ELDEN RING Review

This review is written based on my 100s of hours with my own retail copy of the game, we didn’t get sent one, but that’s not going to stop me from sharing my thoughts on it.

With that out of the way!

When the Elden Ring was shattered!

Elden Ring has broken a stalemate with me and the Souls series of games. I tried Demon Souls way back, Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, and Sekiro. I never really gelled with any of them, I was starting to think that even Anime Souls aka Code Vein might not break my stalemate with Souls-like games at all.

Then along came Elden Ring and kicked my teeth in.

Time and time again it did this, and each time my Tarnished fell, they rose with me determined to have another go. I threw myself at mini-bosses and bosses, field bosses, tough wandering enemies and anything that got in my way.

I was finally desperate enough to get my teeth into Elden Ring because it’s such a good game. I played this on my Series X, and it’s so good I’m still playing it with my Astrologer/Fighter-Mage build 100s of hours later.

The rise of the Tarnished

That’s you, a lowly scrub of a character in Elden Ring, Maiden-less and battered from the moment you dare to step outside of the first place you begin the game after the intro cut-scene. Just like your character you have little to guide you, save for glowing item icon loot that you can pick up. The first little part is classic FromSoft.

Explore a little, get absolutely murdered and awake to find that you’re not dead at all, but you’re about to die a lot. If you get used to dying, and not worrying about the Runes (xp and money) you’re carrying at the time then you’re going to have a lot better time with Elden Ring. If you think this is another cakewalk *Souls like from the people who brought you Demon Souls and so on, then you’re wrong.

Elden Ring tries to help ease the frustration of the series by adding a bunch of Quality-of-Life improvements, features, and helpful things. But it will still KICK YOUR ARSE repeatedly if you so much as think: pff, I am a GAWD – FEAR ME – I destroyed the last boss!

Here’s a tip for new players who might get the game: Do not ignore the ghost telling you to drop into the pit, it’s the game’s tutorial. Now many people missed this, because just like the *Souls games before it, there’s no real hand-holding here. Many times, FS have put a message in: jump in here only to laugh at the players who did.

YOU DIED…

Oh ha ha ha ha, FromSoft.

Assholes!

This is the spirit of Elden Ring, and more so when you tag in the game’s helpful/not-so-helpful asynchronous online component (which you can turn off in the settings) – some players will drop hints and so on, some will just put a message like: jump, loot here!

You do, and you die.

HAHAHA

Assholes!

Open World done Right

I have played a lot of open world games, and honestly, I was close to open world burnout as you can possibly get. Elden Ring however, it manages to craft a fantastic lore-rich (even though the lore is hidden in a lot of places) world and setting that hooks you in, makes you invested and more importantly lets you discover things on your own.

There’s no sudden plethora of ?’s across the vast over and underground map.

It’s FS’ biggest game world so far.

You can put down markers, and up to 5 (count em) beacons on the map to help you find your way.

You need to find map fragments at the obelisk steles too, it won’t just chew away at the fog of war for you. In every aspect of the game, Elden Ring expects you to put in the work and actually play.

No quest logs, no objective markers, and very little guidance unless you listen to dialogues, read notes, and follow the golden glow of grace to the next story boss.

Tip: don’t always do this, go explore, and prepare to die or run.

That’s the general gist of the game though, accumulate xp, find tailored gear to your character’s build and progress from one encounter to the next to become the Elden Lord.

It’s not easy, it’s not going to be easy, but it won’t be nails-hard all the time.

George R.R. Martin helped design the world of Elden Ring, but he was given some tight guidelines and shackles so he couldn’t just go wild, the game’s better for it, since it’s very much the vision of the developers.

Who are you?

Before all this you generate your character, choose a template from the 10 available ones on offer.

They run the gamut between warriors, mages, thieves, and priests really. They give you a level, starting gear, and some early skills/attribute points to begin with.

All save for the Wretch, who has a club, some underwear and 10 in everything. Starts at level 1, and is the hardest to get to where you want them to go. But, also… offers the most in stat customisation later on.

Here’s a great ER resource: https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Classes

There’s a lot of customisations on offer to make a Tarnished you want to make, lots of sliders and templates to get to grips with, and even a keepsake item to take out with you. My suggestion would be to take the Golden Seed (one more flask charge early on) and get a boost to that flask early.

What do you do?

Explore, follow the story as you find it, and learn the nuances of the game’s many systems. It’s here that Elden Ring has a lot to throw at you, and it does it in a short amount of time without much in the way of any kind of tutorial beyond a message here and there that pops up for you to read.

How does the game help?

Elden Ring has been designed with new players in mind, and veterans to the series. It walks a thin line between both, yet manages to satisfy those camps for the most part very well. If you’re new, you’re going to have a harder time with the game, but not one that will frustrate you for long. If you’re a vet of the Souls games, it’s not baby’s first Souls like some people think it is. You’ll find enough of that DNA here to make it one of the best *Souls games since the originals.

