5/5 ★ – Just_Deli's review of Elden Ring.

I said this list had no order, but I will be honest this is defintley a 'saved the best for last' kinda situation. What I wrote in 2022 about Elden Ring. "I fully believe this game is special, massive and extremely beautiful in a tragic gothic way. But I am not a Dark Souls kinda guy. This game is easily the most accessible Dark Souls game out and I really do like this one, but it just isn't for me enough to be in my top 5 this year... but everyone should give it a shot at least." With that context in mind I will just say this, I thnk Elden Ring is the greatest game created so far. Sometime around May of this year, with the June DLC looming, I decided I would try this game again. I hadn't touched it since March of 2022, but I really wanted to be excited for the DLC, so I knew I needed to finally complete this game. 5 hours in I was fighting, and really struggling, against Margit (the first mainline boss) and I was about to give up again, because I didn't feel it was worth it. I had a friend give me a few tips about how combat worked, and I followed a short build guide to obtain a really big sword. 100 in-game hours later, I became an Elden Lord defeating the final boss at 3 a.m. The pure satisfaction and joy of beating a really difficult Elden Ring boss is easliy among my most unforgettable gaming moments ever, and you do that like 20-30 times in the span of this game. I never considered myself to be someone who could just sit and attempt killing a boss for hours on end, and yet I did with this game. The thing that makes Elden Ring so special is because of how well it is made, it is almost never the game's fault for you dying (except the Fire Giant...), every death, every battle with a boss is a learning experience. You fight and learn the 'dance' that is the fight and perfect it. The other thing I think makes it feel so special is it is currently the best example of "If you can see it, you can go there" because it is one of the few games I have played where It is as true as can be. Not only is it true, but they do it on the grandest of scales possible. Think of a moment when you start a game, maybe it is an open world RPG, and sometime after playing through a tutorial, it leads you up on to a cliffside and shows you the vast size of the world and you get treated with a beautiful shot of the games landscape and maybe even the title card. Ok, so in Elden Ring this happens like every 5-10 hours over the course of 100+ hours of playing the game. Every location you discover, every dungeon, castle and cave you come across is grand in design and thoughtfully handcrafted by the geniuses over at Fromsoftware. I remember after being 60-70 hours in, and I finally arrived to the main city in the middle of the map and was treated to that landscape view showing me all of this new area I had discovered, I said out loud to a few friends watching, "WHAT GAME IS DOING IT LIKE THIS?" This is all just the base game. I have some things to say about the DLC. I understand so many were upset a DLC was nominated for GOTY this year. But like I said as I discovered the city of Leyndell, WHAT GAME IS DOING IT LIKE THIS?!?! This DLC came at a perfect time and it was a perfect ending to my time with Elden Ring. The sheer sense of scale and discovery I experienced with this DLC made me feel like I was experiencing Elden Ring on launch. I am so thankful for that, because it was the one part I felt like I was missing after waiting so long to finally come back. Souls-heads are some of the silliest, most insufferable gamers, at least on the internet, but one thing is for sure, they aren't wrong when they say this game is a masterpiece.