Ever since the release of Demon’s Souls back in 2009, famous director Hidetaki Miyazaki and the several talented members at FromSoftware have put out masterpiece after masterpiece. Creating a franchise of games that have set new grounds for what developers should aim for. Creating worlds with tons of history and background to uncover. Designing levels that somehow twist back into each other, and make the player gaze in awe as they wonder how they ended up from one location to another. Designing encounters and challenges that are tightly designed and reward players for overcoming unbearable odds. Providing a wide collection of tools to work with, but rewarding those who master their own style of play. FromSoftware’s catalog isn’t just designated to medieval roleplay fantasy with Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls. They offered a unique spin on the action genre with the mythical Japanese inspired Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and reworked the game design choices of the Souls series to create a lovecraftian nightmare which many know as Bloodborne. These games have defined the last decade of gaming and it’s no wonder why people keep coming back for more even after one reaching hundred percent completion with each title.
It’s because the team at FromSoftware have a vision and no matter how much flack is thrown at them by journalists and critics they continue to follow their artistic vision. The Soulsborne franchise is not for everyone, and even though I try really hard to motivate my friends to check out these games I still have to keep in mind that not every game is made for everyone. Soulsborne appeals to a specific audience and that’s what makes it special. It aims at the niche of people who wish to be rewarded for their effort. Who want to feel better about themselves by giving themselves a goal to work towards. No matter how many times they get beaten down they’ll always get back up and continue fighting. There’s a phrase that goes throughout the community, “Don’t you dare go hollow.” In the world of Dark Souls it refers to a human being that has lost all purpose in life and lost sight of who they are. Someone who has given up and can’t find the willpower to push forward. Going hollow can be viewed as growing empty or depressed in the real world. We want to find reasons to have faith in the world, but we can’t do it due to all the negativity and catastrophic world events that surround us. We wish there were friends and family surrounding us with love each day, but relationships aren’t meant to last forever. We want our own personal struggles to go away, but overcoming them isn’t easy. Soulsborne is a challenging franchise of action RPGs, but to me and several other people it’s a series where we can prove ourselves. Prove that we can do anything. That we can look beyond the darkness and find some hope in the world. Hope, the recurring theme throughout this entire franchise. That’s why FromSoftware is so well respected by their fans and community. They have a message and no matter what they tell it brilliantly. I mean sure their games occasionally have flaws and are hard to overlook. Despite it all, FromSoftware have provided me comfort these past few years and I truly want to thank them with this long ass loveletter. The best game they have put out. The accumulation of every great idea the ever had. We’re here to talk about FromSoft’s ultimeatum. Elden Ring, it’s been a long wait hasn’t it?
Elden Ring began development straight after the release of The Ringed City, which was the last DLC expansion for Dark Souls 3. The project was secretly in the works and a teaser trailer wasn’t shown until after the release of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice during E3 2019. Three years after the release of Dark Souls 3. Everyone was wondering what Elden Ring would be as vague scenes were shown during the teaser. It was then revealed that FromSoftware would be working with one of the most famous writers in recent history. George R.R Martin, the mastermind behind Game of Thrones. Although I do have to admit I have no knowledge of Game of Thrones and don’t quite care about it. The hype crowd grew bigger for Elden Ring as fans realized two creators of fantastical art would be clashing together to create what would theoretically be one of the greatest games ever made, but come on. Just by slapping a popular name onto your trailer doesn’t mean your game is automatically going to be perfect. Especially when no gameplay was shown during your teaser. After that FromSoftware stayed quiet for a while. A month passed, then half a year, then one whole year, then another half a year, and it basically added to two years since the teaser reveal for Elden Ring. At that point some fans were wondering if FromSoftware pulled a Bethesda and revealed a project that looked amazing but would never come out. Then it happened, the first actual reveal of what Elden Ring would be. The gameplay reveal did not disappoint. Just for being a gameplay reveal, Elden Ring had so much going on for it. FromSoft would be taking their iconic Souls formula and transitioning it to one of the biggest industry standards at this point. They would be making an open world Souls game and it would be the grandest adventure yet. A culmination of all their greatest ideas.
