So... getting back to my 'forever' Elden Ring playthrough, as in ...I've beaten the game more than once, am taking it slow and combing everything, playing for a few concentrated days/drop for a few weeks, come back and chip away some more.
The storytelling in this game really is interesting. I think I've gone deeper into the lore than your average player at this point... just looking at the average hours people put in. And the reason I say that is because really understanding who/what all of these beings are, what this world is, it's history, what your role is, what it even fkn means to take control of the Elden Ring... is like a steady research project. You're taking a whole suite of college classes on the subject, preparing your dissertation. It takes TIME in the game world to recognize all of the signals things are putting out. It's easy to THINK you know from the main beats but honestly... you gotta examine this game like an anthropologist, it is SO unbelievably rich in interconnected details that require 100% active inference. As in, nothing in the game is gonna say "Hey, pay attention to this. THIS matters. THAT means something." It just doesn't plant those kinds of flags. What you gather from the main story has a lot of half-truth to it. You have to ask yourself what matters, what you can uncover, what those details may tell you. Without that context, you only think you know what's going on... you haven't realized that you CAN'T fully know yet. There's like a bell curve where on the left side, it seems increasingly more surmountable, and then you hit a point of knowledge where the burden of enlightenment takes you deep down into the whole affair and makes you feel so small compared to this world. The way I'd put it is... nearly every element of the game, every item, enemy, architectural choice/detail... everything you can see and encounter, is a part of the story that is Elden Ring's universe.
One thing I really admire about it is the sheer CONFIDENCE to just bury intricacy after intricacy. Most games try almost ANNOYINGLY hard to make sure you see and understand everything. I think it's more a higher-ups mindset, i.e. "If we're going to put money/manpower into this detail, every player needs to see it on the first go. Otherwise, it's not worth it." AKA the "Gamers are illiterate and need the simplest, most streamlined story presentation possible or they will quit. If an 8 year old can't get it immediately, it's too smart for gamers." BS. I call it 'cost/benefit storytelling' or 'bean-counter oratory theory.' But ER goes full sigma and doesn't care if you don't figure it all out. They leave that for players who are more willing to try, and it makes the whole experience feel so much more personal and organic. Elden Ring instead asks "Lets see how smart gamers can really be."
It kind of snowballs as you get a feel for their storytelling language and it slowly becomes this impossibly grand epic tale of death and rebirth cycles of entire worlds, whole societies... that is really impossible to boil down to traditional plot beats. You experience the story of Elden Ring the same way that like... Mayan, Sumerian, and Byzantine ruins tell us the stories of worlds long past, with mystifying and seemingly strange links to our world, our spot on the timeline of life. Elden Ring has in it, a detailed timeline of multiple fallen civilizations with all of these crazy-ass politics and events for you to unravel from the remnants of the current world, which is itself about to become another, like the remnants of the ones it stands on as of playing the game. And all of it tells you about the beings you will encounter in the 'present' era of the game world, what all of these events and changes you are seeing REALLY mean, why things are how they are and why these beings have the motives they do. There are just a lot of things you take for granted as actually being 'new' to the beings in the world as of the time you arrive. It's not immediately obvious, what of the things you see are long-established (i.e. 'normative' for the present Lands Between,) versus what things are changing or have recently changed as of that exact era, because it's ALL brutal and chaotically cryptic. You have to delve into the historical clues.
It's intense. I've played this game for hundreds of hours and honestly, I could've summed up the story FAR more easily after the first hundred hours, than I can now. As you get on top of the game mechanics and the really tough battles, you get into this observation mode and the world really does feel boundless, with layer after layer of meaning to extract. I'm constantly learning stuff that forces me to question how everything is connecting up in my head... there's like 2000 monkeys up there ripping their fur out over piles of burning spreadsheets and flow/bubble charts.
But all I really wanted to say is that ~lvl100, having a high INT character starts getting SILLY OP. Geez man... melee is WICKED hard compared to these near-1-shot, low-cost ranged attacks. A Moonveil and a good staff makes exploration feel almost casual. I actually shy away from using the AOW. Often I will try to do bosses melee only, just two hand the kay-tan and do alla dat smackin-jumpin-rollin stuff. Pull out the AOW in those clutch moments when I EARN a window to punish them with it real cleanlike and NOT lose step immediately after. I feel like it's a good balance of challenge, and honestly, way more fun than either pure melee OR Moonveil AOW spam. Spamming that AOW really trivializes a lot of nasty boss situations. If you can tank just a few hits and just land that AOW at EVERY possible moment, you won't even see half of some of the biggest bosses' movesets.
