Elden Ring vs. Dark Souls 3 - A Discussion on Artificial Difficulty

Oct 22, 2024

Huge spoilers ahead for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree and Dark Souls 3. You have been warned! Please also note that this article was written just a few weeks following Shadow of the Erdtree’s release, before any balance patches.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will know that the long-awaited DLC for Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erdtree, has been released recently. Just as the base game, Shadow of the Erdtree received critical acclaim and seems to be regarded by many as one of if not the best DLC FromSoft has ever created. Somewhat paradoxically however, it seems the majority of fans will agree that the final boss of the DLC is a blight on the overall experience. With anticipation building up throughout the expansion, it was the hope of many that facing off against the Empyrean Miquella would be a satisfying, mechanically interesting and challenging but fair final boss battle.

Admittedly, expectations were perhaps too high. FromSoft is already known for its challenging yet rewarding boss battles, and past DLC bosses have all been regarded as some of the best fights ever made. Knight Artorias, Lady Maria and Slave Knight Gael (to name a few) are still celebrated today. Even Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the game preceding Elden Ring, capped off with an exceptional final boss using a character teased throughout the game, just as Miquella was. Furthermore, Elden Ring’s base game final boss, the Elden Beast, was infamous for its boring design and frustrating moveset. The pressure was on for FromSoft to amend past mistakes and deliver another banger of a boss battle. Unfortunately, what we got instead was a frustrating waste of time which dramatically turns up the difficulty without any thought of providing a satisfying challenge. More on this later.

As I was thinking about this final boss’ design, I realized that they share many characteristics with the penultimate boss of Dark Souls 3’s base game: The Twin Princes. In both engagements you are battling a large, sword-wielding fighter bearing a spell-caster on their back. In both fights, the first phase of the battle is fought strictly against the sword-wielding foe, while the second phase introduces the spell-caster. As such, an obvious question came to mind: How come the Twin Princes is one of the most satisfying and well-designed battles across all of FromSoft’s gameography while Radahn, Consort of Miquella is one of its worst? To answer this question, let’s start by finding out what makes the Twin Princes such a phenomenal boss fight.

Why are the Twin Princes so exceptional?

The Twin Princes fight begins by immediately introducing the player to one of its main mechanics: teleportation. Lorian opens the fight by teleporting to the player’s side from across the room and immediately attempts to slash the player. On paper, it seems as though this is a cheap shot. In practice, however, most players should be able to react to this attack. This is because there is a reasonable delay between the teleportation and the start of Lorian’s attack. Players can see him raise his sword as he begins to teleport, and once he disappears and reappears nearby, most players will react with their defensive option: the dodge roll. The delay they gave Lorian on this opening attack makes it so that a “panic” roll will still allow the player to dodge the attack. And even then, if a player manages to get hit, they should have plenty of health left and will not be taken by surprise a second time. Either way, the introduction to teleportation attacks has set the scene for the fight.

Making our way through the first phase, we can see that this brief delay before the teleportation’s follow-up attacks remains consistent throughout the fight. Actually, the pauses before nearly all of Lorian’s attacks take roughly the same amount of time - about half a second. Not only is this crucial to establish the somewhat elusive “flow state” players can get into while fighting great FromSoft bosses, but it is essential when combined with the teleportation mechanic. While the lock-on camera often follows Lorian while he warps around the room, every now and then the camera will drop its lock-on. When this occurs, he will almost always be out of sight of the player. And yet, it is almost always possible for them to dodge Lorian’s slashes and thrusts. This is because the fight has been subtly conditioning the player to dodge after the same delay once Lorian begins an attack animation. They must simply dodge with the same rhythm they’ve already started growing used to. In this way, despite taking away such a crucial player tool, the fight manages to remain fair while also feeling fresh and unique. The player also feels empowered when they manage to predict and avoid an attack they couldn’t actually see coming. Furthermore, the attack’s delay is short enough that the player must still be paying attention, and if the player begins their attack when it isn’t safe they will be struck by Lorian before they can do any meaningful damage.

