Elden Ring (2022)

I've been mulling what to say about this game for a while now and I can't come up with any coherent though. So I'm just going to sit and ramble on.

The game is so incredibly uneven that I can't honestly say if I liked it or not. At the same time it features some of the most incredible levels and the most dull and repetitive areas.

Reaching the capital city, for example, was such a shock. The open vista of the whole city almost frozen mid struggle, each corner telling a story... it's simply stunning. I spend ages going through it's streets absorbing the ambiance.

But is that overshadowed by the countless samey boring catacombs whose boss' idea of escalating difficulty is increasing the number of the same enemy you need to fight? I don't know.

The open world is gorgeous complex and interesting place. I love that you platform on things that don't look like platforms, like broken down structures and weird root systems. I also like that there are lots of little animals and enemies that seem to be doing stuff instead of just standing around waiting to be killed. It doesn't feel like a level in a game, it feels like a real world.

But does that justify the complete broken difficulty curve that means that you can easily overlevel and overgear yourself out of any satisfying challenge? Or that the game effectively can't use difficulty as part of the storytelling toolbox? I don't know.

Similarly uneven is the combat. While you can block or even parry, abusing iframes is by far the most effective strategy, and the one the game clearly expects the player to use. But this makes fights feel messy and lacking in physicality. And also makes enemies the sole controllers of the flow of battle. For the most part bosses will go on with their animations without reacting to your attacks, so the strategy in most encounters is to dodge and keep your distance until a gap in the animation opens up an opportunity for attack. There's nothing of Sekiro's incredibly satisfying control of the battle in which you could force enemies where you wanted them once you'd mastered their moves. I just cannot get into this iframepalooza of a combat system.

But there were highlights. I really liked fighting the Godskin Apostle. Only by chance I found him at a good level in which it was pretty hard but still doable and satisfying to get right. And the rewards from beating him were massive at the time so it also felt appropriate. The first couple Evergaol fights were also thrilling. Again, hard but doable and forced me to learn the patterns.

But, honestly, no boss was as memorable as Sekiro's first Genichiro fight, Owl, or Isshin. Partly it's because I was so overleveled that I could kill most mid-game bosses with a few attacks without require any mastery of my own. How could Rennala be a memorable fight if I literally killed her in 7 hits?

The summary of all this rambling is that my Elden Ring experience was blemished by it's sheer size and lack of structure and a combat system that I don't particularly love. The fact that I still mostly liked it should speak volumes the small kernels of greatness that are mixed with the packing peanuts of dullness.

Going to be coming back to this once the DLC is out, and updating this. But as of now just finished the main game (including every boss, every quest, and exploring almost the entire map) in around 176 hours.

Before Elden Ring released I didn't know much about From Software aside from the memes about Dark Souls, and was in a pretty long hiatus from gaming after my youth. But the huge explosion of popularity and online discourse about the game made me really excited for some reason, with all of its dark fantasy and RPG elements, things I already loved seducing me completely. Being the dork that I am though, I decided I would play all of the previous SoulsKiroEtc entries before playing it, so I played Demon Souls and fell in love with the experience and idea. I then lost my mind and played the Kings Field series and other early FS entries but we'll gloss past that part. Fast forward an entire 2 years and I had finally finished all of the previous entries I found relevant and felt refreshed enough to finally tackle it, completely terrified of having built up this pedestal for a game I didn't know much about and it not reaching any of my hopes.

But somehow it did. Somehow it was exactly what I wanted it to be and more. Yes I still dislike parts of the open world experience and prefer some of the original more linear designs, but it's hard to argue against it since it gives this expansiveness, immersion, and life to the world that I had never really felt in the previous games. The gameplay was basically the same as the previous entries but felt a lot more polished, fluid, and refined, a clear result of over a decade of work. The art design, from entire areas, to the smallest architectural components is gorgeous, I am always baffled at how much attention and focus are put into these things. I feel like if everything weren't trying to kill you, you could spend hours just walking around and inspecting every piece of the game closely. The bosses were pretty great overall, I think there were some better bosses in earlier entries, but the main ones here were still a great experience (especially Mohg, Malenia, Godfrey, and Placidusax). Just an overall phenomenal experience.

The story is really where this dug its claws completely into me though. I loved the Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro storylines/worlds, but this one feels like it took pieces of the concepts from all of those entries and merged them together to create this immense incredible world. I honestly did not expect it to feel so huge, from outer gods influencing and interfering in the world, to eons of different races/dynasties, to the demigods that we see in the game who probably ruled for thousands of years before the game started. I just found myself peeling back layer after layer and realizing how much there really is. I don't know if it was the GRR x FS writers combo that created such an insane world but I'm all for it. Maybe it's the very prevalent Middle Earth references here but I found myself as enthralled with researching lore for the games as I was when reading the Silmarillion, it just felt so fun, creative, and beautiful.