Personally, I get more of a rush out of doing things like trying to thread the needle by sidestepping ranged volley/barrage type of attacks, backstepping to dodge short, close attacks and crouching into a punishing return attack, threading in jump dodges to punish ground attacks, executing the roll sequences that put me in the perfect spot to stick a clean big hit to set up for a crit... that kind of thing. I enjoy the dance of staying up in enemies' shit. If you lean on the AOW of the Moonveil too much, you kill that rhythm completely and it's just not very exciting past the power trip. It's a KILLER weapon that only becomes more enjoyable the more skill you apply to it.
It's kinda like Pikachu in OG, N64 Super Smash. Everybody hates them, because Pikachu is just objectively more advantageous when it comes to moveset - top-tier character. It's only when you see two Pikachu users fight that you realize the REAL menace is someone who fully understands how to use Pikachu effectively. That is far rarer. You think it's good, but if all you do is spam thunder, you don't even know the half of how good Pikachu actually is in that game, and a competent Pikachu user will reveal you to be a trash player in short order. I should know... I was one back in the day. I got lots of hate from my buddies until I did the "Okay, lets all be Pikachu and see what's up." or "Anybody here good with Fox? Lets 1v1. Beat me, and I'll never use Pikachu again." Fox and the Pika are arguably the two highest-tier characters to fight with, with the most advantages over all of the others... and Fox arguably has the advantage over Pikachu. Nobody beat my Pikachu with Fox. And nobody ever complained when I chose Pikachu again.
Similarly, I think the higher tiers of using a top-tier weapon like the Moonveil are actually a bit harder to reach than they look. It's easy to lean on the AOW, even though it actually has a lot of weaknesses and limitations in that if that isn't going well for you, you have no fallback. What you get on the low level of skill with it is much higher than with other weapons. But for it to truly shine, you still have to actively apply skill with it. It still rewards you more when you put the work in. Even in PvP, you're getting fucked if all you can do is spam the AOW. Anybody with a modicum of skill and experience with their build will be able to deal with that, because they know people are out there using Moonveil like a Pikachu-user spamming thunder. What is FAR more threatening than a bulked-up Moonveil-weilder with lots of FP, is a player generally skilled with katanas, who happens to be wielding a Moonveil.
The one exception would be the dungeons. They can be some of the weakest aspects of the game, with many of them being pretty repetitive. It IS nice to just be able to shoot through those with the Moonveil AOW, and pick off all of the ganks with a staff. To me, that's just more time gained in the rest of the game, which is always showing me SOMETHING new.
Honestly though... the people I have the most respect for in this game run pure STR. Plain melee is soooo much harder than arcane, intelligence... holy (more like "HOLY SHIT this is ungodly.") The game really tests your ability to not panic roll (honestly, rolling is the least favorable choice many times - watch people who are REALLY good at this game and notice how any time they can do something other than roll to deal with an attack, they generally do - you'll see them repeatably doing all of this stuff you would never think could work in a seamless and epic-looking fasion - I think the game is made for that and it's just a matter of putting a little patience towards analyzing your skillset - kinda like improving on a musical instrument, you gotta hone in on what you're doing and optimize different aspects of it via conscious repetition.) I can back up the claim that the game is made with the things I'm describing in mind - it was only when I started approaching combat that way that I started seeing WHOLE new moves and combos from bosses - the stuff they start doing when you get creative makes you appreciate them a lot more. They react to that playstyle and diversify more, it all just goes up to the next level where things actually make more sense. To fight melee, you have to go all in with your available moves. Each of them are optimal for different situations. It's like a cat and mouse of you and the game adapting to one another. There is just a lot about this game that punishes pure melee a lot more ajnd requires you to constantly be aware of your character's strengths and limitations. If you spec into buffs and ranged more, you bypass a lot of that. Without them, it's a constant white-knuckle challenge.
It is fantastic. But honestly its good how 3.5 fixed that, it felt a lot fairer then.
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