FromSoftware Once Again Nerfs Radahn, Leading To Exact Same Discourse From Two Years Ago
Stop us if you've heard this before:
FromSoftware has nerfed Radahn after months of players complaining that he's too difficult, only to cause a rift among gamers who believe he was a worthy challenge and those who think he was over-tuned and needed to be dialed back.
Yes, FromSoftware has once again turned to the big dial that says 'Radahn Difficulty' on it and dialed it back, only this time, it's done so with "Promised Consort Radahn," the final boss of Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC.
Back in 2022, Elden Ring players were vocal about the trouble they were having with the "General Radahn" boss fight in the base game. Ultimately, this led to a series of patches in which Radahn was nerfed and then re-buffed as FromSoftware tried to get his difficulty to a "tough-but-fair" level.
In Shadow of the Erdtree, "Promised Consort Radahn" is the final boss of the DLC, and as anyone who played the game knows, he is exceptionally difficult. His first phase is already quite challenging, but the difficulty is ramped into overdrive when he enters his second phase and all of his attacks are followed up by streaks of holy damage, basically causing the entire arena to turn into a blinding laser show.
The patch states about Promised Consort Radahn:
Changed the action pattern when the battle starts.
Adjusted some attack moves.
Decreased the damage of some attacks.
Decreased stamina damage of some attacks.
Decreased the attack range of some non-weapon-based attacks.
Improved the visibility of some attack effects.
According to gameplay footage posted to social media in the wake of the patch, the most obvious difference is that one of Radahn's attacks can now be dodged, when pre-patch it could not be avoided. The visual effects in the second phase appear to be less of an assault as well.
There is predictably a swath of gamers teasing anyone who beats Promised Consort Radahn now that he's been nerfed. Dexerto even published an article from a gamer who described the nerf as "an annoying betrayal."
On the other side, there are gamers who believe a nerf was necessary, and toning down some of the fight to make it fairer and less of a visual nightmare is an unambiguously good thing. It's the exact same discourse that played out in 2022 when General Radahn was nerfed.
Thus, the duel of the "Git Gud" crowd and the "boss quality" crowd rages on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
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Phhase
In fairness, he was the first Fromsoft boss to attack your GPU directly.
King Crimson
I beat Radahn pre-nerf three times and I still say he was completely cracked and needed to be toned down. He was pretty much impossible for certain playstyles, especially magic users, to fight effectively. In fact, Fextralife's advice for magic users on the boss's page used to be "switch to melee."
Rynjin
Yeah. I beat it, it wasn't fun. Which is the big issue with the fight in general. It is not difficult in a way that is enjoyable or interesting, Radahn 2: Electric Boogaloo just has infinite turbo hyper-armor and massive aggression combined with ludicrous amounts of damage and HP.
He's sorta like the inverse of Darkeater Midir. Midir was dumb and unfun because he was easy, but had way too much HP and damage reduction to ever complete the fight quickly. He was an endurance boss, and it sucked.
Radahn 2.0 is instead just a "build check". If you're not running a build that can:
A.) Max Bleed buildup to kill him fast (which is what I ended up doing).
B.) Turtle and poke forever.
C.) Use Frostbite instead of Bleed.
D.) Spam poise breaks as fast as possible.
You're in for a bad time. And in every case the gameplay loop is just "wait for Radahn to finish his 5-7 hit combo and then get in precisely one (1) hit of your own, repeat". He doesn't even really have an interesting moveset. in phase 1 he's got some generic sword combos and then 2 spells we've seen variants of from other bosses, and in phase 2 he's got pretty much the same moveset you just can't actually see any of it and need to dodge entirely based off muscle memory and guesses because the visual clutter is so ridiculous.
The final boss of a DLC shouldn't be dull. At least Midir was a bonus boss, the ACTUAL Ringed City final boss was an amazing spectacle of a fight that was actually FUN.
Steven The Pirate
I'll never understand why people treat a single player action RPG with optional multiplayer like it's a competitive fighting game. Who gives a fuck, use any and every means at your disposal.