Eu amei jogar Elden Ring.
É um dos jogos mais... jogos que eu já joguei.
Daqueles que você não precisa estar necessariamente muito atento ao que ocorre ao seu redor, pra entender a história (que vai ser muito melhor contada pelo Vaatividya no youtube) e assim aproveitar o jogo na sua completude.
Pode parecer redundante, mas o "jogar" é o que esse jogo tem de melhor pra oferecer.
Pontos fracos pra mim são as mecânicas de bosses gigantes e repetição de alguns bosses iniciais que decidem virar mobs no decorrer do jogo, criando uma "banalização" do que é ter uma barra de vida de boss, algo que costumava me fazer prender a respiração em outros jogos.

I have a weird relationship with Elden Ring. It's simultaneously the best and my second least favorite FromSouls game.

It is the best because the first time you play it, it's by far the best Souls experience and one of the best experiences ever in gaming. The open world is amazing to explore, there's always something to be found anywhere you go. The rewards for exploring are also great because it's either something that will upgrade your build (or change how you approach your build) OR something that doesn't fit your current character but plants that seed in your mind that makes you start planning your next character.

The boss fights are superb as always, so is the soundtrack. The build variety is through the roof and the amount of builds you can make is also here in spades.

So why is it also my second least favorite FromSouls game? The reason is kinda simple actually, Souls games made me expect a lot from their subsequent playthroughs, I would go as far as to say the first run is the tutorial and that the game really starts when you decide the build you want and you actively go after the weapons and spells you want, knowing where they are.

The problem with Elden Ring is that it's biggest triumph is also it's biggest gimmick. The open world. After you beat the game the first time you can throw everything that I said about the open world out the window, because now there's no reason to explore places you know there are no items that fit your build, not only because there are no items but because it's far away enough to become an inconvenience. Clearing (rushing, really) dungeons that drop smithing items is a very boring and repetitive experience. I came to realize that, if you strip Elden Ring of it's biggest attribute (the open world), what is left really is a Dark Souls 3.5 Open World Edition but with less charismatic characters and lore probably because it's the third installment of a ongoing franchise. All of that makes Elden Ring, in my humble opinion, a much less replayable Souls game than every other with the exception of Sekiro, if you consider that a Souls game. I say it's replayability is worse because the open world ends up becoming a hindrance, precisely because of how big it is, while other FromSouls seems to have the perfect world size where everything is within reach without vast open fields in between.

Now... ALL of that could be solved if Fromsoftware had put more effort into their New Game + modes. Elden Ring BEGS for a revamped NG+ system like Scholar of the First Sin, or even better, it begs for a native randomizer mode that not only randomizes enemy locations but non-key item locations.

At the end of the day, Elden Ring really is Fromsoftware's magnum opus, but it also slightly disappointed me in the weirdest way.

Elden Ring is truly a masterpiece from FromSoftware.

The open world is breathtaking and offers an enjoyable exploration experience, even for someone like me who isn't a big fan of aimless wandering. However, I found the open world dungeons to be somewhat disappointing as they all are identical. The main ones are good.

While it's true that some of the bosses are repeated throughout the game, the unique ones feature amazing fights and cool designs. Except for Malenia, who is just awful.

As someone who isn't the biggest Souls fanboy, I don't have much to say about this game. I do believe that Bloodborne only looses in comparison due to the tedious process of running back to a boss fight. Thankfully, Elden Ring does not have that backtracking, which was a relief for some hard bosses.

