This game is like a drug—it's like crack for those unfortunate enough to actually like anime. The amount of time I've wasted on this game is astounding. "Just one game" I'll often tell to myself, next thing I know I've spent 2hrs of my life on an anime song guessing game. TWO FUCKING HOURS mindlessly chipping away at my sanity. But I love it. I love every second of it because life is hard, and guessing the songs I spend hours listening to on YouTube anyways is easy. And just like that, I've convinced myself to play another round. Someone put me out of my misery.

As much as I love playing as a Japanese, sexy, bikini-wearing, zombie-killing, wrestle-manoeuvring, blood-soaked, sister-searching, prophecy-fulfilling, cowboy hat-toting, vampiric, samurai, furry, anime chick, the gameplay just isn't up to snuff. Cool combos be damned. It's an odd fusion of Dynasty Warriors, with stock character action, set-piece, QTE, precision timing combat, which, initially, really works, but coupled with dogshit level and enemy design, falters irreparably in regards to any semblance of a gameplay loop.

On a technical level, yeah, it's good. Actually, more than good, it's great. Probably the most intuitive and polished thing FromSoft has ever put out, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that assumption. However, despite being backed by strong creative direction, the game is ridiculously bloated and noticeably meanders its way through the later sections. When I compare it to something like Demon's Souls, the stark differences bear mentioning. Demon's Souls has the most inspired level mapping, design and accompanying lore I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing from not just FromSoft, but video games in general. Elden Ring doesn't have the liberty of perfectly crafting its every asset because, in an attempt to stay even more relevant in the modern gaming landscape, it opted for the tired open-world approach.

Fortunately, Elden Ring has one more card up its sleeve, which saves the game from being even more of an unbearable slog. It's its most iconic card of all: the boss fight card. For the most part, Elden Ring's boss fights are fantastic. The Fell Omen is a brilliant starter boss who practically forces you to acclimatise yourself with the basic controls and mechanics—pushing this game's sizable new player base to "learn their shit" as early on as they can. Other notable bosses, like Radahn, ingeniously build upon FromSoft's legacy by giving the player something holistically new and exciting, even if he was so broken he had to be later patched. It isn't until you get to the Fire Giant that Elden Ring figuratively—and quite literally—falls apart. For the sake of spoilers, I won't go into any specifics, but aside from one exception, every subsequent boss somehow becomes even more unfair and more unfun than the last. And it's unfortunate because I wanted to blindly praise and revere this game like the rest of the marks. It took over 50hrs to finish my first playthrough, but I spent the last ten feeling disillusioned and bitter. Even in vanquishing the final boss—although still overcome by the orgasmic pleasure of beating and shelving the game—I was left with nothing but a bittersweet aftertaste and the sound of my friend laughing at some videos he found on his phone.

3/5, and that's generous.