Elden Ring Review - A Bold New Step Held Back by the Open World

Preface

This script was originally written as a Steam review at 2AM on April 19th 2022, because I felt I had to get this out of my system after playing the game a bunch of times. This was actually the first review I’d written of all my reviews. I wasn’t expecting to start writing reviews for other games but I found this one extremely cathartic to get on paper, so I started writing these scripts as a hobby. The format was definitely created here, I’m doing my best not to change too much, but the writing style has definitely changed a lot.

Introduction

Elden Ring is an ambitious new (hey Kina how long’s it been now?) Soulslike from the company that started it all, From Software. Overall, I think it's definitely a great game and the game-feel is absolutely at the top of From Software's lineup, except maybe Sekiro (in my opinion, a different kind of game) and Dark Souls 3 (this one’s just my preference though). I've finished this game 13 times with different builds each run as of writing this review (well, more now as of editing this but let's not talk about that), so I have a lot of positives and negatives to say on the game. I'll be going by categories: Story and Presentation, Visual and Sound, and Gameplay.

Disclaimer of course, this is all my opinion and you may come to the same conclusions as I do. Please feel free to disagree with me and let me know, cause I think there’s a large element of personal experience in regards to games. 

Story & Presentation

To quickly summarize the story: (Actually, this is really hard to figure out where to start. If I’m misinformed, please let me know)

So the general story of Elden Ring is that in the distant past, the Greater Will came to the Lands Between (the setting of the game). This Greater Will, at some unspecified point, got in contact with Queen Marika the Eternal, who is the current god of the Lands Between. Using the power granted to her by the Greater Will, she along with her king consort, Elden Lord and Lord of the Battlefield, Godfrey, subjugated the lands between. Once there were no opponents left, the guidance of grace left Godfrey as well as his warriors, the Tarnished. Due to this, Queen Marika exiled them from the Lands Between, and bade them to return after their death, upon which the guidance of grace will return to them. You are one of these warriors of Godfrey, or one of their descendents. I’m not quite sure which. Either way, while you were gone, Queen Marika’s first child, the demigod Godwyn the Golden was killed with the rune of death (a piece of the Elden Ring that Marika sealed away). Following this, Queen Marika shattered the Elden Ring, which led to her other children starting a war, known as the Shattering, to claim the pieces of the Elden Ring and the power housed within. You arrive back in the Lands Between some time after the war, and your main goal is to put the Elden Ring back together and become the Elden Lord so you can shape the Lands Between to what you want. 

Story wise, it’s easier in this game compared to the previous ones to get a clear picture of what’s going on and why, and I think it’s fantastic despite the loose ends. It’s a pretty standard Souls game story with enough puzzle pieces to get a full picture, though I do think that the characters are not quite as memorable as from the previous games. Many of the NPC quest steps lead into each other, with each questline giving more context to the story and lore. The game also gives us the closest thing to a main quest with Ranni’s questline, which has a pretty good throughline for most of the game.

There are some obtuse parts in the story, and with the absolute mega sized world, it can be very easy to miss NPC quest steps. Personally, that has never been an issue for me, as I'm not a completionist and am okay with missing things, though I've heard the complaint voiced by several friends and I can understand why it’s an issue for them. Post release, they have alleviated this issue slightly by adding NPC markers on the map to show the locations of the NPCs so you can continue their questline. It doesn’t fix everything, but it certainly does help.

Visual and Sound

Visually it's their best game so far, with a large variety of areas to visit and an actually engaging open world. Environmentally, the game’s views are breathtaking. I’m not an explorer and I don’t generally care for nice views as I just want to bonk some enemies, but I had many moments where I actually stopped to just take in the view. The character creator creates people that look like actual people rather than uncanny looking sort of people like in previous games. You can also still make absolute abominations, so people who prefer that will have no issues there.

In terms of enemy visual design, I believe they’re mostly fantastic. Most are not my cup of tea personally as I’m far more of a fan of the previous games’ aesthetically, but that’s more of a preference thing. I appreciate the designs for what they are, though I don’t think they’ll stick with me nearly as much as designs like Ornstein and Smough, Artorias, the Nameless King or Sister Freide did.

All the visual effects for skills and abilities feel absolutely fantastic, though one complaint I have on spells is that sometimes spells get too visually cluttering even when you're the one using it, so it's actually quite hard to see what you're doing. 

There are also a lot of memorable soundtracks, though as before I am more of a fan of Dark Souls style music. The sound design is as top notch as it has always been, with clear sound telegraphing and satisfying sound effects. 

Gameplay

As mentioned before, Elden Ring’s world is absolutely massive and is a delight to explore. As previously mentioned, I am not an explorer, and honestly almost blind so I miss much that’s right in front of me. Even then I was taken in by the drive to explore some of the areas. It is fantastic, and each place that you explore has something unique to reward you for your time. The dungeons do end up feeling a little samey after the first few, and some of the resources (specifically the gloveworts) are necessary for a smooth-ish playthrough, so it does become a bit repetitive. However, the rewards are generally quite worth it. I’ve heard some people voice that the rewards are not always useful for the current build that you are running, and that it should always be something useful for any build. I am not of this opinion. I think that it’s fine for the game to give cool things to players even if they can’t use it. For example, if I am running a pure Dex build and get a very cool Int/Dex weapon which I don’t have the stats for, it provides me a good incentive to make space in my build to go into Int as well to give it a test. This would then give the opportunity for me to test out spells I now have access to, and if I don’t end up liking the weapon and spells, I have access to the ability to Rebirth (which you get access to very early in the game) my character back into a pure dex build.

