Right so its time for a new review and this one is of a new video game that has recently come out that I was keen to try out as it Elden Ring, which is by Fromsoftware i.e. the team who developed Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro.
And this game takes a more open world approach to things as it is basically a progression of the Souls series itself with very similar combat only this time you can ride a horse to explore its vast open envrionment. And so far this game has also been getting some incredible reviews as just about every game reviewer has awarded it a 10 out of 10.
So, with that all said is Elden Ring worthy of the praise and its perfect score? Well, let's find out!
And I will mention just a little bit about the story below so the usual warning is coming...
SPOILERS AHEAD (NOT TOO MANY THOUGH!).
STORY
So, I've quoted the premise of the story taken from Wikipedia's website.
"Elden Ring takes place in the Lands Between, sometime after the destruction of the titular Elden Ring and the scattering of its shards, the Great Runes. Once graced by the Ring and the Erdtree which symbolizes its presence, the realm is now ruled over by the demigod offspring of Queen Marika the Eternal, each possessing a shard of the Ring that corrupts and taints them with power. As Tarnished — exiles from the Lands Between who lost the Ring's grace and are summoned back after the Shattering — players must traverse the realm to ultimately find all the Great Runes, restore the Elden Ring, and become the Elden Lord...".
THOUGHTS
Well Elden Ring so far as I already mentioned has received univeral acclaim for reviewers giving it perfect 10 out of 10 scores, calling it a masterpiece of gaming but what do I think? Is it a masterpiece? Well at the risk of sounding very unpopular in short no. In fact I would say for me personally, dare I say it, this is perhaps Fromsoft's weakest Souls games to date (but that's just me, if you disagree that's fine!).
However before anyone reading this gets mad, its far from a bad game, in fact I think it is an excellent game for the most part and the open world exploration can provide some enjoyment and the horse riding adds a welcome new mechanic to the Souls formula to cover terrain quickly. The game also offers some other nice improvements which I will mention in a bit.
But, I also have to say that the game suffers from Fromsoft's insistence in trying to consistently top the difficulty of what they've done before in the past and its the game's difficulty level that ramps up drastically as it goes on that makes it suffer and prevent it from being a potential masterpiece. It does get a lot of things right but it also gets quite a few things wrong in the process and that's where it falls down for me (but more on that later!).
GAMEPLAY
As for the gameplay there is a lot to cover in terms of the gameplay given the new mechanics here in play and the open world style, so I will split this section into sub-sections as usual below.
HORSE RIDING
And I will start with look at the game's most notable and newest mechanic, which is the horse riding as your playable character, the Tarnished, can ride a horse throughout what is known as the lands between and there is a vast world to explore here, so being on horseback is an excellent way to see it. There are however times where you have disembark your horse because you may enter enclosed areas such as caves or castle entrances or in other cases when you are about to face an in-game invader.
As for the horse itself, it is called Torrent and they can be summoned by the use of a whistle and when the Tarnished gets off the horse, it will disappear and can be brought back again via the whistle. Torrent however can taken damage from enemies, so you have to be careful and pay attention to their health bar because once it reaches zero, you will be knocked off the horse. You can however replenish Torrent's health via the use of seeds that you can feed to her and its best to keep an eye on that during combat and if her health drops to zero then you need to use one of your healing flasks to revive her.
COMBAT
In terms of the combat, Elden Ring adopts much the same combat style as the previous Dark Souls games although more specifically its very similar to the combat of Dark Souls III. So, here again you can perform regular and strong attacks, which vary weapon to weapon, parry enemies by knocking their shield aside with your own shield to follow it up with a powerful counterattack as well as backstab enemies. Another new feature of the combat here is the inclusion of a guard counter, where if you block an enemy attack with your shield you will launch a counterattack that can deal alot of damage also.
WEAPONS
As for the weapons, the game has a vast array of weapons available that range from melee weapons to magical weapons such as staffs or seals (previously talismans in the Souls games) that can cast sorcery spells and miracles respectively. As for melee weapons there is everything you can imagine here such as straight swords, katanas, axes, clubs, hammers, maces, daggers, halberds and of course large swords and what are now known as colossal swords (formerly known as ultra great swords in Souls games). These weapons generally can be upgraded via materials that you find throughout game to increase their power and attack.
