Elden Ring - gamertags on first page

/Enjoys life thoroughly playing with summons

Some bosses can be parried, but even so not all their attacks. It even differs with attacks from the same weapon, so have fun finding out which work through trial and error.
And since that's still not enough, most bosses don't go down from 1 parry, no, you must parry them 2 or 3 times in a row to get 1 riposte. It's usually much easier and safer (and more damaging) to just stance break them instead.

Parry timing in Elden Ring is awkward and precise, nothing like Sekiro. The Deflecting Hardtear physick from the DLC actually is much closer to that game's deflection.
And if you try to parry everything, you're going to painfully realise that even most basic enemies' attacks are that stupidly delayed nonsense. It's a nightmare for parrying.
Dodging too early may still save you from getting hurt, mistiming a parry is guaranteed damage.

So yeah, there are lots of reasons to dislike parrying unless you're an expert player and/or want to do a challenge run.

There are some enemies, most notably the knight types (it is worth trying when struggling against the Crucible Knight in the Limgrave Evergaol), against which parrying is pretty good. But for the great majority of enemies and bosses, you'll just make your life harder.

Mohg's Nihil can be countered with a physick
There's also a shackle for Mohg like there is for Margit, found in

To find Blaidd again,
For his armour,
A Blaidd mask

Maybe pay Ranni's Rise another visit then

It can be used twice, but only during the first phase. I guess if you time using it right at the end of the phase you could drop his health quite a bit beyond the trigger for the second phase. As you say though, the first phase is pretty straightforward, so I personally didn't find it helped that much.

If you are using a bleed weapon or abilities, those are surprisingly effective against him. I found the best thing to do was to really rush him down in the second phase, before he would start flying around the place and be impossible to get hits on. With my regular DPS, as well as bleed proccing once, I was able to pretty much kill him, bar 2 or 3 hits, before he got off the ground. I was using the mimic though, so you might need to take a more cautious approach.

Sorry to bang on about Shadow Keep, but dang. I must have cleared it top to bottom 3 times, each time finding new stuff, and only on the last time have a found a way to the attic, and the rear grace sites, and somehow I missed that you could drain the water! Great stuff.

From memory it seems bigger than Stormveil Castle, but probably recency bias.

Shadow keep is indeed awesome but I think stormveil is peak elden ring.

It can be used again and it basically just slams them into the ground and holds them there for maybe 5 seconds. So twice you get some free damage.

Oh, I thought it'd stop him using flying attacks. I wouldn't have used it anyway

Only finished the DS trilogy, which if we want to use ratings, were like 7, 6, and 8/10 for me. Well I also finished Tunic if that counts, 5/10. Tried to get into DeS (have it on PS3) but that game is just so weird and after 17 hours it was still a constant mystery what to do and how to play the game, and I wasn't really having fun, so eventually abandoned it. Didn't like Nioh and Another Crab's Treasure, abandoned them early.

I'm not much of a Souls player I suppose, I just like Elden Ring and the DS trilogy to a lesser extent.

As for other From games, tried once to get into Sekiro, trying again recently, not sure when and if it'll ever click. Also got Armored Core 6 even though I'm not usually interested in mech games, but thought maybe From could change that. It didn't. Haven't played BB because I don't have a PS4/5.

DS2 is my least favourite in the trilogy, but I think it is unfairly thrashed. Well, some of it is justified (like some of those runbacks, I mean seriously wtf), but I feel like it's being treated like the ugly duckling from a different father to deflect criticism away from the other games. For example, there's a ton of videos showing some terrible hit detection that are titled "lol DS2 amirite" or something, but when Elden Ring does the same, almost nobody says anything.

I found DS2 pretty frustrating at times, and often it very much felt like it was blatantly being frustrating just for the sake of it, but I definitely also had a good time with the good parts. As in, the good parts were enough that I'm glad I played through, but the bad parts were enough that I probably won't play through again.

edit: although truth be told, as ER bosses are getting ever more absurdly OTT, sometimes I feel like I want to play DS2 again. Sometimes I'm so tired of everything exploding all the time I'd rather just have a big guy with a big bonk please...

I missed more than I thought it the main game as I’m still in ng getting stuff. Got the last two upgrades for my flask in areas I thought I’d done but turns out not. That includes finding another hero grave area, a dragon boss, a black assassin boss and one other boss. Oh and an erdtree boss that dropped three tears including one to boost my lightening.

It basically just has 4 different paths to follow from your starting point. The areas probably feel the most like 'levels' than any of the other games as they aren't always connected in a way that makes sense. It's the most linear but I don't mind it. It has some great locations and a lot of nice little ideas that you don't find in any of the others

Yeah, it's an ideas game and that's what I like about it. It feels like it has the most secrets/things to discover of all the games. After you've played any of them a couple of times, difficulty isn't really an issue and it's easy enough to progress all paths at the same time by switching between them as you go

It's the only one that changes the game for NG+ as well, which is something that should have become standard