A lot of fans were even more pumped as the gameplay and shots shown during the trailer were enough to give them an idea, but not so much to overhype them. A lot of video games and game trailers seem to fall victim to showing more than they can handle. Let’s take Cyberpunk 2077 for instance. A lot of flashy, stylish advertisements were shown up until the game’s release. It was hyping Cyberpunk 2077 up to becoming one of the greatest games ever. Then some really concerning stuff happens during development and the final product we ended up with was not like what the trailers and advertisement showed. Unlike CDPR, FromSoftware gets advertisement and hype culture done right. They give you expectations, but not so much to blow the water out of the park. Unlike CDPR as well, FromSoftware even released playtest codes to certain players who signed up online. They would be given the ability to run around the first major area in the game and feedback would be sent back to the developers. Show what did and didn’t work. Not only was this playtest a good way for FromSoftware to figure out how development and direction was going, but it also allowed fans to see whether Elden Ring lived up to the hype. Surprisingly, even though it was just a playtest, Elden Ring was in fact shaping up to the hype. So it turns out that Elden Ring had epic reveal trailers and wasn’t a complete scam. That’s really rare coming from the modern video game industry. However, the game was still getting delayed due to its massive scope and was pushed back all the way to February of this year. About a month ago I should say. When the full product is released all problems should come full circle.Luckily we were proven wrong yet again, because even though Elden Ring was shaping up to be amazing it still blew our expectations even further. This is one of those rare occasions where everything goes perfectly. Direction, development, outcome, and more. Both the critics and fans are right for once. Elden Ring lived up to the hype and ended up becoming one of the greatest games ever made.
To be fair, I was a little skeptical with Elden Ring. I still had the mass amounts of hype that everyone else had and was hoping into that good old hype train. Traveling more than two hundred miles per hour towards our designated location. Oh yeah, let’s say that the train driver was really high to show how fast this train was going. At the same time though I was still preparing myself for disappointment if it turned up. Going from the tightly crafted worlds of Bloodborne and Dark Souls to an open world sounded like a lot to handle, and creating an actually good open world experience is really hard without falling to a majority of design trends seen with the genre. This is a genre practically dominated by one company, Ubisoft, and even though they didn’t invent the open world they did influence the amount of laziness and poor choices you can get away with. I’m not going to list specific choices or design tropes until later, but what I can say is that the open world soon went from providing the most amount of freedom and adventure to the player as possible towards hand holding them through a tour guide in a theme park. All open worlds have fallen victim to the hand holding design at some point, even the ones I really love like Ghost of Tsushima and Horizon Zero Dawn. Popular franchises who weren’t open world originally soon made the transition and it was not always for the best as we have seen with Fallout 3 and Halo Infinite. Would FromSoftware fall victim to modern day game design as the rest of these titles? Luckily, we were proven wrong yet again. At this point everything this company touches ends up turning into gold. Elden Ring redefined what the open world should be, and even ended up out breathing the wild Breath of The Wild. How did this happen? How did Elden Ring exceed expectations and fix the open world formula? That’s why I found it really hard to talk about Elden Ring as with my usual reviews. We really have to take a deep dive into what makes Elden Ring amazing. Analyze each individual component and what works. I’ll be dividing this critique into sections, so there's an easy telling what is what. Pull out a notebook, because there is a lot to learn from Elden Ring.
Part 1: The Open World and Exploration
Let’s start off with one of the most asked questions among the gaming landscape. Why is the open world genre so overdone and when did it start to become overdone? There was a time when games were a lot smaller. That doesn’t really need an explanation, but I’m just going to say it was the Playstation 2 era. Video games were much smaller in scope and levels were often tight and restrictive. It wasn’t all bad though, because these tight experiences allowed developers to create carefully crafted linear adventures. There were also ways to make a linear designed adventure replayale by offering choices and encounters that could be solved in numerous ways. Take the original Deus Ex for instance. The first level, Liberty Island, had one goal but that goal could be achieved through any manner. Plus the most straightforward path was actually the most difficult. Then there’s Resident Evil 4 and how combat encounters could go several ways. What I’m basically saying is that linearity isn’t always bad, but the goal of a developer is to always aim for higher goals. Hopefully make another landmark innovation and let others take influence. The first open world sandbox ever made was developed by Rockstar Games and would become the main influencer for the open world, Grand Theft Auto 3. After that developers really began to experiment. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R franchise offered a sandbox gameplay, but not as big as GTA3. Then there was The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind and it tried to go for a more open approach. All of these are landmark titles in the gaming industry, but I think it was one game that truly cemented a majority of open world design choices, Assassin’s Creed.
