Elden Ring (2022)

Everything I've seen about Elden Ring looks amazing. I love the imagery and the way they've created the art. Just the player characters tattered cape looks so perfect. It all has a sort of grit-ieval Norse apocalypse feel to it that so appeals to the old D&Der in me.

But I'm also pretty bad at games that require reflexes and good hand-eye coordination. Fighting games, racing games, action sports games, platformers, you name it, I'm the reason they make story mode in games. Not that I'm completely hopeless but there's a reason I've always preferred the turn-based genre.

So I've always steered well clear of the "souls-like" genre. It's hard to imagine having to dodge, block, and hit all in time to a fast and erratically moving enemy. But seeing Elden Ring is making me feel like I'm missing out. If only there were subcontractors you could pay to beat the bosses for you.

I am honestly in awe at the scope and ambition of this game. This is the kind of game where in high school, after playing Dark Souls 1 for the first time, you'd have silly "what if this game was open world but dark souls combat dude" conversations with your buds. Of course this was before the market was over saturated with open worlds but this is THAT game and it is absolutely incredible. I cannot describe just how much fun I'm having with every hour I put into this game. This ticks every single box in what I love about the open world genre and I'm struggling to come up with any negatives as far as my own personal tastes go. I can definitely see people struggling with various aspects of the game and it definitely has the usual open world issues where there might just be a whole lot of nothing but walking around and exploring in between dungeons and boss fights but for me this is perfectly fine. I'm very content with just exploring and stumbling upon a well hidden dungeon or an open world boss that may completely demolish me. Not just that, but the art direction is absolutely stellar in regards to environments and enemy design and makes traversing the world, in my opinion, a really good time.

I have to say though that my experience may be different than others because I'm also doing a coop playthrough with my best friend. This is also his first souls game ever and seeing him go through the stages of "first time player of souls genre" has also been a blast. We're both about 30-40 hours in and it still feels like we've barely scratched the surface. We were both awestruck when we picked up the map in Liurnia and basically saw the map triple in size to what it was before and the map has only gotten even bigger since then. Really looking forward to putting in more time into this game and this is already easily my game of the year/decade/century and pretty much favorite game ever.

One of the best things From did with this game is help me realize that I don't dislike open world games, I dislike modern open world design. Specifically I hate how open world games are generally just a flat plain, where the fastest route between you and your destination is a straight line. It strips the art of level design, something that used to be intrinsic to all games, straight out of the equation.

Elden Ring may be an open-world game, but it's the most visually and geographically interesting one I've yet seen. The differences in verticality are insane, there are difficult geographic obstacles to navigate around, there are major chokepoints between areas you need to find. I suppose it's only apt that the developers who created the best 3D level design way back in 2011 have managed to translate some of that magic into an open-world format.

The thing I don't get is why is this so special? Why is it such a novelty for a fantasy open world game to LOOK FANTASTICAL. Why is the world of The Witcher 3 and Skyrim so fucking BORING in comparison? There's no reason they had to be. Am I just old fashioned for wanting giant magic trees and huge dragons and underground cities and impossibly sheer cliffs jutting into the stratosphere with castles atop them? Is that not what all the normies want out of fantasy these days?

I spent literally all day completing side quests and gathering resources to build up my character for an incredibly difficult late-game boss. At least I enjoyed most of the side stuff, because I still can’t do this one. I summoned people when I could find someone, and they died faster than me—feels nearly hopeless.

Reasons I hate this mandatory boss:

1. It is just 2 bosses from optional content combined into one fight, their synergy is annoying, and they share one huge health bar
2. There is a piercing sword attack that inexplicably can hit you through solid objects (that also means you can’t really see it coming)
3. There are AOE spells and other attacks that make it legitimately impossible to see if you are near them
4. No AI summon like Ornstein & Smough to even the odds, and my castable summons feel absolutely useless
5. Damage output far beyond any of the story bosses immediately preceeding this in the game

I heard a bunch of reviewers didn’t even get to finish the game before putting out their reviews—this is probably why for some of them, and it’s not even the end of the game. Back to the grind…

16 hours in and damn this game is amazing! There's definitely Breath of the Wild -vibes and let's face it, this is basically Dark Souls 4 and thats a good mix. It's even a little bit ridicilous that every term from Dark Souls has been changed with new ones.

There's great amount of variety how you want to play the game and each situation, and atleast the strength-build with Morning Star and shield feels just amazing. Lands Between is intresting to explore and there's something intresting everywhere you go. Open World in Souls game is great because if you hit a wall in some area, you can always go different direction to get some gear or level up and come back.