These lock-on disruptions also serve to pace the fight properly. If Lorian only chained attacks that did not affect the camera, the player would quickly learn when to counterattack due to the consistent delays. From there, the fight would be over before long, and thus feel far less satisfying. Instead, the occasional camera disruptions force the player to take the time usually taken to counterattack to lock-on again instead. Skilled players may actually forego the lock-on and counterattack in a chosen direction, which offers a new layer of risk and reward. Even then, the fight occasionally adds another unique scenario: The camera will cease its lock-on, and Lorian will teleport somewhere in the room far away from the player while charging a large shockwave of light. The player must find him in order to be able to react to the shockwave before it appears. Once again, instead of being frustrating the developers have made sure to give the player a fair chance of dodging this attack: There is a loud audio cue while Lorian charges the shockwave. As such, perceptive players will be able to locate Lorian and dodge the attack with no problem. It is an engaging and satisfying attack to overcome even if it does not allow for an easy follow-up window, which is not an issue when you consider that most of Lorian’s attacks allow for counterattacks. Additionally, players who are able to find Lorian quickly may even be rewarded with an extra hit or two, which is a terrific feeling.

Let’s move on to the second phase. Once Lorian goes down, his brother Lothric revives him and climbs onto his back. Not only does he now fire spells at you while you fight his brother, but he also has a health bar of his own. At a glance, it may seem like fighting Lorian once more is a boring idea for a second phase… Especially when you consider the fact that Lorian has no new attacks. However, the opening attack of this second stage quickly does away with this concern.

It begins with Lothric casting several magical projectiles which drift upwards and stay suspended in the air. After a delay, they begin chasing the player in pairs and will deal decent damage if they are not dodged. The player has enough time to note the speed and path of the first few projectiles before Lorian begins another (now familiar) teleportation attack. Thus, the player must use their memory of the first phase’s attacks while simultaneously adjusting their roll direction and positioning according to the straight path followed by Lothric’s magical projectiles - a path the developers made sure the player had enough time to register. Nearly every other attack during phase 2 follows this general idea: The core of each attack is the same as in phase 1, but with added spells and hazards which force the player to adjust their habits on the fly. It is a genius and pragmatic way for the developers to get more out of the already stellar first phase, but that isn’t even the end of it.

During the second phase, Lothric is the true target of this fight - the battle is only over when he is slain. Killing Lorian provides a window of opportunity for the player to heavily damage Lothric while he works to revive his brother. If one were to damage Lothric only within this window, Lorian would need to be felled two to three times in the second phase in order to deplete Lothric’s health fully. However, while Lothric is being carried by Lorian it is actually possible to damage Lothric by hitting them squarely in the back. Certain openings intuitively guide players into striking this area, and so it will inevitably be noticed that Lothric can be damaged this way. This small detail adds an all-new layer of depth to the fight. Not only do players have to adjust their dodging patterns according to the swings and spells, but now they can choose to further adjust their positioning in order to try and take advantage of this weak point. Players must now weigh the risk of being too slow to reach Lorian’s back and missing a counterattack (or worse, getting hit for it) against the reward of bringing down Lothric much faster than one would normally be able to.

As if this wasn’t enough, the mechanic of teleportation and the weaving of spells ties the gameplay with the narrative. Lorian and Lothric are bound by a curse that weaves their souls into one. This is shown during the fight, where a perceptive eye will notice that Lorian is not the one casting the teleportation magic - it is actually Lothric casting the spell from afar. The fact that the brothers can coordinate complex and dangerous attacks without any verbal communication conveys the depth of their bond more effectively than any cutscene ever could. Combining this with the exemplary gameplay design, the Twin Princes’ tragic lore, and one of the best orchestral pieces in the entire Souls series… Indeed, there is no doubt the Twin Princes deserves a place among the most outstanding boss fights not only within FromSoft’s gameography, but within all action-adventure video games. If I had to criticize it, I would only lament the fact that the Twin Princes’ health values are remarkably low, and as such the fight often ends too quickly. But much like a high-class dessert, if your only complaint is that you wanted more, then it did a damn good job.

Why are Radahn & Miquella so horrible?

