I’d like to start this review by outright stating I am not a diehard FromSoftware/Soulsborne fan. Before Elden Ring, my experience with Souls games was limited to Bloodborne, which I ended up loving more than I could have possibly expected, considering I’d previously avoided games from this developer as I play video games as an escape from the real world, and all the stress it brings. Playing games from a developer with the opposite intentions in mind, stressing the player out with needless, tear inducing boss battles, with zero options for difficulty settings never appealed to me, as less options in a games is always a plus, right? That’s sarcasm folks.
That being said, once I finally dived into Bloodborne I realized the difficulty of the games has been vastly overstated. Just like any other RPG, so long as you spend a fair amount of time leveling, you’ll progress through FromSoftware games just fine; that is, until Elden Ring. Even over-leveled at 154, beating the final boss was outrageously obnoxious. Not necessarily hard, mind you, but tedious as all hell and still tries to make your level grind feel nearly pointless.
That being said, I was beyond pumped to jump into this new open world AAA title from the devs that gave me Bloodborne, and experience this new massive undertaking they’d taken on in an attempt to widen the fan base of a niche market they stuck themselves into of their own doing (or undoing).
As of today, I finally finished Elden Ring after putting a whopping 223 hours into the game. Not to toot my own horn, but I feel like spending that much time on a game grants me the slightest bit of entitlement to consider myself a pretty fair judge on everything the game has to offer, so I’ll start with the positives, followed by the negatives, and I’ll try and note specifics along the way.
Pros:
Open world is huge. Nearly every nook and cranny has some secret to uncover.
The game is massively front-loaded, meaning they put the best stuff in the first 20+ hours to scale highly with critics who rate the game before finishing. So the first few days of time you put into the game will be the best.
The first few bosses, story and optional, will give you a great sense of achievement when you manage to take them down after some leveling, and they all seem very balanced and fair, even when they’re slapping you around.
Sadly, that about does it for the pros. Now the cons.
Cons:
Graphics are awful. I’m not even a even a graphics snob, but playing it on my PS5, I chose performance mode (60 FPS) over graphics mode. After seeing how terrible the graphics looked (I mean early PS3 bad, seriously) I tried to switch to visual performance mode, and the lag was so bad, it was unreal. I’m an old dude, I could care less about 60FPS, that is, before I witnessed the horrific lag on visual mode. It was unbearable. Witnessing a PS5 stutter that much was shocking. And, even worse, sadly the “upscaled” graphics mode is almost impossible to see any true improvement in graphics. It’s that bad. The difference is negligible at best.
Next, not only do the graphics look two generations old, but the gameplay itself just screams PS2 indie RPG. Anyone expecting a story, or modern gameplay we’ve become accustomed to, should search elsewhere. Elden Ring (like all FromSoftware games) puts all their effort in epic boss fights, and forgets a game should tell a cohesive story. Nothing about Elden Ring is cohesive, and if you’re expecting a AAA story RPG, you’ll be massively disappointed. Having loved Bloodborne, I’m okay with FromSoftware’s lazy storytelling, but considering George RR Martin wrote such a lore heavy world for them, it’s absolutely unforgivable that their first attempt at an open world game requires you to read item descriptions for the slightest tidbit of information on the story, info that constantly contradicts itself and just never adds up.
Side quests. Holy heck. One thing any regular video game player can always whine about in open world RPGs are side quests. Depending on the effort put in, they can range from “fetch quests” to “involving fun fetch quests.” Sadly, in Elden Ring, they fall into this previously non-existent category. They’re neither engaging nor rewarding. You will absolutely never feel any sense of achievement from finishing a side quest. Quite the opposite, you’ll find yourself grinding through one just to get some random lame item that might help you against one particular boss of over a hundred at best. To make matters worse, the NPCs who offer quests literally interact with you less than a PS2 NPC would.
On that note, the entire game feels like an upscaled PS2 unfinished indie game. Other than the thrill of exploration and the challenging bosses (both of which lose their charm 20 hours in) this game barely feels like a AAA title at all. It’s got more of a Euro Jank feel. Add to that the pure imbalance of the entire game, and after the first front loaded charm wears off, you’ll go from feeling like you’re having the time of your life, to doing everything you can to rush through the rest of the game so you can be done with it forever.
It’s biggest, unforgivable flaw that brings it from a 5 star game to a lenient 3 star, is the constant unbalanced gameplay you’ll feel. Considering the game has several options at the beginning for character builds, so that people have multiple choices on how they wish to play the game, be it a melee build or magic build, no matter which build you choose, the game will eventually punish you for your choice. Notably so, melee builds will be constantly made to feel bad for choosing that route. Nearly every awesome item you acquire in the game is geared towards a magic or sorcery build, and most of the early to mid bosses can be cheesed using magic. However, the game then switches gears, and later bosses can quite literally be impossible to beat with a magic build, requiring you to respec your character, something you can only do a few times a play-through. To me, it’s absolutely unforgivable to release a game with that level of imbalance.
My last note on the game, is that FromSoftware seems to have some major issues realizing what makes their games great, mainly the exploration factor, and in their attempt to branch out to a wider audience with Elden Ring, they massively failed. We all love beating that challenging boss, but a few bosses in Elden Ring are outright egregious to take on, and require abusing the hell out of the devs overlooked items/weapons/cheeses etc that might make things just a tad easier, before it gets patched a week later because FromSoftware has either lost touch with what makes their games great, or more likely, they hide their failings as a developer by distracting us with difficult bosses, so we forget the fact that they can’t tell a story to save their lives, even when one of the world’s most famous authors wrote the story for them.
Bottom line. It’s a great game you’ll fall in love with, but ultimately find yourself pleading for a swift finish so that you can delete it from your system and never have to suffer through its mediocrity again.
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Should I Get It Reviews
Just what I thought Elden Ring would be. The open world is huge and immersive with a lot of places to adventure about. Sure the difficulty can be off putting to none Souls/Borne/Sekiro fans, but the earlier areas are easy enough to get you acclimated to the difficulty coming later. I’ve put in about 39 hours and I’ve technically spent my time riding around the world finding maps to see how big it is and boy it doesn’t disappoint and surprises you the deeper you go in.There’s another reviewer who gave the details on the game so I’m not going to repeat what he said but one advice; go in blind and enjoy the world.Edit:Clocked in 100 hours and the game haven’t lost its touch. I’ve sharpened my rolling skills, participated in multiple invasion and PvP content and still loving it. I believe I’ve only uncovered 60% of the map since taking a peek on the whole map online. The story is great and the feeling of discovering something have not dwindled one bit. Me and my son are enjoying this game with the help of group passwords. If you’re still reading this then that means you are interested and should go ahead and buy this game.Update:After 200+ hours of fun and discovery I finally got the platinum trophy. People complaining about the game being hard have to realize that it does have an easy mode except it is not in the options menu but the items you uncover during your travels. You’re missing out on one of best experience in gaming just because you’re too used to handing out rewards in a silver platter. If you are buying this game, take your time, learn the mechanics and enjoy the game. The full price is way worth it and without microtransactions or DRMs to ruin your experience. If you are still reading this then what are you waiting for!? Put this in your cart and buy it. See you inside tarnished!
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