How I knew I could never beat Elden Ring and why I was wrong – Reader’s Feature

metro.co.uk:

A reader explains why he thought Elden Ring was too difficult for him… and how he ended up getting a Platinum trophy for it anyway.

My only previous experience with a Soulslike game has been Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (which many agree is a watered down version of the Soulslike formula) and up until the [spoiler redacted] sequence in the final moments of the game, I found it a bit of a chore to get through. I am not ashamed to say that I played it on the easiest difficulty setting. Although the light puzzles and platforming were enjoyable, I just didn’t have fun with the combat.

I have always enjoyed an arcade style of action (the pinnacle for me being the Batman: Arkham series), probably from the fact that nearly every game when I was growing up was a side-scrolling beat ‘em up and/or had some sort of combo meter at the side of the screen.

Soulslike games take an incredible amount of skill, timing, practice, and patience to get through, where any wrong move could end your life in an instant. Having to learn the attacks and patterns of regular enemies and bosses with pinpoint accuracy and reading stories of players quitting on the final boss after 100+ hours, sounded more like torture than fun. I know I just don’t have the patience or, more importantly, the skill to get through such a game.

Then one Saturday morning I logged into a chat room with a friend and there he was playing Elden Ring and his reaction was: this game is amazing and it’s actually not that bad in terms of difficulty. For the next hour or so I watched as he worked on mastering the first major camp, northeast of the Church of Elleh. The more I watched, the more confidence I had that I may be able to give this a try. Later that day I used the credit in my