I just completed a few runs of Elden ring with a parry build, it was really fun! Forced myself to develop parry strata for Malenia and PC Radahn. The more I played with it the more parryable attacks I discovered. Most of the time if an enemy is two handing a colossal weapon, you can't parry. Otherwise there are tons of attacks that are parryable. Parrys absolutely trivialize lots of otherwise very difficult fights.

Historically, the way I like to play fs games is to like pick one strong build and use it all the way through. This doesn't really work for ER, every boss is kinda like a puzzle with different weaknesses and strengths to defend against. So you need a few different approaches in your build unless you wanna struggle like hell using a slash weapon against like Radahn. Parry is like this too, its a good tool against many enemies, absolutely trivializes others, but doesn't work well, or at all, against some others. Its just how the game is, IMO.

But there's def some sides of it I don't like. I really enjoy quick roll mechanic but the game gravitates toward heavy armor and a giant fuck off weapon. Being quick and nimble is hard, being unga bunga is easy. There's not really incentive to develop a quick and nimble play style, eventually it becomes like a challenge run. I could not defeat like Malenia or even make real progress in the dlc with a light roll character. I accept it for what it is, but it doesn't work for me. And yeah there's probably a skill issue component, but I've completed probably 10 playthroughs of Elden Ring base game, and SOTE 4 times. I've platted every game since bloodborne, and have thousands of hours logged in soulsborne series, I got as good as I am going to get.

Sekiro is one of my favorites though, mastering the parry in Sekiro made me want to try a parry build in ER. I think my favorite thing about Sekiro is if I'm struggling with a boss, the strategy isn't to find some gimmick, but to just play them straight, defect their attacks, focus on position and spacing, concentrate. It feels more honest to me. I also came from Bloodborne. Have you tried Nightreign? There is one character that is parry focused and is very fun.

Poor communication of it is absolutely frustrating, particularly how there's rarely ever a distinction in feedback between "your timing was slightly off" and "your timing was good but this cannot be parried". You shouldn't ever have to go look up whether an attack is parriable out of game, and From aren't very good at this

Honestly I'd be fine with literally any attack being parriable with some kind of ash of war type ability. Let the standard parry be free, add versions with mana costs that can deflect normally-unparryable stuff with some magical assistance. Elden Ring sorta got there with Carian retaliation, but didn't commit hard enough in my opinion. There should have been a version for huge physical attacks, and the blasphemous claw should have been a version of this too

The Lies of P combat is my favorite, it’s like Elden ring but more fair. Specifically when it comes to deflects/parries ER feels like you need to memorize when to parry whereas in LOP it feels natural to parry attacks from a new enemy.

Also, just want to comment on this

I know you shouldn’t be able to parry some kinda laserbeam or something similar.

I think you can do this in breath of the wild.

I dont parry in video games. Its a challenge I dont find fun or interesting. Every time I try to parry, the inconsistencies and lack of clarity just demonstrates that its a punishing mechanic that I have more fun circumventing by dodging, kiting, or staggering

I enjoy Elden Ring's fuck around/find out approach and various discoverable flavors of parry. The reason being that is resulted in emergent gameplay where I don't know what the hell is going on until I find and master a different ability for myself. It preserves the novelty for a longer period of time.

For instance, I was very late in discovering the existence of the deflecting tear phisic. One day I had just invaded a lone player and they were just deflecting my fireballs and dragon's claw with like, a thrusting sword and it was COOL! They got to farm so much aura in that moment and I suddenly had more motivation to go figure out what the hell they had drank when I arrived.

I like those moments and the sequences of events that they trigger. It feeds my hunger for narrative and discovery, even if so far most of them have turned out to be lesser parries compared to the ole Bloodborne Blikky

I think I agree?

At the end of the day parrying is a high risk/high reward mechanic and not being able to tell if you can even parry it isn't very fair.

I don't know what would be an appropriate design change to fix this though. From definitely wanted the classic high speed sword duels out of Sekiro so they tuned the mechanics to it, whereas ER seems to be about the mobility.

It does make sense. Screwing around and finding out is usually entertaining but having the game not communicate so many things and leaving players to browse through endless wikis in search for some orientation is absurd, specially taking into account those that may not be up-to-date or, more recently, AI slop sites that host complete nonsense.

That's part of the reason why my partner stopped playing Elden Ring. Safest options were basically endless loops of a couple of hits after a dozen rolls or searching for a guide online, which left her feeling luck and cheese took all the credit for each victory.

What is FF?