Yeah, this review is dedicated
To all the haters that told me my 1050 could never run this game
To all the people that lived with 3090s running the game on ultra
telling me to upgrade my graphics card when I'm just tryin to play this game and have some fun
And all my fellas in the GPU struggle yknow what I'm sayin?
This game is super great and ridiculously awesome. This is what kids must've felt when they played Ocarina of Time on the n64, how kids felt when they first listened to The Marshall Mathers LP or when people saw the Godfather for the first time in theatres or when comic readers graced their eyes with Watchmen. Nothing will be the same and none of this is an exaggeration. The open world is filled with high-quality dungeons like the original souls games and they totally managed to overcome my biggest fear of going open world and they kept their good level design. Secrets go into huge areas and the areas are linked to questlines and they have bosses and stuff. I knew there would be repeated bosses and mini-dungeons, but the ones we got weren't terrible. I did every single one I came across and although they were repeated design-wise and some bosses, some of them had unique elements to them where you wouldn't be sure what to expect. Some fun puzzles and bosses there. Many new additions to the souls formula: the biggest being obviously the open world, but with it comes the horse and jumping. I think level designers might've held a party after they said the horsey could double jump because there's so much fun stuff hidden everywhere behind a little bit of horse platforming. Also, another cool addition is the boss's tendency to hold their attacks back and feint. As much as I love dark souls 1 and 2, a lot of bosses fall into the trope of having a very telegraphed attack so you can roll behind and chip away at their health from behind but now every single boss is a Mordhau master. They go in for an attack- and then hold their sword here. Every single fiber of your souls veteran being is telling you to roll. NOW!!! THE SWORD IS UP!! ROLL!!!!! and you do. And the boss is still holding his sword up. What do I do? roll again? oh god!!!! you keep rolling. You spam roll because you think the attack will come immediately after the windup. But the boss is baiting you and you fell for it- dead! it, like sekiro, makes you VERY closely watch what the boss is doing. Only dodging at the last possible second makes the game a lot more tense and with the crazy heavy combos, shields are basically worthless unless you've put all your points in stamina. Boss design is really tough and I honestly think it's some amazing bosses, but I don't feel as strongly positive about any particular boss as I do with some particular bosses in Sekiro or Dark Souls 3. I'm sure my opinion will change with subsequent playthroughs but that's just how I feel, the bosses are mostly great but I don't think any of them reach the height of Isshin, Ornstein & Smough, Gael, or Freide.
Now onto my two negative points: the PC performance and the final boss.
The pc performance was fine on day 1: after that, they had a patch that decimated my framerate. Like I could not play. You don't know how I felt after waiting for so long, preordering, counting down the days for a year, and waiting through the delay that I just had to sit there and look at the game on my desktop. But at least they promptly fixed it and it worked for me from then but many people faced issues even with high-tier processors so I think the point is justified to be here.
Yep, this is one to be remembered by and is the next huge step in revitalizing open world games. BOTW started it, stumbled a little, but Elden ring took that concept and ironed it out. It would be cool to see games like far cry and assassin's creed take this approach. And despite the rocky PC port and the final boss being a letdown, this game is amazing and fully lived up to my sky-high expectations.
The next segment contains light spoilers for Elden ring and devil may cry 3, I will go into detail about my distaste for the final boss.
The final boss is the only true blemish on the game itself. Have any of you elksters played devil may cry 3? if you have, then you've fought Arkham for a second time. And you know how amazing the buildup and the story and music and everything is but the fight itself is so undeniably unfun and boring. You have to redo his first phase every single time- which worked for sekiro's final boss but it doesn't work here due to how fast you can dispatch enemies in sekiro with knowledge of their moves and when to parry. But here, you have to output enough damage every time. There's no posture bar to break. But the first phase isn't the bad part: the second part. Here, run at the enemy, slash at their stomach until they teleport away. Now dodge these lasers. Keep going for another 15 minutes. Absolutely horrendous boss design and I was honestly appalled at this because of how amazing the series' previous final bosses were made. Some of the best of all time! Gael from dark souls 3 and Sword Saint Isshin from Sekiro are tied for #2 best boss of all time for me (true elksters know the number 1[It's the final boss from metal gear solid 3 if you're just joining the elk army today]) yet this is one of my least favourite bosses of the franchise, and let's be real at it's lowest it has some doozies. Sorry to leave the review on a sour note but it's one of the best games of all time and an easy GOTY unless Gotham Knights blows the industry to kingdom fuck. Which let's be real it might. Anyways stay safe fellas have a good day. I dunno what my next review or game will be but I'm getting strong feelings of revisiting a classic from the ps3 era, maybe lego batman 1 or 2. Fun fact I almost got the platinum trophy for lego batman 2, the only one remaining was to finish a level in co-op but since I had one controller I never did that one. Would've been my first platinum, but I guess spiderman ps4 is my first platinum now which sorta feels like getting some supermodel to 2nd base and running away to lose your virginity to a hooker. Doesn't matter that much tho the game's still fun. Alright, cya guys later.
To all the haters that told me my 1050 could never run this game
To all the people that lived with 3090s running the game on ultra
telling me to upgrade my graphics card when I'm just tryin to play this game and have some fun
And all my fellas in the GPU struggle yknow what I'm sayin?
This game is super great and ridiculously awesome. This is what kids must've felt when they played Ocarina of Time on the n64, how kids felt when they first listened to The Marshall Mathers LP or when people saw the Godfather for the first time in theatres or when comic readers graced their eyes with Watchmen. Nothing will be the same and none of this is an exaggeration. The open world is filled with high-quality dungeons like the original souls games and they totally managed to overcome my biggest fear of going open world and they kept their good level design. Secrets go into huge areas and the areas are linked to questlines and they have bosses and stuff. I knew there would be repeated bosses and mini-dungeons, but the ones we got weren't terrible. I did every single one I came across and although they were repeated design-wise and some bosses, some of them had unique elements to them where you wouldn't be sure what to expect. Some fun puzzles and bosses there. Many new additions to the souls formula: the biggest being obviously the open world, but with it comes the horse and jumping. I think level designers might've held a party after they said the horsey could double jump because there's so much fun stuff hidden everywhere behind a little bit of horse platforming. Also, another cool addition is the boss's tendency to hold their attacks back and feint. As much as I love dark souls 1 and 2, a lot of bosses fall into the trope of having a very telegraphed attack so you can roll behind and chip away at their health from behind but now every single boss is a Mordhau master. They go in for an attack- and then hold their sword here. Every single fiber of your souls veteran being is telling you to roll. NOW!!! THE SWORD IS UP!! ROLL!!!!! and you do. And the boss is still holding his sword up. What do I do? roll again? oh god!!!! you keep rolling. You spam roll because you think the attack will come immediately after the windup. But the boss is baiting you and you fell for it- dead! it, like sekiro, makes you VERY closely watch what the boss is doing. Only dodging at the last possible second makes the game a lot more tense and with the crazy heavy combos, shields are basically worthless unless you've put all your points in stamina. Boss design is really tough and I honestly think it's some amazing bosses, but I don't feel as strongly positive about any particular boss as I do with some particular bosses in Sekiro or Dark Souls 3. I'm sure my opinion will change with subsequent playthroughs but that's just how I feel, the bosses are mostly great but I don't think any of them reach the height of Isshin, Ornstein & Smough, Gael, or Freide.
Now onto my two negative points: the PC performance and the final boss.
The pc performance was fine on day 1: after that, they had a patch that decimated my framerate. Like I could not play. You don't know how I felt after waiting for so long, preordering, counting down the days for a year, and waiting through the delay that I just had to sit there and look at the game on my desktop. But at least they promptly fixed it and it worked for me from then but many people faced issues even with high-tier processors so I think the point is justified to be here.
Yep, this is one to be remembered by and is the next huge step in revitalizing open world games. BOTW started it, stumbled a little, but Elden ring took that concept and ironed it out. It would be cool to see games like far cry and assassin's creed take this approach. And despite the rocky PC port and the final boss being a letdown, this game is amazing and fully lived up to my sky-high expectations.
The next segment contains light spoilers for Elden ring and devil may cry 3, I will go into detail about my distaste for the final boss.
The final boss is the only true blemish on the game itself. Have any of you elksters played devil may cry 3? if you have, then you've fought Arkham for a second time. And you know how amazing the buildup and the story and music and everything is but the fight itself is so undeniably unfun and boring. You have to redo his first phase every single time- which worked for sekiro's final boss but it doesn't work here due to how fast you can dispatch enemies in sekiro with knowledge of their moves and when to parry. But here, you have to output enough damage every time. There's no posture bar to break. But the first phase isn't the bad part: the second part. Here, run at the enemy, slash at their stomach until they teleport away. Now dodge these lasers. Keep going for another 15 minutes. Absolutely horrendous boss design and I was honestly appalled at this because of how amazing the series' previous final bosses were made. Some of the best of all time! Gael from dark souls 3 and Sword Saint Isshin from Sekiro are tied for #2 best boss of all time for me (true elksters know the number 1[It's the final boss from metal gear solid 3 if you're just joining the elk army today]) yet this is one of my least favourite bosses of the franchise, and let's be real at it's lowest it has some doozies. Sorry to leave the review on a sour note but it's one of the best games of all time and an easy GOTY unless Gotham Knights blows the industry to kingdom fuck. Which let's be real it might. Anyways stay safe fellas have a good day. I dunno what my next review or game will be but I'm getting strong feelings of revisiting a classic from the ps3 era, maybe lego batman 1 or 2. Fun fact I almost got the platinum trophy for lego batman 2, the only one remaining was to finish a level in co-op but since I had one controller I never did that one. Would've been my first platinum, but I guess spiderman ps4 is my first platinum now which sorta feels like getting some supermodel to 2nd base and running away to lose your virginity to a hooker. Doesn't matter that much tho the game's still fun. Alright, cya guys later.