This review contains spoilers
I've been trying to write this review for about two weeks now, and to try and find an angle between "it's the best thing since sliced Zelda" and "aS a SoUlS vEt, I'm dIsApPoInTeD" as most of the tepid hot takes around this baffling, horrendous, incredible game seem to be. But I do feel both, and can't help but think that this specific conflict is built into the experience From have delivered this time around.
For context, I've proselytised about this series endlessly since Dark Souls 1. I didn't have a PS3, but I had a few friends who did, and had Demon's Souls, and their own ravings sent me out on launch day when DS released on the Xbox 360. I fell in love with and utterly fucking hated that game for around a year, as I'd routinely start new characters only to hit a wall against something like Quelaag, until over the course of one long weekend an aforementioned friend sat and coached me through the entire game. And now it's one of my all-time favourites. I can't help but feel if anyone asks me in 2023 I'll probably say the same about Elden Ring, but I don't feel that way just yet.
This time around, much like with all the games preceding it post-DS1, I dived in and stumbled through to the end, battered and exhausted. The formal coaching days may be behind me, but there's still a core of my friends who'll jump in to co-op through a bit one of us is struggling with. And despite what the cvlt say, jolly co-operation is a cornerstone to enjoying these games in my opinion.
I've now done everything the game deems worthy of an achievement save for two other endings, which I'm closing in on slowly between playing other games. But I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface after some 130ish hours. I'm consistently finding new areas, encounters, NPCs, items. The baffling thing is though, to me at least, that as the initial sense of sheer scale falls away and you realise that the Lands Between are nowhere near as big as they first seem, you start to see quite how densely packed it all is.
There's an entire essay to be written on the gripes I have, like just the sheer bullshit in a lot of the game's boss encounters, the way they dialled up the obtuseness to 11 for practically all of the NPC questlines with (at least, before the recent patch) no way of keeping track of where people end up unless you happen upon them on your travels and mark the map yourself. How people say INT is broken too, but us mages only have two cool end game spells whereas faith builds get dragon heads, eyeball lasers, homing lightning... but again, what is it to experience a From game without staring into the abyss of all the things that boils your piss as the hours roll by, your friends and family ignored, house getting dustier, meals skipped, until you emerge two weeks later into the spring sunlight actually somewhat tarnished and dead behind the eyes, shrugging and saying "yeah it's alright, but I'd have done X, Y, and Z differently." If it was just alright, why was I so compelled to inhabit that world at the expense of my actual life, and why am I going to cut this off midsentence to play some more when I should be working or
For context, I've proselytised about this series endlessly since Dark Souls 1. I didn't have a PS3, but I had a few friends who did, and had Demon's Souls, and their own ravings sent me out on launch day when DS released on the Xbox 360. I fell in love with and utterly fucking hated that game for around a year, as I'd routinely start new characters only to hit a wall against something like Quelaag, until over the course of one long weekend an aforementioned friend sat and coached me through the entire game. And now it's one of my all-time favourites. I can't help but feel if anyone asks me in 2023 I'll probably say the same about Elden Ring, but I don't feel that way just yet.
This time around, much like with all the games preceding it post-DS1, I dived in and stumbled through to the end, battered and exhausted. The formal coaching days may be behind me, but there's still a core of my friends who'll jump in to co-op through a bit one of us is struggling with. And despite what the cvlt say, jolly co-operation is a cornerstone to enjoying these games in my opinion.
I've now done everything the game deems worthy of an achievement save for two other endings, which I'm closing in on slowly between playing other games. But I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface after some 130ish hours. I'm consistently finding new areas, encounters, NPCs, items. The baffling thing is though, to me at least, that as the initial sense of sheer scale falls away and you realise that the Lands Between are nowhere near as big as they first seem, you start to see quite how densely packed it all is.
There's an entire essay to be written on the gripes I have, like just the sheer bullshit in a lot of the game's boss encounters, the way they dialled up the obtuseness to 11 for practically all of the NPC questlines with (at least, before the recent patch) no way of keeping track of where people end up unless you happen upon them on your travels and mark the map yourself. How people say INT is broken too, but us mages only have two cool end game spells whereas faith builds get dragon heads, eyeball lasers, homing lightning... but again, what is it to experience a From game without staring into the abyss of all the things that boils your piss as the hours roll by, your friends and family ignored, house getting dustier, meals skipped, until you emerge two weeks later into the spring sunlight actually somewhat tarnished and dead behind the eyes, shrugging and saying "yeah it's alright, but I'd have done X, Y, and Z differently." If it was just alright, why was I so compelled to inhabit that world at the expense of my actual life, and why am I going to cut this off midsentence to play some more when I should be working or