Elden Ring Review

 

It's a rare thing that I find myself completely obsessed with a game at this stage in my life. Long gone are the days of spending hundreds of hours on multiple Skyrim playthroughs, and my familiar, yet therapeutic treks through World of Warcraft are much briefer nowadays; I just don't have the time to waste away on a single game like I could in my youth. I'm a father of two, a husband, I work a full time job and own a home, so my free time is precious little. My gaming backlog could stretch out into the infinite beyond, like an unwound scroll extending from my house, into the skies and all the way to the icy wastes of Neptune at the far reaches of our solar system. I also have other hobbies apart from gaming, so I'm locked in a careful dance to feel like I'm able to participate in each of my interests without abandoning anything. To try and mitigate all of this, I've found myself largely seeking shorter, tight gaming experiences that can be knocked out in a few sittings and moved on from. The first season of Marvel Rivals was the last live-service game that I sunk any time into, and I just don't find myself enjoying those endless cyclical games anymore.

I recently got through Dark Souls III, which was my first real experience with FromSoftware's famed Souls franchise. During my playthrough of Dark Souls III, my best friend Nick purchased Elden Ring for me, insisting that I would really enjoy the game. Of course, I had heard of Elden Ring already, the game has been extremely popular for the last few years. I had a good time with Dark Souls III, but I wanted a break from the genre for a while. Then the whispers of intrigue began. It was a familiar voice, like someone I had heard speak for untold thousands of hours. Guy Fieri? What are you doing in my mind? "Go ahead, big dawg. Why not download it and see what all the fuss is about? Is the game really that good?" The persuasive voice in my head won out. I downloaded Elden Ring and have been more or less hooked to my laptop like an IV for the last few weeks.

 

This game is bigger and better than Dark Souls III in every measurable way. The small, linear zones have been replaced by a wide-spanning, absolutely gargantuan open world. The ugly, gloomy, grimdark setting has been traded for a gorgeous, vibrant, awe-inspiring universe that is chock full of vistas and imagery that will regularly make you pause to just take in what you're seeing. There are countless different builds that you can try out for your character, giving you massive amounts of agency and room for experimentation with how you want to play the game. This gives the game an almost absurd level of replayability. Elden Ring feels like the culmination of everything that FromSoftware has learned and honed since Demon's Souls released in 2009.

 

I have to start with discussing the world's design. This game's universe just lives in my mind. I find myself being mentally summoned back to this insane world throughout my day; daydreaming about some of the fantastical sights and scenes that I've encountered. Elden Ring takes place on a vast continent known as the Lands Between. There is no easy way to describe the setting, but the description that is coming to mind is "what if a traditional fantasy setting took a ton of acid and flipped through Alejandro Jodorowsky's notes and concept art for his planned Dune film?" There are loads of classic fantasy elements throughout Elden Ring: ruined castles, dragons, knights, wizards, etc. Then there are facets of the design that are incredibly unique and unlike anything I've ever seen or even thought of before. There's a whole race of people that are living jars (shout out to Alexander!) There are colossal walking mountains with buildings high atop them. Enormous cosmic jellyfish float all about the Lands Between. People worship and serve giant, sentient fingers that may or may not be emissaries of some sort of inter-dimensional god. I could go on for paragraphs about all of the creative, extraordinary visuals that you'll see across your adventure in Elden Ring.

 

My character exploring an underground kingdom. That's right. I'm underground and the "sky" looks like that. It looks like I'm exploring some cosmic domain with stars and a nebula up above.

One of my favorite things about Elden Ring's world design is that it encourages exploration. As a diehard fan of the fantasy genre, there's an inherent sense of wanderlust that comes with the territory. You're experiencing a world that is different from our own, who wouldn't want to go out and see what lies beyond the horizon? Of course, you'd want to venture out and see incredible sights and alien creatures. The issue is that I never got the sense from Dark Souls III that I wanted to explore. The world was dismal and gloomy, dangerous and utterly devoid of joy. Elden Ring still has some unpleasant regions and locations, but they are scarce. The Lands Between are replete with golden forests, sparkling lakes and seas, wildlife skittering around in bushes and fields and an undeniable sense that this world is very much alive. The beautifully designed world is practically begging you to explore. I do wish that Elden Ring had actual towns or with NPCs and whatnot, but we never see anything like that. While it's still extremely dangerous, I found the world to be more intriguing than intimidating. There's still that ever-present feeling that you get in most FromSoftware titles that the world is in the midst of a major upheaval or decline; like you're witnessing, and even facilitating the observable end of the current age. This is reiterated by the actions that the player undertakes as he or she overthrows the various kingdoms and demigods who rule over the Lands Between.