Anyway that's my rant for now. This is the longest single player game I have ever played and I can't believe I enjoyed almost every moment of it. Happily looking forward to the DLC.

Shadow of the Erdtree Review:

I have finally finished the DLC, clocking in at 77 hours to fully get through it (including a lot of exploring, doing all bosses/quests, and struggling through a lot of bosses). This ends up basically tieing the longest From Software game I've played (DS2 at 78 hours) aside from Elden Ring, so I'd say the price point was totally worth it. There's a ton of content here.

Overall I was incredibly satisfied with the experience. The new world was incredibly beautiful and unique, to the point of gaining my preference over the base map for ER. The enemies were all basically new and fun to fight (aside from the Furnace golems :(). The difficulty was scaled appropriately imo, as they provide a new leveling system for just the DLC which helps a lot to get you to the appropriate defense and offense for the game (although I'd say you would still want to enter the DLC basically at the end of your ER run, not by just speedrunning through the required bosses). The new weapons were also incredibly fun to use, there are so many new styles now and I found it easy to abandon the weapons I was used to from the main game and try out different ones in the DLC (also helps that it is so easy to farm or find smithing stones).

The bosses (which is my main love in these games) were mainly fantastic. Two of the hardest bosses in all FS games for me were in this DLC, and I had a lot of fun just memorizing their movesets and dying time after time. The bosses have a lot of flash and beauty to them too which makes them incredibly memorable. I do think there were a few that were not super memorable but the others make up for them.

I think where the game falls a little flat for me is with the overall storyline and lore exposition. While I loved the general story going on, I wish it had more of a proper ending to it. And while I did find a lot of interesting lore pieces throughout the game, I feel like a lot of the questions from the main game were left unanswered, some that were very open ended. But I guess that's just how these things go. Maybe some additional material will be released in the future (in whatever medium) and we'll get those answers but oh well.

Overall a fantastic DLC that I couldn't stop playing and had a lovely time with.

We've heard it time and time again. Elden Ring is considered to be among the best video games of our time. An opinion shared by countless review outlets and players attesting to its pedigree online. Bandai Namco, the games publisher, recently revealed that Elden Ring has sold a whopping 23 Million copies across all platforms. Just to give you an idea, Dark Souls 3, a game in an established and well received trilogy of games capped out at 10 million copies sold by 2020. It also enjoys the reputation of being the highest rated game for the PS5 console on Metacritic. For a completely new IP, that kind of success was unprecedented. With that said, in this review, I'd like to explore what I think elevated Elden Ring to its godlike status among the video gaming community, and for myself, and also try to bring to light what tarnishes the overall experience.

Unlike the linear design of its predecessors, Elden Ring drops the player into a vast, explorable expanse called The Lands Between which is filled to the brim with things to see and do. The first thing that players will notice about Elden Ring’s open world is its art direction. I truly believe that the Lands Between is one of the most visually striking video game settings to date. From its vast fields to its towering structures that fill you with both wonder and fear in equal measure. For example the Erdtree; a colossal tree that gracefully shines throughout the Lands Between. Laying eyes upon it for the first time was truly a jaw dropping experience that no other game has been able to replicate. Passing the threshold of the dense trees suffocating light and being welcomed by the sheer vastness of Liurnia of the Lakes is sheer creative genius in my opinion. What I'm trying to say here is that FromSoftware, the developers of the game, knew how to frame these moments effectively for the player to be in absolute awe. They are honestly a masterclass in this regard.

It isn't just what's in the distance that is interesting, but also what is around you. The Lands Between is filled with unique landmasses, dungeons, caves and castles with their own types of enemies to overcome and unique loot to obtain. There is always something intriguing to explore and find in the Lands Between, which is what I believe places Elden Ring's open world design above many of the existing open world’s that use repetitive, check-list game design. For me, what elevates its open world design even further, is the fact that every item you find while exploring the world contributes to your overall understanding of the world's narrative. If you strive to understand the story and world of Elden Ring, it gives you even more reason to explore every nook and cranny of the Lands Between. I believe it to be truly genius open world design that I wish more open world games would start incorporating.

Exploration of the world doesn’t come without its dangers though. There are countless uniquely designed enemies just waiting to convince you to go touch grass instead of challenging them any further. This brings me to the combat of the game and its enemies. Just like FromSoft's previous games, you have a slew of armaments to choose from, but the selection here is much more generous. Every weapon you find (and there are A LOT of them) is unique with its own abilities and stats. There is a great deal of player expression in the game. You want to be a spellcasting assassin? No problem. You want to wield both faith incantations and spells at the same time? No issue. You want to bonk with a big hammer in only a loincloth? be my guest. Its all there. You can express yourself the way you want to, which makes the replayability of the game viable despite the lack of intrigue for exploration the second time around. As for the combat system itself, you can expect the same design from FromSoft's previous games, but with some additions such as a crouch to sneak up on enemies and most importantly the ability to jump, adding a completely new dimension to exploration and combat. For example, you can jump over some enemy horizontal slashing attacks instead of rolling away, allowing you to evade an enemy attack and at the same time giving you the ability to retaliate mid air with your own weapon attack. These are welcome additions to the combat system that are interesting and exciting to pull off.

