I inexplicably dropped this game at almost 90 hours in, around level 129. What happened was that by the time I got to the snowy north and visited Castle Sol I was so checked out, so fatigued by what I had endured, I spent the remainder of the game just rushing through the gold line route, and I stopped making detours just so I could get the game over with. (The Fire Giant almost made me throw the controller at the wall, yeesh). I gave up during the second half of the last boss actually, I got tired of fighting the stupid camera.

Look, I'm bored of wacking giant walls of flesh for 10 minutes, and I hate Fromsoft's flying enemies because the lock-on camera goes crazy, so the Elden Beast made me rage quit basically.

At one point during my 90s hours playing this game I was on the Elden wiki for the upteenth time following a step by step guide to complete a quest when I had a moment of self awareness and realised how fucking stupid the whole thing was.

I promptly gave up pursuing the remaining unfinished quests, of which I had copious notes in a desktop notepad file that resembled the manic ravings of Charlie in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

The only way to do quests in this game is:

a) blind luck
b) trial and error
c) the internet.

This raises two possibilities. Either Miyazaki:

a) wants the player to check for any change in world state by scouring the entire fucking world map. So after every NPC conversation and boss fight, the player must search the entire world for any missing NPCs or doors that may have unlocked.

b) consult the internet on what to do next.

If it's the former, he's insane. If it's the latter, it begs the question: what's the fucking point?

Now, a common retort would be "this is what Fromsoft have always done, it's their style."

My retort to that would be: there's a difference between checking for changes in world state in a carefully crafted linear world, and doing the same in a huge open world like Elden Ring.

It's beyond unreasonable to expect players to randomly search this game's world map for changes. And it is random, because there are no coherent hints left by NPCs or the world at what will change.

The first NPC you meet in the game is next encountered in such a random place many miles away, I'd guess the vast majority of players would never see him again without an online guide. (hell I got to the last boss and never even saw Patches, the series staple, which really sucks)

Take the character Blaidd for example. At one point he (and this is quite rare for the game) explicitly says he'll be going down the lift at Mistwood.

Ok, so the player's assumption is he'll be either near the lift above ground or under ground. No. Instead he's far deep in Siofra River region. Miyazaki expects the player to search THE ENTIRE UNDERGROUND MAP for this character. He'll ultimately be found in a random spot near a cliff edge. Not even next to or inside a remarkable landmark. Searching every nook and cranny for an NPC is not compelling gameplay.

The game is just relentless with this shit. Nepheli's quest (which requires one to also finish another random NPCs quest) culminates with her appearing in a location I did not expect because there's no hint of her going there in her own dialogue beforehand.

We're just expected to either search the whole map or read a guide. Again: neither option makes for compelling gameplay. (this one was bugged too, I had to specifically teleport and then rest at a specific grace point to fix it)

You can imagine my utter surprise when the devs decided to mark Volcano Manor bounties with a red mark on the map. It's like...they're so close to getting it.

If only the map could have been utilised more, if not with objective markers (which are not really in the spirit of the franchise) then with vague cryptic visual hints highlighted for the player in relevant areas on the map so they can check for changes/NPCs. Or how about a diary tab with cryptic clues pointing the player in a vague direction of landmarks.

Anyway, suffice to say Elden Rings was one of those games I complain about a lot but still spent 90 hours playing, which is a testament to Fromsoft's weirdly addictive gameplay. I thankfully got my money's worth.

I think the voice director and English translator for these games in particular doesn't get enough praise. All of Fromsoft's games have a very particular acting style that is really vivid and consistent. The actors have all been directed in a specific manner to create the right atmosphere. I think someone like Troy Baker or Matt Mercer would have stuck out like a sore thumb with their own particular brand of caricature voice. (Mercer even stuck out for me while playing Pillars of Eternity)

My favourite things about the game were:

a) the architecture in every region. I think it probably has the best underworld designs of any fantasy I've played. Only thing missing was dwarves down there!

b) favourite moment was entering a random building from a side entrance and as I explored it it slowly dawned on me that I was in a replica of the Roundtable hub.

c) Soundtrack is good.

I think the most shocking thing for me was that I did not enjoy a single boss fight in the entire game. There was nothing here to compare to the best that Bloodborne and Dark Souls III had to offer.

I did not experience the same thrill as simultaneously fighting three LOTR Nazgul rejects in Bloodborne, or scrambling around an entire ruin full of enemies just to attack a massive dragon in the head in Dark Souls III. There was nothing epic and cinematic on the level of Nameless King, etc. Rennala was probably my favourite boss because of the weird creepy vibe.

Soulsborne games have always had big bosses, but this game takes it to the extreme in my opinion. Bigger is not always better for me, and I find wacking a massive wall of flesh for 10 minutes a boring way to spend my time (I gave up trying with Rykard).

My favourite fights were the smaller characters, even those red NPC enemies, who I hilariously believed were actual human invaders at first. (speaking of which: the lack of invasions without first opting in sucks)

I think the Soulsborne formula transitioning from linear world to open world required much more profound changes than what we got, which resulted in my continual dissatisfaction. It was nice being able to jump and having a horse (double jump!), but...that horse handled like ass and I grew to hate it. If you need to bring up the telescope every time you want to turn the horse where you want it...that's an issue.

