Game review: Elden Ring for Steam

Where to begin with this mythological beast of legendary stature? I guess we can lead with the two main points of hype in the year following its release. Elden Ring was endlessly called a masterpiece, and it was claimed to be the most accessible FromSoftware title to date.

I have played over 300 hours spread across two classes, and that’s a lot to digest and then distill into a brief review. The easier of the two claims to cover is its status as a masterpiece. In this, it absolutely deserves the title. I’ve always liked the worlds of Dark Souls, and while I wasn’t as much of a fan of Bloodborne, I could still recognize the haunting beauty of its settings.

Elden Ring manages to surpass all previous entries, and I can’t tell you how many times I would freeze in the middle of a trip across the map just to take in…everything. The night sky, a gorgeous lakeside view, a cavern illuminated by glowing rocks that made me forget I wasn’t outside staring at the stars, or an underground waterfall populated by a slumbering giant that I’m loathe to wake and break this moment of grand spectacle. Every shift in the biomes is a new reason to stop and soak it all in. It’s a positively gorgeous work of art.

Then there’s the music. All the previous entries chose silence during normal gameplay before cranking the volume on orchestral and operatic numbers for the boss fights. They were beautiful, yes, but so loud that after playing with headphones on, I’ve got a near constant case of tinnitus. Elden Ring chose to put a lighter kind of music all across its world, choosing to raise the tempo in fights with normal monsters, and raising it again for boss fights. Across the world, there are even monsters who sing, and it’s easy to miss them if one were just sticking to the roads to get to their destination. The music is more subtle, and again, throughout my time, I would stop my current quest just to listen and appreciate each song in the moment.

But for as much as I liked the world of Elden Ring, I cannot say that this is the most accessible FromSoftware title. That honor should go to Dark Souls III, which sheds most of the bad ideas from previous entries (yes, enemies can carry torches, but you have to collect a bug to strap its butt on your head if you want a light source) to deliver the tightest, most enjoyable fantasy hacking and slashing I’ve ever played. Elden Ring, however, has a layer of obscurity pulled so taut over most of its systems that even after doing the tutorial section, I still had no idea what I was doing, or where to go first.

Take for instance the map and fast travel. Many dungeon areas do not allow for fast travel until exiting them properly. So when I first got to the underground lake areas, I assumed the same was true of them; that I could fast travel among the Sites of Grace in the lakes, but not back to the surface. I was maybe 150 hours in when I finally discovered that I could push a button to bring up the surface-level map and fast travel without taking the slow elevator back up. The could have been good to know right from the start.

Or how about the convoluted way the health and mana potions are upgraded. One item is needed to boost their efficacy, and the other is needed to expand how many times they can be used. But while sacred tears are straightforward, golden seeds are a headache. To find the tears, you just go to any building that looks like a church, and odds are good you’ll find one. But golden seeds are scattered around small glowing trees, many hidden until you trip on them. Quite a few are surrounded by enemies that can easily one-shot a starting character, leading to several instances of trying to sneak across the map, getting almost close enough to nab them, and then having a soldier drive their sword so far up my character’s ass that I can virtually taste their shit.

After just a few golden seed upgrades, Elden Ring sets up another grind. Soon you need two seeds to get an extra potion dose, and then three, and then four, and then five. To get all the potions, I literally had to print out maps and set them on the table beside me while I played.

There’s so much grinding built into this beast, making it one of FromSoftware’s most frustrating titles for me. Unlike past titles that had two kinds of basic arrows and a handful of special arrows sold at higher prices, Elden Ring has one normal arrow, and everything else has to be crafted. Small animals have to be killed for small bones. Birds must be massacred on a horrid level for feathers. (The birds are all beautiful, too, so I felt like a monster every time I realized I was running low on arrows.)

Crafting requires collecting “cookbooks,” being another kind of grind. Then there’s yet another grind to find the right ingredients, most of which is in limited quantities in the myriad dungeons scattered across the map. Then you have to collect pots and ritual pot and perfume flasks, meaning each item you need for a great build is also dependent on constantly stopping your progression to just grind in the collectathon. It very quickly becomes the most tedious part of the loop. (I will admit, being able to collect materials while riding Torrent was a nice touch. I normally avoid mounts if I have to keep dismounting every few steps to pick flowers, so being able to gallop the lands and hoover up stuff without slowing down or stopping was an upgrade from other fantasy games.)

