Reviews VideoGame / Elden Ring

A Phenomenal Game That Suffers From the Same Old Problems

As contrarian as I tend to be, even I must admit that Elden Ring is a fantastic piece of media. The graphics, the music, the story and the gameplay are all of the quality that we've come to expect from Fromsoftware.

But therein lies the problem, we've come to expect the same things over and over again. From has a problem with innovation, despite most games having some new mechanics they often don't feel well implemented. From's strategy is to use games in the series as a proof of concept for something they intend to do in the sequel. For example a large number of things from DS 3 have made a return in ER, even though that game wasn't nearly as well polished. The problem with that is the devs often reuse the more unpopular part of their games. Once again we have an overreliance on poisonous swamp levels and areas that force you to take damage because you...walk...so...slow through the environment. Disturbingly, this is actually made much harder than usual by the items used to cure poison and it's variants being so difficult to find.

To compensate for that, ER implements a crafting system which I found to be almost entirely useless. None of my builds have any need for weapon buffs, bombs or throwing knives, which make up the bulk of the options. The only thing I used crafting for was for antidotes to status effects.

I think the game is very ambitious and it's good that From wanted to step out of their comfort zone by being Open World for a change but it still plays and reads like Dark Souls with a few words changed. A deceptively large chunk of the game takes place in narrow corridors where you aren't allowed access to your horse and the player is once again given the illusion of choice with your weapons. 90% of the weapons in Elden Ring are worthless, they're simply window dressing. That's why You Tube is abuzz with clickbait videos like "BROKEN OP BUILD" or "ABSOLUTELY BUSTED SWORD IS NOW BETTER" about 9 or 10 weapons: The rest just aren't worth talking about.

Finally, as a man who cares about story, I was disappointed with a bulk of the questlines. Many of them felt unfinished, especially Melina and Millicent. Also the lore seems to be missing who chunks, which I think has a lot to do with GRRM's original story being cut at one point in development. We have no reason to think that the world is coming to an end, but apparently it is. The dead are walking the earth, The Shattering is still being fought in a lot of places, and generally the entire continent appears to be abandoned save for like 5 people. This is all clearly a holdover from the Souls series which always take place in rotting and decaying kingdoms. In summary, I think the best way to say this is also the most controversial: Elden Ring should've been more like Elder Scrolls. The world should've felt more alive and vibrant, like things are happening without the Player being around.

7.5/10