4.5/5 ★ – nldemo's review of Elden Ring.

Elden Ring puts on a masterful display and redefines what an open world should be, but that open world formula turns out to be a double edged sword. Whether you are a returning fan of the Dark Souls genre, or this is your first endeavor, Elden Ring is a great way to discover what makes Souls games so damn great. I am still convinced that playing (and beating) Souls games makes you a better person. They teach humility and patience - skills many gamers (and let's be honest non-gamers too) would benefit from in our world of instant gratification and short attention spans. In a lot of ways, Elden Ring does feel like it could be Dark Souls 4. The story and lore might be the best standalone tale FromSoft has ever told, even if it is derivative of a Souls game. It is a natural evolution of the series and being disconnected from the Souls story line makes it a great place to jump in as your first Souls-like adventure. The one factor that really makes the game stand out from prior entries, is the truly massive and open world. In a time where open world games have become commonplace, Elden Ring truly does raise the bar for the open world experience. Rather than a map that is a list of checkmarks, it builds on Breath of the Wild's formula of see cool thing in the distance, go there and have a memorable experience/find cool stuff. It gives the player more freedom to explore in any direction, or go level/gear up elsewhere if you hit a roadblock on this path. It hides solutions and loot cleverly in a 3d environment. Counter intuitively, I would argue that the open world is simultaneously the one biggest downfall this game suffers from. This is for a few reasons, but mostly comes down to scale and repetition. I think the game would really benefit from trimming some of this fat down, so that each individual experience is a bit more special and unique. My personal time to beat this game was 113 hours, which was essentially 99% completion. I sought out every chest, quest, and boss fight I could. In that time, I got hoards of equipment and spells I would never use, but the lotto of finding them always came with a little bit of excitement. I also ended up repeating many boss fights (e.g. gargoyles, dragons, fire drakes, kitty statues, Erdtree Avatars, etc). Do I feel more satisfied from killing the same boss more than once? Not really. What about repeating the multiple optional "samey" catacombs or mining mini dungeons in each new area (which are reminiscent of Bloodborne's weakest link - the Chalice Dungeons)? I personally, do not. You could argue... "but why do everything?" Why not just look in a wiki and find the optimal build and skip everything else? Well, that comes down to personal enjoyment and what I believe is the ideal way to play Souls. Everyone is free to play their own way, and I hope that way maximizes your enjoyment of your games. In Souls games, the real joy for me is combing through each area, finding all the unique loot, bosses, and crazy challenges the game throws my way, and conquering all of them. I would love to have the ear of the game designers to understand their intent. Since I cannot, I try to interpret it as best I can. For these reasons I try to minimize my time on the wikis, I try to full clear each area (because they worked on them after all!), and I run with melee builds. Sure, spell casting is a perfectly viable option, but I just don't think you really get the true "experience" that way. But, if it gets you more into the game, by all means do that! Let's pause a moment to talk about the Souls formula. Souls requires the player's attention. It is tight and responsive controls (even if you don't approve of some of the default button mappings), that will punish you if you mash buttons in a panic. It is the occasional jank and relief from being able to cheese an encounter. It is a game that will kill you over and over, but almost always in fair ways that are the player's fault (or the result of simply learning a new encounter). It is best in class level and world design; where interconnectivity, shortcuts, secrets, and multi-directional paths to explore are second to none. With so much praise, what could change? I think we could definitely do with a little less time in the wikis. The game respects the player, but sometimes almost too much so. Things can get much too ambiguous and require you to interact with the community to figure things out. It's not the act of doing this that is the problem; rather the frequency in which the ambiguity occurs. For example, a quest NPC may be difficult to find, you complete his quest, and then he or she disappears again before letting you know they still have unfinished business. With no quest log, hints, or markers, how do we find them next? Well, if we're in a linear game, no big deal, but when that NPC has the option of going back to an abstract location in an area you explored 50 hours ago, good luck finding them without a wiki! There are also simply too many miscellaneous notes & paintings with abstract clues for a chance at loot, and too many main story characters with names starting with an "M" (Margit, Morgott, Mohg, Malenia, Maliketh, [another] Mohg, Miquella, Marika, Miriel, Melina, & Millicent), making it a bit more difficult than I think it needed to be to follow along with the story. The games lore and endings can be presented in unique ways, and like to leave things up to player interpretation, but again could be a little more forthcoming. The lore is super rich and interesting in all these games, but you really have to dig for it. Why not let the player enjoy it a little bit more without having to go to youtube for an explanation? Why create a masterful opening cinematic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kppMjL5doq4), but not actually include it in your game? I really appreciate the ability to respec my character, but with so much cool equipment it would be extra amazing if I could also respec my gear so that I could try out more builds. I may be coming off as overly negative, but it's only because I love this genre and the developer that created it. There are plenty of things Elden Ring has improved upon its predecessors - even if the Demons Souls remake had a better character creator than this game. For one, the budget is clearly in another biome than the original Demons Souls and Dark Souls. Regardless of release date, the graphics simply do not hold a candle to Elden Ring, and that's great news for welcoming in new players. The lighting in Elden Ring is excellent, even beyond other AAA games, especially in situations like navigating dungeons with a torch in hand. There are some exceptions such as the mountaintops covered in blizzards and mist, which even if that is developer intent can be pretty annoying in a game when you can't see a draw distance as good as Turok 64. Speaking of the dungeons, the game has a plethora of amazing ones and you really can get lost exploring all the paths, trying to figure out how to get those couple of dang items that you can see but just can't seem to figure out how navigate to. It also has some of the most fantastical and memorable boss fights I have experienced in the series, several of which making my top favorites (here's looking at you, Maliketh). Not to mention that the final boss himself was quite satisfying in both visual design, phases, abilities, and being a decent challenge. Besides the George RR Martin [debatable] influence on the lore, what else is new to the series in this game? The first of two major things that you'll obtain are spirit ashes, which give you the ability to summon spirit NPCs in certain areas and just about all boss fights. The ashes themselves are fun to collect as if they were Pokémon, and offer lots of different tactics and play styles. Maybe the intent was to give offline players more of an even footing with online players summoning friends, but the one major downside to these summons is that they end up making most boss fights trivial. Sure, I am an experienced Souls veteran at this point, but in no other Souls game was I able to one shot so many boss fights. It really just comes down to the summons being great tanks, which allows the player to sneak up on the bosses and dish out damage with much lower risk. This may be intended for drawing in new players, but I think it boils down to a simple miscalculation in game balance. The other new feature is our trusty steed Torrent, and I simply have only good things to say about him. It was a pleasure trying to fight as many things on horseback as possible - even if it was not the most effective way to do so, as well as quickly travel through large regions, sprint past hordes of enemies, and double jump around to explore both more safely and more vertically than ever before. The overwold also offers several windy launch pads that you can use while mounted on Torrent to leap high into the air (or to fall safely down onto), which gives a quick shortcut to high places or simply the option to have an enjoyable look around from a bird's eye viewpoint. In this game, stealth also plays a much larger role than before, allowing you to thin out many encampments with sneaky kills while crouching away and staying out of trouble. There is also the addition of the Wondrous Physick, which is like a secondary player customizable alchemy potion that bestows a single charge of various benefits, which resets when you rest at site of grace (this game's version of the bonfire). Elden Ring deserves all the critical acclaim and sales that it achieved as a standalone culmination of the Souls formula on a AAA budget. I am eagerly awaiting the DLC (presumably coming in 2024) even though I have no clue what to expect from it. My only wish is that they scale back the massively open world a bit to make the experience as tight as the controls. Elden Ring is yet another Souls campaign that will keep me engaged and thinking about it long after completing the game.