This is actually my fourth run through Elden Ring, despite only being my second review. I have an RL5 run on indefinite hiatus after beating Malenia, which was my primary goal; and a low-level co-op gimmick run also on hiatus because my friend got busy with life stuff. So although this is the second time I've fully completed the game, I've spent hundreds of hours in its world between my last review and this one. I've also replayed other FromSoft games, shepherded friends through them as well, and generally refined my taste for the design sensibilities at play here.

The result of this is a change in my perspective that makes me view this game in a much more positive light. At this point, I think Elden Ring might be my second favorite FromSoft after Sekiro. It's got an ineffable kind of charisma to it, a confidence in its own terms of existence that's certainly also present in earlier games but appears in full flower here, that makes it intensely compelling even on replay after replay. It's colorful, not just in the literal sense of abandoning the drab palette of Dark Souls but in the broader sense of having so many different threads in constant interplay in terms of plot, faction, enemies, level design, and mechanics.

And the mechanics are so tight. That's the biggest lesson I took away from juxtaposing this so directly with its predecessors. Time after time I'd say "oh they have a really good solution for this in Elden Ring." The pouch, dual wielding, ashes of war, spirit summoning, effigies of the martyr, the stance mechanic—all of these are individually excellent, and having them all blossom in the same game is mind-blowing.

I do want to take a moment to circle back to the criticisms I leveled in my first review about the latter third of the game. I've warmed up substantially on the post-Leyndell areas—Mountaintops is actually pretty interesting other than Flame Peak, the initial blizzard crawl in Snowfield is really emotionally compelling, and the legacy dungeons Farum Azula and the Haligtree are complex and exciting (Mohgwyn a bit less so, but it's got the vibes). And the vast majority of the endgame bosses actually rip! Godskin Duo is a really cool puzzle, Maliketh is a classic balance of punishing phase 1 with high-spectacle low-difficulty phase 2, Godfrey really pushes the jump mechanic to its limits, Fire Giant is super intimidating but ultimately slow enough to be totally feasible. Elden Beast is still wholly indefensible and Gideon is a bit of a nothingburger, but for the most part the boss and level design is cool.

And then there's Malenia.

My feelings on Malenia at this point are complicated more than anything else. I've beaten her at level 5, I've beaten her without parries or summons, I understand her fight on a deep level and I love it in many ways. But fucking Waterfowl Dance, man. Even after sinking hundreds of attempts into her, I have never been able to survive it consistently at close range. Not with the light roll elongated slightly by a patch, not with the circling strategy, even Bloodhound Step only gets my survival rate up to about one in three. And I still consider this a flaw. I know more workarounds now—using frost pots to knock her out of the animation, using throwing knives to bait it out when she's far away—but none of those are consistent across a long phase 2. And it does break my heart a bit that the boss that would otherwise be my clear favorite has such a striking caveat. Nowhere in these games am I as interested in what was going through the developers' minds than Waterfowl Dance.

But the big difference is that this no longer capsizes my impression of the game as a whole. I'm happy enough to take my sideways outs against Malenia and appreciate the rest of the fight, and the rest of the endgame, for everything fantastic it brings. And I'm beyond excited for the DLC next month.