time it's 4 and on the ground, 2nd time it's more and some in the air, etc. If you interrupt this *or* inflict Madness on *HIM*, he loses his shit, drops his staff, goes absolutely feral for a solid 30-40 seconds and becomes a simple melee beast. This is absolutely what you want. This is a really, really neat fight, but if you let him buff, some of his attacks upgrade to cover more ground, rotate, etc. He also has a somewhat unintuitive move where he will massive aoe force Madness bar fill at a rapid rate while spawning yellow "coin" looking things on the floor that slightly heal you and *HEAL YOUR MADNESS BAR* so you are forced to run around picking them up until he stops this or get chunked and stunned. Neat fight.
Next up is Fulghor, Champion of Nightglow . Shithead centaur. Tall, infuriating. *Constantly* moving, big ol sweeps, swipes. Aoe spam, large aoe spam. Has an extremely fast dash back and forth along the stupid arena. People literally call him harder than the final boss of the game *and they are right*. A total mess that perfectly exemplifies FromSoft's "We give up, we are out of ideas lol" Boss design philosophy which was already peeking in Elden Ring : BIg stupid target with camera issues. Won't stop, huge health sponge, massive damage, weird tells, aoe, aoe spam, aoe range spam. Oh and hits like two trucks having hate fucking sex too, because *of course*. Cunt. Weak to lightning - like a lot. Good luck if the main gameplay rolls you ZERO lightning drops though.
Following him is Caligo, Miasma of Night. Ice dragon. Absolute cunt. Shit camera, huge, can stay still randomly but never too long. Massive AOES and ice breaths. His weakness is fire, but it doesn't do much either. He loves to fly around, wasting your time, making you chase him. He has a mechanic where walls spawn you have to hide behind or get slammed. Another mechanic is he vanishes with - as far as I can tell - ZERO TELLS inside a heavily fogged up arena and you're meant to ???? I don't know. If I randomly find him it seems like he stops charging up to drop the frozen ceiling on you, or I'm just miles away and I'm out of range. Unfun to chase, unfun to fight, supposed to be easy but if you have mostly melee, you're not gonna be near the bastard very long. So yet again, spongy spammy get back here bullshit to waste the player's time.
Finally, the NightLord, the big one. He starts like a weak humanoid with some slashes and whatever. About half of phase 1's health over, he starts rushing, dashing, having more swings and harder damage output. He can get annoying but mostly fine. A waste of time until phase 2 starts.
In Phase 2, he will do very quick stabs, dashes, medium aoe slams until you annoy him enough. Then he flies up, simply rips the universe open to draw on one of the other defeated Nightlords properties and some of their gimmicks, then lands with the absolute biggest AoE in any FromSoft game ever released. The scale of it is insane. For those who played Elden Ring, it easily runs from one end of Stormveil Castle to the other, and the actual damage spots it generates are about 1.5 to 2 Malikeths big. EACH. Dodge-able but has a "ha, gotcha!" cuntbag delay because OF COURSE it does.
After that, he gets faster, with more wide ranging dash&slash aoe bullshit, and for a minute or so each slash creates fissues in the direction he swung near or behind you so if you dodge wrong, *you still get hit*.
He tends to have such fast and high range moves that , again, melee people have a lot of problems with him. Which is most of the cast. I think his weakness is meant to be holy?
It may be better to look up some boss fight videos to see what I mean.
But this all just sums up to me probably not buying anything FromSoft again if this is all they can do now. I've played Black Myth Wukong with reactive bosses, clever mechanics. I wasn't "Gotten" be a 3 second windup and a 0.10 slam like Lies Of P's badly designed bosses have, I wasn't "gotten" by a weird bastard delay built into attacks to catch you rolling what should clearby be the attack.
Nightreign can be fun, especially with friends and especially with at least 1 skilled friend - and while Libra is actually a very fun fight and like 2 of the other ones are "okay"...
..most of them aren't. Ignoring melee characters who still move like shit, attack slowly or have crap range. It's not great. There's a new "Storm Dash" for Elden Ring - pressing L3 or the left stick - and outside of combat it's zippy and will be you 98% of the time, costs no stamina. IN BATTLE however, if you press it, it takes about 30% of your stamina and eats it very quickly.
You could theoretically regular run with circle...but good luck fucking getting anywhere with that shit LOL. So as a melee character, you slow run and don't even reach the boss, or you storm run and you *may* reach the boss...only to have no stamina to attack (or at most once) before it leaves again.
There is disinterest in design and disdain for the player and I'm just, you know. DONE with it. I'll keep playing Nightreign until I get bored of it, but I don't trust them to design fun bosses any more, just "hard" ones through bullshit, bad and broken mechanics. Malenia was not a peak, it was a fucking warning of the impending failure. Remember her? 2 full health bars, loads of aoe slashes and swings. Inexplicably heals if she hits you (including shields, invalidating turtle builds, nice!). Has her Anime Bullshit attack that needs a martial arts lesson to learn how to dodge (Unless you're locked into an attack since if you don't react IMMEDIATELY, well...).
The thing is, the Ironeye - the ranger - can plink plink with arrows and do weaker but reliable damage to shit out of range. The other caster can generally cast stuff (depending on what you find in terms of staves as their spells are pseudo random within a set pool) , but the travel time is also generally longer. The magic caster is either stronger but slower damage or very good damage if you have the weakness castable.
Like, to the point where my 90-150 per R1 arrows are 33% to 50% the average swing from a *strong* melee unit. Except, you know. They can't get into range and can't actually DO anything.
It's a shame. But between the bad design infesting most of their bosses now and the whole Switch 2 exclusive weird ass bloodsuckers or whatever that was, at least for Souls stuff, pause and wait to see if they get their shit together because it's amateur grade shit now.
TL;DR : Enemies won't stop fucking moving for the 75% melee cast : Unfun, wastes time, awful *or* Enemies for the 2 ranged classes are much too fucking spongy and take too long to fight = not really fun either *or* fucking both. That's what it is. Unfun.
*Error 404, too much lewd found*
Lol, but probably not a game for me it sounds like.
Fromsoft reversed the 5 years tried and true Estus formula to go back to hunting shit healing items that rarely dropped, only in certain areas.
You couldn't warp between checkpoints any more, just Where you are => Hub (Loading) => Destination (...loading...)
Many things were a step backwards. Atmosphere, yes clap clap wow good.
Hitboxes and some bizarre flailing asshole attacks? Ehhhh yeah that too.
It's a fun concept, but there's a bunch of stuff that needs ironing out.
Ever since a day or two ago I'm absolutely DROWNING in idiotic people who can't dodge, can't keep up, won't resurrect, use skills wrong, steal all the items without looking at what it does.
I expect that out of a saturday and especially sunday but wtf. Rage inducing ;_;.