While Elden Ring may not be the best game of the century or even of recent years, it is still an exceptional game that will keep you hooked for more than 60 hours. Again, only a Souls Like to make you addicted to the dopamine rush of endless retries and eventually wins it provides.

ill post my ramblings with terrible grammar here while waiting for the DLC
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In DeS you trick the environment,
In DS you adapt to the environment
In DS2 you interact with the environment
In DS3 you speedrun the environment
In ER you discover the environment

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"Heresy is not native to the world; It is but a contrivance. All things can be conjoined."
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so first thing I notice in the game is that you do not really choose gender at all, you only choose body types and they just so happen to be feminine, masculine and such. Which is something you do in Monster Hunter and probably a lot of other games too. But more I played more I went back on that idea and it felt ludonarratively important.

when you explore the world, clashing identities are recurring in main bosses, which are allegorical beings to how lashing out against fundamentalism caused several ways of life, all still 'rooted' (pun intended) in fundamentalism and its divisioning perspective - people being mistreated has made them to internalize as to how world is supposed to be made and then it reflects on their external beliefs or whatever they are doing. A lot of them have several identities and none of their identities are ever really established/highlighted for being the real one (the correct one, if you will) - or how they came to be. For all I care the possibility of having several identities is not even highlighted textually or at least not in memorable enough manner for me to recall - connecting the dots and understanding is completely on you, immediately after you come face to face to such individuals.

anti-divisioning is not only regarding individuals but at the very least in-game items too. When I first started collecting items that give you souls or whatevers the currency in Dark Souls 7, first thing that caught my eye was how they are not really named in varied manner like they were in other Soulsborne games, but now you can see that I managed to overthink its narrative importance.

Main trio are main character, marika and miquella I think.

Miquella is referred as a man but also has identity of a saint which is a female, (but only formally) going away from fundamentalism and golden order and wants to create shelter for literally everyone. Its never really confirmed whether Miquella's body is a male or female or intersex though, which may happen in the DLC.

Marika is also Radagon and they both are trying to do different things, reflected on how Marika wanted to shatter the ring and how Radagon wanted to repair it. we don't know which one is the real one of course. If either one of them is, at this point of their existence.

then there is Elden Beast that controls them and maybe even some higher gods dictating its fate, almost as if a foil to the player itself who controls the main character.

Since the very beginning (of the game) value is given to being embraced, remembering, learning and whatnot, hence the need to be given comfort and affection, that which cannot be physically attained by Marika (or alike) since these identities can't really touch one another and are being isolated from their alleged loved ones (Godfrey, who can barely contain his civilized pretense and mentally melted Renala)

One thing about Elden Beast, though, is how it does not really have any identity that can be divisioned, establishing as a figure that completely contradicts the fundamentalism despite being its very inventor.

main character of course has no clashing identities whatsoever, main character will be whatever you want to be, self-insert is everything, serving as a force of nature that optionally could overrun all of these old ways of living and accumulate it all into identity of their own. More importantly, our self-insert could also gain knowledge from their encounters and direct experiences completely on their own volition, reflected on gathering spells and delivering them to masters/teachers - foiled by Gideon who mostly just gets intel from everyone else and gives up, using said research against you if you were to overshare said information on your own. After all you are the only one in the world who has not lost the taste of the grace.

If you merely finish the game and get its basic endings, you only get endings that feel like afterthoughts and are anti-climactic - of course, the ones you get by collecting runes of old that you continue to follow. Actual endings, however, come from the exploration and end by the evaporation of the world and its ways, finally freeing the world from divisioning all things, an ending towards which Marika has been guiding all of Tarnished all along.

This subverts the expectations of the 'old ways' of playing Souls titles, where it all started from 'David and Goliath' type of gameplay and degenerated into 'git gud' mentality by the end of Dark Souls 3, where people castrate themselves into spearheading entire game instead of trying out different things. Here, like in Dark Souls 2, you shall liberate yourself from the one-dimensional playstyle and keep trying out different things - and by the end of the story, instead of choosing whether to run away or get swallowed or whatever like in other Souls games, you need to discover different endings and may even give up on the throne that has always been meant as a systematic trap to misdirect your ambitions.

(the way I interpret, Marika in her madness could only lash out by guiding you towards Frenzied Flame ending, but Melina grew to gaining her own agency, so that you would choose something else)

after this I read how the world of Elden Ring is alchemy conceptualized as a fantasy world (not really sure where does the concept of homunculus fit in here) to make a commentary on how artificially divisioning the world through both faith (religion) and reason (intellectualism) severes the connection between (wo)men and causes both internal and external identity issues and throws the whole world into the state of perpetual stagnation.