Now, let’s change gears and move on to Shadow of the Erdtree’s infamous finale. The fight opens with an aerial spinning charge. This attack is decent enough; It is easily dodged if rolled into and offers time for a counterattack - even with a heavy weapon. However, dodging in any other direction will result in damage taken from the large area of effect (AoE) shockwave. It is impossible to predict this without being hit by it, which is an unfortunate problem that plagues many of Elden Ring’s bosses - DLC or otherwise. In fact, while the first phase of this boss is relatively inoffensive compared to its second phase, it suffers from the issues that run rampant in Elden Ring. Namely, Radahn’s attacks have varied and borderline unnatural delays, and he has several attacks which do not have clear counterplays.

Let’s talk about the various delays between Radahn’s attacks first. These may not necessarily seem like a problem at first sight. After all, without a unique mechanic akin to the Twin Princes’ teleportation, difficulty must come from somewhere else, right? Well… Not quite. The problem with these inconsistent delays is that they are a cheap way to increase the difficulty but without offering meaningful challenge. To be clear, I have no issue whatsoever with difficulty so long as it is well-designed, and my failures feel like they were my own fault. For example, Elden Ring would certainly be much more difficult if stamina restored so slowly that you could only swing once every thirty seconds, but that does not mean the game would be meaningfully challenging the player. In that case, the game no longer respects the player’s time and becomes an exercise in frustration masquerading as a satisfying, engaging challenge.

When you have seen Radahn attack roughly half a second after raising his sword, it is then extremely jarring to have him suddenly slow down and hold his swords above his shoulders for over a full second before his next attack. In this case, you were tricked by the game into getting hit, as the delay ensures you will be struck near the end of your roll - a roll which was reasonably timed given the information previously given to you. The same applies the other way around: If you saw the slow delay first, you almost certainly won’t react fast enough to the quick attack and you’ll immediately be hit. As a result, in order to progress you’ll invariably need to parse each and every combo of swings and memorize the delays individually, which is far less satisfying than nailing tight but consistent dodges and gradually figuring out your openings as you would with the Twin Princes. Not to mention that it shatters player immersion to see these legendary fighters hold their weapons above their heads for seconds at a time, leaving themselves wide open. It’s as if they themselves know they’re characters in a game who wouldn’t easily be killed or injured due to these openings as one would in actual combat. In other games this may not be a problem, but Elden Ring and its DLC place a significant importance upon their story, lore and characters.

Moving on, the other problem is that many of Radahn’s attacks do not adequately visualize how they should be dodged. The prime example of this is his meteorite attack. After flying into the air, he summons a handful of boulders which then fly towards the player. The only way to reliably avoid this is to run in a line perpendicular to the stones’ flight path, and then to jump just as they are about to hit you. It must be a jump - rolling does not work - because the lower half of the player’s hitbox is invulnerable when jumping, and the invulnerability lasts longer than a roll. This detail is never explained to the player. Once again, this is a problem that is all too common in this game. Unlike Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and its perilous attack indicators, Elden Ring fails to establish a consistent visual language to help the player decipher attack types. As such, reliably avoiding these attacks requires yet another foray into the world of trial and error, which gets old quickly since many of Radahn’s attacks suffer from this problem. To be clear, I don’t expect the bosses to hold up a sign describing exactly what they are about to do before they do it. The aforementioned Sekiro finds a great solution: An indicator flashes when an enemy winds up an attack which cannot be parried (the usual response to enemy attacks), and it is up to the player to pay attention and decide which of their alternative means of dodging should be employed (jumping if the enemy is about to sweep their weapon, or performing a Mikiri counter if the boss is going to thrust their weapon forward). Players aren’t spoon-fed a victory, but they aren’t kept in the dark as they are in Elden Ring.

