Elden Ring is simply a game that the player naturally adapts to their own style of play. Challenging at times, vicious at others, but mostly incredibly fun. The enjoyable pace makes the hours of play pass by like water, and each path opens up a few more, only to come together again after a fair amount of exploration before the next big reveal. [Issue#318]
Elden Ring is a superlative title, one of those works capable of becoming an event and becoming engraved in the collective imagination. It achieves this by remaining faithful to its formula and exporting its identity to the concept of the open world, achieving its own personal approach, resulting in a world that is visually stunning, and that works with overwhelming precision in terms of mechanics. An excellent videogame that also maintains the concreteness of its proposal.
Elden Ring is personally the best souls game in the series, you can practically create your own difficulty by using different builds and every boss is so unique and this game has some of my favourite bosses in gaming history
Elden Ring packs its intricately crafted world - a world which should be used as a reference point for open-world design moving forward - with more impressive boss fights and secrets than you can shake a giant greatsword at. Although its punishing combat system may not be to everyone’s taste, it is an essential experience both for FromSoftware newcomers and seasoned veterans alike.
Elden Ring is a crowning achievement of over a decade of Miyazaki’s and FromSoftware’s work, and an amazing example of how to find a whole new level of fun in a well-known and somewhat worn-out formula. The open world turned out to be a perfect fit for the genre and you can still tell this masterpiece was created by the famous Japanese studio. I honestly haven’t been so excited about a game since the first Dark Souls.
Elden Ring feels like the natural evolution of a video game series that continues to reinvent itself after more than 13 years of its birth. FromSoftware is simply the best at what they do. While there are some technical issues and repetitive structures and creatures, Elden Ring is a cruelly wonderful piece of work and one of the best adventure games of recent years.
The years of waiting were worth it, Elden Ring is brilliant. It offers a huge amount of content, a beautiful world and addictive gameplay. But the series does start to feel a little bit stale.
Elden Ring needed to be fresh and bold, and
it succeeds, putting you in charge of your
own adventure. However the open world has
some uneven terrain. [Issue#12, p.80]
Build variety , Atmosphere , Boss fights , Replayability and every other word you can probably think of that made these types of games special is pretty much true for Elden Ring as well . At the same time old wounds remained and some are even worse due to the open world . Balancing is all over the place , The final stretch is a test of patience , Too many copy/paste bosses to fill the needlessly humongous world with things to do , Obtuse item placements , Side missions and cheap beginners traps return with a vengeance etc. It's good but I'm somewhat tired of these types of games hiding behind the "skill issue" meme and thus most people downplaying legit flaws out of fear of getting called out
Game world is bland. Story and cinematics is almost non-existant. NPCs are boring and only give riddles.
Gameplay is also boring and made for mmo-kiddies that like to grind and grind and grind.
For the TLDR; it wasn't fun, more like painful torture. Maybe the initial user experience was better, however my experience was awful.
For the actual design and look of the game, I rate it easily a 9.5 to 10. The level of detail and look was incredible and breathtaking. For the musical score, I have to be honest, I was hoping for a bit more variation. While the sound quality, and mixing was excellent, the music was too somber and depressing. You expect it when rummaging through dungeons, however, there's no uplifting moments in the game, it's all depressing. For that I give a 6.
The game design is a mess. What I mean is, the user is set into an open world with no questline to follow, no guide, zip. Figure it out on your own and hope for the best. You don't know if you're supposed to head north south, whatever. The vast level of secrets and quest details would be impossible to follow without a youtube video. How they figured these things out is beyond me. Sometime you exhaust all dialog with an NPC, only now you have to search for them again in some other part of the world and hope the questline isn't broken.
It would have been nice if there were actual functioning towns and places where every NPC isn't an enemy. Every city, barracks, castle, etc. is an enemy camp aside from the Roundtable and a select few other places.
The biggest issue though, is the gameplay. I'm spamming the buttons to run, drink a health potion, whatever, and my character either isn't moving or responds too late while the boss jumps across a massive chasm in a fraction of a second only to slice me to ribbons multiple times before I can do anything. I was one-shot killed so many times it was ridiculous. The screen changes to second phase of the boss and within one second, no lying, insta-killed. For some inexplicable reason, healing your character requires you to come to a slow walk; you can drink a health potion while running. So, running away and trying to drink a health potion after you've had a special attack that took 90% of your health away just means they will hit you multiple times in the back as you try to regain health. I leveled to 206, re-specced multiple times, used numerous buffs (trinkets, armor, potions, flasks, weapons, etc.) and still got my ass handed to me. I play for fun and relaxation, not to get demoralized and frustrated to the point I'm cursing at my screen. I enjoy a challenge but the game just wasn't fun for me. I've been gaming since the early 80's, from Atari, PC, multiple gens of multiple platforms (all of them). I've never played a game that's pissed me off as much as this. I was so excited to play it since I'm a huge fan of RPG's and the genre. This game will break you.
SummaryA New World Created By Hidetaka Miyazaki And George R. R. Martin
ELDEN RING, developed by FromSoftware, Inc. and BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Inc., is a fantasy action-RPG adventure set within a world created by Hidetaka Miyazaki creator of the influential DARK SOULS video game series; and George R.R. Martin author of The New York Times b...