I think final boss in itself is not to be seen as individual entities but they in unity represent a traditional marriage into one allegorical being. in alchemy elden beast would be something like Rebis (explained in elden beast trivia on the wiki) which is sort of an angellike figure, in itself a hermaphrodite, but Elden Beast also is a parasite of a traditional woman and a man (or rather, they represent what is an ideal of a woman and a man in the world) and I think they all influence each others mind as Radagon and Marika can swap with one another and Elden Beast resides there all the same, so its not like Elden Beast has more control over Radagon than Marika. So a hermaphrodite divides itself into a man and a woman

but an irony is that all of the off spring (I think all) are born as queers, with these identity issues where they can't be a traditional person fitting to order's understanding, all of them are impure, with or without incest involved.

instead the only one that comes out as 'unalloyed', as in pure, is Miquella, who may or may not be intersex themselves (could be a nice reveal in DLC), but despite going away from the order, he/she still divides themselves into identities of a man and a woman, unable to free themselves from the deeply rooted, conditioned mindset. After all, whatever discontent you feel, or your wish to change the world - all futile - as unless the very root is burned down, it will always grow the same fruit.

so 'elden RING' in itself is a symbol of marriage and that symbol of marriage transforms itself into a BEAST (could be a religious beast akin to son father and holy spirit), revealing that marriage in itself is animalistic and a woman is a pray while a man is a weapon, a tool of the order itself. While the order itself is non-divisioned being, it still uses divisionment on purpose to control sentient beings and their nature.

which is foiled by another marriage and countered by an Age of Stars ending where MC and Ranni have a queer relationship and companionship where they venture on adventure of discovery instead of being stuck as a lonely existence the way Marika did. Instead of burning down the world, you make use of everything you have learned to creatse something anew, something completely alien to the concept of divisionment, whatever it may be. Radagon could have been entirely different being, or one made by Elden Beast to fulfil the role as the intellect was required rather than Houx being a representor of brutal age that could only pretend to be civilized (as Godfrey failed to live up the standard of being an ideal man as it has always been an unnatural pretense generally speaking, so did Radahn, failed to live up to self-imposed standard that was Godfrey and became an actual animal, incapable of being human and got forever prisoned to massacre his own beloved men - or rather, he did, in fact, became what he aspired to, without learning what he was wishing for as he never knew who Godfrey was in reality and as dream turned real, it was his worst nightmare). Or could have been created by Marika's conflicting thoughts and desires. not sure if its ever stated objectively since identity matters are not even stated or rather, are rarely (if at all) stated in unreliable manner by unreliable narrators.

Bunch of characters and bosses you encounter naturally are also foils to your path, but that's the case in every above average story anyway so I won't bother recounting them.
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I feel like game itself could greatly benefit from not having such tame encounters throughout the entire game, where you keep only meeting 2-3 monsters piled together even in the endgame, which is actually pretty easy so long you level vigor (there is not much to even level tbh, its not Dark Souls 2, and yet you can obtain almost as much levels by the end of the ER - I think I was around 130 level in around 50 hours). But I guess game is just not optimized well enough for that.

despite the big size I think levels themselves are a bit too short, but unlike what they did with DS3, the world actually feels lived in with how you can randomly keep meeting praying monsters, or maybe even singing (this is dragged down by how reskinned monsters are scattered around the world, serving as a reminder of artificiality, but there are barely any games without repetitiveness around so I can forgive it) and playing on instruments and in general its as if they tried to make the world with set-pieces that feel like paintings, you can feel the how these things were in the concept arts themselves and access them all in a single ride from different angles. Although that does take a hit on how generally levels were meant to be built up in Souls formula so that the gameplay with its encounters could feel methodical, making Elden Ring a lot less concerned to be 'a game' in comparison.

