Great protagonist and (some) great side characters. Story feels like it dips into a long mcguffin hunt around the middle, but apart from that it's solid character work. Magilou for life.

The gameplay is... it's not good, there's no other way to say it. It's hard to even tell what's happening or why sometimes, and changing the difficulty never felt like it increased the challenge, just the tedium. The complete lack of dungeon design and open maps of nothing don't help it either. Don't play this game expecting great gameplay.

I played more awhile, but honestly the combat feels... pretty overrated. I played on the hardest default difficulty the game offered me and nothing even provided the slightest challenge, and the combat system feels more like a beat em up than a character action game.

The weapons barely feel different from each other, the combo trees all feel the same... the enemy design looks cool, but are all defeated the same by the exact same strategy; pressing the dodge button, because witch time shatters the game and is extremely generous on timing. I don't know, the game was just kind of disappointingly easy and lacked the depth I thought it was going to have.

It's a decent game that I think capcom needed to make to get the series back on track, but I don't think it measures up to its reception.

The utter disaster that is the enemy variety in the game hurts it the second you meet the mold. The bakers are decent villains, but they are the only break between fighting mold monsters on repeat. Once you realize the game really has no teeth and isn't going to hurt you in any other way but a hillbilly or a ball of slime, the tension goes right out the window.

If you don't realize this though, the game does have a tense atmosphere, and again, the bakers are decent. But it's mostly a stepping stone to get to the much better RE8, Imo.

Holy Fuck.

You know, there are times when you get worried as someone who's been playing videogames for awhile. Will I never find my 'favorite' game again? Are all the good games behind me, and everything else coming is just decent, maybe once and awhile great, but nothing in compared to what you felt before? That's somewhat where I was at with Elden Ring, and here it is.

All of the things I had at 5 stars prior to now were freeware... and a VN, but that's a special case. That's not to say I'm allergic to any game that requires money to play, but my big favorites often come from small teams, or even single people, making games with a focused vision, or unrestrained ambition. Elden Ring has both, in spades.

From your first footsteps outside, you can tell what kind of game you're playing. Similar to every game in the souls series, you wander around a now dead kingdom, like a fly buzzing over a carcass, but never has that atmosphere been more prevalent here. Architecture sanded away by time, great big monuments in tatters, madness and hostility everywhere you see. But that's not the only atmosphere Elden Ring has. Sometimes it's more mystical and dabbles in the unknown, sometimes it's gross but beautiful, sometimes it's hard to even describe. But the map never stops giving you something new, new senses to experience, new things to find.

See, open world games have been in the same cyclical trap for a long time when it comes to big releases. A map filled with nothing but collectibles, the same bandit camp copy pasted. But Elden Ring, while does have some asset resuse, I won't lie, the entire world feels like it has a purpose. Ruins hide basements which hide ashes, churches are always good to find, towers golden trees. Minor dungeons such as caves all the way to other huge maps and castles entirely. It's not just the amount of content, it's the depth of it.

The souls series has always been desperately trying to evoke this sense of exploration and awe-struck wonder. It's done so in different ways. Dark Souls 1 had it's looping world, Dark Souls 2 had size and ambition, 3 had hostility in combat. Bloodborne evoked a haunting atmosphere. But it was never put together, something always lacked one from the other. Bloodborne got the closest, and now we've hit its apex.

I can't say the game is entirely perfect, of course. The catacomb dungeons can sometimes feel a bit bland, especially with DaS2 bosses usually sitting at the end. But I found I was often at least given a weapon to see. And the natural consequence of a game so open ended is that much of the game can accidentally end up trivialized by finding it too late. It's not a problem to some, of course there's natural satisfaction from feeling your characters strength in a concrete way, but it's worth mentioning.

And I've also seen some people dislike exactly how freeform it is; they get stressed out without a clear goal. I sympathize with this, as someone who can end up lost and overwhelemd and was at times even in this game, but at the same time I wouldn't want it any other way in this game. It's a joy to be lost in.

It's the best in the series for sure, and one of the better games to be released in years in the main stream, and definitely one of my favorite games of all time now.

I was playing it with a friend and we were both enjoying it, especially the rapid form changes and small goals to keep progressing... and then it all kind of stopped. We just stopped playing one day and never wanted to go back to it. Mostly because, sadly, after the charm wears off and the bulk of the forms come in... there's not a lot to it, really. It's like an ARPG without the loot explosions, or as much customization, but with all the repetitiveness. I can't see myself going back and playing it, but maybe.