Ultimately there was a tangible feeling of quality being sacrificed to make up for quantity with the design of the many repetitive dungeons, ruins and castles, most of which bored me. I wonder how many hours most reviewers played this game before giving it 10/10 ratings, and how many would have felt burned out if they'd played more comprehensively like most regular players. We joked for years, using that meme image of Bloodborne with a messy HUD, but...I got flashbacks to every dull Ubisoft open world game while playing this.

By the time I got to the snowy mountains area I was on driving on automatic, that tired feeling you get when you're grinding for xp in a Final Fantasy game or something. I swept through Castle Sol in what felt like 30 minutes, it felt so underwhelming. The world feels barren, soulless and shallow, which narratively doesn't feel right considering the starting premise is that you're trying to become an Elden Lord. Lord of what exactly? A dead world with no civilian population? At least in a game like Bloodborne, its implied everyone is locked inside to stay out of the way of the hunt, etc.

I would hope FromSoft doesn't abandon linear worlds, but the success of this game pretty much ensures it's going to be open world here on out. I hope they learn lessons, create depth, rethink how they approach UI, dialogue, rewards, loot (fuck me the lack of good loot in this game) and mechanics (I completely ignored great runes, I hate busywork consumables). Even something as simple as a fucking exclamation mark in inventory to show when you've got a new item, like seen in Nioh, would be a common sense addition. I hope the devs continue to evolve rather than rinse and repeat what I experienced in Elden Ring.

Elden Ring Apology Form
To: Hidetaka Myazaki
Reasons for behavior:
☑ The annoying fanboys convinced me it was overhyped
☑ I only played the game using shitty builds and spirit summons
☑ I was jealous of Hidetaka Miyazaki
𐄂 I didn't play the actual game
𐄂 I don't know Soulsborne
𐄂 Mercury was in retrograde

☑ I will hereby respect Elden Ring and I will NOT talk down on the future first-ballot Hall of Famer

Playing Elden Ring without spirits makes you realize how bad the boss agression and balancing is.

Godfrey/Hoarah Loux is the worst offender here. First phase is good, but the 1.5 phase is a bit worse, where if you take 5 steps away from him he does a bullshit shockwave attack that spans the entire arena. And Hoarah Loux is just bad. Tons of grab attacks, ridiculously badly balanced damage, and way, way too agressive.

Maliketh is goated though.

Elden Ring has a lot of bullshit flaws and is obviously not a perfect game. But when you look at it objectively, and the magic that you feel in the first moments of this game, and how that feeling grows more and more while you find out the map gets larger and larger. Despite many repeated rewards and BS like that, the fact that this game makes me want to explore every single nook and cranny despite messages telling me "no item ahead" goes to show how good of a game fromsoft has made.

Elden Ring is not a perfect game. But when you look at games today, there really is no perfect game. But in terms of what Elden Ring sets out to do as a game and a medium, I feel like despite all it's flaws, the scope of the game and how good most of it is more than makes up for it. Elden Ring more than achieves it's goals and has truly set the standard of what heights video games should strive for.

"first off, pickle, and then try sage" -a message on the ground, providing a delicious soup recipe

as some guy who likes exploring in video games and isn't satisfied until every square inch of the map has been scoured, this game is incredible and peak. everybody knows its strengths at this point, probably, but i am crawling over the finish line two years after the game came out so you'll have to give me some grace here. do you get it. grace like the. grace in game. haha

really though, it is actually absurd how many unique items, tidbits of storytelling, beautiful locations, and just adventures there are hidden away in mostly every nook and cranny of this world. there were multiple times i'd doubt my completionist's urge, thinking i had to be insane for attempting to check the most random spot for a path or dropped item, only to find that curiosity rewarded. and then they hide entire area entrances and bosses through illusory walls and off the sides of inconspicuous cliffs. of course. that's definitely where i'm most thankful for player messages (it's a strand-type game) since they can both tip you off towards those esoteric secrets and warn you when a long, annoying pathway in fact does not have anything hiding at its end.

the diversity of enemies and bosses is something i have to shout out to the void as well. i've seen some grumbling over bosses, enemies, assets etc being reused over time, but i feel like the variety here is honestly incredible with far more diversity than any open world game i've played before. if you told me there were like 100 enemy types in this game i'd believe you. every encounter brings a new arena, new mixes of combatants, and oftentimes some cool lore or environmental storytelling to go along with it. even in those cases where bosses graduate from "big encounter" to "just another enemy" it still feels interesting - like this beastman dude is pretty interesting, wonder what "farum azula" is. then you get to farum azula and there's a ton of him and it makes sense that he's not special there, he's just some dude, some beastman of farum azula. there's absolutely nothing like the capra demon spam of the dark souls endgame, or the undead dragon spam on that wondrous note.

i feel like you could get a phD in the weapons, weapon skills, sorceries/incantations, all the craftables, the weird niche interactions between enemies, it's all so much that it makes me want to do multiple new game cycles just to understand and appreciate it all. not to mention fashion souls, which of course returns. all of this freeform collecting and character building leaves the difficulty curve feeling totally adjustable. i for one marked most of the runebears on my map for later, because screw those guys until i'm overleveled. my only real complaints off the top of my head: what the hell is the fall damage, and we need new rats

perfect timing for shadow of the erdtree, just need to get my ten hours of youtube lore video studying in. now we can devour the gods togethaaa