The story of Elden Ring, just like any other FromSoft game, is shrouded in mystery, requiring the player to actively seek out the story themselves by piecing together information from dialogue with NPCs and item descriptions. As I don’t fully understand the story just yet myself, I would like to refrain from critiquing it. All I would like to say though is that it is very compelling. It deals with the consequences of having an unshakable belief in a system of Order that is perceived to be without flaws, divine and “right”, even though there are many prosecuted and shunned by the system with no convincing reason as to why. You, as the tarnished, may choose to follow this faith blindly, questionably, or choose to believe in something entirely different, for better or for worse.

Like any game though, Elden Ring is not perfect. And unfortunately its imperfections for me really sullies the entire experience. The problem I am referring to involves the design of the many bosses of the game, notably once you reach the last leg of the game. Once you enter one of its last regions, the difficulty ramps up to an astonishing degree. Suddenly regular enemies you have encountered before are able to 3 shot you despite hefty armor and a large heath pool. These enemies however pale in comparison to the last 5-6 bosses of the game. Several of these bosses were so damn aggressive and unrelenting with their attacks that you would barely be able to retaliate against them!!! The design philosophy behind these games has always been ‘tough but fair’. Bosses attack and combo > you evade said attacks > you get a window of opportunity to attack the boss while they recover from their onslaught. However, many bosses in Elden Ring just DO NOT ADHERE TO THIS PHILOSOPHY. The end game bosses are the biggest offenders in this. They all have combos that go on for way too long or combos that begin immediately after the end of a combo to where you just CAN NOT LAND A GODDAMN HIT. IT IS ATROCIOUS. They get to attack you WAY MORE TIMES than you get to attack them. How is that fair??? and it honestly does not help that every strike is so fast the next one already hits you before you're done with your rolling animation. Also, all these bosses are capable of 2 SHOTTING YOU. One other thing that REALLY bothered me was the amount of delayed attacks many of the bosses had. Delayed attacks are such a cheap way of adding difficulty to the game. Dodging and parrying attacks based on instinct by naturally predicting the speed of an attack is SO MUCH MORE REWARDING than THAT ARTIFICIAL BULLSHIT THAT LOOKS SO UTTERLY RIDICULOUS. I just cannot fathom what Fromsoftware was thinking with designing these bosses…They are so overtuned and unfair und just so miserable to fight against because you just feel like you are being punished for absolutely nothing…the ONE good thing I can say about them is that their design is very memorable and their attacks are badass. THAT'S IT. FUCK YOU MALIKETH. FUCK YOU. YOU'RE SO FUCKING COOL MAN BUT YOU HOP AROUND LIKE A DOG ON CRACK!!! JUST STAY PUT SO THAT I CAN HIT YOOUUUUU!!!

By the time I got to the last 3 bosses I just wanted the game to end so bad. I was so done. The overtuning of the bosses has me genuinely scared of the bosses that I may encounter in the upcoming DLC, because if those bosses are even more on crack than the base game, I may just decide to touch grass instead and be less maidenless than I am…

I love this game. I really do. It genuinely has the best open worlds out there and its art design is breathtaking. Its bosses are very memorable whether you like it or not and the final boss is my favorite boss fight in any video game because of the sheer sense of finality and the score played when fighting him. His second phase does not exist to me though. We don't talk about that. Elden Beast doesn't exist. He can't hurt you anymore.

Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed.

I avoided Souls-like games based on their sheer reputations for brutality and frustration... and frankly the toxicity that seemed to come from those who liked them. But so many people were hyped for Elden Ring, I figured why not give it a shot.

I loved what I discovered: a beautiful, immersive open world fantasy that was dark, atmospheric... and yes, viciously unforgiving at times. But I found that I not only didn't mind the difficulty (once I'd braced for it), but I actually LIKED it. It became a matter of solving the combat puzzle, as it were.

Because of Elden Ring, I'll eventually be trying out other Souls-like and Souls-inspired games. It's currently on hiatus (TOO MANY GAMES TO PLAY), but rest assured I WILL be back to continue my journey in the Lands Between before too long.