On one hand, bosses (naturally excluding mini-bosses) are easily the best among any Souls games, despite just being a base game - but mostly as duels, since game is was not really concerned to make fights that are more than just a duel in open-field(ish) arenas. So on the other hand, you can clearly see game is not really experimental in some of the aspects - it does not feel like you can play around bosses like you can in DeS for instance (where you can get silent walking ring so that blind bosses won't ever be able to see you) as they do not have much gimmicks beyond getting an item to stun them or block one of their attacks and you can't weaponize environment against them to my knowledge, since locations also pale in comparison to, say, DS2's Zelda-like levels. They also are not really 'obstacles' which was making certain bosses interesting in previous games, but nonetheless their destruction in this game happens on your volition.

But, as I said, game is moreso focused on discovery, to the point of the most of the game being pretty much optional. One of the sections of the open world is technically hidden level, complementing the narrative and roads and shortcuts in-between these levels also need to be discovered on their own right. Needless to say, my appreciation of the game skyrocketed here. People blasting through the game with walkthrough open may not be into it, but I dig it quite a lot. If we were not be living in the age of internet, discovery of Elden Ring would not feel like a checklist, but an actually amazing effort. I hear how people talking about the discovery losing its magic in 20 hours, but its exactly these post 20 hours of gameplay sections are where you start discovering actually interesting, exciting areas, start discovering the secrets and how the world functions in hiding to further make use of what you have learned in another parts of the world (which was the intention all along) - even if catacombs and such feel rather cheap, they still adhere to this very ludonarrative - and discover an entirely hidden continent thats also the best section of the game and is not even a repetition.

Miyazaki I believe has said how specific creatures being in specific areas and not being repeated has always been part of environment story-telling in his mind and I can understand people who criticize the repetition in Elden Ring likely have that older perspective, but I believe this time repetition itself is also environmental story-telling and benefits the idea of the world (namely its lowest common denominators) losing (or never even attaining) the semblance of individuality they may or may not ever have had.

I have also seen people complaining about how collecting souls and stopping the process of being a hollow have always had meaning in Souls games and apparently its not the case for Elden Ring but I beg to differ - Runes are the world you are supposed to understand through which you understand yourself and give your own meaning. All in all, completely subverting the age expectations and conventions of Souls games and further evolving them (alongside the way bosses fight you by reading your inputs and all)

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Unfortunately, day and night system does not have much substantial additions to the gameplay, unlike, say, Dragon's Dogma.

You can also feel how Souls formula was not really made to be open-world be it how you can just skip through everything since enemies can't gang on you so hostility of the environment goes out of the window and theres not much really to do after killing everything aside from collecting materials or whatever), so I mostly see it as an atmospheric build-up to good old dungeons, rather than game's main appeal. It's polar opposite to Demon's Souls (where you just choose and teleport to whichever level-line you wish) and the culmination of its structure - there you needed to at least kill the final boss of any other level-line and then you could turn DeS into a linear game and head straight to Allant. Whereas in Elden Ring you can kill any of the two bosses after going through their respective dungeons (whether you 100% their dungeons or not, as they hide a lot of secret sections) and then turn ER, too, into linear experience by heading towards Elden Beast.

(though I still believe Demon's Souls is the most interesting Souls game mechanically)

ER of course also grants you freedom to go anywhere you want, anytime you wish and even if the game admittedly gets patterned, most of the time game compensates on itself by upgrading said patterns. Fortunately I have not even met most of the double bosses, which brings me to what makes me appreciate it openness - I do not 100% games, at least on my first run, so replayability comes from how each time I can just take different paths in the game instead of burning myself out on the first one, which I think is the same for most of the players, as well as how developers intended to create the game.

Elden Ring is the most frustrating game I’ve ever played in my life. No, it’s not because of the difficulty curve, at this point I’ve already gotten the hang of it, and I’m still only just decent at these games. Never has there been something that’s felt like an event that’s once in a lifetime, but at the same time so dime-a-dozen. Assimilation-Contrast theory at full force.

Boss design, encounter design, world design, content distribution, you name it, none of these elements come together how they were probably supposed to, at least I feel. So much goddamn recycling, so much goose chasing to try to find the most optimal build for you and not getting anywhere with it, so much stunted progress. It hurts to think about.

