This might be the last revision I made of a game, but hey, life calls me, and I didn’t just stop the start of Elden Ring because of the release of Horizon Forbidden West and Destiny 2: The Witch Queen the same week, but I did too. . . then I had a son, so here we are! And as a playful new father, I decided to make my way through Elden Ring, against all odds.
And I’m glad I did.
A little context: I’m not a Soulsborne person. Not really. I bounced off the original Demon’s Souls at the time and never played the Dark Souls trilogy. However, I played Bloodborne to its conclusion, so I guess it prepared me up a bit, even though years ago at this point.
Elden Ring, although it is another game from FromSoftware, is another animal. It is bigger, longer and I would say much more accessible, despite its moments of excessive difficulty and its prospect of loss of progression. And it’s one of the most productive games I’ve played in several years, and it’s by far the most productive game I’ve seen released since the dawn of the PS5/Xbox Series X generation. I expect it to last a few more years and GOTY by 2022 turns out to be a lock-in at this point, especially after the recent delays.
For starters, the global Elden Ring created here, The Lands Between, is a tale of good luck not only for the developer, but also for the total concept of open globals in games. I’ve played so many open global games at this point that Frankly, I’m exhausted by the concept, but Elden Ring replaced all of that with his exceptionally varied and large map that never stopped being engaging after a hundred hours, and there are probably a hundred secrets. a part. Of course, we have our “biomes,” an initial vegetation, a swamp, an icy mountain, it never feels derived and features some of the most productive stage narratives I’ve ever seen, plus a masterful point design that uses verticality, either above or below, in tactics we rarely see on maps like this.
My adventure through The Lands Between was like a wizard, first casting spells with a shield and then with a Wolverine claw set that I had changed to allow me to teleport out of harm’s way. This is fromSoftware’s first game where magic is not just an option, but a very large component of the game, capable of difficult constructions between Int, Faith, Arcane and weapons used by all three. Basically focused on Int, it would throw tracking meteorites and throw icy moons at other people at the end. . I was told that Faith is probably the most attractive way to take more entertaining spells, but I still had a great time.
My structure made me spam spells while my summons, first skeletons, then a copy of myself, then a manic DPS killer, helped me and took me through the toughest battles. You can beat the point for the maximum content of the game if you do. enough aspect missions or rune reproduction, but you finally succeed at a point where it doesn’t matter, as the last third of the game throws the trick into its ultimate form, and no force will save you. The toughest boss in the game, Malenia, will hang up -Out of my nightmares for years to come, and she’s already a video game legend (just like a genuine player you can summon solo).
Combat is a laugh with any kind of construction, but where the game shines is exploration. I can’t perceive how dense this map is, where it lacks genuine signs about where you deserve to go and what you deserve to do, but it just happens anywhere. , do anything, take you to attractive places, scenarios, and treasures, and if you don’t explore enough, you may miss out on large, total pieces of a game, such as an expanding complete domain in which you can only succeed if you get two halves of a single medallion from an NPC and a chest among thousands.
If I have any criticism to make of Elden Ring, it’s because he may be too obtuse. While I like to perceive things for myself, there are a lot of issues in the game where it would be literally very unlikely not to interrupt missions or lose endings or loot without looking for guides, and the harder the game, the more there is to miss. There is “difficult” and there is “the accidental final touch of a mission too early 70 hours ago absolutely breaks the chain of this total area”, which requires some other total component to get it right. There are too many cases like this, so I found myself looking for more and more guides as the game progressed, as I felt like I was going to ruin the game despite me just hunting to figure it all out on my own.
Nor is it a game that you will play for its history. Yes, it has memorable characters and wild scenes, but not much, and not often. You will have to make many paintings yourself to read the traditions of this world and what it is. go down here in this area that George RR Martin himself helped create. Although I love mythology, the most common thing is to read article descriptions and search for videos on YouTube is not what I would call an ideal video game storytelling practice.
But again, in the grand scheme of things, those are minor cases and, in fact, reasons to give the game a component with a new edition and not miss everything you know so as not to miss the moment. I don’t know if I have time for that anytime soon, however, I can see the advantage.
Elden Ring is an amazing achievement from the point of view of the literal architecture of the video game, while creating a complicated but not incredibly punitive game that everyone, even non-soulsborne devotees, deserve to be able to enjoy. it’s been so inspired with an open global since Skyrim, and Elden Ring even surpasses it in many ways. it’s an achievement of the game like we’ve rarely seen it, and I would be remiss if you don’t take it and see what it’s about for yourself.
Rating: 10/10
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