I enjoyed Elden Ring significantly more than the Dark Souls series, but a lot less than Bloodbourne or Sekiro.
I'm pretty convinced the open-world aspect of Elden Ring is just a gimmick that isn't even very well incorporated. All the From Soft titles have a linear progression that it expects you to take, and it provides you with tools that you need right around the time you will need them.
In Elden Ring, you have this weird situation where it seems to have an expected linear progression, but doesn't really tell you. If instead of taking the obvious route in front of you, you veer off and kill a few bosses, by the time you come back to continue the main storyline, you'll have outleveled all of content by a ridiculous degree.
I definitely had this experience. The first thing I did was kill 2 bosses the game didn't expect you to kill -- the Tree Sentinel and Margit. Then I went off and fought a dozen mini bosses before continuing the main storyline, which made the entire game a walk in the park from then on.
As usual, it has an amazing story and interesting characters that I loved to follow along. Unfortunately the gameplay just fell flat due to bad design. I didn't end up finishing it myself -- I just watched someone else beat it. Which probably gave me a lot more enjoyment than playing it myself.
I'm pretty convinced the open-world aspect of Elden Ring is just a gimmick that isn't even very well incorporated. All the From Soft titles have a linear progression that it expects you to take, and it provides you with tools that you need right around the time you will need them.
In Elden Ring, you have this weird situation where it seems to have an expected linear progression, but doesn't really tell you. If instead of taking the obvious route in front of you, you veer off and kill a few bosses, by the time you come back to continue the main storyline, you'll have outleveled all of content by a ridiculous degree.
I definitely had this experience. The first thing I did was kill 2 bosses the game didn't expect you to kill -- the Tree Sentinel and Margit. Then I went off and fought a dozen mini bosses before continuing the main storyline, which made the entire game a walk in the park from then on.
As usual, it has an amazing story and interesting characters that I loved to follow along. Unfortunately the gameplay just fell flat due to bad design. I didn't end up finishing it myself -- I just watched someone else beat it. Which probably gave me a lot more enjoyment than playing it myself.