It goes as far as to, depending on what kind of player you are, backing you into many corners and forcing you to give into the norm. This game has the strongest metas of any souls game which you can, and usually will, just fall back on because of how the game is designed. It doesn’t help that movement pathing and tracking is still scuffed because of the engine limitations, making for some combat encounters that feel like absolute bullshit. Some of these issues aren’t exclusive to this game, but they are definitely accented.

None of this is to say the game doesn’t succeed on the face of it. It is quality, you can find many things here worth your time. I understand why this game, to many people, was magical, at least in their first play-through. There are plenty of moments that make the game at the very least stand out too: Going down those LONG elevators and bearing witness to and exploring the depths of the lost cities. Seeing through to the fates of the people you meet along your journey like the crabbed but still obliging Blackguard Big Bogart, who’s your main source for boiled prawn and crabs (get it?), or the insecure Boc, the Seamster who tends to your armor and improves it.

There is no shortage of things to discover and moments that if you let them, are able to stick with you for as long as your brain can handle. Those things I listed are nothing compared to some other stuff in the game you should just see for yourself. The Radahn Festival, the Volcano Manor quest-line, the curve-balls thrown at you when you enter new biomes, the palpable atmosphere of Raya Lucaria Academy, or reaching what was probably my favorite location in not just this game, but any souls game, in the Leyndell Royal Capital.

But I’m sorry it just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny if we’re merely talking how its design philosophy works in conjunction with the new layout and structure, despite how much surrounding it does. Part of me feels like this game, even if it does lose the novelty of its sheer scale, would have been better off if each legacy dungeon and subterranean area were just linked together and the rest of the null space with repeated content and bosses with frugal rewards would be trimmed away.

It would, in essence, be the true culmination of all of the previous work at FS, not an amalgamation of everyone else’s work. I’ve played literally every (post-souls) FS game. Bloodborne is my favorite fucking piece of fiction ever, flaws and all, as meager as they are like Bloodborne is as close to perfection as any game can come. I don’t understand how this is the next step for this, admittedly, played out sub-genre of games. They can do better. Bloodborne II can do better. Pls give me Bloodborne II, pls Daddy Miyazaki I beg you.

Despite all that, I’m somehow still willing to bend and give this game like, a 9/10. That is less indicative of the game and more of me. I tend to take games as they are, not as I want/expect them to be, nor as what I happen to feel while I’m playing them. Elden Ring is deeply flawed and I feel like people are gassing it up a bit hard, but at the same time, it felt special to me, in a similar way to how it was for many. It didn’t resonate with me as much as the other games in this loose franchise, I much prefer Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Dark Souls 3, but it is an impressive feat in open world game design, despite the trappings it falls under and mishaps that occur.

Elden Ring is a really good game, but it’s not the best show of the talent at FS. Every convention you come to expect from other games is here with minimal change besides the souls blood that courses through this game’s proverbial veins. You want a truly game changing open world? Look at Metro Exodus, or hell, for something more understated, Arkham City and Origins. Bigger doesn’t always equal better. Elden Ring doesn’t feel like the final form of the franchise that established its own mold, but rather an attempt to fit into the wider mold, which is disappointing.

O ano é 2022, em março alguns dias após o lançamento do jogo, depois de horas explorando o mapa, você sem saber acaba chegando a um chefe chamado Radahn.
Fique preso nele por mais de uma semana, vá atrás de farm, equipamentos melhores e novos companheiros para lidar com ele em batalha, depois de finalmente derrotar o Flagelo Estelar, você descobre que um dos melhores chefes já feitos por Miyazaki era um boss opcional.
Depois de tudo isso você não tem dúvida do quão incrível seria a aventura dali para frente, obrigado Mestre.

