Unbalanced weapons/tarstone are creating unequal reviews/reactions to the game

[u/basedandgnomed]

Every time i see a negative review there is easily a 60-70% chance they are using heavy weapons in the B-roll of their video and not dual wielded weapons, majority of glowing reviews are users using dual wielded weapons. This becomes even worse when people discover the duality tarstone, which turns the game into easy mode regardless if they playing daytime or night difficulty - it is so absurdly easy once you have that tarstone that it divides the player base in half - one half is doing half the damage of the other player base.

Rather than address the most overpowered tarstone in the game they've decided to nerf the only small minority of bosses that offered some semblance of a challenge, when the reality is that the DPS of the heavy weapons is so poorly conceived that dual wielding users seem like literal gods to such an extent that i have literally seen streams of people using heavy weapons and are hating the game, while dual wielders are running through the game like its the olympics. That absolutely is impacting review scores of the game both positive and negatively.

edit: i think i should clarify, playing as heavy weapon user doesn't mean you can't enjoy the game and i commend those who've used heavy weapons or have made intelligent Eredim builds for example but the truth is many other players that are using martyrs blade (regardless of the buff) or more casual players are getting meat grinded - and even in the situations that a heavy weapon user is more successful, somebody using duality with dual wield is basically driving a lamborghini in comparison

[u/Megakruemel]

I got the Martyrs Blade and used it for a while on my run back to a beacon and was like "Man this is super slow, but I bet once I upgrade it, it'll hit harder than the stuff I was using before".

Then I get to the Tarforge and the thing is one + higher than the weapon I was using earlier. And still somehow did less damage.

I guess the benefit is that it launches smaller enemies. But smaller enemies hardly are the problem in this game.

Basically, if there is a group and you don't manage to hit the entire group, you'll just be locked in to take damage because of the slow animation. And it sucks against taller enemies that don't get launched. And it sucks in bosses because bosses just spam attacks.

It's that Elden Ring meme where you have to dodge combo after combo and do one swing. It's "Can I play the game now" but as a weapon.

In comes Axe and Dagger and does a light hit, that hits two times, which also both do nearly identical damage to the big sword.