There's a great sense of cheapness about the whole thing that seems to come from a lack of internal cohesion: there's something heterogeneous about the animations, the different art assets, the awkwardly translated item descriptions and the Crunchyroll dub voice-acting. Everything feels cobbled together, and this feeling's heightened by the way it appropriates so many aspects of Bloodborne without much consideration for the overall effect that game achieves with them.

There's something sympathetic about any piece of media whose goal is to be just as good as another, driven by a kind of scrappy acquisitiveness that insists it needs neither talent nor originality to succeed. However they de-Italianized Pinocchio which is unforgivable.

one of the better soulslikes, but these games are a balancing act that can easily tip into "fucking mess" and at times this game is really teetering on the edge. there's a recurring feeling (particularly pre-patch) that everything is overtuned - all the bosses hit super hard, they're super aggressive, they're super mobile, and they have shitloads of HP. and there's almost always a phase 2 with a new health bar. even the minibosses are just tediously tanky. it's not inherently super difficult - though it does have elden ring's comically delayed wind-ups - it's just balanced so punishingly that there's almost zero room for error, and that kind of sucks.

i do have some issues with certain aspects of the design (the largest being the skill tree, and what's on it), but most of those would be minor nitpicks if the game gave you a little more leeway on the big fights. there's not much you can do when you hit one of the many brick walls - there's basically nothing to explore, all of the major upgrades are locked behind the game progression, and the NPC specters are rarely helpful. the recent balance patch helped in this regard, but if you thought fromsoft games need an easy mode, or if you rely on summons to get through the tough fights, this game might not be for you.

Lies of P threw everything souls into a bucket and tweeked 1-2 things into sort of new ideas. There are high highs, and very low lows. My experience may differ from others, granted, by the vast majority of time I spent in the game was pretty low and uneventful. Most of the levels are a drab and dull trudge through typical souls nonsense implemented in a really tropey way. Big slow weapons are completely unviable. Your character has no poise and a slight breeze will interrupt his animations. Obnoxious level designs reminiscent of Dark Souls 2. Stuff like walking on rafters while ranged enemies shoot at you and if you get hit once you fall off and die.

There is no rhythm in this dance. There is tedium. And it makes you want to play Sekiro instead.

I will still continue playing this game, solely for searching just how bad it could become.

somebody got really upset at my previous review, so let me be a bit more thorough this time.

the main issue with elden ring is that it presents itself as "open world dark souls" (i know it's not in the same series as souls, but you know what i mean), and then completely fucking fails at being both of these things.

for a game that everyone claims is the most derivative, unique game ever, it sure does nosedive directly into every single fault that open world games have. a massive, diluted map filled with copy/paste bosses and dungeons (but this time you have to fight two minibosses instead of one!), completely worthless crafting items that nobody will use outside of extremely niche circumstances, and rewards for finishing quests/optional areas that i'm unable to benefit from because it doesn't fit in with whatever build i'm using. pushing my way through stone imps for 20 minutes and being rewarded with some spell i can't use and 1/3rd as many runes as i need to level up isn't really going to incentivize me to explore more. sure, i'm not expecting every hidden item/secret to cater to my playstyle, it just feels disappointing.

as for the dark souls part (by which i mean how it handles boss/enemy behaviors and damage), everything is tuned way the fuck up to the point of absurdity. in my opinion, this is in response to other design choices that negate some of the previous difficulties of souls games, if that makes sense. ie, DS1 lacked warping for most of the game, meaning if you were stuck against certain required bosses it was a big decision to either push forward or spend time backtracking to grind/use facilities (note - i did steal this from another review but it's definitely a valid point). 2 and 3 allowed you to warp freely between bonfires, so that aspect of difficulty was gone - 3 offset this by having bosses with more complex attack patterns, and 2 did it with the worst fucking boss runbacks known to man.

since you can warp freely in elden ring and most bosses can be reached with few runbacks (from what i remember at least), they decided to crank the fuck out of both damage and boss attack patterns for the sake of difficulty. now you have moves that can easily kill you in one hit with no warning, massive combos that leave you no room to retaliate, and attacks that are delayed an obscene amount cause gotcha :). i understand that all of these were present in previous fromsoft games, but never to this extent. it's such a lazy way to do difficulty - i don't give a fuck if you call me bad, compared to every other soulsborne game it's just nowhere near as fun or satisfying to interact with, even if it looks flashier. elden ring is like that annoying kid in 2nd grade who kept making up bullshit rules in whatever playground game they were playing to benefit themselves.

look, there's things that are good about this game. i honestly wish i could love it - whenever that dumb ass voice in my head tells me to give it another try, it's the worldbuilding, music, and aesthetic that brings me back. but then i remember that everything past leyndell exists and it immediately goes back into the backlog.