There are few games that while playing I thought to myself - why should I stop. I played Elden Ring the week it came out, when there was no information, no guides, no nothing, and it was some of the best single player experience I've had. The feeling of going out into this massive world, exploring and taking on the challenge that Elden Ring provides, is like nothing else. Yes, it is a hard game and there is no easy mode, but it's not soul crushingly difficult as some have described it. It is for the type of person that is willing to fail as many times as it is required to be able to overcome the challenge before them.
Story
I can't say that Elden Ring has a “good” story. In fact, if you rush straight to the end, you will have like 5 conversation by the time the credits roll.
But the lore of this world is incredible. Every item, every crevice is part of this gigantic fantasy world, that calls out to you to keep exploring more and more of it. Whether you will learn it from reading every item description or YouTube is up to you.

Mechanics and gameplay
It is Dark Souls with an open world. Honestly, the basics are pretty easy to understand - attack enemy, dodge roll when they attack. There are some things added to spice up the formula, but I can't say anyone will be left wondering what's what.
The big selling point is the open world, and I can say that From software has done a fine job. It is gigantic, I have 100+ hours and I didn't manage to explore all of it. Also, unlike many other games that have massive open worlds, Elden Ring never got boring. It constantly changes environments, so that it never feels like circling the same place.
You know how this games is supposed to be super hard, well you can circumvent most of it by just exploring. The first boss is intentionally way above your level to encourage you to back away and to become more powerful.

Graphics and artstyle
Elden Ring is absolutely gorgeous. The graphical fidelity technically isn't that good, but the incredible art design of the world and the attention to detail more than makes up for it.
There is a wide amount of color used throughout the different areas, but it always stays in that fantasy feel, so that the immersion is never broken.

Atmosphere/Immersion
In all of my time playing games that allow me to customize my character and make him myself, I have never felt as attached as I did to the character, I made in Elden Ring. The game gives you the feeling that you are a small, insignificant person, that has to carve out their own path in the world if they want to survive.
Immersion is another part that is done very well. There are no big flashy menus, quest markers or even a mini map, this allows the player to feel as if they are actually in this fantasy world.
Soundtrack
Great ost with many great songs, all of which closely follow the setting of the game, so you can expect instrumental somewhat classical in nature music. My favorite is “Roundtable Hold”.

Final Thoughts
All in on strength

I deeply appreciate elden ring, but, by the 40 hour mark it ran out of ways to keep me engaged outside of its core, punishing, combat loop.

elden ring marks fromsoft's first foray into the open world genre, and it largely is a success. the audio-visual presentation is brilliant, and the landscapes are striking. but here, unlike the open vistas of say, Breath of the Wild, each step further into the expanse is met with dread. my favorite moment, stepping into a seemingly bottomless well to reach the underworld for the first time, seemed to mark a change in tempo. there was a (simple) puzzle, a beautiful, almost tragic, boss, and an inviting beauty to a dark sky, starlit by the glimmer of cave rocks.

that type of exploration is the exception, not the rule. for most of the journey, you are a hammer, and the world is an excuse to present a series of nails. this singular focus on combat works in more poetic expanses, such as Shadow of the Colossus, but its unerring violence chewed away at the sense of discovery that so enthralled me during its opening hours.

my favorite open world games are ones that encourage discovery and engagement in ways beyond combat. here, the occasional fetch quests and story moments are so obfuscated by wonky design, that it's almost impossible to track unless you're playing with a wikia or a pen and paper in hand. this type of discovery works well in the more staged worlds of Dark Souls and Sekiro, but feels less at home in the massive world of Elden Ring.

When I saw that it would be open world I was worried seeing the things that are made by companies like EA and Ubisoft, but this game has a reason to be open world. Exploring and getting lost is great.

The game allows you to headbutt the boss or say "I can't do it now, I'll be back later".

Amazing from start to finish.

I have played many Dark Souls games before so I knew the kind of hard task that I was in store for (to a degree). I've never felt compelled to really keep the fight going. Bloodborne was the most I spent on a game like this, until Elden Ring.

Elden Ring has been complimented to death, and it deserves all of it and more (for the most part). Its scale, it's satisfying combat (even when you are getting absolutely smashed for hours on end), it's world building, the scale (the scale deserves multiple compliments), the secrets. The game never feels like you're near the end of exploring.

