A Review of Elden Ring

Here is a review of Elden Ring, which I think is the greatest action RPG of all time. This review comes out three years after it was released. That's what we call "topical" in the biz. After sinking 145 hours into the game on Steam Deck I figured I should write down my thoughts, shut her down and go make some friends.

What Works

• Incredible, FULL open world: every region feels different, graphics are incredible, models are super detailed and there's secrets everywhere. you will repeatedly stumble into massive new places by accident and yes you can explore it all
• Complex and varied combat system: use whatever weapon, magic or incantations you've got to kick ass. you'll fight giants, gods, humans and every type of fucked up monster you can imagine and some you can't (giant fingers). Swords, staffs, spears, bare knuckle brawling, whips, bows, great bows, crossbows, on and on. It's full self-expression through combat.
• Deep lore to unpack at your own pace: there's no lengthy cutscenes or complex character arcs to keep track of, the only story that matters is the adventure you're making through your actions. but man the lore is heavy - every place has detail and every item has a detailed description with in-game lore. You can develop your own internal canon of what's going on the world or throw yourself into hours of deep dive lore videos by one of the GOATs of Elden Ring content, VaatiVidya.

What Doesn't

• Enemy encounters can be cheap and poorly designed: getting jumped underground by five giant rats ain't hard just cheap! In fact, out of all the enemies you face in this game, none is mightier than the sewer rat. And sure, you will randomly get your ass beat in life so it's an immersive experience. But there are so many places where Slime-level enemies can take hours of progress from you.
• Hitboxes are all over the place: you know you dodged that crazy move and that monster still took half your HP and threw you into a brick wall. I dislike all redheaded sword masters for this exact reason. Babe1Babe2 did a great video on the subject. it's not game ruining, it's just that the game is so dialed in on every other aspect that it's a bummer.

The Verdict

Buy it now: If you love the fantasy genre in any capacity, from tabletop games to movie trilogies, this game was made for you. This is what it feels like to go on a monster slaying adventure in a grimdark hellscape. You will get your ass kicked until credits roll and love every second of it.

Why It’s Worth Talking About

Elden Ring is an action RPG developed by FromSoftware, a Japanese game studio that's been around since the late '80s. They started off as a business software company but pivoted to entertainment and in 1994 released their first game: King's Field for PlayStation. It was a first person fantasy role-playing game inspired by Wizardry, the gold standard for Dungeons & Dragons style videogames at the time. King's Field, like Wizardry, had the difficult mission of taking the fun and unpredictability of a tabletop gaming session with your friends and translating that into a digital experience. Plus they had to do it on the new frontier of "consoles", a very risky gamble for a young studio. Could they pull it off?

They crushed it.

King's Field was a massive success, leading to four more games in the series and giving "FromSoft" the time to refine their definition of fantasy role-playing game.

FromSoft went superstar in 2009 with Demon's Souls for the PlayStation 3. As a launch title for new console generation, it had even more to live up to. Nobody thought the game would be a success in Japan, much less the world. But it became a cultural juggernaut for one main reason: it was hard as hell in a rewarding way. It was how videogames used to feel as kids - little direction but the world feels so rad that you're excited to explore and see what happens. Demon's Souls introduced a few key elements that would carry into all future FromSoft games including Elden Ring:

• It went from first person to third person
• Added incremental checkpoints throughout a giant open world
• Established hub areas where you can rest up
• level up points and shop currency are one in the same, you collect from enemies and use them in the hub area and special places
• ultimately their signature system: a cycle of death and rebirth that lets you take on enemies and areas and over again. When you die, all of the enemies come back as well. When you rest at a checkpoint, all of the enemies come back. When you turn off the game, they're waiting for your ass. Only bosses get defeated permanently. There's no room to breathe. An excellent evolution on the roguelike concept. NetHack gang rise up.

Like most nerds, I love fantasy stories. But I always think, "man if these main characters didn't have plot armor, they'd be torn to shreds". That's the case here - you are regularly getting your ass kicked and killed in this game. It's like Kentaro Miura's Berserk brought to life. The positive is that you're able to start over and try again. You make incremental progress through a giant open world. You die and try again. That's life.

Demon's Souls is a good game but felt incomplete. So FromSoftware refined their vision again with a spiritual sequel in 2013; Dark Souls. It took everything from Demon's Souls, which in many ways felt like a tech demo, and poured DETAIL into it. It felt like a masterpiece and it established FromSoft as a hitmaker. The tagline that the studio used to promote the game was "Prepare To Die", and that marketing phrase still comes to mind over ten years later. It just works for the brand.

After three Dark Souls games came Bloodborne, which leaned into gothic horror and fast-paced combat. Then, the masterpiece.

Elden Ring, released in 2022, is the final form of what began in 1994. It is the ultimate fantasy RPG.

Story & World

Let's set the stage for the greatest adventure of your virtual life.

This game is set in The Lands Between. It is a giant medieval fantasy island made up of different regions, towns, castles, forts, mines, dungeons and more. It might've been a nice kingdom once but when you start the game, most humans are dead and monsters are everywhere. If you do meet an NPC in this world, they're selling you something, lying to you, or are planning to use you for profit. Huh.

