I'm having trouble seeing what everyone else sees in this game. Maybe it's because I went with a Strength+Endurance Great Sword build, maybe it's because I had covid while playing this and it's affected my mood towards the game. Maybe it just didn't click with me for reasons I'll get into. But whatever the case is, I didn't seem to enjoy Elden Ring as much as others have. And that bothers me.
In previous Souls games, a lot of what made those games interesting for me was that their design involved a lot of interlooping paths. It's similar to how a Metroidvania is designed, where one area is locked off by progression gates that you open to bring about shortcuts for that area. Elden Ring has this, but only in the more linear areas of the game that are there for progression. The rest of the world, in turn, is designed like a regular AAA open world map, albeit with the non-linearity of other Fromsoft games. The non-linearity is great, and I understand the appreciation for it. The open world part is where I get confused with the praise. A lot of it is your standard tropes of open world design; small dungeons, forts, repeating geometry, paths within the terrain that direct you where you need to go, enemies scattered everywhere, reused bosses to fill out open world. All of this is stuff I've already seen before in other games, and in games I love, but just with a Dark Souls twist to it. Which, if you're really, REALLY into open world games, and you're really, REALLY into Souls games, it's probably like chocolate and peanut butter making out for the first time. Which is great, I love seeing those two suck face! But to me, it's a lot more of the same from each. And I'm beginning to become fatigued by it.
This may be Breath of The Wild's fault. My brain may have decided, consciously or unconsciously, that anything that doesn't provide the same feelings that Breath of the Wild has given me for open world games is a lesser experience. Which isn't a fair point of comparison. Breath of the Wild isn't a perfect game, and if someone with different tastes felt the same way about it the way I do with Elden Ring, I think I would understand where their preferences lie. I am in love with exploring. I love interacting with the environment. So climbing everything and seeing where I could go, what I could do, what I could skip, what I could manipulate, was something that appealed greatly to me. Elden Ring is more for the type of person who wants to control a build, customize it, and do crazy damage to tough enemies through their own skill mastery.
But I think there's a point where the Dark Souls and the route they took with the open world design tends to clash. I think it's also, in part, because they've broaded the appeal of the games to a wider number of players. They provide the player with a lot of options to get through the game much easier. Dark Souls has done this before with things like summons, but they usually required some drawbacks like the use of humanity. Here, it's simply a matter of finding the right summon, leveling them up through grinding, and having them do most of the work, or distracting the boss. On top of this, enemies tend to be a lot easier, especially given the fact that you can summon your mount almost whenever. This means normal enemies, mid-boss enemies, and certain boss enemies become a repeated game of using your horse to circle around the boss and hit them until they're dead. And when the horse is essentially an incredibly fast option with the only drawback is if you take enough damage, your horse uses up a healing item, it's by far the best option to pick from. Not to say that the game can't be challenging, because it can be, but the selection pool of my options feels less strategic when all I'm really doing is circling an enemy with my horse and chopping them down as my summon distracts them. The easiest option for the player tends to be the one that the player goes and chooses. It's best to prevent those types of things entering your game if possible. It's like with back stabbing abuse in Dark Souls 1, it's usually the most effective, and would get used a lot. But you still had more interesting options to roll, dodge, parry attacks with Dark Souls 1, with the horse strat, you're just running around.
Maybe in a couple of years, I'll come back to Elden Ring, and give it another chance. I'll try a new build, I'll try different strategies, I'll try not to think about other games. Who knows, maybe I'll like it more. It would not be the first, nor will it be the last, where I go back to a game that I didn't much care for and take away something different. But as of right now, I don't get why people love Elden Ring. And it's going to keep bother me.
In previous Souls games, a lot of what made those games interesting for me was that their design involved a lot of interlooping paths. It's similar to how a Metroidvania is designed, where one area is locked off by progression gates that you open to bring about shortcuts for that area. Elden Ring has this, but only in the more linear areas of the game that are there for progression. The rest of the world, in turn, is designed like a regular AAA open world map, albeit with the non-linearity of other Fromsoft games. The non-linearity is great, and I understand the appreciation for it. The open world part is where I get confused with the praise. A lot of it is your standard tropes of open world design; small dungeons, forts, repeating geometry, paths within the terrain that direct you where you need to go, enemies scattered everywhere, reused bosses to fill out open world. All of this is stuff I've already seen before in other games, and in games I love, but just with a Dark Souls twist to it. Which, if you're really, REALLY into open world games, and you're really, REALLY into Souls games, it's probably like chocolate and peanut butter making out for the first time. Which is great, I love seeing those two suck face! But to me, it's a lot more of the same from each. And I'm beginning to become fatigued by it.
This may be Breath of The Wild's fault. My brain may have decided, consciously or unconsciously, that anything that doesn't provide the same feelings that Breath of the Wild has given me for open world games is a lesser experience. Which isn't a fair point of comparison. Breath of the Wild isn't a perfect game, and if someone with different tastes felt the same way about it the way I do with Elden Ring, I think I would understand where their preferences lie. I am in love with exploring. I love interacting with the environment. So climbing everything and seeing where I could go, what I could do, what I could skip, what I could manipulate, was something that appealed greatly to me. Elden Ring is more for the type of person who wants to control a build, customize it, and do crazy damage to tough enemies through their own skill mastery.
