Elden Ring is great. It takes the already open world exploration and choice driven format of the Dark Souls games and absolutely blasts it wide open with a massive world full of surprises, challenge, and interesting lore.
Elden Ring plays like a Souls game, equipping weapons and armor of your choice to block, dodge, and cast your way through nerve wracking environments and difficult boss fights. You have your classic stat options of strength and dexterity, as well as faith and intelligence, but Elden Ring also adds in an arcane stat (similar to Bloodborne) for special weapons that usually cause bleeding. There are an order of magnitude more build options here as well, with more weapons and armor, more spells, and new systems like the ashes of war and spirits that let you customize things even further.
The areas and bosses have a ton of standouts, with the elden lords being the main attractions, each relegated to their own part of the map and usually their own "legacy dungeon." I was amazed again and again by unique areas that reveal themselves and how epic and fun the fights are. From has a couple of its classic gimmick fights, but they mostly work better than those found in past games.
The world is huge and although it is the main selling point, it also serves as the only real dark spot in my experience of the game. Exploring is rewarding and a ton of mini caves and dungeons dot the map, but they are comparatively unsatisfying and get a bit repetitive. It isn't quite to the level of the chalice dungeons of Bloodborne but it can be tiresome to navigate similar areas and repeated bosses, even when you are finding cool weapons, spells, and weapon arts in them.
The world of Elden Ring is interconnected and dense, with many different factions vying for control of the Elden Ring itself. This leads to a lot of intricate lore and engrossing side quests as you chase down all of your options for what to do with this horrific, broken world. Many of these open up completely optional side areas that expand the map and put you against new bosses and dungeons. I really liked trying to make sense of all of this and it really feels like there will still be a lot for me to uncover on subsequent playthroughs.
Elden Ring is a beautiful game with excellent art direction and an impressive number of varied areas and enemies making up for any shortcomings it has graphically. I was amazed by the vistas and landscapes over and over as I traveled the Lands Between on my quest to become the Elden Lord.
Overall I don't like Elden Ring quite as much as the more directed and tighter experience that Bloodborne provides, but it is still easily among my favorite From Software games. Truly an amazing experience that iterates meaningfully and impressively on the genre they defined.
Elden Ring plays like a Souls game, equipping weapons and armor of your choice to block, dodge, and cast your way through nerve wracking environments and difficult boss fights. You have your classic stat options of strength and dexterity, as well as faith and intelligence, but Elden Ring also adds in an arcane stat (similar to Bloodborne) for special weapons that usually cause bleeding. There are an order of magnitude more build options here as well, with more weapons and armor, more spells, and new systems like the ashes of war and spirits that let you customize things even further.
The areas and bosses have a ton of standouts, with the elden lords being the main attractions, each relegated to their own part of the map and usually their own "legacy dungeon." I was amazed again and again by unique areas that reveal themselves and how epic and fun the fights are. From has a couple of its classic gimmick fights, but they mostly work better than those found in past games.
The world is huge and although it is the main selling point, it also serves as the only real dark spot in my experience of the game. Exploring is rewarding and a ton of mini caves and dungeons dot the map, but they are comparatively unsatisfying and get a bit repetitive. It isn't quite to the level of the chalice dungeons of Bloodborne but it can be tiresome to navigate similar areas and repeated bosses, even when you are finding cool weapons, spells, and weapon arts in them.
The world of Elden Ring is interconnected and dense, with many different factions vying for control of the Elden Ring itself. This leads to a lot of intricate lore and engrossing side quests as you chase down all of your options for what to do with this horrific, broken world. Many of these open up completely optional side areas that expand the map and put you against new bosses and dungeons. I really liked trying to make sense of all of this and it really feels like there will still be a lot for me to uncover on subsequent playthroughs.
Elden Ring is a beautiful game with excellent art direction and an impressive number of varied areas and enemies making up for any shortcomings it has graphically. I was amazed by the vistas and landscapes over and over as I traveled the Lands Between on my quest to become the Elden Lord.
Overall I don't like Elden Ring quite as much as the more directed and tighter experience that Bloodborne provides, but it is still easily among my favorite From Software games. Truly an amazing experience that iterates meaningfully and impressively on the genre they defined.