VideoGame The Cracks on the Ring
I loved Elden Ring, I don't regret purchasing it on launch, and had a ton of fun with it. From really nailed the Sandbox aspect of the game allowing the player to explore the world at their own pace, keeping most landmarks within sight in astonishing visuals. I recommend it for people who were afraid of the souls series.
But the purpose of this review is to address problems that many reviewers didn't delve into.
This game is fun, but as the time of this review, its absolutely broken.
Ruins the game? No. Ruins the fun? Depends on your play style, but from a technical standpoint (won't discuss if boss x or y is 'cool' nor story) its still broken. In fact, my opinion is that stretching the Dark Souls Formula into an open sandbox opened cracks that the From Developers couldn't deal with. And yes, I played every single Soulsborne title from From, with multiple builds (I will try to be brief due size constraints).
Basically, most bosses (and enemies) have traits that, while isolated, aren't especially harmful, but when repeated over and over, or worse, joined, makes their specific points a chore to go through having:
A- Tracking attacks (will track where the player is and attack that specific spot, even if they roll)
B- Input-tracking (did you press the attack button? They will immediately jump back, hit the healing button? They will jump to where you are and attack you).
C- An extremely aggressive A.I with RNG attack pattern.
D- Pack a whollop of damage, capable of downing even a tank-build player with just one or few hits.
And the further into the game you go, the more you see these traits cranked up to eleven or intertwined. Margit had one tracking attack and kept high aggressivity, and his A.I was varied enough that you were able to give one or two hits between his attacks. No problem! Except that, in later bosses, these traits are often combined into attack messes that will immediately react to you counter-attacking, closing already tight punishment windows and often spamming area of effect attacks that will kill the player. Got a sliver of hp left? They will react to you either backing down, or worse, drinking estus. And don't forget that this game is HUGE. You will see the same boss over and over again, worse, with dual or even trio versions. Now add everything together. You have bosses with random patterns of punishing moves that won't leave many windows of opportunity and will chase you. This also have the added effect of making the consumables nearly useless. Some of the ingredients of the harder-hitting consumables are finite, so why waste them in a boss can one-shot you? Enemies will often go far beyond their usual range to hunt you down and also have tracker strikes and their a.i is so disjointed that they break at weird thigns. I defeated the first stage of the last boss by standing literally still and just attacking. Most of the fights where you can ride your horse were obviously not prepared for hit-and-run combat, many of the weapons have problems that are still being patched (by mostly toning down). So it doesn't feel balanced, more that both sides of the struggle have nukes.
Also, for those saying that "I haven't updated my vit enough", I did. The same problems are there, and you can still be killed by an over-aggressive combo that will stun-lock you to death at the smallest misstep.
The size of the game also presented problems on its own not just to repetition. NP Cs in previous Fromsoft games often disappeared, but followed the player's path, and due to its linearity were often easy to find (with 'guide dang it' exceptions). The patch that shows where the npcs are on the map was like a band-aid to a bullet wound, because it won't say where they move to, and since they WILL go to areas that you may have cleared, you'll still have to check the guides regardless.
And while I won't discuss the story itself, the From Soft style of storytelling is ill-suited for a game so large. They need to give the player journal to keep track of the plot (a la 'Yakuza' that updates as you meet npcs), because, sincerely, how do you expect to keep track of a npc that was only mentioned in the intro, once, and then appears at the end? Do they want me to keep reading every single piece of armor every time I want to remember what happened area X? It gets egregious when you remember that the names are alliterative. Who is Godwin? Wasn't Godfrey? No, it was Godrick. Didn't I just fight Ranni? No it was Renalla. And so on. Remember, this is a full open-world, not linear and contained. Add 50h exploring another side of the map, and I couldn't remember who was who. My saving grace was Gideon who at least reminded me of who SOME of those people were.
Lastly... I feel that the soundtrack is quite weak. Dark Souls 1 had haunting songs, battle-ready songs, sad and tragic songs, every one fitting their boss like a glove. I honestly can only remember Elden Ring's last boss soundtrack because it finally pumped things up.