There are bits and pieces pulled from all sorts of archetypical fantasy and history so it feels fresh and familiar at the same time. You've got the usual haunts for RPG adventures: ancient forts, castle towns, spooky dungeons, secret temples, magical lands, wizard towers, pagan shrines, churches, actual hell, and so on.

George R. R. Martin, the mad lad behind Game Of Thrones, played a huge part in developing the lore of this game. Beyond the physical setting of The Lands Between, all of the items and weapons you collect have flavor text that builds on the massive lore under the surface. Elden Ring doesn't beat you over the head with story but it is truly inspiring what they've created here. It's the history of our world told back to us in a distorted way. (Same as it ever was).

Every single thing you see in this world belongs to it. There's a reason for that symbol in that location, why those enemies are there or here, who owned that sword before you, why this part of the map is so insane compared to the rest of it.

Since there's only a short cutscene at the beginning of the game that mumbles through some context, I'll give you a spoiler light summary on where things stand in the Lands Between when you show up. If you want a totally fresh experience, skip down to the Gameplay Breakdown section.

So a magical blonde lady ascends to godhood through mysterious means and creates a giant island country that she ruled as queen and god. There's a divine golden energy, called Grace, flowing throughout this land, blessing everyone and making everything great. The living embodiment of that divine energy is a giant magical tree in the center of the island called the Erdtree. It's absolutely massive. You'll see it from nearly any point on the map aboveground. So our girl builds a beautiful royal capital city at the foot of the Erdtree called Leyndell. A glorious reign of peace and prosperity begins.

Many years pass; because she's divine it could centuries or millennia. But eventually something awful happens and the magic lady loses her shit, destroying her divine crown and link to godhood. This move is generally regarded as "not good" and throws The Lands Between into chaos. War breaks out amongst her demi-god children for the remnants of that divine crown, each of them hoping to make things whole and usher in a new era of peace.

And the name of that divine "crown"?

The Elden Ring.

The war escalates, an apocalypse or two happens and a stalemate emerges. The demi-gods take various pieces of the Elden Ring and disappear. Grace fades away from most people and places. Humans leave for safer places. Those who remain are locked in endless conflict, trapped in flux between life and death.

Even more time passes: hundreds of years, thousands, who knows. You, the player character, are a descendent of the various people that left The Lands Between eons ago. Somehow the divine, golden light of grace starts appearing to others like you, drawing you back to the Lands Between to set things right. To do so, you'll need to collect "great runes", or various pieces of the Elden Ring from the demi-gods. There's a general idea of where some of these demi-gods could be, but they're surrounded by armies of absolute monsters so you'll need to git good and be prepared to die a lot. Restoring the Elden Ring makes you the Elden Lord, savior and ruler of this realm.

Welcome to The Lands Between.

Gameplay Breakdown

You design a character at the start of the game. First it's looks, then pick a class and keepsake. The classes are standard RPG fare: warriors, wizards, rangers, barbarians, thieves, samurai, spellswords and more. Your keepsake determines your starting gift, which could have extra healing, bonus experience points, unlocking some locations earlier and more.

You wake up in a tutorial dungeon with one goal - get the hell of there. It's a solid introduction to the game mechanics. When you first enter the overworld you'll be astonished at how MUCH you can see. It's like climbing to the top of Everest and seeing the entire world around you. It's all explorable and each region of the game could be considered an entire game world onto itself. You start off on foot but eventually you get a magical horse that can double-jump and super-jump which opens up even more places to explore.

Throughout all of these regions are save points called Sites Of Grace.

They're sprinkled throughout the map in a way that lets you progress through the game as the developers intended. Each site of grace on the main path points to the general direction of the next one. And because they're placed every fifteen minutes or so, it's a fun way to grab little wins in the game. You can also warp back to any Site of Grace that has been previously discovered.

If you're not ready for a particular boss fight, you can go somewhere else to face new enemies and make progress towards another new site of grace. By default the entire world map is blank, but as you reach Sites of Grace and and discover map fragments throughout the land, you'll get a lay of the land.

Because it's an open world, you can also fuck off from the main path and go on all sorts of tangents. The combat system is reasonable so you won't get outclassed immediately if you end up in late-game places. In fact the game encourages you to meander and tricks you into doing it many times. You might open up a treasure chest and it literally transports you to hell. You might fall down a mine shaft and end up in Narnia. A weird guy on the side of the road might ask you to look inside a creepy house and maybe there's fifteen goblins in there or it's treasure. Or both. Or neither, he lied to you and now you're cursed. There's too many weird things stuffed into this game to predict what will happen to you - you've just got to move forward and see what happens. Look it up if you're confused or figure it out if you prefer. This game is an adventure machine and analogy for life.

