There's so much to talk about with Elden Ring. There's the giant open world, which is at times breathtaking and awe-inducing but also at times rote and formulaic (you know you're going to find a tunnel with miners, catacombs with some undead enemies, caves with various wildlife, etc), but by the time the magic is starting to wear off, the game kicks into high gear and barrels through to the endgame.
It works incredibly well - the lore revelations and boss encounters, and "legacy dungeons" (what I understand to mean a Dark Souls-ass level, basically) happen with increased frequency toward the end, and it feels like the big payoff after spending over a 100 hours roaming the open world, adventuring and piecing together the lore of the Lands Between in an almost archeological manner, as you do in these FromSoft games - reading item descriptions, listening to cryptic NPC dialogue and trying to keep track of what different quests you're on at the moment, since the game doesn't track anything for you.
I kept notes on what characters wanted me to do for them, or any hints they provided as to where they might be headed, and it always felt rewarding seeking them out and finding them. On the flipside, it felt really bad when I accidentally progressed something too far, making other questlines completely inaccessible.
I've heard it mentioned elsewhere that this game, length-wise, is almost like a whole Dark Souls-trilogy in 1 game, and I'm inclined to agree. The Dark Souls-games usually take me between 30-50 hours to complete, and the timer was at 122 hours by the time the final credits rolled, and it is quite telling how captivated I am by this world when the thing I've been doing in the days after completing is diving deep into the lore and trying to learn more about everything I didn't pick up on, or things I simply didn't find.
I've said a lot of words about this game, but the long and short of it is that this is a game I'm going to remember for a long time.
It works incredibly well - the lore revelations and boss encounters, and "legacy dungeons" (what I understand to mean a Dark Souls-ass level, basically) happen with increased frequency toward the end, and it feels like the big payoff after spending over a 100 hours roaming the open world, adventuring and piecing together the lore of the Lands Between in an almost archeological manner, as you do in these FromSoft games - reading item descriptions, listening to cryptic NPC dialogue and trying to keep track of what different quests you're on at the moment, since the game doesn't track anything for you.
I kept notes on what characters wanted me to do for them, or any hints they provided as to where they might be headed, and it always felt rewarding seeking them out and finding them. On the flipside, it felt really bad when I accidentally progressed something too far, making other questlines completely inaccessible.
I've heard it mentioned elsewhere that this game, length-wise, is almost like a whole Dark Souls-trilogy in 1 game, and I'm inclined to agree. The Dark Souls-games usually take me between 30-50 hours to complete, and the timer was at 122 hours by the time the final credits rolled, and it is quite telling how captivated I am by this world when the thing I've been doing in the days after completing is diving deep into the lore and trying to learn more about everything I didn't pick up on, or things I simply didn't find.
I've said a lot of words about this game, but the long and short of it is that this is a game I'm going to remember for a long time.