In the end, if you haven't bought it, I do reccomend it, but at least after some patches. And for the love of Jolly Cooperation, ignore the 'Git Gud' people, they came out of the woods in force for this one.
VideoGame 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
VideoGame The height of the Open World genre; a masterpiece
I'm utterly blown away by the quality of this game. FROM has been for a long time, my favorite developer, but this puts there other games to shame. And it puts the likes of the The Elder Scrolls and Breath of the Wild to shame with the scope of it's open world and high quality.
In terms of exploration nothing has been ever this rewarding, you get a giant sandbox of verticality to explore with all the bells and whistles FROM has added to make the journey a bit easier. The new horse, the jumping, the crafting it all builds to a familiar, but vastly transformed Souls experience.
The combat is pretty much Dark Souls III on steroids with some elements of Sekiro added onto it and it's fine, if it's not broken don't fix it. The only aspect i'm lukewarm towards is the bosses; quality has dropped a little even if there's still plenty of fantastic fights.
The lore is also much more detailed then past Souls games; npc's and bosses generally act more like characters. But it's still cryptic, which is good, because people asking for stuff otherwise want to get of FROM's idenity.
In conclusion; it's my favorite Open World game since Dragon's Dogma, and it blows everything out of the water. Elder Scrolls, the Breath of the Wild games, and Grand Theft Auto might as well be dead franchises, this is the new standard
10/10
VideoGame Good, but not Golden
My experience with Elden Ring basically can be chalked up to two distinct feelings: pre-Forbidden Land, and Post-Forbidden Land.
Pre-Forbidden Land was a fun and unique experience, it was where I had the most fun out of the game exploring a new world with an interesting story, motivation, and gameplay experience. Most bosses were tough but could be beaten without 3-4 attempts if I stopped and came back after examining my playstyle or getting more levels/items. I was intrigued by the world and wanted to explore as much as I could, do the sidequests to see the outcome, or explore the underground zones because of their unique atmosphere.
In general, this half of my experience felt like the traditional sentament of "Hard but fair" with some BS thrown in at times. I never hit a wall, or felt that the game was outright bullshitting me on something. Difficulty of the areas at the time was hard but fair.
After getting to the Forbidden Lands though, I started to sour on the game. Enemies and bosses suddenly were hitting so hard that even with 45+ Vigor, I was nearly killed instant by some enemies. Many areas relied on frustrating gimmicks like the Haligtree, or the bosses had outright broken moves or mechanics that were not at all something I could properly handle. Bosses like Maleina, Maliketh, Mohg, Ser Gideon, and more relied on BS moves or mechanics to turn hard fights into "You have to do specific things perfectly to win", which is not something I found fun after a certain point. Maliketh for example took two hours to beat because nothing I was trying worked, and I only won because I got lucky.
I loved the fight with Godfrey and I liked Radgon but the Elden Beast was a huge let down, I don't know why it feels just boring to fight, but besides some BS moves, it really felt like a tacked on fight.
However, I feel most let down by the story, or rather, how the story telling was handled in this game. It feels like Elden Ring relies a lot on just saying stuff happened or just are something, but doesn't want to leave guesses for why it happened/was a thing, and this makes it hard to feel as interested in the setting. For example: Why did Malenia and Radhan fight? The game just says they did and there are no suggested reasons in game for why, which forces players to write the story for it. This has happened in past titles, but they usually had more in the world to suggest why it happened. For example: Havel being found sealed inside a tower just happens, but there are item descriptions and placements found that suggest why he was there, which makes for a compelling story.
Working towards getting those answers or at least, finding my own, was a major appeal of the game at first, but by the end I felt like I had been given no answers at all, or that I couldn't formulate one. It made my exploring feel almost worthless, which when combined with the frustrating late game bosses, reused bosses/enemies, and general progression of some of the sidequests, made it feel like the last chunk of the game was rushed or unfinished.
I still like the game, and want to replay it, but I can't help but feel like there was a lot to this game that felt unfinished or rushed near the end.
I've never written a review before so hopefully this all makes some sense.