4/5 ★ – Fernofai's review of Elden Ring.

It took me over a year to finish Elden Ring. Not only because it's a long game, but also because it took me very long to come along with the Open World. Elden Ring has the same peculiarity as the Dark Souls games, namely to reveal its story and lore only to the ones who really, really want to know. It does the same thing with telling people where to go and what to do. That may be cool, if you are playing Elden Ring only to stray around in the world and take what you get - and you get a plenty - but it's incredible annoying if you want to get progress in the main story. It gives you some hints though, such as that the sites of lost grace (i.e. checkpoints) point roughly in the direction of a bigger objective and very few quests even have quest markers. Lastly the world itself has some glaring landmarks such as Stormveil Castle or the Elden Tree, which you obviously want to reach. Nevertheless I struggled heavily with the Open World and was very frustrated until the game suddenly turned into a more linear - still highly branched and complex - Dark Souls-like Level Design. This was the point where my motivation came back and I could finish the second half of the game in less than a month. Apart from this navigation and orientation issue of mine, the game delivers the classic Souls-like combat and exploration experience. Some new things include a horse-like animal you can ride and even fight from, which was very fun. You have more possibilities of equipping your weapons with different unique abilities and there is a whole crafting system which I barely used. The beautiful world features monumental architecture, epic bosses and unexpected encounters and secrets around every corner. Everything is rounded off by an incredibly immersive soundtrack. I would say, that Elden Ring is close to perfect, if there wasn't the fact that it simply couldn't motivate me to play for a significant part of the game. All things considered it was still an overwhelmingly positive experience which I can recommend!