Positive :

• Open world is beautiful and exploration is fun (those silmarion inspired trees are everywhere and that's making me feel happy)
• Great variety in builds and no main meta build, a lot of different options work
• The main loop of beating a boss, unlocking new areas, progressing through the beautiful levels and trying to find new loot to improve your gear is kind of addictive in a good way
• Tons of content, no MTX, no open world bullshit to inflate game time, 60€ game

Negative :

• I didn't expect much from the story and I'm still let down
• Those 2 seconds roll animations might have been okay on PS3 and I know it's supposed to emulate a protagonist which is not a superhero, but man does this make combat annoying
• Once you get your build rolling you just spam the same attacks and it quickly becomes repetitive
• Music is nonexistent outside of boss fights
• I found monster design uninspired (except bosses ofc), 90% of mobs kinda look like brownish ghouls/knights
• Seriously it's 2023 and no pause, no option to deactivate random players spawning if you want to play coop, no quest journal .....
• Menu UI is overall terrible
• Grind

I know a lot of people are a fan of this niche genre, and i'm glad they got what they wanted. But to call this a perfect game or a masterpiece feels vastly exaggerated in my opinion.

When I first saw the trailer for Elden Ring, I thought an open world Dark Souls wasn’t exactly a good idea, because Dark Souls games tend to become tedious in the latter parts. Now, after spending 135 hours with the game, I still think it has been a bad idea.

All games are Skinner boxes. What makes From Software games special is that they rely on a variable-ratio schedule of reinforcement, while most games rely on a fixed-ratio schedule. Technical jargon aside, your typical game rewards the player (more or less) on a regular basis, while From Software games reward players now and then. This is what makes the games so addictive and that’s the main reason people keep getting drawn to them, since a variable-ratio schedule tends to reinforce behavior the best (i.e., it’s the most addictive). That works very well for a linear game of around 50 hours, but Elden Ring takes it a bit too far, almost extinguishing behavior at times (i.e., it can be quite boring).

It doesn’t help, either, that graphics are severely outdated, while having the performance of something like Cyberpunk 2077 with RT on. Most of the time the game looks like The Elder Scrolls Online, with very low-resolution textures and 20 years-old vegetation. The animations are also outdated and controlling your character doesn’t feel so good, making the combat slow and clunky. On the plus side, the art style is great, with masterful use of color and some of the best, most majestic, architecture ever seen in a game. Also, for the first time, we get to see dynamic weather and a day-night cycle in a From Software game.

There are numerous additions to the Souls formula, which make the gameplay more pleasant and more welcoming to new players. Out in the open, you benefit from having a mount, which allows you to escape dangerous situations, and I haven’t encountered any mandatory boss in the open world (can’t say if there is one), all can be skipped by moving along. Sneaking also makes some encounters less difficult, while exploration, especially in dungeons, benefits tremendously from jumping. Likewise, stamina doesn’t get depleted while exploring the open world and defeating small groups of enemies replenishes your flasks. In the beginning, you can level up quite easily with the help of the new herb-picking mechanic. You can make a lot of runes by selling weeds and mushrooms. Also, you can now craft things on the go, but you will have to find tomes with recipes in the world. On the other hand, you can hardly find smithing stones for upgrading your weapons. These can be found only in caves initially and you have to go through a lot of enemies to get them.

As usual, the lore and plot are cryptic (though less so than in the other games), which would be great if they were just a bit interesting. They are not. They tried to make it appear more interesting by associating with G.R.R. Martin’s name, but, if you’ve played the other Souls games, you can easily notice the huge amount of copy/paste, with some changed labels. There are some interesting characters, though. Good luck not missing their quests in this vast open world with no markers!

The combat is moderately satisfying for the most part, if you can ignore the aforementioned clunkiness. It doesn’t help that a lot of bosses are fast like those in Sekiro, while you are slow like in… well, Dark Souls. What does help is the enormous variety of weapons, spells, and incantations, as well as a lot of buffing items. You also have summons with you all the time, but you can't activate them in all areas. Still, you can activate them when it matters. Weapons are infused with special attacks (“ashes of war”) that can be changed at the bonfires ("sites of grace"), and these are the best-looking animations of the combat. Needless to say, they can be of great help, too. All Souls game had a lot of replay value, but enormous weapon and accessories variety offers Elden Ring more than any other so far.

The best areas in the game are the so-called legacy dungeons. They have some of the best level design From Software has ever made and the best bosses in the game. Often, their graphical design is also beautiful, especially when contrasting it with the blandness of the open world. I would have enjoyed the game a lot more if it was just Dark Souls IV, with these dungeons connected by a hub, as per tradition.

As it is, the enjoyable moments in the game are few and far between. For all the additions to the formula, for all the complexity of the combat system, for all the weapon and enemy variety, it remains a sophisticated exercise in ennui.

Elden Ring is a great game and I spent over 91 hours to finish the core game along with most of the optional content. The game world is fantastic, the combat is tight, as expected from a FromSoftware game, the character and weapon animations are smooth and fun, there is a wide variety of bosses with memorable move sets, and almost all 'additions' to the game (jumping, Torrent, Ashes of War, Spirit Summoning) improve upon the Souls formula.

