Elden Ring, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and other FromSoftware titles are appreciated for their somber narrative style, distinctive grim settings, incredible sense of scale, and opportunities for discovery. They are also famous for being extremely tough.
For some dedicated gamers, that last bit is all that really matters. The difficulty, and your subsequent investment of time and energy to master the game's melee combat system, is what makes FromSoftware games what they are. Many of those same players would tell you that it's just the way they play, and that they don't blame other players for their different playstyles or where they find satisfaction in the game.
And then there are the others. The ones who would, and do, tell everyone whether or not they ask that unless you play like them and match their skill level in parries, dodges, and precisely executed combos, you're not playing legitimately.
For some, the various systems of Elden Ring, such as summoning Ashes to help clear difficult encounters, spamming Comet Azur from afar to melt a dragon's HP, or even calling in multiplayer co-ops for boss battles, is tantamount to break the game these tactics are illegitimate, so "making cheese" is the true cardinal sin of Elden Ring.
Cheesing basically uses unconventional tactics to get ahead in the game that some say are exploitative and violate the spirit of the game. health with arrows or sparkling stone shards while staying out of range of his attacks, well, you're little better than a cheat.
I'm here to tell you that not only are you wrong, but fighting your way to the Elden throne is truer to the spirit of the Soulsborne genre than its precise dual-wielding katana builds and dodge prowess ever could.
Exploiting weaknesses is what winners do
You didn't hit her. You used summons. You used bleeding. Spam ranged attacks. You used ashes of war. You upgraded your weapon. You have upgraded your character. You used a controller. You turned on the screen. You used electricity. You used the concept of time. pic.twitter.com/sgie5Zu7EQApril 3, 2022
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The way you win in a Soulborne game is that you mercilessly exploit the enemy's weaknesses. For a melee build, that means getting in close, learning attack timings, and parrying and dodging your way around to expose an enemy's weak spot so you can hit them hard while you have a chance.
But FromSoftware didn't make a game just for melee builds, they made a game with a rich magic and affinity system and environmental damage that applies to both enemies and the player.
Some enemies are immune to poison, but weak to lightning. So we encourage you to hit them with every lightning spear you can throw at them. Build up enough points in Arcane and Faith and you'll never have to worry about the Fire Giant's ability, as he melts completely under a blast of shimmering stone breath.
If you realized that a boss can't locate you somewhere or that a boss could roll its gigantic butt down a waterfall to its death, then exploiting that is perfectly legit.
FromSoftware can and has placed an invisible barrier around an arena to prevent an enemy from falling off a ledge, so if you forgot to place one along the edge of the waterfall in Nokron Aqueduct for the gargoyle fight twins, and one or both of those gargoyles. Are you foolish enough to roll sideways to your death while impossibly dodging your attacks?
Good. If there's one lesson to be learned from any FromSoftware title, it's that one small mistake can be instantly fatal. There is no reason this should only apply to players.
The Soulsborne games aren't just about playing in a very specific way, focused on melee with honed attack timings. You can do this, if you wish, because it will lead you to the true goal of any Soulsborne game: to win by any means necessary. The point is perseverance, endure and overcome the challenge. How you do it is up to you.
Anyone who tells you that using the game's built-in mechanics to win is cheap or somehow below the dignity of a true Soulborne player is telling the tale. The winners win the games. Losers complain about how others win games.
Elden Ring is made to be cheesy
I'm sure the developers of Elden Ring have put a lot of time and effort into making it so that anyone who invests the time and patience to master them can beat the game's combat mechanics. It's been a hallmark of the entire Soulsborne genre ever since Demon's Souls released on PS3, and that tradition has carried on in every FromSoftware game since.
You know what else is from the beginning? Enemies too big to follow you through a door that you could then turn into a poison arrow porcupine. That spot along the wall where a spider boss's fire breath attack can't reach you, but you can still hit it with ranged attacks? It was in the original Demon's Souls and it was still there in the PS5 remake, unchanged. If FromSoftware considered these tactics off limits, they had multiple games to fix them.
Still, I can still cut down an extremely difficult boss battle by raining Rotten Breath on them from a rooftop in Lyndell and there's absolutely nothing a couple of mounted Tree Sentinels can do about it except die slowly like the happy golden dogs spawned by computer. that they are.
One would think that the experienced developers who have created arguably one of the greatest games of all time would have thought of this possibility and done something to keep it in those scenarios where the twin Tree Sentinels might catch up with it in a fair fight. But you know what? FromSoftware has thought of it, and they certainly approve of this innovative troubleshooting solution to overcome a challenge.
Can't that giant rune bear scale a cliff to hit me in Caelid while I rain down spell after spell until I die? Hard. Git Gud, Rune Bear. It's not like I can do that to all of you, so I'm sure I will when I can. If the developers didn't want you to climb cliffs to devastate overpowered enemies, they wouldn't let you climb cliffs on enemies.
Elden Ring cheats. You owe him nothing.
Anyone who has ever tried swinging a big sword down a narrow hallway knows that the giant rat in front of you will hurt you.
As your Claymore bounces harmlessly off the wall, that puny little rat and the one behind you bite into you and, can't you tell, they deal enough damage to make your SL100 character go down like you're an SL10 character fresh out of the severe.
You know who doesn't have this problem? Pretty much every enemy in the Elden Ring. We've all seen a Putrid Tree Spirit swing a claw through wall geometry to take 60% of your HP in one hit, if it doesn't kill you outright.
FromSoftware clearly knows how to program actor kick animations to interact with the geometry of the level. Still, one of those weird kidnapping maidens at Volcano Manor can send her little scythes through a cliff or wall ledge and kill you even though the physics should still work in the Midlands. Unfortunately, this really only works for you. Everything else lives in its own personal singularity where matter is too abstract to be an obstruction.
Do we call this cheating? Sometimes we do, in especially serious cases, but mostly we accept that in addition to being subdued early on, our enemies will also take all of the referee's limit calls in their favor. The game is always against the player in these types of games, so any advantage you can get helps bring things closer to parity, but never quite.
Consider it fair if you want, but unless you're hacking a game, using cheat codes, or taking advantage of an obvious bug (knocking an enemy off a cliff and dropping an enemy through ground geometry are two very different things , for example), nothing is prohibited in a Soulsborne game.
You can tie one hand behind your back and say that you will never use a magic spell on an enemy that cannot reach you, but you had better believe that if the tables were turned, that enemy would be ruthless in his assault. As Ternished in the Midlands, we are at war with the world because the world is at war with us. There is no shame in admitting it and being so ruthless.