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In Elden Ring, magic is divided into Sorceries and Incantations (which scale with Intelligence and Faith, respectively). Previous Soulsborne titles, meanwhile, typically offered a greater vareity of magical options. Dark Souls, for instance, included Sorceries, Miracles, and Pyromancies. While Sorceries and Miracles are fairly self-explanatory, Pyromancies were completely unlike any other spell school. Elden Ring‘s Incantations try to combine Pyromancy abilities and Miracles, but you really start to feel the lack of a dedicated Pyromancer school/class as you realize that Incantations too often serve as a “jack of all trades, master of none” option.
There’s also the matter of how you grow your magic-based character in Elden Ring compared to previous Soulsborne games. In the first Dark Souls, players could only improve spells if they upgraded its catalyst, and in Dark Souls 2, Pyromancy spells scaled with both Intelligence and Faith but didn’t require any minimum stats. That design choice allowed any player to wield Pyromancy abilities to some degree. While that’s technically possible to do in Elden Ring, the stat points required to use some of the game’s more worthwhile spells ultimately demand a more dedicated build that feels at odds with the freedom you’re supposed to be able to enjoy when growing your character.
While not strictly necessary, an Elden Ring sequel could improve on the magic system by incorporating more spell schools (which ideally includes one that mimics Pyromancy’s independence from stat requirements). Not only would that open up more combat options regardless of a player’s build, but it would give From Software a chance to design even more crazy spells.
Elden Ring 2 Should Feature Signifcantly Fewer Repeated Bosses
Since Elden Ring is an open-world title, it obviously has more dungeons and bosses than any other FromSoftware game. That’s a great thing on paper, but in order to fill out a roster of challenging enemies, the studio had two options: run developers ragged by creating a unique boss for every dungeon (as well as several areas in the open world) or create a few bosses and recycle them. FromSoftware obviously opted for the latter.
Simply put, there are a few kinds of boss fights that are repeated too many times throughout Elden Ring. Players have to fight a total of three Mad Pumpkin Heads on their journey, and you’ll eventually battle six Erdtree Avatars if you’re trying to see everything (not including the non-boss variants). As for the Burial Watchdogs…well, the less said, the better.
While some recycled bosses in Elden Ring benefit from minor differences, most players will still end up fighting the same basic enemies again and again. Admittedly, many open-world titles suffer from Elden Ring’s boss recycling problem, but that usually disappears with subsequent entries. You can’t deny that an Elden Ring sequel with improved boss variety would offer a greater challenge. At the very least, nobody wants Elden Ring 2 to repeat Dark Souls 2’s mistake and feature too many humanoid bosses.
Source: Den of Geek
