8/10

Some of the highest highs of the series, but also some of the lowest lows. Please note that in my review it is from the perspective of a souls veteran who has played every single game in the series previously. I play under the following conditions: Solo only -- no player or NPC summons including spirits, melee only (no magic), no overpowered builds (e.g. bleed, bloodhound step, etc), fight every enemy I see without giving up as soon as it's available for me to access naturally.

Limgrave is one of the best areas in all of Fromsoft. Tree Sentinel and Crucible Knight are extremely tough but fair opponents. It's all downhill from here though, as the rest of the game offers little to no challenge. I was using dex dual katanas without any sort of bleed build, which is not an overpowered build at all, and capped my level to 139 to ensure maximum pvp/pve coop opportunities. Despite that, the rest of the game fell over with a couple of exceptions -- dragonbarrow (bell bearing hunter, black kindred) and Malenia.

On one hand, Malenia was one of the toughest, most insane bosses in all of souls history and was truly gratifying to beat, taking me 3x as many tries as the next hardest boss for me (75 attempts on Malenia for a kill, vs 26 for Owl on Sekiro no kurocharm/demon bell NG+, or 25 attempts on Tree Sentinel).

However, there was simply too much filler/pointless content to fill out the gigantic world. The world is huge but mostly empty and the repeating enemies, copy pasted dungeons, and uninspired side bosses that fall over is tiring to slog through. I 100%'d the game on my first run, doing every single boss, dungeon, item, and ending, and it took me around 180 hours which is ludicrous (albeit some of that was pve cooping for fun) because most of it wasn't exciting content.

The other major thing causing this to not be a higher rating is the end game, which is disappointing. I did the bosses in the order I found them, meaning I did Morgott > Mohg > Malenia > Fire Giant > Godskin Duo > Maliketh > Gideon > Hoarah Loux > Radagon/Elden Beast. Of these, Malenia killed me 75 times. Mohg killed me 6 times. Radagon killed me twice. The rest, I first tried. Because Malenia was such a difficulty spike, the rest of the end game felt incredibly underwhelming in comparison. The tuning of the game is simply weird, with Morgott being insanely easy if you do all the other available content before going to him, and the rest of the end game suffers the same fate. Fromsoft "overtuned" the optional areas (Dragonbarrow, Haligtree) to make them ridiculously hard, which makes the rest of the end game feel humorously easy in comparison. Summed up, the balance of the game is all over the place, with a couple of insane difficult spikes in "optional" areas (early Limgrave, Dragonbarrow, and Haligtree) and low difficulty in all the required stuff, which is disappointing.

Overall Elden Ring is a great game with great ideas and direction, but suffers a few flaws from pushing the open world concept too hard with too much filler content and uneven difficulty. Still, it was hard to put down and I enjoyed playing it, and a few fights (Tree Sentinel, Crucible Knight Gaol, Malenia, Bell Bearing Hunter, and Black Blade Kindred) truly were difficult even for a vet.

It's hard not to compare Elden Ring to other entries in Fromsoft's catalogue. It has heart, but not as much charm as Demon's Souls. It has good combat, but not as good as Bloodborne. It has iconic bosses, but not as iconic as Sekiro. Elden Ring is trying to do a lot of things at once and while it does succeed at putting those elements together, it seems spread too thin to truly be a masterpiece.

With that said, Elden Ring has the single best PVE/PVP system of Souls games (a low bar) with the near/far coop/invading solving one major problem of finding people to play with. Now just add in turning off summoning pools, please...

9/10 - goated movement.

This game blew me away. I went in confused and lost, yet couldn't seem to put it down. Despite its nonlinear nature, I seemed to always find the right places to go and things to do. Over time, I learned the techniques and skills the game was trying to teach me because it was so rewarding every time to achieve something. At almost no point was there a hard barrier, ingenuity and perseverance can get you where you need to go. One of my favorite games of all time, despite being a random game I stumbled upon in a tweet. My only gripes are 1) the length and story, this game deserves to be fleshed out even more. It gives hints of story via dialogue and world items, but they're rare, and the ending is a letdown, 2) the unrealized potential of the combat. I didn't really focus on combat because it didn't seem important in this game, then the last enemy comes in with an absolute banger of a fight in terms of design, aesthetic, and fun. There needs to be more.

This game is about movement and exploration. That's where it shines. So focus on those things and don't get bogged down by anything else.