영어공부8
Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "hey man, that all sounds pretty great, open worlds are cool, attention to detail, blah blah blah, but I think I'm gonna miss having a hub area" And you know, that's fair. Not having that is a real bummer. So it's a good thing- they added one. Because of course they did, this is the ultimate FromSoft game. Why wouldn't it have a hub area?
I don't want to spend too much time on this due to spoilers, but just know that this area is cool. And it's filled with plenty of interesting people to speak to.
And let me just say, there's this passion that shines through every facet of Elden Ring. So much care and love was put into this. They didn't have to go this hard. They really didn't.
On top of that, they still have the confidence to hide some of the coolest things in random corners of the map or behind fake walls. This has been a thing since Dark Souls, but it bears repeating how insane it is that they do this. What other developer in the triple-A space would trust the player enough, to put some of the best stuff in the game behind some random wall? I don't think there's one.
That's enough about the world though, the combat is the real meat of this game, so let's talk about it.
Quite simply, this is an evolution of the combat from Dark Souls 3, but it's been refined and added to- so that it's better than ever. I know at a glance, a lot of it might look very similar to Dark Souls 3, but trust me, this feels so much better that it's hard to imagine going back.
All of this is the result of lots of fine tuning to get the speed of animations and the numbers involved with all these attacks just right along with desiging enemies to complement the whole system. There was a moment where I realized that I had unconsciously been using my entire moveset for each weapon I tried. Even the jump attacks and even the weapon arts. If you're a long time fan of FromSoft, you'll know how crazy that is.
In past games, it's far too easy to rely solely on R1 or light attacks to get through ninety nine percent of encouters and bosses. And why wouldn't you? It's the most efficient option in those games. And FromSoft must have noticed this, because they tweak things and added new mechanics so that every part of the moveset is actually useful and feels right.
The two big mechanics they added were guard counters and breaking an enemy's stance. To guard counter, you just block an attack either with a shield, or while two-handing a weapon, and then you press heavy attack to do a very quick and very strong counter-attack. This alone speeds up the pace of combat immensely, and make defensive playstyles much more active than they've ever been.
As for stance breaking, basically every enemy and boss in the game can have its stance broken. And when tha-t happens, you can follow up with a critical hit. The fastest ways to break an enemy are heavy attacks, jump attacks and guard counters. So boom, that's the trick to making these attacks worth it, in a way that they weren't in past games.
Combat just feels good, they nailed it this time. I kept switching weapons throughout my playthough- in a sort of disbelief thinking, maybe I just happened to choose one that felt good, but no. They all feel this good and the effort that must have gone into that deserves to be reckon nice. And that's honestly just scratching the surface for the combat in this game.