However, the game is a not a masterpiece, definitely not a 10/10, especially for a game released in 2022, and I am bewildered by the abundance of perfect scores it received from game critics. Even though I have no respect for video game critics (not counting independent critics) since formal video game journalism is a sham, I was just surprised since this is not the kind of game that gets perfect scores.

The game suffers from three major problems that prevents it from being a masterpiece:

1. The open world is boring and somewhat unnecessary
2. The lazy storytelling and quest design make for a frustrating open world experience
3. The game engine and some mechanics are archaic and the cracks are starting to show

More details below.

1. When I saw the release trailer, I was apprehensive about an open world implementation of Dark Souls. After finishing the game, I felt that it is definitely one of the more engaging open worlds out there, with quite a bit of verticality and various biomes and enemy types. However, after the first one third to half of the game, traversing the open world becomes tedious. They ran out of enemy and boss designs at that point and started reusing the same assets. Other copy-pasted features become obvious, like the nth Sacred Tear in the nth Church, the repeated walking mausoleums, the 10th fort with the same interiors, etc. The worst offenders are the recycled dungeons and the identical bosses, some of which you fight half a dozen times. The common response to this is that reused assets are unavoidable in these massive open world games. However, there is no need for a game to be this big if the experience would have been much more memorable and less of a chore if it were smaller. I do think the game would have been better if the map was half as large, allowing more opportunities to mix things up, both in terms of boss fights and rewards. I think Dark Souls 1 did this masterfully since the game, although not traditionally open world, had an open-ended layout that fit together beautifully and encouraged exploration.

2. The Souls series has never been about the story or the characters. However, a game's story can be important for the overall experience and I do think stories and characters elevate games when they are notable. Two of my favorite games of all time, The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone and Planescape: Torment were epic character-driven experiences (and in case of Planescape: Torment, a philosophical revelation). The opaque storytelling in Elden Ring hurts its legacy and quests being driven by vague objectives makes it hard to feel immersed in the game world; more reasons it should not receive a perfect score. This worked better (still poorly) in previous games, when the levels were much more linear. In a world as huge as this, this design choice makes no sense and adds to the tedium. As an aside, I would love to find out how long it takes to even 90% this game without any guidance. I personally would not have been able to finish most of the quests without googling (maybe if I had more time).

3. Even though the combat is smooth, it is frustratingly slow. I think this is even more evident since bosses seem to move at a different frame rate than you. After playing games like Nioh, Nioh 2, Sekiro, Dragon's Dogma, etc., the fights feels tedious. Add to that the wonky camera that makes no sense when bosses in tiny rooms take up most of the screen, the janky platforming, enemy attacks clipping through walls, and the shitty performance on PCs, you have a lackluster gaming experience that is mainly held together by the beautifully rendered world and the interesting boss and enemy designs.

In summary, although Elden Ring is a major improvement upon the Souls formula, it is not revolutionary by any means. In addition to a complete overhaul of the game engine, it would have benefited from a shorter, tighter, and thus more unique experience.

Actual Score: 4/5

Okay people, I used the easy mode mod and played for a few hours and I still think I'm done with Elden Ring. I'm just going to get my words down here so my whole experience is documented.

First of all, I'm not updating my score because the review should be on the game as intended, not how it's been altered. I'm leaving the original review here so you can see the contrast. While I am by no means the final authority on the matter, a big part of this updated review is commenting on the easy mode conversation we've been having. If I were to rate the game now, it would certainly be more positive. I'd give it a passing grade just because there were aspects of it I dug.

Let's just get the difficulty conversation out of the way. I suck at this game and am not willing to learn how to get better. This is on me, but this is also my review, and also my life to live. With that said, the game is certainly manageable with the easy mode mod. All it really did was knock down damage incurred and heightened damaged inflicted (with maybe a few other things too, I can't remember), and that drastically changed the experience. It wasn't something complicated, but that's all it took before it got the game to a point where I actually wanted to play it. I still hit a wall, but again, that's because I suck.

The thing is, the easy mode actually grew my appreciation for the game design in some respects. To me it proved that FromSoftware put actual care into the bosses and didn't just give them exorbitant stats. They have personality, and thought out attacks and attack patterns. Even on easy mode, for someone who hasn't given his life to the game, it's still a challenge sometimes. Yeah, some fights are quite easy and you see it, but it's not like I just walked in there and smashed everyone with ease. You act like an idiot, you can still be put down. That's evidence that they knew what they were doing. I still think your character feels clunky, and that the difficulty camouflages that, but the difficulty exists so it would be like saying that The Dark Knight is lesser without Heath Ledger. Well yeah, but he's in there, he's part of the experience. You can make the observation but deducting points for that would be silly. Same here with the difficulty.

As for the exploration, it didn't suffer. I was hot and cold on this aspect but I think it's solid. The world is beautiful and meticulous. There's a mystery to things. I dug moving from place to place, not knowing what hell I would find. I really don't think it's Breath of the Wild in that sense (I'm only comparing them because others do), because I don't think that the exploration is as dependent on the mechanics as BotW was. But I'm aware that others believe that it is. That's fine.