But I think there's a point where the Dark Souls and the route they took with the open world design tends to clash. I think it's also, in part, because they've broaded the appeal of the games to a wider number of players. They provide the player with a lot of options to get through the game much easier. Dark Souls has done this before with things like summons, but they usually required some drawbacks like the use of humanity. Here, it's simply a matter of finding the right summon, leveling them up through grinding, and having them do most of the work, or distracting the boss. On top of this, enemies tend to be a lot easier, especially given the fact that you can summon your mount almost whenever. This means normal enemies, mid-boss enemies, and certain boss enemies become a repeated game of using your horse to circle around the boss and hit them until they're dead. And when the horse is essentially an incredibly fast option with the only drawback is if you take enough damage, your horse uses up a healing item, it's by far the best option to pick from. Not to say that the game can't be challenging, because it can be, but the selection pool of my options feels less strategic when all I'm really doing is circling an enemy with my horse and chopping them down as my summon distracts them. The easiest option for the player tends to be the one that the player goes and chooses. It's best to prevent those types of things entering your game if possible. It's like with back stabbing abuse in Dark Souls 1, it's usually the most effective, and would get used a lot. But you still had more interesting options to roll, dodge, parry attacks with Dark Souls 1, with the horse strat, you're just running around.
Maybe in a couple of years, I'll come back to Elden Ring, and give it another chance. I'll try a new build, I'll try different strategies, I'll try not to think about other games. Who knows, maybe I'll like it more. It would not be the first, nor will it be the last, where I go back to a game that I didn't much care for and take away something different. But as of right now, I don't get why people love Elden Ring. And it's going to keep bother me.
5 Comments
"Elden Ring is more for the type of person who wants to control a build, customize it, and do crazy damage to tough enemies through their own skill mastery."
As one of the people who does not like BOTW but likes Elden Ring, you hit the nail on the head right there. I did a dual UGS build that was strength/endurance focused and that weapon type didn't work well with the horse but swinging those giant slabs of metal around for massive damage while tanking hits like they were nothing was super fun.
I agree with a lot of your points and that the open world is one of its worst aspects alongside the too frequent boss reuse and the fatigue of the souls type game but your combat complaints are from your own choices that you easily could have weened yourself off of if it was that detrimental. You're also ignoring the fact that the horse just straight up drops you if it takes enough damage in a fight which can lead to free and sometimes big damage by the enemy.
Blaming the game for having an option that makes something easy and then complaining it made it easy after use isn't the games fault. You could have just not used it if it mattered that much to you, the game didn't staple your hand to the horse button and the same goes for summons. Mimic Tear was great and I used it whenever I wanted, but if for some reason I cared about the sanctity of the challenge then I wouldn't have. And unless I'm misunderstanding your later point about the horse strat, Elden ring also has rolling, dodge, and parrying but you just need to get off the horse to actually use them.
Unfusing yourself from the horse might be all you needed
As one of the people who does not like BOTW but likes Elden Ring, you hit the nail on the head right there. I did a dual UGS build that was strength/endurance focused and that weapon type didn't work well with the horse but swinging those giant slabs of metal around for massive damage while tanking hits like they were nothing was super fun.
I agree with a lot of your points and that the open world is one of its worst aspects alongside the too frequent boss reuse and the fatigue of the souls type game but your combat complaints are from your own choices that you easily could have weened yourself off of if it was that detrimental. You're also ignoring the fact that the horse just straight up drops you if it takes enough damage in a fight which can lead to free and sometimes big damage by the enemy.
Blaming the game for having an option that makes something easy and then complaining it made it easy after use isn't the games fault. You could have just not used it if it mattered that much to you, the game didn't staple your hand to the horse button and the same goes for summons. Mimic Tear was great and I used it whenever I wanted, but if for some reason I cared about the sanctity of the challenge then I wouldn't have. And unless I'm misunderstanding your later point about the horse strat, Elden ring also has rolling, dodge, and parrying but you just need to get off the horse to actually use them.
Unfusing yourself from the horse might be all you needed
I really enjoyed this review even though I feel differently towards the game. Well considered and written. I wanted to comment on your thoughts towards the open world. Where Elden Ring stood out was in large part how they present the map. In most open world games, you have that moment like in BOTW where you walk out and see a majority of the map from early on, and the adventure is discovering the details and intimate locations. For pretty much every open world, even if they obscure the details on the map, you still from the first minute, have a general idea of scale.
Elden Ring hides the scale by having multiple moments in which the map expands, and it totally recontextualizes your expectations of just how big the world is. Whether this is reaching out east, or the multiple expansions north and then of course the massive underworld. And then just the scale of those locations as well, it seems like you are never done climbing up. First the plateau, then up towards the mountaintops which in itself never seems to end. I can't think of many other open world games that have you stretching so far in all four cardinal directions as well as the great depths and heights.
