a culmination of fromsofts years of experience fine tuning their souls formula leading to a game thats both visually stunning and feels great to play mechanically but is ultimately crippled by the decision for an open world design and the arms race of difficulty versus veterans of the genre.
elden ring is a game of extreme highs and lows. this game has some of the best dungeon design ever seen in fromsoft titles with stormveil castle and leyndell being standout areas, but also the most awful dungeons coming from recycled content that sits on par with bloodbornes chalice dungeons. its a thinly veiled attempt at padding the games overall playtime, judging by the fact that on my second and third playthroughs i skipped 90% of elden rings content because i knew it was all copy pasted dungeons with rewards at the end that werent worth the effort. in this way, the open world actually hurts the replayability of the game rather than the intended effect of enhancing it.
it seems like fromsoft feels a certain pressure to maintain their reputation of creating difficult games. the combat system of souls style games is simple compared to other action games, meaning once a player has mastered the pattern of "dodge/block the enemies attack, then counterattack", there is only so far you can go with enemy design without dipping into the realm of unfairness. the only other option is to innovate significantly on the combat design, but assumedly pressures from sony to create a smash hit game with wide appeal drove fromsoft to center their gameplay on the more well known and simple style of souls combat, resulting in them also taking the former option for increasing difficulty to keep up with players whove had upwards of 11 years experience with these types of games at this point. bosses with attacks whose startup frames dip well under the benchmark of human reaction speed run rampant in elden ring, along with those whose incredibly long attack combos make the player feel like the enemy is actually the one playing the game and having fun.
i would recommend this game only for its polished visuals and mechanics along with genuinely some of the best designed areas ever seen in a fromsoft title. like i said, elden ring is a game of extreme highs and lows. the first playthrough easily hits the 4/5 mark, but as time goes on the problems in this game continuously rear their ugly heads.
elden ring is a game of extreme highs and lows. this game has some of the best dungeon design ever seen in fromsoft titles with stormveil castle and leyndell being standout areas, but also the most awful dungeons coming from recycled content that sits on par with bloodbornes chalice dungeons. its a thinly veiled attempt at padding the games overall playtime, judging by the fact that on my second and third playthroughs i skipped 90% of elden rings content because i knew it was all copy pasted dungeons with rewards at the end that werent worth the effort. in this way, the open world actually hurts the replayability of the game rather than the intended effect of enhancing it.
it seems like fromsoft feels a certain pressure to maintain their reputation of creating difficult games. the combat system of souls style games is simple compared to other action games, meaning once a player has mastered the pattern of "dodge/block the enemies attack, then counterattack", there is only so far you can go with enemy design without dipping into the realm of unfairness. the only other option is to innovate significantly on the combat design, but assumedly pressures from sony to create a smash hit game with wide appeal drove fromsoft to center their gameplay on the more well known and simple style of souls combat, resulting in them also taking the former option for increasing difficulty to keep up with players whove had upwards of 11 years experience with these types of games at this point. bosses with attacks whose startup frames dip well under the benchmark of human reaction speed run rampant in elden ring, along with those whose incredibly long attack combos make the player feel like the enemy is actually the one playing the game and having fun.
i would recommend this game only for its polished visuals and mechanics along with genuinely some of the best designed areas ever seen in a fromsoft title. like i said, elden ring is a game of extreme highs and lows. the first playthrough easily hits the 4/5 mark, but as time goes on the problems in this game continuously rear their ugly heads.