UPGRADES FOR WEAPONS AND ARMOUR
Moving onto upgrading weapons as before in the previous games, a blacksmith can upgrade your weapons at the game's central hub, which is known as Roundtable Hold, which I will say more about in the next paragraph section. As for the materials you need they are generally called Smithing stones but they come in different variations and unlike previous games, you can now upgrade your weapon up to +25, which is quite a jump from +10! However getting the higher end materials is not so easy as you cannot get them until much later into the game.
As for your armour, well like in Dark Souls III and Bloodborne, you cannot upgrade your armour sets but what you can do is make cosmetic adjustments to them to improve their appearance, which is a neat feature in itself. It doesn't really add anything specials but its nice option to have if it want to change the look of the outfit you have on.
MAP
And now we get to another new feature of the game, which is the map as the player can now look at the open world via a map to allow them to plan out their routes and were to travel to. However in order to see new areas appear on the map, you need to collect individual maps of these areas and then they will be updated on your display. You can also set markers for points of interest on the map to places you want to find or return to as well as set beacons to try and locate a specific area. Given the incredibly large area of the game itself, the map is definitely a useful feature that is a good help in navigation.
BOSSES AND ENEMIES
Just like the previous Souls games, you will face a large number of standard enemies as well as bosses but this time round there are even more bosses than ever before! In fact I think there are 83 bosses to be found in total in the game which is quite a number! Standard enemies will vary in challenge from the early game areas where they are weaker and do less damage to the later areas where they are very powerful and can in some instances even one-shot you!
Further to the bosses, there are different types than in previous games that range from mini bosses to bosses that are known as great enemies and lastly the highest type of boss, which is a demi-god and they provide the highest challenge in the game from a boss perspective. One thing is for sure here is that you will never be short of a challenge in this game from its enemies!
STATS
Just as before in the Souls games in Elden Ring you have a number of stats that you can level up as you progress through the game and each starting class of character will different stats than others. So, e.g. a warrior may have higher strength but lower intelligence whereas a sorcerer will have higher intelligence but lower strength.
So, the stats are very similar to before as you have Vigor (for your health), Endurance (equipment load), a new stat called Mind, which affects your ability to store spells and perform specific weapon arts, Intelligence, which will determine the power of sorceries and dexterity, which determines the skill level you have for handling specific weapons such as katanas or spears. Another new stat here is Arcane, which determines your item discoverability which was also used in Bloodborne for the same reason (well that and magic power).
NPCS & QUESTLINES
Another key feature of the game are its NPCs (non-playable characters) who can interact with you throughout the game and to a certain extent most of them will have questlines that you can follow that will lead to you getting special items. Some NPCs can also help you during boss fights although you tend find their effectiveness in these fights can be a mixed bag.
MERCHANTS
And then we have the merchants and there are plenty to be found in this game and throughout the lands between (as they call it in the game) and they all sell different items. As for the items they sell, you usually get at least one melee weapon and a set of armour as well as arrows or bolts. In addition to this they often will sell what are known as cookbooks that let you craft specific items and I will mention more about that below. You can also sell things to the merchants as well in order to earn a few extra runes although you tend not to get much for them however.
ITEM CRAFTING
Another new feature of the game is item crafting in which you can craft specific items such as arrows or bolts as well as weapon buffs such as fire, magic, poison and lightning. The item crafting can usually be obtained by picking up various herbs throughout the game or killing specific creatures such as birds, beasts or large flies. You can also pick items known as cracked pots that can be used to create firebombs or if you have right material bombs that contain a holy infused damage. Other items you can craft also include healing items that cure poison or a new effect called scarlet rot as well as madness (similar to frenzy in Bloodborne). So, there is no shortage of stuff to craft in this game for sure!
SPIRIT ASHES
Another new feature of the game relating to combat are the spirit ashes as your character can summon the help of spirits into boss fights also as well to help clear out hostile areas. The spirit ashes can be found throughout the game and there are various ones to pick up but you have to travel quite far to try and find some of them and they can range from being pretty useless in combat to being pretty good. The ashes can also be upgraded in terms of their strength and health via the use of what is known as spirit tuning and this can be done by finding specific herbs to do so and this can also help out in combat.
