The combat of Elden Ring, at its core, is the same as in Dark Souls 3. If you had fun with Dark Souls 3, you're gonna have fun with Elden Ring. Personally, I love Dark Souls 3, so I had fun with Elden Ring. However, there are a ton of issues with this game.
First off, weapon upgrade materials. They’re way too rare, which means you’re never encouraged to experiment with weapons. Getting the ability to buy them eventually helps I guess but even then, they’re way too expensive (getting a new weapon up to level with your current level is pretty much always more expensive than a level up) and the bell-bearings are way too missable for how important they are. Also, the fact that they’re so granular feels like super weird design to me. It means you get punished for doing things out of order/exploring, and it leads to frustrating situations where you could upgrade your weapon to +18 if only you could get it to +12 first. Why even have that many types of upgrade stones if 2 of them are bundled for each bell bearing?
The design of a lot of bosses is also not very fun to me. Too much AOE, too many delayed attacks, which combined means that your dodge roll is less of a repositioning tool and more of a source of iframes than ever before.
The game is also way too large. The game has to constantly recycle things to be full of stuff. Recycled enemies, recycled bosses, and worst of all, recycled dungeon mechanics, are all commonplace in the later parts of the game. Additionally, the pacing of the game is just off to me. At one point, I defeated a boss and felt ready for the game to end soon. Instead I was told to go somewhere entirely new. I went to the next area (which I found incredibly boring), defeated the boss, and did the thing I was told to do. And then I was teleported to some place for some reason. That place was also boring to me so I decided to give the game a break because I could feel myself slowly starting to despise it.
I also don’t like how disconnected the multiplayer features are from the rest of the game. Not linking the ability to summon to anything means you’ll never just randomly see a summon sign and think “sure, why not”, summoning always has to be a conscious choice.
I understand that a lot of people are glad that they won’t be invaded unless they do coop, but I actually liked being invaded every now and then, but I don’t want to be invaded so much that I’ll use the taunter’s tongue.
All that said, there are also many positives to Elden Ring. The game is beautiful, especially the earlier areas. Spirit Ashes and Ashes of War are both incredibly cool new features. Power stance (mostly) being back is great. The worldbuilding is amazing and I do not understand why people say it’s just dark souls with different proper nouns. Radahn is probably my favourite boss fight from any Fromsoft game, the spectacle is just through the roof.
Like I said, despite all of the issues I have with this game, I still had a fun time with it and I will finish it eventually, I just really need a break right now.
Last but not least, performance on the Ps4 was decent. Some loading screens took too long, and the game was a bit chunky in areas with lots of particle effects (that you can’t reduce/turn off) but I was playing a modern game on 9-year-old hardware so I’m not going to complain. Imagine playing Bloodborne on the Ps3.
In conclusion, Elden Ring is a great game for people who like Dark Souls 3, but not quite as good as Dark Souls 3.
First off, weapon upgrade materials. They’re way too rare, which means you’re never encouraged to experiment with weapons. Getting the ability to buy them eventually helps I guess but even then, they’re way too expensive (getting a new weapon up to level with your current level is pretty much always more expensive than a level up) and the bell-bearings are way too missable for how important they are. Also, the fact that they’re so granular feels like super weird design to me. It means you get punished for doing things out of order/exploring, and it leads to frustrating situations where you could upgrade your weapon to +18 if only you could get it to +12 first. Why even have that many types of upgrade stones if 2 of them are bundled for each bell bearing?
The design of a lot of bosses is also not very fun to me. Too much AOE, too many delayed attacks, which combined means that your dodge roll is less of a repositioning tool and more of a source of iframes than ever before.
The game is also way too large. The game has to constantly recycle things to be full of stuff. Recycled enemies, recycled bosses, and worst of all, recycled dungeon mechanics, are all commonplace in the later parts of the game. Additionally, the pacing of the game is just off to me. At one point, I defeated a boss and felt ready for the game to end soon. Instead I was told to go somewhere entirely new. I went to the next area (which I found incredibly boring), defeated the boss, and did the thing I was told to do. And then I was teleported to some place for some reason. That place was also boring to me so I decided to give the game a break because I could feel myself slowly starting to despise it.
I also don’t like how disconnected the multiplayer features are from the rest of the game. Not linking the ability to summon to anything means you’ll never just randomly see a summon sign and think “sure, why not”, summoning always has to be a conscious choice.
I understand that a lot of people are glad that they won’t be invaded unless they do coop, but I actually liked being invaded every now and then, but I don’t want to be invaded so much that I’ll use the taunter’s tongue.
All that said, there are also many positives to Elden Ring. The game is beautiful, especially the earlier areas. Spirit Ashes and Ashes of War are both incredibly cool new features. Power stance (mostly) being back is great. The worldbuilding is amazing and I do not understand why people say it’s just dark souls with different proper nouns. Radahn is probably my favourite boss fight from any Fromsoft game, the spectacle is just through the roof.
Like I said, despite all of the issues I have with this game, I still had a fun time with it and I will finish it eventually, I just really need a break right now.
Last but not least, performance on the Ps4 was decent. Some loading screens took too long, and the game was a bit chunky in areas with lots of particle effects (that you can’t reduce/turn off) but I was playing a modern game on 9-year-old hardware so I’m not going to complain. Imagine playing Bloodborne on the Ps3.
In conclusion, Elden Ring is a great game for people who like Dark Souls 3, but not quite as good as Dark Souls 3.