Now, the first game wasn’t really that polished but I think the reason Assassin’s Creed took its place in the industry is due to the number of entries the series has seen over the years. It’s an annual franchise with a new game coming out each year, but how do you mass produce the open world over and over? You make a formula that is passable and you press the copy and paste button until it breaks. I’m not saying Assassin’s Creed overall is bad and that by loving it you support laziness in the industry, because there are standout titles in the sea full of Assassin’s Creed. However, I do believe Ubisoft was demonstrating that you didn’t have to do much to create a multimillion dollar franchise. A lot of developers must have looked at Assassin’s Creed, saw how successful it was, and wanted to make something like it. If the formula worked for one person then it must work for several others. So many people have copied this format of the open world and overtime it has gotten even worse. As technology advanced the open world got bigger and a new problem soon began to arise. How do you fill up an even bigger space? How do you make sure the player explores a majority of the world over the course of the adventure? The solution was to fill the world of objectives and objects, and make the player grind through it to progress through the story. This is where a problem started to arise. No longer was the player allowed to freely. Decide whether they wanted to scour the land, or follow the duty given to them. Now they were forced to do content that was originally optional just to progress. That’s not an adventure. That’s filling out an elaborate shopping list of tasks. Open worlds have truly gotten more annoying overtime. They have to hand hold you just so they can show you something “cool”. A good open world doesn’t show this stuff to the player. They make the player discover location and witness the events for themselves. It’s more memorable that way, because it truly feels more like an actual adventure. How does Elden Ring fix the problem of open world handholding and bloat while guiding the player towards points of interest? Well we’re about to dive into that right now.
The moment the player is dumped into Limgrave, which is the first region of the game, they are visually shown a multitude of locations that they could possibly visit. Every location in this game isn’t just a set piece. It’s a place you can venture to at some point across your journey and explore. The first NPC they encounter says that they should probably head to Stormville Castle which lies clearly in the distance. This is a recurring design choice across Elden Ring. All major story areas in Elden Ring are these massive fortresses lying in the middle or far off distance in each region and are always visible. It doesn’t matter where you are in the region as these colossal Legacy Dungeons, as the developers call them, will always remind the player of their presence. That’s why Elden Ring doesn’t need any quest logs or objective markers, because the player should have the intelligence to remember key information such as important story related locations. Plus to advance the main story you need to slay at least two out of the several demigods who bear a Great Rune, and they always reside within the Legacy Dungeons. It’s pretty hard to ignore an academy lying in the middle of an isolated lake.
Another thing to note is that the Elden Ring doesn’t guide the player towards these points of interest. The game allows the player to explore and discover points of interest by themselves. Optional dungeons, enemy camps, chapels, towers, and so on. Some of the Sites of Grace which act as this game’s new form of Bonfires, otherwise checkpoints, sometimes give off this aura which points you toward the next Site of Grace or point of interest. It gives the player a hint of where they could possibly go next, but it doesn’t blantally tell them exactly where they should go. FromSoftware also fixed a problem that previous Soulsborne games had which was backtracking by creating a mid-checkpoint known as Stakes of Marika. There are these small statues that allow you to respawn closer to where you died last. Meaning you don’t have to make a long trudge just to get back to the boss you are struggling with. One final thing that the game does perfectly is having a minimalist UI. This was a huge discussion a few weeks ago with the developers at GuerillaGames & Ubisoft. They stated that the minimalistic wasn’t accessible and that more needed to be added to remind the player of what to do. Now think about how I just said Elden Ring allows you to explore freely. Without the guidance of a dotted line, objective marker, character remarks, or any other forms of hand holding. If you have so much stuff on your UI telling the player what to do then they are going to start feeling demotivated. They’ll realize they aren’t actually being taken on a journey, but rather a tour of the world. It all begins to cluttle and the screen and soon the world you spent hours creating will be meaningless because the player will be more focused on an objective marker rather than what is in front of them. It would also be a big problem as Souls games require a lot of environmental awareness.
Now, FromSoftware is known for carefully designing their worlds and levels. Having these interconnected mazes which loop back into earlier parts and somehow make sense. That was one of the many worries I had with Elden Ring. Will the tight design be lost to the open world? Turns out that wasn’t an issue, because FromSoftware did something that numerous other developers seem to not do. Place locations and objects where they need to be. Every bit of space within Elden Ring was made useful and nothing seems to be out of place. Caves and crypts are always located along cliff sides or deeper sectors in the world. Chapels are always isolated from dangerous areas and reside peacefully. You even soon familiarize yourself with the location of materials and where to expect to find them. Glavewort which can be used to upgrade your spirits will always be found growing within crypts or damp places. Smithing Stones which are used to upgrade weapons will always be found within mines. Sacred Tears to upgrade the efficiency of your flasks will always be located at Chapels of Marika. Even enemies are placed carefully throughout the world. One thing that a lot of open worlds do is to either scatter enemies about or randomly spawn them in and out of locations.