Your health points, magic points and healing items are restored at Sites of Grace, but the tradeoff is that the enemies of the game world reset as well. The good news is that if you're getting your ass beat, you might be able to run away to a Site of Grace where you can save and try again. You can also level up at Sites of Grace. When you defeat enemies in Elden Ring, you obtain points called Runes. It's basically the same condensed life energy as grace. You can use those Runes to level up your stats (Strength, Dexterity, Health, Magic, Luck, etc.). When you die, you lose all of your Runes at that exact spot, and they'll stay until you retrieve them or die again. Then they're gone forever. It's a fun mechanic that gives you a second chance if you stockpiled a ton of Runes, though of course if you die in a boss fight, you better be prepared to win or lose them all.

Eventually you'll also discover a hub world, The Roundtable Hold, which is a safe space with a Site of Grace and filled with NPCs that can teach you spells, sell you gear, give you tips and more. You'll use runes to shop or upgrade things with them.

They are fellow "Tarnished", or the other accursed people that have been drawn back to this land to slay the Big Bad and become God/King. Some of them are cool, some of them are psychos. Just pay attention and don't make any promises if you don't feel comfortable.

Combat Dynamics

Combat is great. There's a diverse number of physical weapons: swords, spears, axes, hammers, bows, crossbows, shields and more. Spells: cause damage with various elements and diving energy, cause status effects. Summons: friendly NPCs, spirits of some enemies, fellow player characters if playing online. Incantations: buffs and debuffs, transformations, weirder stuff. If you start off as a warrior you're not stuck as a warrior - you can level up your Magic enough to be able to cast spells. All you need is a wand or staff of some kind for magic, a special seal for incantations. It's easy to switch between different items you have equipped. Each weapon has a light and heavy attack and you can chain attacks together in combos which vary with each weapon type. It's not as stylish as Devil May Cry, but you can have elegant combat.

As I mentioned before, you will literally fight every type of fantasy monster. Some are the size of lil rats, some are the size of buildings. You can engage in combat on horseback and you will need to for some enemies. On the overworld you'll engage in plenty of hit-and-runs on bigger and slower foes. You can dodge, roll, and use special spells and skills to move around quicker too. There's also consumable weapons, like kunai and bombs. You can also craft items, so if you know a particular bosses' weakness, you can hop on the crafting table to build up more stuff.

Speaking of crafting, your weapons and armor are upgradeable and slightly customizable. Like Dungeons & Dragons, when you upgrade a weapon it'll change to Sword+1, Sword+2, etc. Some weapons can be upgraded up to +25, special grade weapons at +10. There's so many weapons to choose from, and certain bosses will have certain weapons that you can buy later on. Same with armor - you'll be able to wear pretty much anything you see an enemy or boss in. There must be hundreds of different clothing items you can wear and combine. You've got different gear for Head, Body, Legs and Feet. You also have medallions and charms that you can equip for stat boosts.

Graphics / Style / Sound

Graphics are solid. I played on Steam Deck and only had sluggish gameplay in one area of the map that experiences constant rainfall so it bogged the system down. But that only affects like 2% of the world - that's how big this game is.

The rendering of each item is high resolution, the elements of the world all look seamless and beautiful, no low-polygon stuff here. The style is the world is not to be understated. This feels like a real, lived in place. When you wield a sword, or put on an armor set, or just zoom in on a bookshelf in the Roundtable Hold - you can see all of the details.

There's lot of ambient music in Elden Ring and the environmental sounds are great. Sword swinging, walking down hallways, walking in snow, creatures breathing, wind howling, fire crackling, chains in a dungeon making individual sounds. It's really deeply thought through. And I'm experiencing this without headphones, I mostly played on my couch so that's proof they really did nail the details.

Bugs, Jank, or Glitches

Didn't experience any clipping issues. Didn't fall off the game map or brute force my way into any weird places.

The game did crash several times through 145 hours, but it wasn't common and reopening the game fixed the issue. Because there's so many systems at work in the game I didn't get upset and I never lost a ton of progress. I would play every day for an hour or two at a time, up to 4+ hours on the couch if I'm chilling, and it would crash maybe every couple play times.

That's all I have to say on bugs. The hitboxes thing is frustrating, but it's only on some enemies and some weapons.

I did appreciate that there was no issues combining different armor sets and pieces. There's so much variety that I was impressed that you could combine any pieces of clothing and it still looked natural. Everything came together nicely.

Final Thoughts

Needless to say, if you're a gamer, you've heard of Elden Ring. If you're into fantasy games, especially RPGs, you may have played it by now. It truly is worth your time. Yes it is hard, and it can be cheap, but it's so thoughtfully designed that the only games I can compare it to are the Elder Scrolls series, the Fallout series, GTA5 and Red Dead 2. It feels that dense. And it's way better polished than Elder Scrolls or Fallout.

It's a detailed game but digestible. You can play for 10 minutes to accomplish a particular objective or you can lock in for hours and always find a new hill to climb or new boss to take on. Even after defeating the game and getting to the end credits, I still went back in because there was so much I could finish. I haven't started a New Game+ yet because I don't want to give up my save yet. Even after 145 hours I know there's still a checklist of things. And I haven't even discussed the DLC! I didn't buy it yet so I can't comment on it. That'll be another article once I touch grass.

It's time to go outside and make friends. But if I could take one thing with me from Elden Ring into real life?

Try, fail, reflect, repeat. Eventually you'll win.

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