Anyway, I've spent more time than I ever thought I would on this game so I'm just going to close this by saying... for someone like me, easy mode really did help.

---------------- This is the first review ----------------

Rating: 3/10

I'm just going to be the weirdo when it comes to the reviews here. But I'm also going to say that you should just ignore my review. I don't use sites like this to give professional reviews, which means I also don't feel obligated to complete a game. I only use sites like Grouvee to remember what I thought about an experience (because my memory is shit).

I'm actually really pumped for all of you who love Elden Ring. 2022 is for you. This game was never going to be for me. Here was my brief experience:

Got out into the open, went straight. Died 4 times. Decided to go right instead, killed some normal enemies (felt good about myself). Died from some normal enemies because I went down some stairs and got careless (my bad). Spawned, saw an encampment off in the distance with some more normal enemies. Figured I would go wreck their shit, and then when I was approaching them, I watched a dragon wreck their shit. Then mine. Then I uninstalled the game. I clocked 30 minutes but I still want to record my journey for the generations that follow.

So in all seriousness, I don't like FromSoftware games for the most part. The closest I got was Sekiro because I like Tenchu and when I wasn't fighting bosses it was a lot like Tenchu. I really just wanted a Tenchu. So you may ask, why do I keep playing FS games? Because I WANT to like them. I want one of them to click with me.

I have criticisms of some of the other ones that don't have to do with the difficulty, but with Elden Ring I really don't. It's just too hard for me. And you may want to comment on this review and say, "Tyler, just practice and get better at it." Or, "Tyler, you're missing out on a lot by not putting in the time."

And to that I respond with a simple no. I'm getting older. I did my time with old games in the NES days, I like to just play games with as little stress as possible. I actually put SOME games on easy, which is something I never did. I don't do it a lot, but every now and again I am like, "ah fuck it, let's go easy." Hell, I played the FF6 Pixel Remaster (FF6 being one of my all-time faves) and I put the battle system on WAIT, not ACTIVE. I beat that game when I was like 10 on ACTIVE, and now I'm 36 and I put it on WAIT.

Anyway, all this to say that I'm one of those losers who would gladly take an easy mode for this. But I also understand that FS doesn't want to do that. Nor should they have to. They want to reward the player for struggling and I get that game design choice, but I also think that with Elden Ring, the exploration and all the cool stuff that happens would stand on its own, without the difficulty. But it's weird that sometimes people can't just accept that not all games are meant for them. Elden Ring is not meant for me.

I hope you enjoyed my little adventure here in this review.

Elden Ring, for all the talk about it being the most accessible FromSoft game to date (and while that’s true, it comes with caveats), still begins by killing you, tossing you away like garbage, telling you to touch grass (grace), and calling you maidenless.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Let’s get my bias out of the way right up front. FromSoftware is, in my opinion, the best video game developer working today. I’ve beaten every game they’ve released since Demon’s Souls. Dark Souls 1 is my favorite game of all time and I’ve beaten it probably twenty times and gotten every achievement twice, on two different versions of the game (PS4 Dark Souls: Remastered and Steam’s Prepare to Die Edition). I also platinumed Bloodborne and unironically think Bloodborne (including the DLC) is the best video game story ever told. Please don’t @ me with your but what about Last of Us and God of War and whatever else. They may have great stories, but having 6+ hours of non-interactive cutscenes in a 20 something hour game automatically disqualifies something from having the best VIDEOGAME story of all time. I’m sure they’re great movies, but we’re talking about games here. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

On the one hand, I’m wholly unqualified to tell anyone who isn’t already a souls fan if this game is going to be their jam or not, because I have no idea. On the other hand, because of my love for these games, I had INCREDIBLY HIGH expectations which were still HANDILY exceeded. While there was a small part of me that was worried about the transition to open world which, contrary to the opinion of seemingly all modern game developers, doesn’t inherently make a game better, my overwhelming feeling was complete trust in FromSoft and Miyazaki to deliver an outstanding game because they haven’t missed across 12 years and 6 releases. Dark Souls II is the “worst” game they’ve put out and it was still the second best game I played that year after The Talos Principle.

So let’s talk about why this game MIGHT bring on board some people that weren’t fans of the souls games before, and why it’s especially likely to bring on people who maybe played one or two souls games, liked them, but didn’t finish them.

There are two main reasons for this. Reason number one is that you will never be stuck on a boss in this game. The world is almost completely open from the start, so if you’re banging your head on a boss you have complete freedom to leave that boss alone for 10, 20, 30 hours and just do other shit and when you come back you’ll have a ton of levels and weapon upgrades and new abilities to try that will make it much easier. Reason number 2 is that you’ve never had more tools at your disposal and it’s never been easier to cheese bosses and to create OP builds. This is the least precious FromSoftware has ever been about the balance and difficulty of their boss fights. They seem to be saying, hey, you have to work for your victories, but that work can take the form of thorough exploration and experimentation with the tools we give you rather than raw skill or raw number of attempts.