The worst example of this is shown with an attack which cannot be dodged through normal means. I am talking about the now-infamous cross-slash attack (luckily, this attack was nerfed later on). For this attack, Radahn slashes three times - left, right and with both swords in an X - at such a speed that if either of the first two swings is rolled through, the next one is designed to strike the player as soon as their roll ends. It is essentially a tax on the player’s health whenever it occurs. One must either use a highly-specific talisman, certain specific ashes of war, a pair of frame perfect timings or they must get lucky with the arena’s terrain, which may allow the player to pass underneath the attack due to elevation differences. The ability to block or to parry the attack is within reason, but I firmly believe that if your game offers a wide variety of builds then you must put in the legwork to ensure there are reasonable ways for any playstyle to defeat each boss. In most of FromSoft’s titles and especially in Elden Ring, it is easy to trivialize fights using broken builds. However this will never be the average player’s experience, which is what I am primarily concerned with. Even then, it takes the wind out of the finale's sails if the player feels they have to stop what they’re doing, look up guides and go find and grind the necessary equipment in order to swap builds. Especially when the equipment they’ve been using has carried them through the entire game up until that point.

Despite all of this criticism, I would still say the first phase of this boss fight is… serviceable. It has the stellar presentation and music as expected from FromSoftware, and opportunities to counterattack are relatively common even for slow weapons. Unfortunately, the second phase exists.

When the second stage of this fight begins, Radahn’s strength is restored and Miquella climbs onto his back to help out by casting spells - just as Lothric does for Lorian. Radahn and Miquella’s opener is usually for them to float upwards while charging a massive circular AoE spell. While this attack certainly has an obvious build-up, it ranges across such a wide area that the player may not even see the edges of the circle defining its radius. Not to mention the fact that if locked on, the camera will track the boss by pointing upwards, concealing the ground and thus the AoE radius indicator. As such, while the player will know that something is about to happen, they won’t know how to react to it. Even if players do spot the distant AoE indicator, they only have a hope of escaping the blast if they had started running as soon as the boss began floating into the air. Extremely unlikely. Once the attack hits, it will deal a massive amount of damage and the explosion will cover the entire screen in blinding light. A flashy showcase of Miquella’s divine power to be sure, but also a microcosm of the problems that plague the second phase of this fight: Attacks which cannot reasonably be avoided or reacted to when first encountered, an overload of underhanded AoE attacks, obnoxious visual effects, a lack of breathing room and the abuse of a dated, unsuitable camera lock-on system.

The best way to demonstrate some of these problems is simply with the above 10-second clip of the fight. It should speak for itself. We’ve already discussed how unclear it is to figure out how to avoid the first attack. Despite having seen this attack already, the player may not have deciphered how to avoid it consistently yet. But before the player even has a chance to recover from it, they are bombarded by afterimage slashes. Before they can figure out how to properly dodge those, Radahn slams the ground and beams of light bombard the battlefield. All in a 10-second timespan. The kicker is, this is one of the few moves which offer a counterattack opportunity at the very end for heavy weapon users like me. If you’re using such an armament, you can safely get a hit or two in. Most other combos will immediately launch into another, to the point where you usually only get to attack the boss once every thirty seconds or so. To properly avoid the attack shown in the above clip, you must jump perpendicularly to the meteorites, repeatedly dodge to the front-right and then roll into the giant slam attack. But ask yourself this: could you be reasonably expected to figure all of that out when seeing this combo for the first time? Of course not. It’s doubtful that you’d be able to figure it out by the second or third time either, when you consider the fact that you must fight the first phase again and keep track of all of the other combos before you even get to see this attack again.

That is what the second phase of this boss fight amounts to: throwing attempt after attempt at it until you begin to make sense of the utter chaos. Each and every combo this boss has incorporates variations on the beams of light, the afterimages and gravity magic - if not a combination of all three. There exists no consistent method nor indicator to respond to any of them. And every time you die in this phase, you must go through the first one all over again. Go watch any streamer play this for the first time, and I guarantee you the first 10+ deaths on the second phase occur almost immediately after it begins, and those that don’t will barely damage the boss before they run out of healing.

