This review contains spoilers
I've played 2 souls games before. One I thought was just below average, and one I thought was just above. So the cultish obsession of this game was a unrelatable to me. So did I feel it up upon playing it? Well...kind of. In the early hours of this game I did love it, but the problem with FromSoft is that it has become clear after playing only 3 of their games that they are unwilling to do anything more than their bread and butter combat and exploration model. It works fine enough in the shorter games, but Elden Ring is a MASSIVE game, and their lack of any kind of change in how they do things becomes all too apparent in the boredom I felt before the half way point.
In fact being FromSoft's bread and butter means it also comes with many of their positives and negatives. A satisfying feeling combat system, which despite barely changing from day 1 has had some additions to vary things up. Though of these combat options many you won't be able to use properly depending on your build, and many are just useless compared to other options. You have "difficulty" that comes in the form of enemies that hit faster and harder than you, with longer reach, and come in groups (though to be fair this game is easily the least guilty of this of the ones I've played - except Haligtree, fuck that area). You have amazing enemy designs and (mostly) fun boss fights. You have lack of QoL features touted as being amazing game design because they don't "hold your hand" when in reality it's just ignoring decades of game improvements, because there's nothing special about making you waste time testing thousands of spells and spirits because the game can't be assed telling you their stats, or making you go in and out of menus because they forgot to implement a comparison feature in shops. And for every quest that actually gives you enough information to complete, there's 2 more which are so needless cryptic on where to go next, or if the game will even hint that the quest DOES continue, so your only options are to look it up, or luck into the next checkpoint and happen to find the next step by accident, which is especially rare now that the game is open world.
I remember one of the best feelings I had with this game in terms of tone was very early on when I spotted a travelling caravan. A bunch of enemies, a caravan and 2 giants pulling it. Killing them was at the time the hardest thing to do, outside of some optional bosses in the early area clearly not made for a new player, so it was fun to face these gigantic threats and get a reward from said caravan. But as you go on you realise you can't judge books by appearances and every area will feature strong and weak enemies no matter how much effort goes into their design. A regular ass bear is one of the most terrifying things you can find in the overworld. Thus any sense of emotion I got from seeing any kind of enemy was nil because its physical warning signs could mean nothing, as opposed to the tiny thing next to it which can pull off a 50 hit combo with no openings.
I know people love to shit on "checklist" open world games, but I at least like them for giving you more stuff to do. Yeah it might just be a bunch of tasks and minigames like races, but I'll take that over literally nothing but the main gameplay played on loop for 100+ hours.
The open world part of the game does help though, mostly in terms of not being roadblocked by a single boss. Being able to go anywhere means you always have options to go explore something new, get stronger and better equipment. But this does of course create balancing issues, in many ways. Though I almost don't think this balancing issue is even DUE to it being open world. The simple fact that most the equipment you find in late game areas being worse than a lot of early game areas is something that should be easily avoidable. One of the best weapons in the game is available right near the starting area... Like I know they probably want to incentivise exploring, but you can still have weapons that are stronger-than-average for the area, while keeping even better weapons in areas that are meant to be played later.
Speaking of exploring though, this is definitely something you can feel them padding out gameplay with. The hundreds of caves/dungeons/mines etc that have basically zero identity because 90% of them feel the same as all the others, and the rewards for them are something you'll likely never use. That's basically what a huge chunk of the playtime in this game boiled down to for me; going through optional areas, fighting through tough enemies and platforming sections so I can get a chest with an item that is worthless.
I guess there is some benefit to this though, since having so much content, but making so much of it pointless, means you never have to worry about missing stuff. I did a TON of things in the game, but I still know I probably missed many hidden locations, or quests etc, and I don't necessarily feel like I missed out because I know what I found in them wouldn't be used by me anyway.
Anyway that's my jumbled thoughts on this game I guess. I'm sure I could say a bunch more stuff if I just sat and thought about it, but I'm about ready to move on from this game. When it started I was thinking of giving this a 9, but by the end I was forcing myself to go through the same motions with nothing to excite me, and all I can give it is an unenthusiastic 7. It's a 50 hour game in a 100+ hour body.
In fact being FromSoft's bread and butter means it also comes with many of their positives and negatives. A satisfying feeling combat system, which despite barely changing from day 1 has had some additions to vary things up. Though of these combat options many you won't be able to use properly depending on your build, and many are just useless compared to other options. You have "difficulty" that comes in the form of enemies that hit faster and harder than you, with longer reach, and come in groups (though to be fair this game is easily the least guilty of this of the ones I've played - except Haligtree, fuck that area). You have amazing enemy designs and (mostly) fun boss fights. You have lack of QoL features touted as being amazing game design because they don't "hold your hand" when in reality it's just ignoring decades of game improvements, because there's nothing special about making you waste time testing thousands of spells and spirits because the game can't be assed telling you their stats, or making you go in and out of menus because they forgot to implement a comparison feature in shops. And for every quest that actually gives you enough information to complete, there's 2 more which are so needless cryptic on where to go next, or if the game will even hint that the quest DOES continue, so your only options are to look it up, or luck into the next checkpoint and happen to find the next step by accident, which is especially rare now that the game is open world.
I remember one of the best feelings I had with this game in terms of tone was very early on when I spotted a travelling caravan. A bunch of enemies, a caravan and 2 giants pulling it. Killing them was at the time the hardest thing to do, outside of some optional bosses in the early area clearly not made for a new player, so it was fun to face these gigantic threats and get a reward from said caravan. But as you go on you realise you can't judge books by appearances and every area will feature strong and weak enemies no matter how much effort goes into their design. A regular ass bear is one of the most terrifying things you can find in the overworld. Thus any sense of emotion I got from seeing any kind of enemy was nil because its physical warning signs could mean nothing, as opposed to the tiny thing next to it which can pull off a 50 hit combo with no openings.
I know people love to shit on "checklist" open world games, but I at least like them for giving you more stuff to do. Yeah it might just be a bunch of tasks and minigames like races, but I'll take that over literally nothing but the main gameplay played on loop for 100+ hours.
The open world part of the game does help though, mostly in terms of not being roadblocked by a single boss. Being able to go anywhere means you always have options to go explore something new, get stronger and better equipment. But this does of course create balancing issues, in many ways. Though I almost don't think this balancing issue is even DUE to it being open world. The simple fact that most the equipment you find in late game areas being worse than a lot of early game areas is something that should be easily avoidable. One of the best weapons in the game is available right near the starting area... Like I know they probably want to incentivise exploring, but you can still have weapons that are stronger-than-average for the area, while keeping even better weapons in areas that are meant to be played later.
Speaking of exploring though, this is definitely something you can feel them padding out gameplay with. The hundreds of caves/dungeons/mines etc that have basically zero identity because 90% of them feel the same as all the others, and the rewards for them are something you'll likely never use. That's basically what a huge chunk of the playtime in this game boiled down to for me; going through optional areas, fighting through tough enemies and platforming sections so I can get a chest with an item that is worthless.
I guess there is some benefit to this though, since having so much content, but making so much of it pointless, means you never have to worry about missing stuff. I did a TON of things in the game, but I still know I probably missed many hidden locations, or quests etc, and I don't necessarily feel like I missed out because I know what I found in them wouldn't be used by me anyway.
Anyway that's my jumbled thoughts on this game I guess. I'm sure I could say a bunch more stuff if I just sat and thought about it, but I'm about ready to move on from this game. When it started I was thinking of giving this a 9, but by the end I was forcing myself to go through the same motions with nothing to excite me, and all I can give it is an unenthusiastic 7. It's a 50 hour game in a 100+ hour body.