ASHES OF WAR
And this brings me onto the ashes of war, which are specific weapon arts that you can pick up throughout the world and can be added to your weapons to enhance their attacks. The ashes of war provide boosts for physical attacks or even for magical attacks although not all weapons can use the same ashes and can vary.
HEALTH AND HEALING FLASKS
As for your health it can be restored via the use of healing flasks that are known as the Flask of Crimson Tears which is used for restoring your health whereas the Flask of Cerulean Tears is used to restore your focus power for magic or weapon arts. You can also charges to the flask to boost their healing effects that are known as sacred tears whereas golden seeds can be collected to increase the amount of usages of your flask however as it goes on you need more than one seed to increase your flask usage.
GRACE SITES
And last of all I will mention the grace sites, which are what was previously known as bonfires in the Souls games and are basically your resting spots where you can replenish your health and reset the enemies in that specific area to respawn after being killed. You can also perform other tasks at the grace sites such as leveling up your character's stats, upgrading your healing flask as well allocate how many flasks you will use for health and magic power.
GRAPHICS
Moving onto the game's graphics there is little doubt that Elden Ring is Formsoftware's most visually stunning game to date as the visuals are superb and the game's environments are rich and detailed from the verdant grass and open vistas to the darkened catacombs. The game also makes great use of starry backdrops in certain areas that look jaw dropping visually and specifically one area of the game that is called Siofra valley is the best looking area of the game for me personally. Character models are also a big improvement over previous Souls games as the character's faces are more detailed than before although some enemies still look a bit weird and off by comparison but for the most they are good. So, overall Elden Ring is a visual treat for the eyes.
MUSIC
As for the game's music score it was composed by not one but five composers this time round, which is not so surprising given the size and scope of the game and the composers feature regular Souls composer, Yuka Kitamura and also Tsukasa Saito who has also previously worked on these games too. And the score itself is generally excellent with some pretty good boss themes to be found throughout and there is generally not an area in the game to be found where music is not used although some areas do share the same theme. Overall it is a very strong collaborative effort from the composers involved and its a fine score for the game.
FLAWS
(Warning: this section may contain spoilers and this is just my personal opinion)
So........the big question, is Elden Ring perfect or does it have any flaws???Yep it does I'm afraid but again this is purely my subjective opinion, so if you disagree, that's absolutely fine.
And to start off I think one of the main problems I had with this game is that they created too many bosses that are extremely overpowered and can destroy you in two hits or even in a one shot. Now, we have seen this sort of thing before in previous Souls games but here, the concept of one-shots is abused to the nth degree! And towards the end of the game there are nothing but insanely OP bosses that can one-shot you before you can even get a hit in and just makes the game feel really one-sided and unfair even for a Fromsoft game!
And this problem doesn't just stop with the bosses, it also is the case with standard enemies as I was regularly one-shotted by a few enemies such as rabid dogs that appeared in the area of the game called Caelid (a fairly late game area) and one of them did a pounce attack on me and insta-killed me with it! It was also the same with another enemy, a large bat that had a nasty attack that could one shot you and there was another enemy that nearly one-shotted me who did a grab and bite attack but I barely survived it with just enough HP at the time! And I just think its not right to have standard enemies, particularly small dogs that can obliterate your health bar and highlights some real issues with the game's difficulty.
Another problem I have is to do with boss design in this game as there are a handful of well designed bosses such as Margit the Fell Omen, Godrick, the Grafted and Renala, Queen of the New Moon as well as Starscourge Radahn. However, I have to say that I felt the boss design this time around was largely uninspiring and there were even cases were they just doubled up the same boss and created them as a duo over and over again! So, there really was a cut and paste feel to the bosses here and with a total of 83 in the entire game, you can imagine it would hard to craft a classic for each one.
