This review contains spoilers
The first two thirds of Elden Ring is masterful and would have easily earned five stars if it stood on its own. While it has flaws here and there, it's a downright brilliant integration of the logic of a Souls game into an open world that feels like it's bursting with life and fascination at every turn. The game shows you the most badass thing you've ever seen in your life, over and over again, hour after hour, then periodically breaks your heart for good measure. It takes all the cool build customization stuff from Dark Souls 2 and 3 and makes them even cooler, overflowing with exciting combinations of weapons and spells.
Everything beyond the capitol, though, feels half-baked. While a few of the endgame bosses are exciting in the way FromSoft fans have come to expect, many more feel like they lean into an aspect of Dark Souls 2 that was better left behind: difficulty for its own sake. The joy of FromSoft games is the curve from a challenge feeling impossible to the achievement of mastery over it, and that curve seems direly mistuned for many of the later bosses.
This isn't merely sour grapes: in other games, I came to to adore the very bosses I struggled most with. In Elden Ring, although I did eventually beat every boss, the lategame ones that posed the most challenge left a bitter taste in my mouth rather than the rush of victory I'd hoped for. Every win felt like I'd just rolled the dice enough times to avoid this or that unanswerable attack or camera hazard.
There is a challenge, I think, in designing bosses that remain engaging even for players who have explored everything in the game and are at an arbitrarily high level, not to mention players who have six previous FromSoft games under their belt. One approach for these fights is to throw out moves that require reading hundred-millisecond tells or executing frame-perfect dodges, but in leaning so heavily on the execution of the fight it minimizes the reward for learning it.
That's why I play these games: to learn to speak the language of a boss and to end up engaged in a dance that, by the end, feels almost cooperative. While there were fights in the latter third of Elden Ring that felt that way, they were few and far between, outnumbered by the fights that visibly could have been so much more fun than they were.
This game very clearly came in hot, and could have used a bit more time in development. Patches are already landing, and it leads me to wonder if the final portion maybe didn't get the attention it normally would have and if perhaps it may yet be improved. I hope it will, because I would love to feel the unmitigated love for this game that I do for other FromSoft titles.
Everything beyond the capitol, though, feels half-baked. While a few of the endgame bosses are exciting in the way FromSoft fans have come to expect, many more feel like they lean into an aspect of Dark Souls 2 that was better left behind: difficulty for its own sake. The joy of FromSoft games is the curve from a challenge feeling impossible to the achievement of mastery over it, and that curve seems direly mistuned for many of the later bosses.
This isn't merely sour grapes: in other games, I came to to adore the very bosses I struggled most with. In Elden Ring, although I did eventually beat every boss, the lategame ones that posed the most challenge left a bitter taste in my mouth rather than the rush of victory I'd hoped for. Every win felt like I'd just rolled the dice enough times to avoid this or that unanswerable attack or camera hazard.
There is a challenge, I think, in designing bosses that remain engaging even for players who have explored everything in the game and are at an arbitrarily high level, not to mention players who have six previous FromSoft games under their belt. One approach for these fights is to throw out moves that require reading hundred-millisecond tells or executing frame-perfect dodges, but in leaning so heavily on the execution of the fight it minimizes the reward for learning it.
That's why I play these games: to learn to speak the language of a boss and to end up engaged in a dance that, by the end, feels almost cooperative. While there were fights in the latter third of Elden Ring that felt that way, they were few and far between, outnumbered by the fights that visibly could have been so much more fun than they were.
This game very clearly came in hot, and could have used a bit more time in development. Patches are already landing, and it leads me to wonder if the final portion maybe didn't get the attention it normally would have and if perhaps it may yet be improved. I hope it will, because I would love to feel the unmitigated love for this game that I do for other FromSoft titles.