Combat wise, Elden Ring is a relatively standard Souls game with a simple combat system. The player has access to light attacks, heavy attacks, rolling, items, special weapon skills (Ash of War in Elden Ring), and jumping. These mechanics are very simple, but are very deliberate due to how the game is set up. Each action takes time to perform and cannot be canceled out of, so each action needs to be considered carefully. The main addition that Elden Ring brings is the introduction of jumping, previously only seen in Sekiro. Jumping gives you the ability to dodge vertically, which allows you to dodge sweeping attacks and counter from mid air. Jumping is absolutely a fantastic addition for sure, though I will say I couldn’t wrap my head around using it in a fight for multiple playthroughs, as rolling has been ingrained as the only evasive option for me. I’m not quite sure why, as I’m an avid Sekiro player and I make use of it in every playthrough, but it is what it is.

Character wise, I think that player character feel is the absolute best it's ever been. The massive variety of weapons, Ash of Wars and Spells/Incantations that you have access to is top notch, and almost every single one feels amazing. The introduction of Spirit Ashes has also given a much more accessible jumping in point for newer players as well, to learn the bosses/encounters in a lower stress way. I think this was a great introduction, though I have some complaints to voice later on how Spirit Ashes feel like they impacted the encounter designs.

Dual wielding, last seen in Dark Souls 2 as powerstancing, has been reintroduced in all its majesty as well. If you use two weapons of the same type, you get access to a new moveset which uses both weapons. This is a fantastic reintroduction and absolutely feels fantastic to use. My main complaint in this regard is that with the reintroduction of dual wielding, two handing weapons feel like they've become quite redundant other than in some specific cases (high strength scaling weapons mainly from the top of my head). This isn't a big issue since you'd realistically use something in the off hand whether that be a shield, staff or seal, and the swapped moveset from two handing a weapon could be considered an advantage in itself (though I tend to prefer the one hand moveset).

Difficulty wise, I believe that Elden Ring is a fantastic game with a great difficulty curve up until the main boss of Leyndell. Early game is a very fair, if difficult, game with enemy damage scaled well. After the main boss of Leyndell however, I believe that the damage scaling of the enemies spikes up to an insane degree. In terms of boss movesets, it feels fine, but the damage per hit is insanely high, unnecessarily so. Some players will love this, and others will hate it. I’m somewhere in the middle, but leaning towards wishing that the damage scaling was not so extreme. It feels like you’re playing on NG+ scaled enemies once you get past Leyndell, and there are so many things that nearly instantly kill you that I just feel like it could have been done better. Of course, you as the player have access to some absolutely ridiculous damage as well, so I guess if you look at it from there, then it makes sense. I just don’t like it personally as I believe that the appeal of Souls games to me is to genuinely learn the boss’s ins and outs, not to figure out how to delete the boss as fast as you can.

Now for the main memorable parts of Elden Ring: Bosses. Bosses in Elden Ring are generally quite high quality, with some fantastic and very memorable fights. They’re very strong contenders for best visual spectacle, and in general pretty fair. However, I have a lot of issues with the general design of a lot of the boss encounters in the game, especially towards the end. There's actually sub-points I have on boss design, please bear with me.

Overall the bosses are extremely aggressive in comparison to the previous games.  I believe that partially it's been done so on purpose as the introduction of Spirit Ash summons have allowed for solo players to have split aggro to give themselves breathing room. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I do feel like playing with no Spirit Ash summons can feel absolutely oppressive on some builds. Souls bosses have always had attacks triggered by their position relative to the player, though in Elden Ring, many of these attacks are also follow up attacks, which puts you in a lot more danger each time you go in for a damage window. This is both positive and negative, as it feels cool that bosses would react mid combo, but also it feels really bad when it looks and feels like a boss finished a combo, only for them to launch into a follow up combo that deletes most (or all)  of your health bar.

One point I'd like to bring up is that there are a lot of bosses that feel like they're meant to catch people who rely on previous games' muscle memory off guard. This isn't actually a very egregious issue, but it does feel really awkward and a bit unnatural in terms of game feel when some bosses lift their weapons and hold their swing for the duration of like three fast rolls before actually swinging. I don’t think I need to expand too much on this as it’s been discussed to death on youtube, but let’s just say I don’t feel that the delays felt natural like how the delayed attacks in Dark Souls 3 felt.

