I watched some guides for Elden Ring before I even started it. And I ended up finishing and loving the game. Let people play games how they want to play them.

Tbf it takes a while to learn how to play Elden Ring especially if you are not familiar with souls-likes. YouTube is a valid strat.

I would agree if he had tried to learn it on his own longer than a day. Didn’t even give himself a chance to figure things out on his own.

Again I hear where your coming from but dying a lot isn't a fun experience for most people, and getting a teensy bit of help to get further is a valid strategy imo.

Nah, I can’t get behind looking at a guide so quickly. Like, not even just Elden Ring, just for gaming in general that’s too quick unless he was legitimately playing all 24 hours. It takes a bit for a new game to settle in. Being bad at a new game at first is part of the process. Nine times out of ten, if you’re repeatedly dying in those first moments, it’s probabyan intentional part of the design. Very few games have opening segments that are unintentionally hard.

Or it just makes you put it down and never touch it again out of frustration. Again if you don't have someone playing with you like I did- probably would have just dropped it and never come back, they story is still awesome, the lore is great, and looking for a few tips on how to beat a boss doesn't seem so bad to me. Not to mention most souls games are Linear af; elden ring scrapped that linear game play in favor of an open world and someone who is new could have a very frustrating and confusing time. Elden Ring was the first souls game I beat, and I won't lie, I kind of checked fextralife every once in a while, to see how a questline started or kept going, ultimately it's about the individual enjoyment regardless of if you checked the guide. I am in agreement though that itsnot much of an accomplishment if all you do is look up the answers to what could be an organic and more thrilling playthrough. I'm playing through Sekiro and Dark Souls 1 and I'm not looking up anything this time. Maybe they'll skip the guide on the next one.

The way I see it, if you’re the kind of player who’s going to quit after dying a dew times, you shouldn’t be playing Elden Ring. The game doesn’t try to blindside you with its difficulty; if you put even the slightest bit of research in, you’re going to know it’s a hard game before ever booting it up. And I’m not saying to avoid guides altogether—I used a few as well, but I used only used guides closer to the end of my playthrough. Busting out a guide right at the beginning saps so much of the experience. And if you just find the beginning frustrating, and put down the game to never come back, that’s okay. Not every game is for every person. As a side note, I also think there’s a difference between a text guide, and a video guide. A text guide still leaves a little up to the player to interpret at least.

Well OP did say he died a lot; and yes perhaps busting out the guide to beat Margit at the start of the game is a cop out of the many ingame hours it may take dying over and over again to the same Boss that is literally berating you for trying, before you manage to work out his combos; but I think in the grander scheme of this game which is quite large; it doesn't take away from OP's experience so much. I think you're falling into the trap of; [i]"Play it the right way!"[/i] There is no one right way to play games, you know that. Guides don't ruin they experience, they just save you a little time, now if OP goes through whole of the game with the guide... that's Lame; totally agree.

Wait what is OP supposed to stand for?

Original poster.

I would actually argue there is a “right way” to play any given game. Granted, there’s no universal right way, rather each game has its own intended right way. Game design is basically all about trying to create that “right way”, and then tricking the player into playing that way without them realizing it. Now, this does come with w big asterisk, in that intentionally breaking that way of playing can be fun in its own right—in the vein of challenge runs & speedruns—but by and large, as far as regular gameplay is concerned, if the player isn’t playing along with the developer’s intended vision, they’re usually playing in a way that’s not as fun. That age old “the player will optimize the fun out of a game” thing. There are exceptions to this—mainly when the game is designed to be exploitative—but assuming it’s a well designed game, you almost always want to play alongside the devs’ vision(s). Guides definitely fall under that umbrella, and the game would be more fun if he just accepts his losses instead. Margit famously is an intentional roadblock intended to get you to get you to go explore Limgrave instead of beelining to Stormveil. But honestly, the bigger issue about using a guide so early is once you’ve started using guides, you’ve opened yourself to keep using them. I always try to persist for as long as possible before looking up any help, because I know once I turn to the internet once, the second time isn’t going to need nearly as much convincing. By looking at a guide at the first hurdle, he’ll likely look up another one at the second hurdle, too.

Ur a hurdle. And no- I refuse the premise that there is a right way to enjoy games.

[quote]And no- I refuse the premise that there is a right way to enjoy games.[/quote] But is that not exactly what game design is? Creating the paths that are most fun to play?

Yea elden ring is my first souls game