 

 

While the sheer majesty and grandeur of the Lands Between is a major motivation for exploration, the actual open-world design in itself is perhaps the biggest singular factor in encouraging a player to traverse the world and find what they should or could be working toward. The relative linearity of the prior Souls games generally requires you to focus on a single zone or boss until you can eventually overcome it and move to the next region. Elden Ring, being open-world, doesn't lock you into a specific zone or boss battle. If you try a particularly challenging boss over and over and just can't do it, you can leave and explore all over the world, grinding experience points and completing side content to get better gear. Then you can eventually return and you'll likely steamroll over the boss. This happened several times to me throughout my playthrough, and it's wildly satisfying to come back and punish a boss that was giving you trouble. Depending on how much you improved your stats, you can often compensate for potentially having trouble learning an enemy's mechanics, and just beat them down with brute force. This open-ended approach to a Souls game was a wonderful innovation and felt like a natural evolution of what they had done up to this point.

 

 

Speaking of bosses, you can't honestly discuss a Souls title without bringing up the iconic and often comically difficult enemies that you encounter throughout the game. Elden Ring plays host to something like two-hundred total bosses, scattered across the entirety of the massive map. There are thirty bosses that are related to achievements/trophies, and several more that you must defeat for various weapons, talismans, armor sets, spells, etc. I probably beat sixty or so over the course of my time with the game, and that was with me getting the Platinum trophy by the end of the game. Several bosses were standouts and will live in my memory for a long time to come. 

Malenia, the infamous swordswoman that you've no doubt seen or heard about, is likely the hardest boss that I've ever fought in any game across my entire history of gaming. She was one of the few bosses that I ended up needing to enlist some co-op help and summon in another player to help me. I attempted her myself (with my Mimic Tear) maybe twenty times, trying different builds, and never got past halfway through her second phase. The first dozen co-op partners that I summoned, she cut through like ribbons of silk. I was losing hope. Then he appeared: some massive, hulking figure named Silksong. He was wearing armor that made him look morbidly obese. He was equipped with two enormous morningstars and wore a blood-red hood. Silksong put on a clinic against Malenia. He could dodge everything she threw at him. It was so satisfying seeing that she-ghoul's health disintegrate from his ridiculous damage output. If you ever read this Silksong, you're the man.

 

My paladin, Cornelius. He's dripped out in golden Tree Sentinel armor and he's wielding the Golden Halberd and the Dragonclaw Shield.

 

 

I briefly mentioned this earlier, but Elden Ring gives you access to a staggering amount of options for how you can build your character, between the stats, weapons, talismans, enchantments, etc. I did a ton of research on creative build ideas before ultimately settling on a rather straightforward paladin-like character, which in my defense, are typically my go-to fantasy class. But, there are so many incredible, and completely viable options out there if you want to play as something more unique. I also have an alternate character themed around Thor, and he wields a massive Mjolnir-esque hammer and can use lightning spells, which was a really fun experiment to mess around with for a few hours. There's a magic school in the game that I really wanted to fiddle around with where you summon magical weapons to do your damage for you, and I've seen some really neat "mage knight" builds themed around that type of casting. Elden Ring is full of these sorts of creative, distinct builds and this is yet another way that the game encourages you to explore everything it has to offer and find the fun.

Similar to past FromSoftware titles, the story isn't really a traditionally told narrative. It's a little more fleshed out than the Dark Souls games, but there's still a lot of interpretation that you'll need to do to understand everything that is happening. I don't doubt that the addition of famed fantasy author George R. R. Martin to the writing team helped facilitate a universe that wasn't quite so cryptic. In fact, his Game of Thrones story feels like a major influence to the macro-plot of Elden Ring. This game is all about a large family of demigods who are each vying for power and prominence in the Lands Between. The game has a few different paths that you can take, with each one getting the player involved with different characters and factions.

The fan-favorite questline for the game is centered around one of the "good" demigods, a blue-skinned witch named Ranni. Her questline introduces a whole cast of characters who you encounter numerous times throughout the game, and it occasionally feels like some sort of Dungeons & Dragons adventurer party. I did three of the core questlines and saw three different endings, and I can agree that Ranni's quest felt like the most fulfilling, intriguing story. The boss that you face at the end of her questline is one of the craziest boss encounters in the entire game. It's not a particularly difficult battle, but the boss' design is something straight out of a nightmare. It's basically a giant skeleton with dragonfly wings and a scorpion tail and comes from the deep void of space. You're gonna hate looking at it, I guarantee it.

Elden Ring is a fantastic experience from beginning to end. I feel that it is the ideal jumping on point for anyone intrigued by the Souls genre. This game feels like what FromSoftware has been working toward and striving to achieve. While the game doesn't hold your hand, there are vast amounts of resources online for people that are confused or needing assistance. The game itself also tries to provide some features like summons or co-op to give struggling players a leg up. While I don't think Souls games are for everyone, Elden Ring comes the closest to being a Souls game that I think anyone could find some real enjoyment with.

VERDICT: Essential
Reviewed on PC