Im over 40hrs into the game (never played that much of anything in one week in my life), being a souls veteran so far it's rather easy, but a very enjoyable experience. I'll probably write some sort of review once I'm finished, but for now let me write this:
Elden Ring is a perfect open world game, BUT it is still an open world game, a genre that I inherently dislike. So, while the experience is, as I said, great, there are still few issues I have, all coming from the genre shift:
- repetition - sure, ER is very varied FOR AN OPEN WORLD GAME, but there is still more repeating bosses and similiar areas than in any souls game before
- balance issues, an open world game like this is bound to have you few shotting trivial bosses every now and then. Plus, if you explore everything like I do, you will be a bit overleveled (which isn't completely gamebreaking due to weapon upgrades, but still means something)
- empty spaces, again, ER world is very dense FOR AN OPEN WORLD GAME, but there are still moments when you just go for a while and there's nothing there except for few random enemies and crafting materials
- finally, the fact that you can just come back later to harder parts of the game - my favourite part of souls games was the fact that you were forced to face and overcome challenges. Sure, you could farm a bit, but it's boring, plus most of the progression is through weapon upgrades, which were area-locked. So, you were stuck in place and forced to keep trying, and finally overcoming challenges felt amazing. This feeling is gone, if you get stuck you just go somewhere else. Sure, you can get stubborn and just stick to whatever you encounter, but I'm not masochistic enough to impose that on myself, I'd prefer when the game does that for me.
all that said, everything else is, well, perfect, so the game for me is still strong 9,5-10/10, with Dark Souls 3 still being my favourite game of all time and strong 10/10.
BUT I'm not even halfway through the game, and if it gets harder and more focused towards the end it might overcome DS3 eventually
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I am pretty sure I am more attempts into Marjit at this point than the entire list of Dark Souls 1 bosses took me on my first playthrough combined.
I keep leaving, going levelling up some more, finding some better equipment, upgrading it. Coming back and trying again and don't feel any closer.
I learned to stop summoning Rogier, as it scales the boss, and he just gets torned apart as soon as Phase 2 starts and leaves you with a doubly more difficult task. Phase 1 is fairly easy at this point, the attacks are pretty slow and telegraphed. Then Phase 2 is just relentless non stop attacks and you get windows for like 1 or 2 hits.
yeah, Margit is a nice skillcheck for the rest of the game, I got to him a bit overleveled (like 25-30, after exploring literally everything I could find in Limgrave and peninsula) and it was still a bit of a challenge. Make sure that your weapon is +3, maybe change your build a bit.
I beat him with greatsword from the camp at the beginning, but it's not an easy playstyle, as you have to constantly be finding windows for jump attacks and charged strong attacks to stagger him, if executed correctly you will get 2 stuns and critical hits throughout the fight. Another thing you could try is bleed, I hear it's really OP, you can get it from flail that is found in the same camp as the greatsword.
As for his phase 2, yeah, the hammer makes it really hard, but if I recall correctly he still gives you a good window after his frontflip attack, so you can just dodge everything else and only go in after that. Keep in mind that the invisible stagger meter decreases overtime, so if you plan on a more passive approach, don't go with that gameplan. You should, however, be able to proc a bleed in that window. I don't use summons, but I've also heard that jellyfish can help a lot, and summoning spirits does not increases bosses' health.