Elden Ring hides the scale by having multiple moments in which the map expands, and it totally recontextualizes your expectations of just how big the world is. Whether this is reaching out east, or the multiple expansions north and then of course the massive underworld. And then just the scale of those locations as well, it seems like you are never done climbing up. First the plateau, then up towards the mountaintops which in itself never seems to end. I can't think of many other open world games that have you stretching so far in all four cardinal directions as well as the great depths and heights.
@stovetop First of all, thank you for reading! It means a lot to me to see someone take the time to read these thoughts I've just had in my head and analyze them.
You're right in that I didn't mention the other downside to using your horse in combat, which is that it takes a while to get back up. It wasn't out of ignoring of the mechanics, it's just that I straight up forgot to mention it. It's been a while since I last played, and I've been writing a ton of reviews from memory in bulk. That's my bad, especially because it's fairly important to have as a way to deter the player from abusing the horse.
And you're halfway right in that it's my choice to use this or to not use this. I agree, it is, in part, a me problem. I could have the option to just not use the horse. If I were the type of player to just try out every option I could, or do self imposing challenges, I probably wouldn't have an issue with this. The thing is though, I'm not that type of person. I would be losing an advantage that's been given me by the game. And as a game designer, it's best to try and prevent things like that from happening.
There's an old quote that goes around by the makers of the Civilization games, something along the lines of "if given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of the game". Me saying this was in service to this quote, and it's something that applies not only to me for Elden Ring, but multiple other players across MANY games. If a player sees an easy way to do something, they're more likely going to do that. This is mostly down to the type of player you are to prevent things like that, but it also has some leeway in becoming a big issue or a small issue. The reason why I brought up the point about Dark Souls 1's backstabbing is that, this is exactly the same problem, but one I has less of an issue with due to the fact that the strat still involves utilizing other game mechanics. With the horse, you don't have the same amount of movement options, and it in turn makes your best strat being to "attack and run away". I think if the game were to provide other ways to utilize the horse, it'd be more interesting, but it's too good of an advantage for me to want to pass up. The same with summons: my ease of access to these things makes it very difficult to just say "I'll just do it without these things", when their ease of access right in front of me.
Again though, this is a problem game designers have in general, not just with Elden Ring, which is why I say that this is something that's best to try and prevent if possible. I might have a better time with the game if the designers made it that even stubborn dumb asses like me played the game in the way that's most enjoyable.
Hopefully that at least clears up my point more and you see where I'm coming from.
You're right in that I didn't mention the other downside to using your horse in combat, which is that it takes a while to get back up. It wasn't out of ignoring of the mechanics, it's just that I straight up forgot to mention it. It's been a while since I last played, and I've been writing a ton of reviews from memory in bulk. That's my bad, especially because it's fairly important to have as a way to deter the player from abusing the horse.
And you're halfway right in that it's my choice to use this or to not use this. I agree, it is, in part, a me problem. I could have the option to just not use the horse. If I were the type of player to just try out every option I could, or do self imposing challenges, I probably wouldn't have an issue with this. The thing is though, I'm not that type of person. I would be losing an advantage that's been given me by the game. And as a game designer, it's best to try and prevent things like that from happening.
There's an old quote that goes around by the makers of the Civilization games, something along the lines of "if given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of the game". Me saying this was in service to this quote, and it's something that applies not only to me for Elden Ring, but multiple other players across MANY games. If a player sees an easy way to do something, they're more likely going to do that. This is mostly down to the type of player you are to prevent things like that, but it also has some leeway in becoming a big issue or a small issue. The reason why I brought up the point about Dark Souls 1's backstabbing is that, this is exactly the same problem, but one I has less of an issue with due to the fact that the strat still involves utilizing other game mechanics. With the horse, you don't have the same amount of movement options, and it in turn makes your best strat being to "attack and run away". I think if the game were to provide other ways to utilize the horse, it'd be more interesting, but it's too good of an advantage for me to want to pass up. The same with summons: my ease of access to these things makes it very difficult to just say "I'll just do it without these things", when their ease of access right in front of me.
Again though, this is a problem game designers have in general, not just with Elden Ring, which is why I say that this is something that's best to try and prevent if possible. I might have a better time with the game if the designers made it that even stubborn dumb asses like me played the game in the way that's most enjoyable.
Hopefully that at least clears up my point more and you see where I'm coming from.
@Rapatika Thanks for the kind words! Personally, I didn't see the hiding of the scale of just how big the world is to be that intriguing, mostly just because it meant that it was more of traversing the world in the same ways I've had for the most part. My exploration brain tends to want to go through places in a different variety of ways, so to see just how big the map is didn't necessarily "wow" me as much as other people. It's a good point though, and it's something that I think I've had a blind side to what others appreciate just because of my own perspective and interests.
NOWITSREYNTIME17
1 year ago