Another issue of note is that many of the late game bosses have moves that are near instant kill or very annoying to the flow of the fight unless you know how to counter it. I’m going to skip explaining the specific moves since my second pair of eyes, Talorian, told me that specific attacks and boss name spoilers can be really annoying for players who care, but I have a few in mind off the top of my head. In my opinion, a Souls game feels best when every death (barring glitches/bugs) feels like it's the player's fault. With how tight the execution for surviving these moves can be, a lot of the time by the time I see them winding up the attack I know I'm about to be dead. This can also be seen positively as we’re fighting literal demigods, and the difficulty makes sense to the story and lore. However, personally I feel like gameplay should always come first in these games, and I don’t personally like how these attacks were implemented.

My last issue on this is that dual bosses in this game are actually very poorly designed. In previous Souls games, most of the dual bosses were designed to actually be fought together, so they function well with a rhythm. Examples of this are Ornstein and Smough from DS1, dual Dragonriders in DS2, Lorian and Lothric, Demon Princes, Sister Friede and Father Ariendel in DS3. In Elden Ring, the dual bosses are literally just bosses you fight elsewhere solo and pasted into one room. This leads to a lot of flow issues where you spend half the fight running from the two bosses rather than the usual dance you do with a boss. I do want to say that most of these bosses are actually great bosses separately, but throwing them into the same room just feels lazy to me. This could be attributed to the introduction of Spirit Ash summons changing the design philosophy and pushing towards a more coop (or with AI companion) to split the bosses. I'm not necessarily a fan of the design decision, and I hope that they focus more on single bosses who are stronger or dual bosses who are actually designed for it. 

Before anyone mentions it, I know they updated the AI to be less aggressive in dual boss encounters, and it did help a little bit. However, I still don’t think it was the right move to copy paste two separate bosses (or even two of the same boss) into the same room.

One issue I want to touch on as well is the use of repeated bosses. I mentioned this a bit in my previous point, but they do reuse a lot of bosses quite often. Crucible Knights, Tree Spirit Guardians, Godskin Apostle/Nobles, even major bosses are repeated. Some of them have twists in the fight that do change how you approach it, but I do think that it was a mistake especially for story purposes. 

I feel like the number of bosses that feel iconic and memorable isn't as high as previous games, especially due to how you end up repeating a large number of boss fights as side (or main) bosses again and again. Some bosses that feel like they should be unique are actually not, which is quite a letdown. That's not to say it's completely forgettable however, and I genuinely think that the enemy lineup is overall quite good. However, after the fifth Crucible Knight you fight, you lose the feeling of “Oh this is the guy who destroyed me repeatedly and it was cool as hell to finally kill him” and it becomes “Oh, another one of you”.

DLC

With the DLC you find out how Queen Marika got into contact with the Greater Will, the war crimes she committed and how she buried it all to present this golden image we know in the main game. I actually like the general storytelling of the DLC far more than the base game, especially with the NPC quests all tying back into the main questline, with multiple possible changes coming in based on different decisions you make. The NPC quests are all also very good, with most explaining the character personalities, why they’d work with or against you, and being relatively easy to complete.

While I do like the storytelling, I can’t quite say the same for the actual story of the main part of the DLC. It feels like some of the cool major bosses were also missing cutscenes, which is a bit sad. I’m in the camp that we should’ve gotten Godwyn instead of what we got for the final fight, but it is what it is. The lore we get from the DLC IS generally fantastic, but I actually think that the story is quite unsatisfying comparatively.

As far as the gameplay goes, it’s mostly more of the same, with all the highs and lows you’ll really expect from it. The DLC has some of the best bosses in the series, and honestly somehow the worst bosses in the same DLC. I’m not quite sure how they managed it, but it feels like the quality is all over the place. They also introduced some really cool spells, which makes me quite happy as someone who started to use spellcasting in Elden Ring.

A new mechanic for progression that they added was the Scadutree Fragments. Essentially, the more you collect the stronger you become in the DLC area. The bosses and enemies are most definitely scaled specifically for you to collect these by specific points, and it really sucked for me as a non explorer, and especially for replays, since the enemies started to outscale me quite hard. I feel like there must be a better way to implement progression in DLC, but I don’t think this is it.

Conclusion

To conclude, despite all of my complaints, I think this is a genuinely great game. If you're on the fence, I would say definitely try it out! It's the most accessible Soulslike game so far, and absolutely feels great to play. If you're new to the Souls style of game, I have one piece of advice:

Don't listen to people who say "Don't use X or Y", use whatever tools you want to adjust the difficulty to how you want to play. If you want to play with all the meta stuff and steamroll the bosses, do it. If you want to just play around with everything and take your time, do it. If you want to challenge yourself to soloing everything/not using specific tools, do it. Enjoy the game your way, don't let others try to force you to play a certain way. What's most important in a game is that you're having fun, and I think a lot of people forget that.

If you haven’t played Elden Ring and have made it through this entire video somehow, please check the game out! It’s an absolutely fantastic game that should not be overlooked. The world is expansive and beautiful, the gameplay is engaging and fun, and the player character feels great to control.

If you enjoyed Elden Ring and want more games similar to it, I would strongly suggest trying out Dark Souls. Dark Souls 1 may feel a bit too clunky due to its age, so Dark Souls 3 would be my suggestion!