As a result of that mentality, exploration and discovery in this game is better than in any other open world game I’ve ever played. You WILL find powerful weapons and abilities and spirit summons that will feel life-changing. Every dungeon and camp has something interesting and meaningful. Even if it’s not something your character is built to use, the possibility of respecing into it later is always there, so it’s always exciting (for those wondering how to respec, just finish the magic academy dungeon).

The mere act of exploration is also rewarding because of the typical FromSoft boss/enemy design which is wildly creative, weird, and badass in equal measure. The art design of the world itself is masterclass, and the best they’ve ever achieved. Every single view in this game is screenshot worthy. They put the fantastical back in fantasy, making the worlds of games like The Witcher 3 look truly mundane in comparison.

Castles sit atop sheer cliffs jutting into the stratosphere

The ethereal golden erdtree dominates the sky at all times

Lovecraftian wastelands transition into verdant fields

Elevators will take you to ethereal underground cities

Which have a healthy dose of Bloodborne

One of the things FromSoft does better than anyone else is pay attention to verticality when it comes to their level designs. With the addition of a jump button that’s even more true, especially in the big “legacy” dungeons. You will be doing some CRAZY shit that in any other game would be a weird skip, but here it’s the intended path. And I’m sure you can see from the screenshots that the attention to verticality extends to the landscape of the open world as well. It constantly dips and rises and the shortest path between you an your destination is rarely a straight line. The geography of the landscape itself is something that has to be navigated around and thought about. Most open world games have had the art of level design completely stripped out of them. FromSoft found a way to put it back in.

In addition to that this game is far, far larger than anyone seems to expect going in. It’s utterly massive. We’re talking minimum 40 hours long and that’s if you look up where to go and what non-optional bosses you need to fight and how to get to them, are good enough to beat them in a reasonable number of attempts while likely under leveled, and do almost nothing else. If you’re intent on exploring most of every area you could easily hit 100+ hours. And very little of the content feels repetitive. You will constantly be finding new cool things, seeing new cool places, fighting new cool bosses and enemies. It’s insane how much bespoke content is in this game. They definitely reuse some bosses several times to fill out some of the later game dungeons, but let's compare that to, say, God of War, where you had nine Valkyries that were very, very similar to each other, a bunch of big rock dudes who were literally identical, a dragon, and baldur. And that's it. Idk how anybody can really criticize them for reusing some bosses when you look at the boss quality in every other game.

I’m so happy with the breakout critical and commercial success this game has been receiving. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving developer. They’ve put out nothing but bangers for over a decade and for their first open world game they really did NOT have to go this hard. Instead of delivering an A+ to the teacher they went to college, got a degree, and stole the teacher’s job and now they're the ones designing the test. Idk how I’m going to enjoy other video games after this. I’ve been ruined. God help me.

I've been waiting for a game like this for so long. One of the few games that keeps me this immersed, excited, amazed and intrigued to just keep going and going and explore evry nook and cranny of a world this big is Hollow Knight, and as much as I love that game, having this kind of experience in 3D is just something else. The other obvious comparison with Breath of the Wild is fully justified, but Elden Ring surpasses it in some ways (besides being quite different anyway), in my opinion. The game gives me flashbacks of my now distant WoW days as well, which I mostly enjoyed for slowly progressing through that gigantic world to explore all of it. Exploration is probably my favourite aspect in video games, and Elden Ring takes it to another level. There's just so much to this game. Beautiful landscapes and structures, exciting places, weird characters and lore, a myriad of diverse weapons, armours and spells, an atmosphere so thick you can almost smell it, a moody score, a perfect level of challenge if you choose, great level design, the strange humor of the world itself and other players, awesome PvP, a horse that can double-jump, an incredible amount of varied enemies and bosses, optional and hidden away content that may include entirely new game mechanics, surprise after surprise and more and more and more. I don't know how they managed to create all of this, at this quality. There's something exciting around almost every corner - it's an adventure like no other. Even though this game is challenging most of the time, being in this world and roaming its lands gives me a warm fuzzy feeling, it's kinda cozy and comforting.

I'm really happy that this game gets the reception it deserves, although I'm also really disappointed that Fromsoft didn't stuck the landing performance-wise. Apparently for some people the game is unplayable, but I'm lucky enough to be mostly unscathed with my rather old GTX 1070 (50-60fps at 1440p with rare stutters).