You may be thinking: “Well hold on, Radahn is using several identical attacks to his first phase, and Miquella has simply added additional spells to them. You said this was great game design for the Twin Princes, how is this different?” The difference is that in the Twin Princes’ fight, Lothric’s magic is cast long before Lorian begins swinging. The player is given enough time to observe how Lothric’s magic attacks function, and only then does Lorian begin his advance. As such, the player can reasonably combine their knowledge of Lorian’s attacks learned in phase one to the homing spells they have just seen in order to position themselves properly. It is thus common for a first-time player to avoid both Lorian’s oncoming swings and Lothric’s magic missiles. Compare this to Miquella’s beams of light: These only begin spawning just after Radahn has swung his swords. In other words, they will spawn once the player has already committed to a roll. As such, it is impossible for the player to plan ahead. Not to mention the fact that the beams grow vertically and often obstruct the screen, which further hinders positioning. The player must simply get lucky or die until they have memorized where these beams will spawn. A tiring, boring and frustrating process since these deaths are not the player’s fault. Not only do they have to clear the first phase of the fight again, but they must perform this memorization with nearly every single one of the second phase’s attacks, which includes altered versions of all of the first phase’s attacks as well as a substantial amount of new and flashy ones.

Finally, we have to talk about the camera. FromSoft games seem to have used the same basic camera and lock-on system as they have since Dark Souls in 2011, and its limitations are laid bare in Elden Ring more so than in any other game. Elden Ring bosses are often jumping and flying around as part of their admittedly awe-inspiring attacks, but this forces the camera towards the ground. The camera cannot move further back in order to provide a better view, which results in situations where bosses (like Radahn in the above clip) fly so far upward that they are completely offscreen despite the fact that they are preparing to attack. In Radahn’s case, couple this with the obnoxious light beams or gravity spike effects appearing all over the ground, and you’d be lucky just to see what ends up killing you, let alone avoiding it. While the Twin Princes fight messes with the camera by canceling lock-ons, it keeps the fight fair by ensuring Lorian swings at a consistent speed and that spells can be seen or heard before they hit the player. Elden Ring instead deliberately messes with the camera by abusing its limitations in order to blind and frustrate the player, artificially increasing the difficulty. After all, improving the camera would be relatively easy to fix. Simple camera offset mods for fights like the Divine Beast Dancing Lion can be found all over YouTube, and the difference in enjoyment for these battles using such mods is staggering. There is no doubt that extremely talented developers at FromSoftware would have been able to implement a similar fix, which can only mean this design choice is deliberate.

How did this happen?

Many fans of FromSoftware who, like myself, felt disappointed by the boss design in Elden Ring and especially in Shadow of the Erdtree may be wondering what went wrong. In my mind, the two main culprits are the summoning system and more importantly, a stubborn desire to cling onto a shallow combat system.

First, let’s talk about one of Elden Ring’s most controversial features: Summons. Many fans defend Radahn & Miquella (along with much of Elden Ring’s questionable boss design) by saying that the game is clearly meant to be played while using summons. While this certainly gives the player more breathing room and opportunities to attack the boss, it does not do so in a satisfying or meaningful way. When summons come into play, the dynamic of each fight becomes the same: If the boss is currently focused on the player, all they have to do is run away or dodge without seeking or taking advantage of the few windows of opportunity to counterattack. If the boss is focused on the summon, the player can either recover their health or absent-mindedly hack away at the boss’ HP while its back is turned. Not only does this not change or forgive any given boss’ poorly designed attacks, but this system is also a waste of the player’s time. It can almost be seen as FromSoft’s way of having an “easy mode” in which players gain more breathing room and free, unearned hits on the boss instead of adjusting the boss’ moveset and behavior alongside health and damage as in games like Terraria.

Now let’s move onto the main culprit: The FromSoftware combat system as it exists in Elden Ring has become outdated. It is functionally extremely similar to the combat of the Dark Souls series - it has replaced “Skills” with “Ashes of War” and has added a jump, which functions within combat as an alternative roll. For the majority of builds, the combat essentially boils down to this: You attack the boss with one of three buttons (light attack, heavy attack or a skill) and you dodge the boss with either a roll or a jump. Shields provide an additional defensive option, but it is essentially a safer dodge that costs more stamina and equipment load. You may optionally buff before or during a fight, and you may choose to jump before any light or heavy attack for bonus damage and stagger force. Though this raises another question: why do light jump attacks exist given that they do less damage and inflict less stagger damage despite requiring the same amount of commitment as their heavy counterpart?