This shouldn’t always be the solution, because it means you may have a really inconsistent world where wrong events could happen at the wrong time. In Elden Ring, enemy encounters are designated to one location and one alone. Enemy patrols will always follow a certain path, meaning if you die to a patrol trying to obtain the weapon they are protecting then you can go back and re-encounter them. There’s this one specific example I want to use where I encountered some soldiers battling the wildlife. I came back moments later and found them still battling the wildlife. At least I know it’s designated to that one location. Bosses in the overworld will always be in one location, and to be honest this helps encourage exploration and memories of the area even more. It gives the incentive that the challenge will always be waiting there for them to conquer, and that they can either go back and keep attempting to fight it or come back later when they are stronger. When opening up the map all that will be marked are important locations and checkpoints that the player discovered. That is all they need. No markers for where enemies are and where certain resources can be found. The player has markers themselves and can mark whenever. I really do believe Elden Ring respects the player’s intelligence by relying on their memory and ability to explore. Reminding them that they can find the resources and experience to get stronger and conquer enemies that once stomped them into the ground before.
Part 2: Signaling Difficulty and Options To The Player
The opening hours of Elden Ring are some of best seen in an open world game. They give a clear idea of how the game works without having to spend so much time showing it. The player creates their character, chooses their starting class, and off they go into the world. Well, maybe not that exactly. They wake up in a chapel and the first enemy they encounter is a boss enemy. He has tons of health, the player’s current weapons will be useless, and seeing as we have no way of healing the boss will kill the player instantaneously. The player is intended to die against this boss and this opening moment signals two things. One, the player will die a lot throughout their journey and they must get used to it. Two, that they must prepare for what is to come as they aren’t strong enough at the moment. By signaling these two keys the player will have the idea that they must improve. Grow stronger overtime, learn the mechanics, master the flow of combat, and create a playstyle perfect for what is to come next.
After this short segment the player is then dumped into another cavern. Two paths lay before them. The one on the left leads to the open world, and the one on the right is a short tutorial segment which teaches the player the base mechanics. This is genius when you look at it. A lot of open worlds have long tutorials to show how the game works and these can last way longer than they should. Some games make it impossible to even skip these one hour tutorials. It’s great that Elden Ring is the first open world to give you freedom immediately once the game starts. It even allows longtime Soulsborne players who are already familiar with the how the game works to immediately get started on their journey, or reruns of the game to not feel so tedious as they aren’t required to relearn the mechanics. A lot of you may be saying that Elden Ring wasn’t the first open world to be open ended from the beginning. That being Breath of The Wild. Was it really open ended from the beginning? Both games are open ended from the start, but only one of these offers it in the opening hour. Elden Ring plops you into the starting region, but you can venture to the other regions immediately if you wanted to. Caelid lies east of Limgrave and you can head there if you wanted to. There will be numerous high leveled enemies and you’ll probably die, but it’s an option and the player can nab themselves some really good gear if they make a mad lad dash to it. Liurnia, the second region of the game, can be reached two different ways. The NPC you meet at the start tells you that you must go through Stormveil Castle, but what he doesn’t tell you is that it’s mandatory. There’s an easy to miss pathway on the right of Stormveil Castle and by taking it you can get to Liurnia right away. This section is supposed to add to the previous part from earlier and how exploration plays out. Not every dangerous location has to be gone through immediately. The final and perfect example I want to bring up is the Atlas Plateau. It can be reached in three ways.
The first is by acquiring two halves to a medallion and taking the lift up. It’s a long process, but it’s the easiest solution. The second way is by traveling through a canyon, reaching a vertical mine shaft, and fighting your way up it. A tough boss, the Lava Wyrm Makar, will be waiting at the end but if you defeat him then you access another path to the Atlas Plateau. The final path is a secret one, but if you locate an isolated area within The Academy and get captured by this grim cage enemy then you’ll be taken to the lava region, Mount Glemir. You’ll fight a boss at the end which are two of those cage enemies mentioned before, and you’ll have access to the Atlas Plateau once more. It’s great that the game provides all these solutions, because it allows the player to decide what path is the easiest or hardest for them. That was a really long explanation. Why did I even bother bringing up Breath of The Wild? It’s because Breath of The Wild doesn’t allow you to leave the starting region until you go through a handful of tutorial dungeons. There is no way to skip this. Almost every speedrunner and massive Breath of The Wild player I’ve seen has talked about this at some point. How annoying it is on future playthroughs to fulfill certain requirements and then be given access to freedom. It also hurts the replay value of Breath of The Wild as the opening hours become a slog. Elden Ring gets the opening done right and an hour hadn’t even passed.