I'm far from finished with around 35 hours in, but the experience so far was pretty much perfect, aside from some extremely quickly attacking bosses that I just don't know how to handle, which is kind of frustrating, but that might just be me. Those damn dogs as well. It's really hard to think of any negatives at this point. I know this sounds super hyperbolic and may be influenced by recency bias, but if the game keeps up this quality until the end, however long that may take for me, it might dethrone Hollow Knight as my favourite game of all time. Oh and I'm gonna squeeze this game out like a lemon until there's nothing left that I haven't seen. In fact, I'm a little afraid of how the hell I'm gonna enjoy another game after this, especially souls-likes haha. Obviously I will, but right now I want to use all of the spare time I can get to play this game.

As an aside, here's a little self-imposed challenge I really enjoy: If you get teleported to a random place on the map in some way, try to get back to familiar territory without fast travelling, but you may run past enemies and use stealth. Also avoid looking at the map, you should always know your general location by looking for distant landmarks. This super amplifies the tense, adventurous feeling of the game until you get back to regular exploring.

Update after 70h+ playtime: Now after I doubled my playtime since I wrote this review, there have been some wrinkles showing. First and foremost, the game will get quite easy if you explore as thoroughly as me, since you'll be levelling up quicker than the enemies around you, so to speak. Now depending on who you are, this might not be a bad thing. But the fact of the matter is that the game is much more challenging in the beginning and gets progressively easier, which isn't a good thing I suppose. It might be intentional by the devs for this game to be easier, but the difficulty curve is flipped to what you'd normally expect. I enjoy the more relaxed pace compared to other Fromsoft games as well, but I do miss some of the tension. The game still isn't easy, mind you. It's just that sometimes I'm feeling like I'm steamrolling everything, even bosses.

The other things I've grown to mostly dislike are catacombs, and to a lesser extent, caves. They are pretty formulaic and mostly use the same assets. They also repeat bosses. I'd be okay to have some of these without bosses at all. Actually, when I happen upon a catacomb while exploring I'm a little disappointed and think "Okay, here we go again".

I'm still far from finished, and might even double my playtime again before I see the end, it's hard to say. I expect to have discovered close to everything the game has to offer before that, but we'll see. But I'm VERY fine with it taking even longer with that. So yes, these wrinkles don't really change the fact that this game is an incredible piece of work to me, and one of my favourite games of all time.

(This was originally written at launch and updated after my second playthrough in 2024.)

A move to an open world format was a natural evolution of the first few Souls titles. For better or worse, that is what this game delivers in a super cool new universe, with a relatively coherent story to boot. I found this at times to be the hardest From Software game to date, and at others the easiest, which was an odd experience at times. Through both excitement and pain, I could hardly put the game down.

Elden Ring's art direction, mostly in its environments, enemies, and skyboxes, is so spectacular at points that I won't share examples, since I'd rather you stumble upon it yourself in game. The game's world has such a sense of awe that is unmatched in fantasy RPGs and most games in general, even those that are technically superior. Pop-in, open world slowdown, and other visual jank slightly hurt the otherwise exceptional presentation at launch, but seem to have been patched.

The move to a true open world for a Soulslike makes a lot of sense conceptually and gave me an unforgettable experience of uncovering it all in my own way. Even on my second playthrough, I discovered amazing things I never saw before and found new ways to get to places I already knew. I found, however, that the extreme open-endedness can give the game an awkward challenge curve. It was frustrating that many things felt either over- or under-powered when I reached them. Only on my second playthrough with knowledge of the whole world did I feel like I got an experience that flowed well.

Another consequence of that open-endedness is that the hunt for upgrades to weapons and summons can be annoying if you don't know where to go. I kept finding "Smithing Stone 5" when I still needed "Smithing Stone 2" for example, and later on it feels impossible to find enough Level 7+ stuff. If you get lucky or know where to look, you can find a way to purchase extras of these at the right time, but this upgrade system just feels fundamentally ill-fitting for a game of this format.

Even when the balance and progression feel off, the dungeons and bosses are often so cool that it can be looked past. Optional side content has big questlines and areas that are 100% worth seeing. Other parts do feel more like filler, and you never know which is around any given corner... Unlike a lot of missable stuff in prior games, most average-skill players will end up doing the "optional" content anyway just because the resources it gives are near-required to even finish the game.

While combat doesn't quite feel as good as Bloodborne or Sekiro to me, it's still one of their best overall systems. One reason is just the huge array of options you get. If anything, there are so many options that for an average player like myself, the enemy design is not as doable with classic solo melee tactics as I would have liked. Enemy AI routines have never felt so unpredictable in their timings, reach, and aggression, which is brutal to get used to, but admittedly necessary to counter all the ways you can give yourself an advantage. There are some truly painful bosses, but some that are amazing—just have to accept both here.

In summary, this game can have issues with balancing, structure, pacing, etc. but is absolutely stunning as an overall experience of immersion, atmosphere, exploration, and adventure. I disliked parts of both playthroughs, but mostly loved it. I highly recommend the game and think it's even better now that more info is out there to help even the odds against its most troublesome foes.