I don’t give Edam.
This piece contains spoilers for a few Elden Ring bosses.
For the first few hours ofElden Ring, I was miserable.
Nothing fancy, just good old-fashioned, no-nonsense melee combat.
That’s the way you’re supposed to play a Souls game, right?
After repeatedly butting my head against the game’s first few bosses, I began to despair.
As a hardened Sekiro player, this felt like some sort of personal failing.
And I did, with the help of a rather unexpected item.
I found a whip.
Boss enemies, at long last, began to fall before me.
Emboldened by my victories, I started messing around with new techniques in other battles.
It felt almost like I was cheating.
Did you exploit a flaw in the game design?
Or did you go down a route FromSoftware deliberately left open to those who experimented and used their heads?
Clearly, I’m not alone in feeling this strange mixture of glee and guilt.
Many have expressed guilt for not defeating bosses in what’s considered the “proper” way.
In other words, painstakingly memorising attack patterns and becoming a dodging master through continuous trial and error.
There’s a perception that any technique that deviates from this playstyle is somehow less valid.
You simply took a different approach to someone who perfected their dodging.
For that reason, you shouldn’t feel guilty for using all the tools you have in a battle.
When a player later returns to a boss with new ideas, the game rewards them for it.
For this reason, it feels like any and all combat methods are acceptable in Elden Ring.
Of course, players will likely discover methods that really weren’t intended by the developer.
I felt like a genius.
I know full well that my whip build will need adjusting when I encounter the game’s later bosses.
After all, it’s what the developer intended.
Most of the time.