Even when you get the crumb of the end game starting, the amount of content between that and the real end game is unbelievable. I thought I was done multiple times, defeating a near-impossible boss that took 100s of runs before finally getting a little luck, only to discover, "there's more, and it's gonna get worse."

The satisfaction of beating those unbeatables, the areas the open up when you're near that end, the effects you choices have on other parts of the already explored world, it's all so interesting even when nearing the end. I put over 170 hours into this game and there's still more for me to do, more for me to kill. These enemies no longer scare me, for I am a God, I fear no man, woman, child, or creature.

Anyway, the combat is very satisfying. When you edge out a roll dodge or a jump at the last second and spring a massive wave of damage at your opponent, it feels damn good. Get surrounded by a plethora of annoying low level bad guys that manage to get you near death, only for you to figure out a way to roll out the way of danger, sneak in a heal, and finish them all off, is so damn satisfying. Getting crushed, still, by wolves because a group of them came out of nowhere and killed your horse, and killed you when you were stunned, while having enough runes to level up once more, is not satisfying and sucks but it's worth it for the highs.

This game makes you paranoid about everything, on purpose. No empty looking room is safe. No empty looking corner with a glowing treasure to pick up is safe. Everything wants to kill you and the game purposely makes it come at you from every unexplored corner. You eventually get used to this hellscape, you don't trust anyone.

Which is interesting for this whole game. There are "bad" guys that will not attack you but because you have been trained to murder anything that doesn't resemble yourself (even that is shaky trust wise) or an NPC usually attacks. But eventually you will discover things that won't and those creatures are the best......unless you accidentally hit one of them, and then they do attack you. It's a risk I sometimes took, unless I wanted more blood. Sometimes you just need more blood.

There are some negatives, definitely. The camera is your enemy way more often than it should. Auto targeting is sometimes awful, and in tandem these two combined can straight up ruin a great run against tough bosses. Especially if those enemy encounters are big. The camera just cannot scale up in a way that doesn't leave you feeling super venerable to things, and since many attacks can one hit kill you, this can be real awful.

The game is also very hands off. It really lines nothing up for you when it comes to many of the items and how the menus and prompts do. It is very "try and see what happens" with a lot. Obviously your play style will dictate what items you give chances to more often than not. There are many items I straight up never touched because they never seemed to go with my build type. I don't want a full on hand holding but it would be nice to get some explanation as to how to setup some of your stuff without so much trial and error and just being left in the dark until you look something up or something else.

Despite these flaws, there are a ton of jaw dropping design choices with areas you explore, there are a ton of jaw dropping bosses that just........do things to make themselves more powerful halfway through a fight or just when you think you've finally beaten them. It never feels severely cheap (every once and a while in the heat of it it def can). It's all wild and brutal and insane. Early on you will face something that rips off a dragon's whole head and use it as a weapon after you've reached a certain level of health. It completely changes strategy on the fly but god, these things are so cool.

The game wants to fuck with you and destroy you. It wants to mentally destroy you. It may have accomplished that with me. I'm still not sure. But God, beating this game was a very satisfying and crazy experience (mostly). I don't know if I will ever touch this game again and beat some of the other, non-main bosses. But I will have this written on my tomb, in blood. Not really though. I am a God now, I will never die.

You will either want to play this already or you don't. This review will probably not change your mind. These games are not for everyone. But for someone who never feels like it's worth sticking through in order to beat these, I beat this one, and I think that's really cool.

I have tried 2 other Souls games in the past and each time they never stuck with me. This time I lost a bet and this was the game that I was chosen to try. I was skeptical I would like it but I was more open to it since it's open world and if I get stuck I can go level up somewhere and come back.

What I didn't expect was one of the most beautiful open world games I've have ever seen in my life. Plus you have a horse that is a joy to ride, which means traveling around is a dream. Breathtaking vistas and just grotesque enemies and bosses that you can't help but want to see.

I did a samurai build which was a lot of fun bleeding the bosses and just seeing chunks of health disappear. The last boss almost broke me but you have so many options at your disposal that you can always find a different way to succeed. I would be mistaken to not talk about the mvp of the games which is the ashes you can use to summon help, and specifically mimic tear who is the mvp of the game.

