My anticipation of Elden Ring
Elden Ring has been my most anticipated game of the last three years. As soon as I started playing Bloodborne, I fell in love with the Souls series, with their atmospheric worlds, sparse worldbuilding and intense difficulty creating one of the most immersive and gripping experiences games have to offer. When a trailer was released for the next instalment, Elden Ring, I was nothing but excited - so my friends and I waited. And waited...
Yeah, it took years since that initial trailer for it to finally be released. Well, it's been here for a few months, and after an extensive playthrough, I thought I'd some up my thoughts on it.
What is Elden Ring?
Elden Ring is set in The Lands Between, a mythic world of gods, demigods, champions and monsters, all under divine power of Queen Marika and the mysterious Elden Ring. However, when one of the demigods is slain and the Elden Ring shattered, exiled warriors known as the Tarnished are called back to the war-strewn lands with the promise of reclaiming each shard of the Elden Ring from the demigods, and rising to become Elden Lord. As one of these warriors, you hold such ambitions, but with dozens of other Tarnished competing for the same prize in a world lost to blights, curses and the wrath of gods near and far, will you have the strength to conquer all?
What is the appeal?
Like other souls games, part of the fun is piecing together the story of the world by exploring it - making the experience unique for each player. You could explore one area as a samurai warrior before finding enemies too difficult and coming back later, or play as a mage and work through half a dozen other castles and areas before ever finding it. There are even entire areas that are completely optional, with the game allowing but not expecting players to uncover all of its secrets, a testament to the lengths the developers will go to in order to make a satisfying and immersive experience.
The story of Queen Marika and her demigod offspring is deliberately quite ambiguous - leaving an atmosphere of mystery for each area, and a entire history of characters, battles and events for keen players to piece together, whatever takes your fancy. I generally fall into the latter - I don't claim to be an expert, but by knowing details about where I am, who I am fighting and why they have fallen into ruin, I have an even greater sense of personal investment, something that I think games can use to their advantage over other media like film, but only the From Software games have managed to itch that scratch so effectively.
That is something to take from all Souls games. You will always get a challenge, but you also choose who and what your character does, where you go, what tools and weapons you use and how much you want to involve yourself in the world. And, while other games would have more nuanced questlines and characters, they don't let you flesh out yourself and your own experiences in the game world as much as this.
Elden Ring Vs Souls
So, I've said my piece about souls games and why I love them so much, but how does Elden Ring compare to its predecessors? Well, the biggest change is the open world as opposed to a series of interconnected levels, something that I feel is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, finding a derelict castle or underground network out in the world is a great feeling, building upon the sense of exploration that Dark Souls began, but was limited by the technology of the time. However, like most open world games, there is an unfortunate habit in repeating content, from catacombs, caves, ruins, and boss fights, failing to integrate items and rewards in the game naturally where the previous games could. Bloodborne had a similar problem with a fair chunk of content locked in the chalice dungeons, but they were ultimately optional and accessed through the hub area, not around the game world
This is, by comparison, a very good open world, with smaller open spaces being distinct from one another to give variety, and a map that isn't covered with points of interest and undiscovered quests - unless you decide to put them there yourself, but it is still and open world, and brings a lot of baggage into it as a result.
Worldbuilding also has some oddities that I felt weren't used by the game as well as previous games - with no clear factions system that influences quests, as well as motifs already used that felt a little out of place, almost like a nostalgic mashup of Dark Souls and Bloodborne themes that doesn't stand so well on their own - at least to begin with. Late game quests help to rectify this, but you could say a bad first impression was made on me as a result. This wouldn't affect new players, though.
Difficulty spikes are another contentious issue, where player choice in side content and certain mechanics like horseback riding and spirit ashes can make many fights too easy for most of the game, but ramp up in places where you feel you need them to even stand a chance. Most difficult fights in the other games brought a sense of fairness - you would die a lot, but understand where you went wrong and what you should do next time. Here it feels wildly unbalanced, swinging from too easy to too hard at the flip of a coin. There is still a lot of signature Souls elements to enjoy, and with the added jumping attacks and guard counters making boss fights all the more dynamic, you have to admire the new directions this game has taken, but I have to be honest about the flaws the game has as well.
The levels in this game can often rival those in Bloodborne and Dark Souls III for me, with several standouts. The same goes for the bosses. Unfortunately, by embedding them in an open world, the general impression you can get of the game can be different. I think for a player like myself, one thorough playthrough is worth it, but for subsequent ones, I would definitely be a little more selective in what I do and where I go because of this. I want to keep the legacy dungeons and awesome demi-god fights in my mind more so than riding around Limgrave, working through caves with repeated bosses, making entire sittings feel like the same busywork that bogs down other games, something I had hoped Elden Ring would overcome.
However, I will say that I have fond experiences through each main chunk of the game, with the overall quality not dropping but rather rising going into the final dozen hours or so. My favourite game in the series is Bloodborne, but even I have to admit its quality peaks at the start, and the mid to late game has plenty of slower sections that could have been improved, so it is nice to see the lessons of the past have well and truly been learnt, even if a few new ones have risen to take their place.
So what do I think?
To give Elden Ring a rating out of ten is a tricky task. While taking the world by storm and giving the Souls experience to a wider audience than ever before, I feel the open world environment has resulted in it losing as much as it gains. I have been exceedingly critical of this game in my review, but I want to stress that is because of how involved I have become with it - the games leading up to it and the hype surrounding its release that was bubbling away for years. I really enjoyed the game, but I don't think it can be considered quite as good as those that came before for the reasons I have given. However, adding up all the new welcome additions and improvements to the system that it brings, it wouldn't be fair to give it any less than a 9 out of 10.
9 OUT OF 10
Have you finished Elden Ring yet? What did you think of it? What were your favourite bosses and locations? Let me know in the comments. I'll be sure to follow this review up with a spoiler one, discussing the highs and lows of the game in greater detail. Until then, have a good one.
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