This might be, not just the game of the year, but the best game of all time! I just love this game!

literally first time booting it up i played for 14 hours straight and i was SO DAMN SHOCKED when i realized this i thought it only passed like 5 hours or so lol

so this is how nintendo fans felt when botw dropped huh?

but seriously, up to now this is a masterpiece. from have exceeded themselves with this one. i'm forever a miyazaki bitch fr

In the last couple days I played this game a LOT. I’m not even gonna say how much because it’s too much. Lol

Today I fought one of the coolest bosses in any of their games, visually just stunning, really mechanically fun, decent challenge, while also being one of those “story”-style fights all in one. I also saw some jaw-dropping new areas and got to find and unlock some pretty cool stuff. I had a real nice long chunk where I just got to explore and kill stuff and make great progress.

Unfortunately many of my fears about the game pretty much are true and grind the fun to a halt at times. The content spread through the open world is mixed in quality, and because of the nonlinearity its challenge level is usually either way too easy or way too hard. The overall boss roster reminds me disturbingly of Dark Souls II which had great highs but the overall worst set of foes. Optional dungeons are generally fine but simplistic and with mediocre rewards, so I can only do so many. I have the most fun with the critical path content, but its balancing is so frustrating.

Main bosses at times seem to be balanced under the assumption that you have done a ridiculous amount of that side stuff. I left a hard boss for hours to do side content and exploration, came back and it felt like it barely even made a difference. So often the bosses just one-shot me even with a 31 in the health stat. You can just go back and do something else yet again, but I don’t think it makes for a fun well-flowing experience.

This kind of challenge in my opinion should not be so nonlinear and so tied to stats. The game feels jarring and awkward in its progression as you uncover stuff in your own weird order. I doubt I’d ever want to replay this knowing that I’d need to spend hours and hours building myself up to even stand a chance on some fights. So I don’t know, time for an hour of grinding tomorrow morning? It’s going to be another From game that I hate to love.

I don't know why I even gave this a shot. I couldn't stand Dark Souls games when I tried them before, but I guess I figured maybe I'd get it this time around? This game absolutely will not get you into the series if you haven't liked it before, it's just more of the same. I quit prior to two hours in so I could refund, but the open world wasn't really doing it for me either. The game plays slow enough without stopping to pick up berries and kill animals for bones to make arrows or whatever. I guess my streak of absolutely not getting and not enjoying wildly acclaimed games continues haha.

Also good god the stuttering on PC. I have a 11th gen i9, a Radeon 6900 XT, 32 GB of memory, and a sixty-three-hundred dollar suit. COME ON!

It feels weird to finally say this, but I have now played a sizable amount of Elden Ring, up until the end of one of its central required "Legacy Dungeons," and I am just taking a break now and ready to share some spoiler-free thoughts...

I really like the amount of options available for combat already. I have found a weapon type I never would have considered using in prior From games (basically just Wolverine claws that stack a bleed meter on the enemy) and it feels great. I do think this flexibility is feeling a bit like a double-edged sword (ha-ha, get it...), because I frankly just want to use melee combat, but that feels like I am making the game harder for myself as it might expect me to use ranged combat and summons liberally as well.

Another thing that the game is making it hard for me to do is to follow the literal glowing path it sets out for you through the game. I am not here to play this game for 80, 90, 100+ hours and poke around every corner of its open world for hidden stuff. Just not how I enjoy games, even my favorites. I looked around the opening big area for a while and honestly didn't find much. Following the clearest path forward instead, I feel like I am already woefully underleveled for the boss I'm stuck on and have no idea where to begin catching up. Dying in 2-3 hits to these bosses makes them frustrating tests of endurance. This was not an issue for me to nearly this extent in their prior games.

You might have heard the game is an easier take on Dark Souls. I can see how someone who covered every inch of the game as their job would say that, or how a hardcore player who wants to kill every optional boss might say that. I don't think that means the game is going to be easier for the average player, though, and especially not for a total newcomer. Its early required bosses have incredibly erratic and unpredictable timings and ranges. Demon's Souls still feels like a much better entrypoint into this type of game in my opinion. It feels like I died almost as much to the first couple required bosses in this game as all that game's bosses combined...

Despite my relative lack of interest in its open-world-ness, there is definitely still enough here to satisfy me. The main dungeon areas have been challenging and mostly fun, gameplay feels great, enemy and boss designs can be devilish in a way that's fun to learn, and there are some great surprises in cutscenes, walking around, and what enemies do in general. It's definitely apparent why it is resonating with most people so far, and I am excited to see what comes next.