Whoever thought you might like Elden Ring because you like Zelda is not a true friend. There’s really not much similar with the gameplay loop.
You’re right that the gameplay is more about learning and recognizing patterns of enemies and adjusting to them so if that doesn’t appeal to you you’re probably not going to like it. With that being said though, your first soulslike is always the hardest and if you stick with it they are very rewarding to play once you know what to expect.
It sounds like you probably had the wrong expectations of what the game was going in. These games can be frustrating under the best of circumstances, but are very much “tough but fair.”
If you choose to give it another shot, look up a build. The weapon scaling system is a little obtuse and if you’re pumping levels ups into str and using a dex weapon you’ll do no damage. Whatever you do, put a lot of points into Vigor. Get it to 40 at least after you have the stats to equip your weapon to increase your health because defense is mostly cosmetic in these games. Other than that, you get i-frames on your roll and the game rewards aggressive play so learn to roll into attacks and not away if you’re not using a shield.
I expected it to be difficult with a possibility of not enjoying it but seemed pretty popular so thought I’d give it a go.
Will give your suggestions a shot but I find everything about it obtuse to be honest. To me good game design lowers you gently into mastering the controls and ramping up difficulty, not just chucking you in at the deep end with confusing menus so it’s on the player to look everything up.
Dropping you into the deep end and expecting you to find your own way is kind of a hallmark of the series. Almost every game starts with a basic overview of the controls and then a difficult boss you are expected to lose to. Even the controls overview is entirely skipable because they are in the form of messages on the ground. In a way this teaches you about how you interact with the world because the storytelling is almost entirely environmental. Going against this would upset a massive fanbase because this is a very well established series at this point.
At a certain point in the story, you can respec all your stats. If you mess up or want to change anything - this happens after the second major story boss. The only thing that you truly need to know about to be successful is weapon scaling. All weapons scale based on a specific stat, ranging from E-S with E being the weakest scaling and A/S being strong scaling. The number on the left when you’re in your equip menu is the base weapon damage based on its level (normal weapons can be level 1-25 and special weapons 1-10. You unlock the ability to upgrade weapons pretty early in the story) and the number on the right is the additional damage you’ll have added based on a combination of the weapon’s scaling and your own stats. You can be quite successful just by understanding these two mechanics because they will make up a good portion of your damage.
Since you mentioned Zelda originally, there is a reason this meme exists:
Whoever thought you might like Elden Ring because you like Zelda is not a true friend. There’s really not much similar with the gameplay loop.
You’re right that the gameplay is more about learning and recognizing patterns of enemies and adjusting to them so if that doesn’t appeal to you you’re probably not going to like it. With that being said though, your first soulslike is always the hardest and if you stick with it they are very rewarding to play once you know what to expect.
Cheers, probably just not for me then.
It sounds like you probably had the wrong expectations of what the game was going in. These games can be frustrating under the best of circumstances, but are very much “tough but fair.”
If you choose to give it another shot, look up a build. The weapon scaling system is a little obtuse and if you’re pumping levels ups into str and using a dex weapon you’ll do no damage. Whatever you do, put a lot of points into Vigor. Get it to 40 at least after you have the stats to equip your weapon to increase your health because defense is mostly cosmetic in these games. Other than that, you get i-frames on your roll and the game rewards aggressive play so learn to roll into attacks and not away if you’re not using a shield.
I expected it to be difficult with a possibility of not enjoying it but seemed pretty popular so thought I’d give it a go.
Will give your suggestions a shot but I find everything about it obtuse to be honest. To me good game design lowers you gently into mastering the controls and ramping up difficulty, not just chucking you in at the deep end with confusing menus so it’s on the player to look everything up.
Dropping you into the deep end and expecting you to find your own way is kind of a hallmark of the series. Almost every game starts with a basic overview of the controls and then a difficult boss you are expected to lose to. Even the controls overview is entirely skipable because they are in the form of messages on the ground. In a way this teaches you about how you interact with the world because the storytelling is almost entirely environmental. Going against this would upset a massive fanbase because this is a very well established series at this point.
At a certain point in the story, you can respec all your stats. If you mess up or want to change anything - this happens after the second major story boss. The only thing that you truly need to know about to be successful is weapon scaling. All weapons scale based on a specific stat, ranging from E-S with E being the weakest scaling and A/S being strong scaling. The number on the left when you’re in your equip menu is the base weapon damage based on its level (normal weapons can be level 1-25 and special weapons 1-10. You unlock the ability to upgrade weapons pretty early in the story) and the number on the right is the additional damage you’ll have added based on a combination of the weapon’s scaling and your own stats. You can be quite successful just by understanding these two mechanics because they will make up a good portion of your damage.
Since you mentioned Zelda originally, there is a reason this meme exists: