In a desperate attempt to keep it succinct (I failed somewhat), I'll say just a few short sentence fragments:

- Substantial step backward in combat design from Sekiro understandable given the development timeline and the need to accommodate the expected playstyle and build variety transplanted from Dark Souls, but still disappointing to me, who felt everything Sekiro accomplished in terms of its combat design was so exciting, and I think could have been incorporated more... something about Guard Counters specifically feel like they were on to something but then failed to truly integrate it into how the bosses are fought and experienced.
- It's fucking crazy how big the world is, how did they fucking manage this??
- It's ultimately kinda hard to grapple with the idea that the more of the world you explore, the smaller and less magical it all ends up feeling, which is I think partly a product of the ease of fast travelling and just how simple traversal actually is (it's just Dark Souls but bigger)
- I truly do not think world design as a whole in From Soft's modern oeuvre has ever been as good as it was in Dark Souls (there will always be something in the back of my head that believes it has something to do with the above point)
- I want to feel a true and meaningful sense of danger, mystery, and intrigue, I want to truly feel lost and isolated and alone and like I've gotten myself too far down a dangerous path... Elden Ring has flashes of this, but truly, the worst thing I can say about it is that it too often feels like Breath of the Dark Souls 4. The death mechanics and the fast travel mechanics constantly undermine any chance of feeling truly unmoored from anything.
- Visually and artistically unimpeachable, unfuckwithable, a GOAT among GOATs for visual splendour and artistic direction
- For some reason I feel no desire whatsoever to ever play it again, and that's somewhat significant because, as of writing, the expansion is not yet released
- That Elden Ring, of all games, has the rigid and uncompromising fall damage mechanics of Dark Souls, will never, ever make sense to me... they have such different relationships to verticality... like... what?
- As per the above, I would give it another half star if Torrent's double jump could mitigate fall damage

Elden Ring might just be one of the games I enjoyed the most and think is outrageously good in so many ways, that just left me feeling drained and unfulfilled by the end of it.

That being said, I feel something close to certainty of the following:

- From Software have not yet created their masterpiece
- I feel that I can sense where and how the pieces were not quite in place for Elden Ring to be this masterpiece
- Where Elden Ring stayed somewhat stuck in the past, though, are, for me, in a strange way, signs that the pieces in could very well all be in place for this masterpiece to come about soon.

I'm calling a shot, here: before the end of the decade, or, perhaps, shortly into the next, From Software will release this masterpiece. Just think about it--every major game they've released since Dark Souls has shown growth, refinement, experimentation, and all in their own way have a unique visual and aesthetic and narrative tour-de-force. They are quite possibly the finest game development studio in existence at the moment, at least for their size and stature there's no competition that comes even close. It would take some kind of cataclysmic disaster to befall the studio for them to not release something, almost, epochally significant. Wait, having played all of these goddamned games, maybe I shouldn't jinx it.

Anyway, yeah, it feels appropriate and honest on my part to review Elden Ring ranting and raving in a grandiose style about things that are seemingly only tangentially related to Elden Ring. I promise, though, that my 4 stars out of 5 is perfectly honest.

It has been a while since I played it but this game stuck out to me for a very unfortunate reason.

The real horror of this game is realizing that it uses the whole Metroid-like, lock and key gimmick, but seemingly without, to the best of my knowledge, any real branching paths or any meaningful exploration beyond a linear path to and from every new area. This means the game somehow manages to feel like an uninterrupted stream of the most tedious, shallow sections of other Metroid-likes--it's like, the linear corridor before you get a new ability to show you the problem the ability could solve, then you get the ability, then there's another linear corridor where you get to use the ability. I mean, in good Metroid-likes, this can be a nice change of pace, but it only works as a change of pace. In CARRION this just feels like an endless Baby Mode tech demo. From what I remember, sometimes this is interspersed with Okay boss fights, and then also horribly tedious narrative heavy sections; I feel like I'm being unfair in saying there are sections where you walk around at a snails pace as a little human scientist, but, I think that might be part of it.

I mean, the gimmick taht got it headlines is funny for a few hours, I guess. But I'm still left scratching my head at why this game did not have meaningful exploration and/or branching paths.

A simple but snappy turn based strategy game. I would call the experience of playing it breezy, especially for a strategy game. It's a fun romp, narratively speaking nothing impressive, but... well, I have to repeat once more that there is just very few aspects of this game that can't be described as snappy, or streamlined, or lean, or just straightforwardly satisfying. Difficulty curve, dialogue, the visuals (especially those beautiful and expressive character portraits!), the spells and abilities, the class advancement system...

Just, yeah! It's a beaut!