Let’s be honest: one of the most talked about components of FromSoft’s games are the bosses. For many, it is the sole reason to play these games. FromSoftware has cultivated a reputation for very difficult yet fair boss design (mostly - looking at you, Bed of Chaos). But let’s consider the fact that at the time of Elden Ring’s creation, FromSoft had made three (four if you count Demon’s Souls) games with roughly the same combat, and 50+ unique bosses. Most of which are celebrated. The gameplay has not evolved significantly from the basic roll-and-attack dynamic of the past, but the developers are no doubt conscious of the fact that they must continue to provide challenging bosses for a player base that has largely grown extremely skilled at this style of play.

To be clear, a shallow system does not necessarily mean it is bad. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice doesn’t have a particularly complicated combat system when compared to action games like Sifu or Monster Hunter. If we boil it down, you essentially only have a dodge, jump, parry and attack, with shinobi prosthetics serving as extra utility. It also only has a single weapon - there is next to no build variety when compared to Elden Ring. However, Sekiro takes full advantage of every single one of its mechanics, and the focus on a single moveset allows each and every boss or enemy encounter to be crafted precisely and according to the few tools the developers have put into their players’ hands.

Forced to maintain difficulty in the Elden Ring using this old system, the developers at FromSoftware began stretching the limits of this combat system. Bosses need to feel like a step up from those in Dark Souls 3, and so grandiose but unpredictable and gravity-defying attacks are commonplace. They often possess certain attacks which are nearly impossible to dodge or predict through normal means (Malenia’s Waterfowl dance being the most egregious example), and AoE spam plagues many enemies throughout the mid-to-late game. The obvious camera limitations seem to be capitalized on in order to artificially increase difficulty. Certain fights against large mobile enemies come to mind, like the Ulcerated Tree Spirits fought in cramped areas. When the camera finally manages to keep up long enough for you to see what is going on, you’ll find the enemy stuck behind a wall and yet still able to strike you through it.

The developers are aware of the constraints of their combat system and in the past they would carefully construct bosses, such as the Twin Princes, within these restraints. This resulted in creative solutions and mechanics allowing for complex and tactical fights despite the player’s limited options. While making Elden Ring, it seems that somewhere along the way they instead began using these constraints to increase difficulty no matter the cost, as they could find no other way - after over a decade of designing bosses under this system, it is hard to blame them. The summoning system was likely conceived as a solution to alleviate these issues, but as discussed above it introduces its own problems. With the release of Shadow of the Erdtree, I believe FromSoft has now stretched these limits as far as they can go. If Radahn & Miquella’s boss battle cannot convince you of this, then nothing will.

With all of that being said, I don’t want to be too hard on Elden Ring and FromSoftware. Shadow of the Erdtree is in a class all its own in many ways. Its open world is a true joy to look at. The sheer creativity and diversity at play is nothing short of brilliant. Every time I think I’ve seen the most beautiful and unique area in the game, I get proven wrong just a few hours later. The quality of the soundtrack and especially of the performances are equally outstanding. It is clear Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team have agonized over countless details, and you can feel the heart FromSoftware has put into this title.

Given its groundbreaking success, it is inevitable that a successor to Elden Ring is on its way, in spirit if not in name. When they begin its development, I can only hope that the developers will shift their attention to an overhaul or reimagining of its combat systems. Despite the misgivings I have shared in this article, Miyazaki has actually mentioned in an interview that while Elden Ring is close to his ideal fantasy game, there is still room to improve. If FromSoft’s games continue to be directed by a team so humble and clearly passionate for their work, then I have faith that they'll work hard to ensure their next game does nothing but improve upon the imperfections of Elden Ring.

Credit to the Twin Princes gameplay goes to: HyperKira and Shirrako. Credit to the Radahn gameplay goes to myself, Let Me Solo Her and Dan Allen Gaming.