4 stars for actual game but im gonna have to give it half a star because my playthrough was ruined by fromsoftware elitist fans who have been ableist and stupid as shit to disabled people asking for an easy mode or using summons.

I genuinely will never interact with anyone who says "youre bad if you use summons" i do not give a shit, yes its easier and you can say the boss is boring now, but i dont give a shit. I cant play games like elden ring without help because im fucking disabled in my prominent hand so having to make my fingers work and do everything needed to beat a boss drains me mentally. Oh and thats not even it because there will always be that one mentally unwell basement dweller who says "git gud"

'I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella'
'I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella'
'I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella'
'I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella'
'I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella'
'I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella'
'I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella'
'I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella'
'I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella'
'I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella'
'I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella'
'I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella'
'I am Malenia, Blade of Miquella'

This might be the first game I can truly call epic. It’s not that other games dont have such qualities or that the rest of From Softwares offerings aren’t similar; they very much are and have a shared aesthetic interest in mediaeval fantasy and creationist mythology. It was just never like this, never on this scale. My journey with it felt Homeric and it took me four months and about a 100 hours to finish this shit. It's arduous as a good adventure should be and by the end of it I felt I actually went through something physical. As if I had been changed in some way and my soles should have hurt after all that distance travelled.

It is one of the few games that can back up all that talk of gods and men, birth, death, sin, light, darkness with actual gameplay and match it in its biblical proportion. The secret to this awe inspiring grandeur is that Elden Ring doesn’t fake the space. What my brain usually detects as skyboxes, here steadily reveals itself to be ‘’real’’ environment, my mouth gaping in astonishment. The ominous castle in the distance isn’t just decoration. It’s shrouded in fog, but I’ll get there. Or I won’t. Every piece of architecture has a life on its own and it doesn’t need my presence as a player to make it authentic. It was there long before and it will stay that way after me. The Lands in Between are so large, that the history of its digital world dwarfs you (that’s not even halfway through your quest. Fairy early on, you descend by an elevator that takes its time more than usual. Upon finally reaching the ground, your expectations of a middling dungeon are destroyed after you find out that you didn’t make a 10 minute detour, but discovered an underground world, the bygone eternal city of Nokron, a whole different dreamy universe than the one you left behind). As a result of this you feel like a hero part of the fabric of the mythos, doing your part in the shaping of the world of gods and men. Each zone of the map is like a massive canto from the epic of Elden Ring. It’s insane how many times you tell yourself ‘’ Wow, this is mental, there’s no way they can outdo this’’ but they do over and over. I won’t get into unnecessary enumeration, but the potential for adventure you sense after you get your sight on Liurnia when you exit Stormveil Castle is palpable. It is the perfect fantasy image to tingle your senses. Between the sharp rocky ominous formations is nestled a valley swallowed by morning fog. It looks unnatural, as if it's poisoning the ground and hiding evils within. In the far off, you can make out the silhouette of a twisted magical castle begging you to trudge and fight your way through the fog to uncover its mysteries. A perfect fantasy image. Also, the first glimpse you get of inner city Leyndel, after you penetrate its gargantuan siege walls and emerge on the inside, is a sight that will stick with me for a long time.

So, what’s the problem then? I can think of two, a major and a minor. The minor is repetition. Even Miyazaki's titanic talent could not manoeuvre around the open world blight. The most glaring and objective issue of the game is the surprising amount of uninspiring copy-pasted dungeons and the overuse of bosses. It cheapens the world that they have worked so hard to create, when they didn’t even have to do it. This excess of content was unnecessary.

The major one (apart from trivial imperfections and overcomplicated rpg elements that I’ve always found cumbersome in these games) is that I think From Software might have reached their creative limit. The ouroboros has bitten its tail. Is Elden Ring the latest innovation of the soulsborne formula or its last creative push ? To me it feels like the latter. Everything that began with Demon's Souls level design revolution of the 2010’s has blossomed here into its most complete form. It successfully fused with the open-world, a mark of ambition that just has one logical conclusion. You can’t go bigger than the biggest. How does the saying go ? Once you go open-world you never go back-erd or something of the sort. These questions might be more telling of an imagination deficit on my end but where do you go from here? How many different ways can you roll around a big ass knight and his giant sword ? How many times can you make delayed attack patterns to keep me on my toes? How many more castles can you make? How much bigger can the map to your game be ? I can keep going. How do you bring new ideas into a game that was the new idea? Are From Software too big to change ?