The story really isn't something that will invest you similar to SMT V, but the world itself is a story to explore. The side characters are great when you can figure out what to do and where to find them. Also I love bosses and this game is full of boss fights.

Highly recommend this game and even as someone who isn't good at Souls games I had a blast!

I see this as FromSoftware's Greatest Hits game. It's every Soulsborne rolled into a single work.

...which is also precisely why for me, it's the most decidedly flawed work they have done in this series of games. So many different design ideas pulled from every past game worked into one core game and so much of that ends up in conflict with itself. The general design philosophy that FromSoftware is known for and then breaking open into an open-world game is itself in conflict with how they design levels and their encounters.

It's the same issue I have with the new God of War games but I still think Elden Ring manages its goal a far bit better overall and the experience outweighs the issues overall that I have. It's in equal measure a game of breathtaking experiences moment to moment; frustrating and messy and bloated in others.

Easily the best open world game I've ever played. Putting souls gameplay into an open world is genius and works perfectly. The game is massive but the quality of items, bosses, areas, music is excellent and consistent throughout the entire game.
A couple of the areas like some of the dungeons were a bit underwhelming but you go through so many interesting areas throughout the game that a couple bad ones are whatever.
Despite souls games being known as hard and stressful this game is just chill and you can explore and fight at your own pace

While I did this run as a modded playthrough under Reforged, Elden Ring at its core is still the best fundamental gaming experience I've had from this decade. Just such a monumental achievement in every facet of game design that can be imagined. Shit, even when I was frustrated (and it happened often), I still don't think I can ever get an experienced like this from any other developer. Packed to the brim with content in a world so dense & rich that it puts most fully-fleshed narrative titles to shame. On a re-run with a stronger understanding of the lore, the experience of walking through the endgame areas and understanding the circumstances of the world itself and your purpose made these grand, cinematic moments feel all the more moving. With Shadow of the Erdtree on the horizon, I already know that FromSoft will once again prove why they're the best developers in the business. Just real, real gaming.

The Hype for the game is completely justified, what an experience. The best part of the game is it's unforgiving at every moment but you're given the opportunity to read all the movesets and try to defeat the bosses. So everytime you die you not only die with frustration but also die knowing something new to deal with the boss and you really get the best kind of dopamine each time you defeat these bosses. You're also given the freedom to fight however the hell you want. Every main boss is uniquely designed with their own set of brutal but awesome move sets. The larger enemies are kind of tedious to fight, they look awesome, the setpieces are visually gorgeous but most of the time they're not as fun as the other enemies who are more challenging and at the same time more fun. Also I really wish the game had a feature where you could replay all these bosses without entering someone else's world. Story wise, I did feel disconnected throughout but I don't think it even matters all that much since it more than makes up for it with the gameplay. Another problem I had with the game is how locked away most of the main bosses are, the game really wants to explore every nook and cranny of its extremely vast open world but it's really hard to look for most of the bosses without an YouTube video guiding you. The exploration aspect is definitely cool but I find myself craving more to fight the bosses the game has to offer. Getting to Malenia was more frustrating than the boss fight itself. It's kinda understandable the developers design the game in a way to get the online community to interact and come up with all the solution to the most bizzare puzzles they've set, but personally I would have preferred it to be easily accessible. If this is the best game of FromSoftware when it comes to accessibility then I really don't know how I'd fair out in their other games. The game doesn't look next gen or anything but it's got one of the best art style you can ever find in a game. The music is equally spectacular.
The performance was stuttery and it would actually get worse if I lower the settings, the only work around with the performance is playing the game offline. Playing it offline kinda stabilised the performance. Also the final fight had one of the best bosses and at the same time one of the game's worst. I would have really enjoyed the final fight if Radagon had a second phase or something, elden beast was absolutely abhorrent of a boss, the most annoying part of the game for me. With all that said, we will be there no matter what for the DLC as well as NG+.