Of course I felt very frustrated fighting previous Souls games bosses and even Sekiro but those games had well crafted, memorable boss fights but in Elden Ring that sort of boss is sorely lacking and the really tough ones that are in the game I just don't really feel motivated or care that much to bother fight solo. A prime example of this is a late game boss, the Fire Giant, who is a mandatory boss you need to kill to progress the game and of course he can destroy you in one or two hits with his attacks but he designed is just so incredibly dull and boring! The guy lumbers around and moves about the pace of 2 miles per hour at best for most of the fight, which makes it exceedingly dull to deal with. In fact I am convinced the director, Hidetaka Miyazaki was trying outdo Dark Souls II for slower pace with this boss but even the Last Giant boss in that game moved faster than this!
And this leads to another problem with the difficulty level of the first main boss of the game, Margit, who for a first big boss is very tough indeed and if you are under leveled then you are going to be in for a rough time as he has a lot of powerful attacks. So, I'd personally recommend exploring the world and leveling up your character's stats and weapon as much as you can before fighting him but I just think that the first boss of the game shouldn't be this hard and again this highlights my issues with this game's difficulty. You could argue that Father Gascoigne from Bloodborne was a pretty tough first boss but Margit is definitely on another level in comparison.
I also felt that this game in some ways was trying outdo Dark Souls II for trolling players with excessive amounts of enemies in different areas and of course most of them are very powerful and destroy you in a couple of hits! Even though I do admit Dark Souls II was guilty of throwing an excessive amount of enemies at players at times, Elden Ring is just as if not even more so guilty of this as well! And there were quite a few areas in the late game where I really started to feel like I wasn't enjoying the game as much anymore because the areas were so infested with tough enemies it made it feel pointless to play. In fact for me, this could well be Fromsoft's trolliest game to date!
Another thing is of course to do with the whole open world structure, which can be fun to explore at times the different areas of the game and you are free to go from one area to another if you want to see somewhere else. However, this structure does have its own problems and particularly as you are trying to find specific items or areas, you can spend ALOT of time riding around trying to find them! You can of course use Youtube videos to help you find these spots and I quite often did that myself because if you didn't you would be totally lost in this game for sure! So, the exploration really is a bit of a mixed bag here.
And this brings me onto an issue I have with the game's map system where if you are riding nearby enemies, the game will NOT let you open up the map to have a look at it, you have to wait until you out of their line of sight or further afield. However, you could actually STILL not be within aggro range of enemies and still not be able to open you map and I often found myself frantically hitting the map button to open it up to no avail. So, the map issues are definitely quite frustrating for sure and I just wish they would let you open it up regardless of your proximity to enemies.
I also felt the game was guilty on various occasions of punishing the player by denying them the use of the ash summons in certain areas of the game where you could really benefit their help. As an example, I summoned one of the ashes, Oleg (a pretty good summon too!) to help clear out an area in the game, Ray Lucaria Academy out in a courtyard but at a certain point he just vanished just as I wanted him to help me! So, I was left to try and take out the enemies myself, which ate into my healing flasks supply rather than get an extra bit of help! Dark Souls II did have a similar mechanic with summons helping you and only staying for a certain time but at least it let you know that when they disappear but Elden Ring doesn't!
Another big problem I have with the game is simply to do with the very high difficulty levels of the late game areas and there were several areas that actually left me feeling really frustrated and a bit demoralised and quite frankly left me feeling like "why am I even playing this?!". I get that late areas in Souls games should be tough but here in Elden Ring, they were frankly taking the piss!
As an example, in the area of the Mountain tops of the Giants, there is an invader named Okina, that appears that can literally destroy you with a bleed infused katana in two or three hits and there is NOTHING you can do about it! Literally nothing! I could barely dodge in time to avoid him and every time I did try and engage him in combat, he just destroyed me so quickly I couldn't react! Another example was in the Castle Sol area of the game which is filled with banished knights that use dual great swords and can teleport in front or behind you and can destroy you almost immediately in the process! Again, I barely had any time to react and in the end, its the constant death after death to these guys just get's really tiresome.
So, this sort of thing really left me feely deeply annoyed and frustrated at just how ridiculously OP these enemies were and frankly and made me think why in the hell does your health bar even exist in this game when enemies can just wipe you out so quickly???!! You might as well go in with zero health and you would last just as long or as near as!
This brings me onto another annoying issue with the game, which is how you are force to dismount your horse when an NPC invader is about to spawn in making it more difficult for you to flee the scene if you want to leave on horseback. So, you are forced to either run far away enough from them to use Torrent or just face off them and of course the more the game goes on the tougher they are!
