Elden ring!

[pahulkster]

Cleared everything out with my poison/rot double pokey thrusting sword build but have hit a brick wall on Radahn. 17/6 on my blessings but I have no idea how I missed so many spirit ashes because I was everywhere and my last playthrough I got to 9. I'll probably go around with a guide and get them all but I still don't know if it will help. Already beat him once with my first character on NG+ so I'm not going to go crazy. This build massacres everything else and Radahn is weak to it but I just can't get the hits in like I could with my longer katanas. I also die half the time just trying to get into the fight and get the mimic out. I can get Thiollier and he helps with that but he doesn't do shit otherwise and the health buff on Radahn is brutal. I might be the only person alive excited for Star Wars Outlaws so I'll likely just chill until that comes out.

 

[wankerness]

Cleared everything out with my poison/rot double pokey thrusting sword build but have hit a brick wall on Radahn. 17/6 on my blessings but I have no idea how I missed so many spirit ashes because I was everywhere and my last playthrough I got to 9. I'll probably go around with a guide and get them all but I still don't know if it will help. Already beat him once with my first character on NG+ so I'm not going to go crazy. This build massacres everything else and Radahn is weak to it but I just can't get the hits in like I could with my longer katanas. I also die half the time just trying to get into the fight and get the mimic out. I can get Thiollier and he helps with that but he doesn't do shit otherwise and the health buff on Radahn is brutal. I might be the only person alive excited for Star Wars Outlaws so I'll likely just chill until that comes out.

Do not use thiollier. He's garbage and will just make the fight harder. Ansbach helps a ton if you're a bleed build but if you screwed up his quest you're out of luck there.

You might just end up having to respec to the build I outlined earlier (greatshield with lots of holy resist and a bleed weapon you can use while blocking, basically). It's a seriously tough fight for just about every other build.

 

[p0ke]

New Londo (the swampy ghost area that you drain the water out of and then fight a ton of darkwraiths and then the four kings are the boss)

Ah, yeah, that place sucked. I didn't think of that, because there's a shorter way to 4k once you've opened the gate to the Valley of the Drakes. On my first playthrough I managed to run past everything unscathed from that side to get to the boss with full health and estus.

I dunno if I'm imagining it, but I'm finding the bosses to be a little more.... simple? Which makes sense, it's an earlier game, but I find the bosses in this easier to read than in ER. In ER, it sometimes would take me a dozen attempts to still think "how in the hell am I supposed to beat this?" and the solution ends up being to change your build to match a weakness like a pokemon game and tank hits or whatever else. In DS1 so far it feels like the solution is usually to stop panicking and learn the patterns, because they aren't that complicated. I killed the Gaping Dragon yesterday, for example - after a few attempts I figured out you can just keep a distance to stay out of danger until it charges, which gives you a chance to run around it and attack the tail from relative safety. When it jumps in the air run away. When it swings the tail, dodge roll. Repeat until dead. This seems like good boss design to me - intimidating at first, but manageable once you learn to read it.

Yeah, and generally the bosses didn't have many phases until DS3. Even in DS2 they just go a little more nuts (light their weapon on fire etc) at 50% HP, but in Elden Ring pretty much every boss has multiple health bars.I don't mind the epic end bosses or whatever being like that but it kinda gets old when every boss does that. Of course there are exceptions to the phase thing, like the Darklurker splitting into two, but at least the health bar doesn't lie
I like the more simple design too. Just take a deep breath and don't get greedy with the attacks, and that's it.
+ Like @wankerness said, especially in DS2 the same strategy works for almost every boss - you just circle around them (mostly right is better but a few are easier to dodge left) and poke them when their combo is done.

 

[dr_game0ver]

 

[wankerness]

I am guessing that's a parody video, but I've absolutely seen dummies who are used to all those action games like God of War reboots, Assassin's Creed, etc where you have infinite stamina and can animation cancel and have auto-lockon play this game just like that and immediately bounce off of it because of it. I mean, even some games that are equivalently hard if not harder like say Bayonetta would teach you to play basically like that.