Oh wait, I should mention why I needed arrows even though both of my characters could cast magic: dodge. Literally even the dumbest insect or dog in this game knows how to dodge spells and incantations, and especially in the early game, it’s all too easy to run out of mana without hitting an enemy once. And yes, they can dodge arrows too, but at least having them gave me more chances to pin someone down before having to use my wimpy sword with my wimpier strength and dexterity stats. Silly me, I thought a magic user should max their stats for more damage. That only counts if I can hit something.

Oh, and magic. Everything can cast magic in Elden Ring. Dogs and wolves can do it. There’s a slug, snake hybrid who can summon an infinite number of spirit allies. You killed one? Great, here’s another, and maybe even two or three. Trolls can conjure magic knives to pin you to the ground before you even see them coming. And when you finally find the zombie sorcerer-slash-sniper with built in cloaking technology? Shiiiiiit.

Then there’s what I chose to call the buckets of bullshit, certain enemies that are damage sponges, ignoring attacks no matter how big the weapon or spell hitting them is. Their attacks cause instant staggers, they have combos to ensure death if anything connects, and almost no window of opportunity to punish them in return. I’m not talking about bosses, either, just random assholes on patrol with health bars bigger than the bosses, ready to ensure rage loops if I don’t choose to sneak or run around them. Hell, there’s a part of the map I never got to explore because in addition to all the above bullshit, those buckets teleport and vomit poison that stacks so fast, I don’t have time to find the antidote on my equipment list before I’m dead. I leveled up over and over, always coming back to that asshole, and always ending with the same result.

I guess we should talk about the bosses, lest the “get gud” gang shows up to feel superior. Most bosses, I beat in two to four attempts. Several of the bosses, I beat on the first try. Hoarah Loux? First try. No, for real. I don’t need to get gud, because I already am. I’d have to be after logging thousands of hours in Dark Souls III alone, to say nothing of the other entries and Bloodborne. (With the secret ending boss, too. Now that guy was HARD.)

FromSoftware is very much my jam and my tea. But they always have little tics here and there that diminish the experience. The gimmick boss fight that requires leaping a chasm and landing on a skinny ass root at just the right angle. Or the one with curse breath that’s immortal until you break their crystal doodad. Or the one that requires grabbing a special weapon at the back of their throne room, equipping it, and then charging it up while the boss is already slamming a twenty foot sword around like an arachnophobe trying to kill a spider with a rolled up newspaper. (In that regard, Elden Ring’s gimmick boss was actually an improvement by putting the gimmick weapon at the front of the boss chamber, letting me equip it before waking the boss to do battle. (Oh, and he took four tries, in case you were curious.))

I’m put in a very difficult position scoring this massive beast. Did I enjoy the journey? Sometimes, yes, but also a lot of times, no. I loved the exploration above-ground, but found most of the dungeon crawling to be too similar to each other so that none of it stands out. The boss fights were good, until they weren’t (Looking at you, Elden Beast.) And most importantly, I’d just start to settle in and enjoy the journey itself when something would come along and shout “How dare you have fun! This is supposed to suck!”

In the end, I have to give Elden Ring 4 stars. To go any lower ignores the time I spent enjoying it for what it is, a masterpiece. But I can’t go higher because it isn’t nearly as accessible as others might claim. I think the real question is how eager am I to get in there and play with a different build? The answer is, not at all. In fact, I installed another game minutes after finishing Elden Ring. I’ve since beaten that, too, but I have no desire to return to The Lands Between no matter how pretty they were.

Similarly, I wouldn’t recommend this to newbies looking for a way into FromSoftware games. It’s their familiar recipe, but with so many extra ingredients making it harder to appreciate the final product. If you really want to get into their works in the most accessible and forgiving way, I already told you where to begin. Just remember that if you do go into that one, the base game is more forgiving, but the DLC is a whole other game mode that will beat you up, steal your lunch money, and then pack you in your locker.

So, see you next week for another review, which is already done. It’s easier keeping to a schedule when a game only takes 30 hours to play instead of 300, you know?