Elden Ring – RPG Review

Elden Ring is a souls-like RPG from the critically acclaimed developer FromSoftware Inc, who themselves began the souls-like genre with Demon Souls on the PS3. Elden Ring differentiates itself from past FromSoftware games by being a new IP and a mostly open-world experience. Not that previous games locked themselves behind separate loaded levels, they had seamless transition but it was designed in a closed linear fashion of a pathway area connected to the next area. Elden Ring has a huge open world to explore, letting you tackle different bosses in whatever order you wish until the end section. Differing from previous games by the company, it also introduces jumping and a mount.

I do definitely recommend this game, and score it a 8.8/10 .Some people call Elden Ring a masterpiece, it is indeed an excellent game, but it has some flaws.

What Elden Ring does right is that it doesn’t re-invent the souls-like game too much, it just adds more. The visuals are amazing, the animations are excellent, and the game has a ton of variety in terms of weapons and enemies, locations and boss fights. The plot is the usual show and don’t tell, sprinkled with bits of lore added to item descriptions, that make you want to join in on discussions about character’s motives and hidden lore implications.

The Dark Souls trilogy are incredibly beloved games, and with Dark Souls 3, the series was closed out. However Elden Ring does basically feel like Dark Souls 4. The other previous releases of Bloodborne and Sekiro Shadows Die Twice were fairly drastically different games to Dark Souls, but Elden Ring is very similar, not just in its medieval theme of knights, dragons and high fantasy.

Sekiro Shadows Die Twice was a 9.5/10 game for me, and it’s hard for Elden Ring to beat it in my view. Yes, Elden Ring is a bigger game, in a bigger world, you technically have more to do, but the gameplay just isn’t as clean, the plot not as gripping, and the difficulty not as enjoyable.

From a souls-like fan, Elden Ring as a game is a complete push over. If you played all the previous games from this developer, this game will be a breeze to get through, especially considering the game features various completely overpowered weapons such as the Moonveil, Rivers of Blood and Blasphemous Blade to name but a few. These weapons combined with the Mimic Tear or Black Knife Tiche, make the game a complete pushover until at least NG4+. “So what”, some people might say, use normal weapons and not overpowered ones and stop using summons. Well yes, we can always progressively “gimp” ourselves in a game to reach some artificial difficulty until we get to “Blindfolded No Hit Runs Controlling the game with Donkey Kong Bongos” , but the point stands even without them.

If there was one feature I was really hoping for in Elden Ring was a next step up in the challenge, and it wasn’t delivered. The plot was also a bit weaker than I expected, especially considering George R.R Martin advised on the world building. Yes, there are plenty of interesting characters, but perhaps because the boss battles are so easy, I didn’t find the bosses that iconic apart from Malenia and Radahn, which weren’t difficult at all, but at least the characters were very well designed. The plot just felt very “thin”, there just wasn’t much even considering it’s a FromSoftware game. I think after playing Bloodborne I spent hours reading about lore, but after playing Elden Ring, everything is pretty much laid out, there’s not much intrigue into the plot.

Different from previous games, nothing brought any fear into me, and nothing brought a serious challenge, and then eventually in NG4+ the challenge feels too artificial, it’s just more health, more attack, and dodge a lot. The fights were just nowhere near as enjoyable compared to Sekiro, which is why I think the developer has gone backwards a bit in their gameplay philosophy.

I feel like Elden Ring is simply a game for the mass market. That “For the casuals”, is a bit pretentious, but it basically is true. This type of game simply appeals to the wider audience who want some challenge but not too much that they’ll invariably rage quit, want an open world, want a standard of graphics and want everything to be accessible, whilst they read online guides to play “optimally”.

I felt that the addition of the open world simply made a lot of the world have empty spaces. In fact the world was so large, that they had to start repeating various bosses, or doubling them up as a new encounter. Yes, double gargoyles bosses is a fabled thing from Dark Souls but it’s not exactly ground-breaking in the challenge department anymore.

I guess that is the problem with creating a game like Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne and Sekiro, if you make too good a game, the next one will be compared and might not match up in every department. I admittedly probably have too fond a view of the previous gameplay experiences. Elden Ring does try something new at least, it’s different. But I assume that with Elden Ring’s success, the gameplay of these games now takes on a new meaning and leads the next games more and more into casual-demanding playstyles.

Similar to how music might become more “pop”, and less “authentic”, I feel like Elden Ring is a step towards this type of populism in games, where everything is open world, easy challenges and surface level gameplay.

The development team did a great job, but I feel like their efforts were massively dropped into the open-world aspect. The various locations that serve as sort of “levels”, were amazingly designed. Stormveil Castle, Raya Lucario Academy, Nokron Eternal City, Leyndell Royal Capital and the Haligtree were all amazing areas to play in, but I’d rather just have double the amount of these, instead of the many minor locations dotted about the world map that serve no real purpose than to pass by and collect some random treasure at, or kill some repeated boss at.

I also feel like the end of the game is a bit anti-climatic. It starts out so well and the open area of Limgrave is especially well designed, but subsequent areas seemingly add more and more filler content in, which isn’t that rich to enjoy. For example the whole of the Caelid zone, is just not that interesting. The Mountaintops of the Giants also generate a similar feeling of not much of interest being there. There’s a lovely view as you cross a giant chain at one point, and yeah, that’s it. The final boss of the area, the Fire Giant is just terrible as melee, because you spend most of your time in the fight running towards him after he rolls away.

There just aren’t that many iconic difficult areas or bosses in the game. Malenia is touted as one of the hardest bosses in the game, someone that people can easily get stuck on supposedly for 100+ tries. But the boss is literally a one skill wonder who regens a bit, that’s it. Learn to dodge the “Waterfowl Dance” and the boss is a pushover, and it’s not a hard move to dodge from at all. You can just run away for most of it, then time your roll on the last bit. Four rats in a dark room pose more of an issue than this boss.