+ Boss fights
+ Freely switching party
+ Very emotional ending

- Blitzball sucks
- Sphere Grid is a giant placebo
- 'Religion bad' plot
- Post-game opens too late
- and is too grindy

When I was younger I used to have recurring dreams which weren't very scary but I was always terrified of having them. I was in a white-black void filled with tightropes of alternating thicknesses that I had to navigate across; the thinnest ones were like fishing wire and would slice me up real bad but for some reason I was more afraid of the thickest wires which were sausage-shaped and fleshy and standing on them wouldn't hurt me physically but I was repulsed by it none the less.

Where I grew up, houses didn't have basements. Instead we have attics or lofts which I have on occasion peered my head into and seen shapes move before fumbling for the lightswitch. In general though, I find that lofts take on a different role than that of the basement, instilling a sense of mystery rather than dread, where else would you store a century old painting or cursed music box.

Final Fantasy Tactics is addicting. It is obsessive in the same way that trying to fix a broken computer is. About a month ago my PC broke. I spent 4 of the simultaneously longest and shortest days of my life waiting for parts to arrive, sat on the floor, hunched over my PC case, repetitively turning the power on and off, unplugging parts, dragging myself over to my partner's build to see if their GPU would fix the problem, frantically crawling tomshardware threads for solutions, frustrated that I couldn’t do the work that I needed.

In many ways, my experience with Final Fantasy Tactics reflected those 4 days. My PS Vita charger was just a little bit too short to sit comfortably while it was charging so I was alternating between repetitively entering maps and clearing them, frantically crawling gamefaqs threads for builds, calculating my characters stats and what I needed to do to fix their setups, frustrated that my Arithmetician wasn’t working the way I wanted her to. I was getting impatient waiting for my Vita to charge and I was soon sat on the floor, hunched over the single free plug socket by the door much like I was with the husk of my PC.

I'm retiring this one so I can get it off my conscience. Another user mentioned that the gameplay can get exhausting and there isn't a better way of describing it.

There is already a high barrier to entry, with the game not being released in the west and it only being available via a (very good) fan translation, so naturally the ratings are high on this site since people are probably already invested in the game before even booting up the rom.

But sadly this game commits the cardinal sin of being a goddam chore - each turn requires moving a dozen units, with the defeat of each sub boss opening up a laundry list of busy work to do with your units; arena fights, buying, selling, gifting money, capturing villages, talking and triggering events. There is just so much tedium to be had while the minute to minute gameplay doesn't actually accomplish much.

And the sad part is that I am tapping out at the start of chapter 5, the last chapter before the time skip - the main feature of this entry. The reality is that a chapter could take 4 hours of my quickly vanishing life away from me, unlocking another 20 hours of... frustration, the frustration you only get from watching someone else do a task too slowly - if only I could step in and speed things up or skip some steps for them.

Elden Ring is good because it is a From Software Souls game. It is also almost exactly as good as the From games that I have played, Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne, which I gave similar ratings.

It is no secret that the Dark Souls franchise has absolutely demolished discourse around difficulty in video games. The problem is, I have never found dark souls games particularly difficult within the context of the restraints and options that the games provide. The combat is certainly punishing, and making mistakes can leave you dead even against considerably lower level enemies, but the feats that are being asked of you, the dodging, blocking, poking isn't in of it self difficult or much to ask.

The second aspect that works to dismantle the perceived difficulty is how the death and souls... sorry runes system works in general, especially with Elden Ring finding itself providing more and more bonfi- sites of graces and other checkpoints. A player will often find themselves corpse-dragging their lost souls across the map, and as long as they don't make too many mistakes, they can get to the next safe haven with their accumulated bounty, letting them level up a few times. The ability to over level throws all sense of difficulty out of the window - especially in the context of The Lands Between where the first boss is begging you to piss off, level up, find better weapons and upgrades, and come back later.

I didn't grind (certainly not as much as I did in Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3) and yet found myself crushing bosses simply because there is so many ways to improve your character instead of merely brute forcing an encounter. Spirit Ashes are also ridiculous, obviously, with the Mimic Tear being my bestie and the only time I struggled was when a boss I would encounter was resistant to my damage type (which happened once... near the very end of the game).

All of this isn't to say that I hated the game (as my rating hopefully shows) or that I am way better than anyone else who struggled on more bosses or conversely did indeed beat the game at a much lower level than I did - I actually massively enjoyed one-shotting almost every single mob after the halfway point, I just think that Dark Souls difficulty (or at least the 3 From Software games I have beat), and therefore their appeal, is overstated. Playing Elden Ring (and especially this entry) isn't some masochist act, is indeed a power fantasy as much as any action game, letting me fell giant monstrosity with my ghostly brethren.

From Soft's games do have one... I would say fatal flaw, but they seem to Estus Flask their way through the problem... in their construction and presentation which is especially present in Elden Ring - character progression is almost invisible from the mid game onwards. Once you have obtained your favourite weapons and spells, the only character improvement exists in making numbers go up on stat sheets. For me, this happened very early on, for others you may end up picking up a new weapon in one of the game's later regions or quests and this feeling may be neglible.

Elden Ring quickly devolves into an action-adventure game. The open world could not possible give me any meaningful rewards when I had everything I needed except runes and smithing stones. The legacy dungeons are clearly where the game shines it brightest, and past Limgrave, I felt no excitement or interest exploring the new regions. Actually that isn't exactly true. The open world isn't bad in Elden Ring, but it isn't any better than the Legacy Dungeons nor the tight level designs of the past From Software titles, which makes me wonder... why bother?

Elden Ring is great because it is a From Software Souls game. And From Software Souls games will always be great.