To help new players, to make it more accessible was the goal.

Not to make it something it’s not and there’s no accessibility features for disabled gamers and so on, so it’s one of those which may miss out on their custom.

New players will find that they have several features to fall back on.

When you die in the *Souls games you drop your currency (Runes/Souls) on the ground, usually at the site of your demise. Not so much with Elden Ring, if there’s a difficult fight, or your fell off something then you’ll find your Runes are perhaps closer than they were at first, to make your life easier.

If it’s a boss fight, then you need to get back in there and get them back ASAP. If you die a second time without getting them back, they’re gone for good.

100,000 Runes lost in the blink of an eye.

Some bosses have short cuts back to their arena, some have a Stake of Marika close by, where you can respawn rather than a Site of Grace (used for levelling and for lots of other things – look up a guide if you need to, Google is the word in this genre).

The Stake of Marika is one such helpful addition, cutting down on frustration from facing a boss over and over again.

Ride like the Wind

Another helpful addition is your double-jumping badass of a spectral mount, Torrent, who will carry you past danger after danger (unless you get invaded) across the game’s very vast map. Torrent can parkour with the best of them, help you climb places where you normally couldn’t go in a *Souls game and you can fight from horseback too.

Torrent can be called for most of the map with a simple short-cut, and again, the game doesn’t tell you how to do this, just that you can assign quick items for use with RB.

Fight!

Combat in Elden Ring is simple enough to do, but hard to master. There’s Stamina to look after, Focus Points and Stamina if you’re using magic, and your health (HP) too. You can parry, and you can guard-counter.

ER makes guard-counters very easy this time. Just hold guard, wait for the enemy attack, and once they hit the weapon/shield – press Y to hit them back and do a ton of damage – breaking their stance and allowing a swift X or two (or even a finisher) to deal even more damage.

You learn all this in the tutorial, down the big hole, remember?

Right Stick clicked in does a lock-on, and you’ll need this for ranged/magic combat, as well as keeping awareness in melee.

There’s not much more to it than that, it’s just a matter of picking fights to learn how to battle.

Sneaky Elden Ring!

Taking a leaf from Sekiro, Elden Ring brings in sneaking with the Left Stick clicked in. Now you can usually move past mobs/guards in ER because the game uses this as another way to help the player. You can get behind and backstab for epic damage, or just sneak on by to get to that loot without picking a fight with superior numbers.

Jolly Cooperation

Elden Ring has co-op built in, summon random people, invade other people’s worlds to kill them, and bring your friends along with difficult dungeons and boss encounters. It also has asynchronous elements, such as messages left by other players, and the ghosts of other Tarnished you can see flit through your world from time to time.

There are also blood stains that show you how your fellow Tarnished perished, clues on what lies ahead.

Bringing the Elden Ring world to life

With a mixed bag of voice acting, incredible sound design, music and the like you get some pretty damn pretty graphics, with some of the top architecture and level design in gaming so far. FromSoft are always gameplay first, and graphics later, but this actually feels like they pushed out the boat on both sides of this equation and honestly it looks fantastic.

How’s it perform in general?

Series X in Performance mode runs at a smooth 60fps and I have been having zero input delay using this mode. Still looks fantastic, and silky-combat is the aim of the game! If you have the TV to handle it, 4K mode is good, but honestly, I love my 60fps. I've not had a single crash, and the hotfix they deployed server side sorted out issues with the multiplayer of the game. In fact, I haven't hit a single game-breaking bug or place where I've fallen through the map.

Elden Ring Final Thoughts

This is hard to sum up, because it’s such a vast, deep, and at times – mystifying game there’s bound to be a lot I missed here to talk about. Plus, I don’t want this to be the War & Peace of game reviews. So, if you just want my honest thoughts as someone who isn’t paid to write game reviews – at all – here it is.

Should I get Elden Ring if I don’t play *Souls games?

Yep, I’d say so. You’ll need to invest a lot of time into it, and learn how it works, but there are channels and guides across the internet that’ll help you discover the nuances and even how to swing things into your favour for nasty boss fights.

It’s the first *Souls game that I have truly fallen in love with, and I am always looking to get an hour or two in on it when I can, when I’m not writing for TTRPGs.

There’s something magical about Elden Ring when it clicks, and once you get that ‘click’ you’ll see the world peel back and the game peel back layer by layer.

You’ll die a lot, you will lose so many Runes, but there’s always the next attempt and the one after that.

Go away, find a place to level up, come back, get further until you beat that boss.

Rinse, repeat in a beautiful dense open world packed with things to see and places to explore which give a true feeling of adventure.

Let it be the first *Souls game for you.

If you’re a *Souls vet, you already know the answer.

Rise, Tarnished, and seek to restore the Elden Ring!