Anyhow, everything people are saying is true. It is one of the greatest games ever made, there are no two ways about it, but by the time I finished it, I felt that I had played it twice already and that’s saying something. I think of it fondly though and despite the stress from its many death encounters, I envision my time with the game in the calm of the ruins, under the golden light of the great Tree listening to the wind and resting with Melina's whisper in my ear. She tells me of the times before and prepares me for the times ahead. I’m not sure I'm following what she is saying, but it’s fine; most of my time with the game is like this, full of confusion about its story and gameplay systems. Half of the time (assuredly even more) I don’t know what I’m doing and what for, yet I don’t care. The poetic malaise of this world has its grip on me just that hard. This is what the peak of the mountain looks like; I glance around and take in the view to see how far I’ve come. After which I take a short break and prepare for my journey down. There’s nothing left to see.

Hello, this is my backloggd, same username as my letterboxd! Normally I do comparisons of people in my life to characters in the game but I didn't really understand the Elden Ring lore, and there were a lot of characters. I can do this:
ELDEN RING
Tarnished = Me
Malenia = Hard R
Melina = Winnie from Work
Miquella = Y**i from Work
Torrent = My Pet Fish, Chup Chup
Ranni = Zeta
Roderika = Kirsty
Gideon = Mitch

I don't give anything 5 stars unless it really deserves it, but Elden Ring deserved it. It had perfect gameplay, a great sense of exploration, interesting story that you could really sink your teeth into, a beautiful soundtrack, and lots of polish that made the game feel wonderful to play. Overall it was a great experience and can't recommend enough.
The open world worked really well with a Fromsoft game. I've played all Dark Souls + Bloodborne, still need to play Demon's Souls and Sekiro, but so far Elden Ring was my favourite. If you struggle with an area, the ability to go away and do something else to get stronger really works well with the open nature of the game. Unfortunately, this also has a slight drawback - because of how big the world is and how many characters you meet, it's much harder to follow NPC quests than it is to do so in, say, Dark Souls 3. That being said, it is doable, you should just bring a journal or something.

Overall, a great game, and one that I'll be replaying at one point. Good job team!

Decidí rejugarlo para dejar lista una partida para el DLC. Quien diría que lo disfrutaría mas que antes. en su tiempo lo jugué para Ps4 y la verdad creo que simplemente no me hizo click. osea, lo termine platinando pero yo creía que era mi souls menos favorito. en esta rejugada me di cuenta que no es así, es una obra maestra, pero simplemente no le puedo dar un 10 porque tengo algunos problemas con unos cuantos bosses y también siento que las ultimas 20 horas del juego no estan bien balanceadas(Skill issue maybe). Whatever ya veremos que tal con el DLC.

it took me SO long to beat this game. I launched this game day one and didn't end up beating it until late the next year. It wasn't because I disliked it or got stuck or anything like that, I think I just started to get too overwhelmed. Despite that, I really loved exploring through this game and getting my shit kicked in. There are so many moments in this game that are unforgettable, exciting, and fulfilling.

I think the actual frustrating thing that sticks with me about this game is that there are end-game areas with "normal" enemies that hit you twice at end-game HP and you die. just a frustrating thing, not something that makes me hate the game. also those fuckin dungeon imps, those things SUCK.

currently working through a sort of 100% save in preparation for DLC

I didn't plan on replaying this, but I pushed my first save file to NG+, so I was governmentally mandated to. If nothing else, it made for a vital contrast now that I've moved past my FromSoft honeymoon period and have played games from them I far prefer to this one. In short, I don't know, man! This thing is a real pain in the behind!

Y'know, for an open-world game with a bunch of shortcuts and shit, this game sure doesn't like it much when I try to enjoy the ability to pick what to engage with. I fought tooth and nail to defeat the draconic tree sentinel at level 45, finally did it, and was rewarded with a door telling me I hadn't had enough fun yet and had to go back and kill a boss I'd intentionally skipped. Cool.

I feel exactly as I did last time, just much deeper. A large chunk of this game passively stinks (post-Limgrave -> pre-Crumbling Farum Azula) when you aren't in a balls-to-the-wall action fight, and even some of those are blatantly overclocked. I will never stop getting annoyed when I can tell an enemy is frame-perfect heal punishing. It just looks silly!

I ignored almost all of the worst moments this time (literally any interaction with the open world/duo fights), so the raw time spent with this game's shittiest segments was a lower part of my overall playtime. Only half!

Again, I adore this game's closing handful of boss fights despite how clearly over the top they are. In much the same way a prescription drug addict enjoys higher doses, despite the long-term damages they pose to the brain's neural pathways. Its highs are really high. It is the most drop-dead gorgeous interpretation of an open world ever.

I've heard promising things about this DLC. It could be something special. It could also be 10 hours of modded Malenia fights. Either way, it'll forever be a massive pain in the ass to actually access. Thanks, Michael Zaki.