I also feel that the game even though it is open world, it just goes on way TOO LONG and I am still currently playing at over 100 hours of gameplay, still trying to finish the game with no end in sight! I am getting closer to the end but the fact I am also up against some REALLY hard bosses, just protracts the game's runtime even more and at this point, rather than find it exciting or exhilarating, I'm just feeling worn out by it and would like to see the finish line.
And last of all in regards to the game's difficulty, I feel it can be offset by the use of specific weapon skills or spells and one such spell I did find very useful (in fact too useful!) is the hoarfrost stomp skill. Now this skill is THE most overpowered and broken feature to have probably EVER featured in a video game and if Fromsoft don't nerf (i.e. weaken) the power of this skill, I'll be absolutely shocked! I was able to use this frost stomp to demolish quite a few tough bosses as well as plethora of strong enemies and at this point it feels like a cheat code for the game or Elden Ring's easy mode! However, the frost stomp skill isn't 100 percent effective all the time as you can still get killed by bosses and enemies, who can dodge it.
UPDATE: The skill, Hoarfrost Stomp HAS since been nerfed and is no longer as effective in boss fights as it was unfortunately but hey ho, I guess it was just a bit too OP, so it was bound to happen sooner or later.
However, my problem with this and other skills like it and indeed the whole spirit ash summon system is that the game relies way too heavily on the use of the tactics to help you fight really hard bosses and when they work well, they can trivialize these fights but by doing that, it sucks the challenge out of the game. And I think that Fromsoft really should have tried harder with Elden Ring to balance out the boss difficulty levels rather than make them super tough and force you to resort to skills or summons to defeat them and for me I just think they've kind of lost their way with this game in that respect. I also personally think this game was not well tailored for melee builds given the absurd difficulty of enemies and bosses as the game progress but that's just me (or is it??).
And that's it for the flaws!
SUM UP
So, to sum up Elden Ring despite any of its faults is still a very good RPG game and its open world design is very impressive and it is easily their best looking game to date with some stunning visuals and much improved character models for your playable characters. The game also has its share of varied combat with a plethora of weapons and spells available at players disposals and it naturally has its share of challenging enemies and bosses. The game also features an excellent soundtrack headlined by Yuka Kitamura, who worked on the previous Souls games and overall this is almost as strong as the previous scores before it.
However, it has to be said Elden Ring is NOT perfect, it has its issues with its excessively hard difficulty in the later stages of the game not to mention those boss designs this time round are very mixed with some better than others. The map system for most part works OK but there are annoying moments where you can't always open it in fairly close proximity of enemies. The game itself also goes on way too long and with so many tough boss encounters, it really drags you down after a while and the game would have benefited from being a good bit shorter but instead the game really does feel like a major slog as you go on.
So, for me Elden Ring while its a very solid game its not the 10 out of 10 all the reviewers made it out to be and I felt the whole open world experience was a bit of a mixed bag but still an interesting one all the same. But if you liked the previous Souls games there is still alot to enjoy here, however just be prepared to put in the hours and suffer if you want to complete it!
So, I will rate Elden Ring:
8.5 out of 10
Right, that's it for now and I will be back soon with another review of sorts.
Until then its bye for now!
REVIEW UPDATE! (21.03.22)
I finally beat the game after 147 hours of gameplay today and the final two bosses were an absolute slog to get through particularly the first boss Radagon although the final one, the Elden Beast was no joke either. Thankfully due to using the bow and poison mist cheese against Radagon where you run up to him before he stops moving, you can pump him full of arrows or you can even spell cheese him (depends on the spell though!) but you need to be careful that you don't break his poise or he will snap out of his standstill and would need to start over again, which happened to me various times!
However with Radagon out the way, it makes dealing with the Elden Beast a hell of a lot easier as you will have a full set of flasks (or near full if you used your FP flasks). And the fight itself is a case of just trying to avoid his holy attacks with his sword and also his circles of light, which is easier said than done but I did find it more manageable after quite a few attempts, Elden Ring was beaten!
That's it for it now and if I do beat Elden Ring, I will do another update at some point!
