Tried this one out because the premise seemed inteesting.

Never been a FF fan and continue not to be. Played to the end of the first disc and got bored.

Magic system is needlessly convoluted. Waste of time.

Graphics pretty good for the time.

Strap in, kids. This is a big one.

The keyword for this game is ‘trust’. The devs have placed a phenomenal amount of trust in the player to make the right decisions for themselves with minimal hand holding. A powerful Tree Sentinel is one of the very first, if not the first, enemy you may encounter and they leave it to you if you want to spend an hour trying to fight him or have the smarts to back off and fight him later. Caelid, one of the toughest areas in the game, can casually be wandered into on accident as it's right next to the starting area. Essentially essential items for major gameplay mechanics are left up to you to find. The amount of actual mandatory content in this game is miniscule. It kinda blows my mind they're perfectly happy for people to miss so much stuff, because a lot of this is very well hidden.

The lore of the land stands on its own and isn’t afraid to get weird, even by FromSoft standards. Minor spoiler, but one of my favourite tidbits I discovered was that General Radahn uses his gravity magic to make sure he never comes off his steed. The lore's compelling, full of new things, and is so apparent in just the environment alone.

The NPC characters are more compelling and abundant than before, having more direct contributions to the state of the world and their quests are massively improved. Previous Souls games would have characters speak in vagueness about where they would go and 9/10 times this would result in few people bothering with them because an NPC would hop around to areas you have no reason to go back to and would then die. Characters in Elden Ring are more chatty, have more defined goals and tend to travel in similar directions to you, keeping them feeling like people but making the quests far more engaging.

My favourite part of this game is the sense of discovery. With certain graces guiding you towards a few major locations, everything else is up to you and it feels incredible. Coming across a tunnel that leads to an underground city with its own secrets that lead you to yet more optional areas and bosses is more the norm than the exception with this game. It’s so jam packed with places to go and secrets to find it’s almost disappointing when you don’t come across an area that isn’t a multilayered labyrinth. Even when I was over 60 hours into the game I was coming across new areas and having my mind blown with just how much there was to discover and learn about. This exploration doesn’t go without reward either. Everywhere you go contains some sort of useful item. Whether it be a recipe book, weapon, shield, talisman, ash of war, spirit, armour, spells, vows, upgrade material, vendor items, ect. It’s a dream come true to me. I love games that let me find things without pointers and have no qualms letting me miss things if I don’t pay attention.

A brilliant piece of game design was the map. The map begins zoomed only on Limgrave, the starting area. But it progressively zooms out the further away you travel. There were many times I was asking myself “how much bigger is this going to get?” and it’s a great and daunting question the game is wanting me to ask. Trap chests and teleporters dotted around the game are great, too. Most of these give you small glimpses of late game areas but some of them hilariously send you to areas you are most likely not prepared to complete yet. I love these.

The amount of content is really staggering and not in the poorly disguised way most other open world games fill themselves out. There is a degree of copy pasting. Very few bosses are one-of-a-kind. Mines, caves, castles and catacombs have a degree of repetition, there’s a very noticeable amount of asset reuse from previous games. But it doesn’t feel lazy. The world feels bespoke from head-to-toe and I struggle to imagine how they’ll top themselves with their next game.

The difficulty scaling of the game is a big step up from other open world games. Don’t lie, by the mid-to-late game in BOTW, you were basically not being challenged by almost anything, in Skyrim you were king of the land by level 5. Elden Ring remains a challenge from beginning to end.

The game doesn’t come without its flaws, of course. Now… Fromsoft RPGs… the thing about Fromsoft RPGs… the thing you have to remember about Fromsoft RPGs… well, Fromsoft RPGs have a lot of repeated ideas, but they’re often presented uniquely enough to stand on their own.

It may be fatigue setting in, but it’s disheartening to see yet another FromSoft game about a world in ruin where an undead (you) must kill the most powerful beings and decide the fate of the world, filled with NPCs who speak vaguely in ye olde English, exploring the usual castles and swamps for the most part. You have your regenerating health item, roll and punish, ect. I think it’s really time to change up the formula a bit and it doesn’t even have to be by much, I think Bloodborne differentiates itself just fine and that’s just slightly more modern ye olde England.

“Door does not open from this side” is as prevalent as ever and lifts exist in some increasingly questionable places.

Contraptions like giant crossbows can’t be operated which seems like a huge oversight as my first instinct was to use them and this was something you could do in previous games.

There’s no logbook. A character may point you in a direction you can’t go to yet and 20 hours later when you have access, you may have, or at least I certainly did, have completely forgotten what that NPC said. I don’t think it’d harm the experience to at least have something in game to refer back to have a character said.

Bosses are extremely samey. Aggressive, infinite stamina spam festivals where you dodge attacks and hit on down time. It’s boring. I wish the series would go back to some of its more puzzle-like bosses, such as the Tower Knight, Fools Idol, or Old Hero. Sure, they may not all be super difficult 1-on-1 ultimate tests of skill but they do add variety and variety is the spice of life.

Optional castles are noticeably less tightly designed and have a samey feel to them. A lot of them feel like just the courtyard of Boletaria Castle. It’s a little disappointing but only a minor complaint.

There are some strange decisions on the difficulty. Some areas can only be accessed after completing other activities and sometimes these areas are very easy by comparison to what you have to overcome to get there.

Overall I can't recommend this game enough. It really does elevate the open world genre to a whole new level.