I played this in order to have more context for my play-through of The Witcher 3..
Let's just say I didn't get any of that and was left more confused than anything.
Not a horrible game, but the amount of exposition and information being thrown at you is disorienting and honestly I have no desire to replay this entry.

I feel as though this game is the culmination of everything wrong with Dark Souls 2&3 rolled into one. While I genuinely enjoyed the first two thirds of Elden Ring exploring and finding all the cool secret areas and encounters, the endgame felt rushed and unbalanced with countless re-skins and frustrating boss encounters that felt cheap rather than a fun challenge.

Which is a shame because this game has some of the coolest visuals and stellar designs for all of it's enemies, weapons,
and environments as well as a fairly interesting world and lore (even though it's essentially just a rehash of the same general idea as Dark Souls).

It's also plagued by a pretty terrible online experience (as of me writing this review) which stutters and disconnects constantly.

In short, Elden Ring on it's own is a pretty marvelous experience in the early game, which takes a sharp turn in quality near it's end.

The definitive way to experience the trilogy and man what a package. I really wish they put a little more effort into ME2 & 3 as they did with the first one, but beggars can't be choosers I suppose.

I really enjoy the atmosphere and themes presented here, I just wish the pacing and gameplay were better so I'd be able to enjoy it more than I did.

This could've easily been a great 40 hour experience, but instead it's bloated to 80 plus. This is due to the main dungeon Tartarus' design and the calendar system delaying every major story event to the next in-game month. This leaves you with not much to do in-between other than grind for levels and complete social links. Which unlike in later persona entries aren't very interesting or engaging.

On top of that, the entire game's narrative seems to be severely underdeveloped. There are inklings of interesting ideas but they are left unfinished or without enough explanation to make me care about them (especially the main antagonists).

Overall Persona 3 feels like a bunch of missed opportunities, which is shameful because this could've been something special if it wasn't held back by it's many shortcomings.

Man this is has one of the most unbalanced hard difficulties I've ever played (Jackal Snipers giving me flashbacks to MW2 hacked lobbies)

Although learning that the dev cycle was 10 months really put a few things into perspective.

Reagrdless of it's shortcomings I had a blast, it's a huge step forward from Halo CE and aside from it's kind of shitty rushed ending and godawful 'boss battles' I thoroughly enjoyed my time playing it.

A genre defining title that has MOST DEFINITLEY shown it's age 20+ years later.

Silent Cartographer is peak Halo while the rest is fine (lots of backtracking and recycled maps to pad the game).


I have no desire to revisit it anytime soon, however I'm happy I at least gave it a shot.



Maybe I'm getting old, or I'm becoming a stick in the mud. But I just couldn't get into this.

I appreciate the music, character design, and ambience. But that's really it.

I feel like the slow, clunky, repetitive gameplay killed any kind of enjoyment I could have had. I understand that this is probably intended.. but I suppose I just look for other things in video games.

I'm dissapointed.. I really wanted to like this as much as everyone else seems to.. but I just felt nothing..