Enemy encounters and boss fights have also given better signals of what the player should expect from combat. Let’s take the first three optional boss fights I expect players should encounter. Heading north of the starting chapel will lead the player to a cliffside and two caves can be encountered while searching this cliffside. One of them contains a crypt and lying within is this sphinx looking statue carrying a giant sword, the Burial Tree Watchdog. Someone online posted a clip of their terrible gameplay and complained that this was an unforgiving opponent near the start of the game, but by taking a closer look you can actually learn a lot from his fight against the watchdog. First is that the watchdog moves in a peculiar pattern. He moves slowly, strikes slowly, but hits hard. This should give you the idea that you should dodge and strike when he is open. If an enemy moves slowly and has a long wind up time then you should know to time your dodges right. Next is that our terrible player, who I will leave anonymous, tried to walk away as much as he could. Expending all his stamina and not allowing it to recharge just. Another terrible mistake a majority of poor Souls players would make.
In all of the Soulsborne games, button mashing is a terrible idea. Unlike a majority of action games when you press the attack or dodge button you commit to that action. You can’t cancel out and you have to watch it be performed before initiating another action. Spending all your stamina at once on attacking and not waiting for it to recharge is also bad, because you might want to save it up for dodging or emergency blocking. The final thing we can learn from this clip is that our player did attempt to dodge away or heal, but he was panicking when he was doing. Either not paying attention to the boss when rolling around, or trying to heal right after he got hit and expending all his resources. You heal when you find the window of opportunity. The Burial Tree Watchdog isn’t even that hard of an early gameboss and there are much harder opponents lying around Mulgrave. He isn’t even a great boss. You refight this guy more than four times across the game’s optional dungeons and he gets lamer each time. It’s surprising that some people can’t take a lesson when it is being demonstrated right before them.
The next two optional bosses are much closer to the starting chapel and they teach the most important lesson of all. Certain enemies can outflank you easily and simply running won’t be enough. Right in front of you is the Tree Sentinel, a golden knight riding on top of a horse. East of the starting chapel is this burnt empty swamp and by walking for a little bit a giant dragon soon comes flying in, the Flying Dragon Agheel. He’ll fly around, rain fire down onto the arena, and basically one shot you. So you have two opponents who are basically unkillable even with efficient gear. What the f*ck are you exactly supposed to do. Come back later when you have something that allows you to outrun their attacks. You soon encounter Melina, the maiden who will help you level up and guide you towards the Great Erdtree which is your main goal, and she gives you a whistle that allows you to call Torrent. The mighty steed who will help you traverse quickly across the Land’s Between. The player can call Torrent whenever they want and can attack enemies while riding. This should give you an idea. You now stand at equal means to fight the Tree Sentinel, the knight on the horse, because now you have a horse yourself to match his level of speed and zoom in and out to attack. You can now attempt to fight Agheel, because Torrent can help you outrun his fiery breath. Horse mounted combat does take some time to get used to because the controls are odd, but FromSoftware have created some of the best horse mounted combat seen in a video game. You practically have to get used to it, because a lot of enemies travel in groups and it’s easier to pick them off one by one on a horse.
The final significance i how many options Elden Ring provides the player for combat. There are a wide variety of weapons and spells to use and they are all great. None of them feel unsatisfying and they all have the sense of impact they had before. The build variety is wide, but Elden Ring fixes the problem several Souls games had before. Some encounters and boss fights appealed to certain playstyles leading to imbalance between players. That’s why there are so many arguments online over what is the best style of play. One boss may be easier to melee players and harder for ranged players. One boss may be easier to a sorcerer, but difficult to knights. You never want those moments where you cater to a specific style of play. If you are going to cater to a certain style of play then focus on it. That’s one of the numerous reasons I love Bloodborne more than any of the Dark Souls games. It encourages an aggressive playstyle by having combat that actively makes the player fight aggressively.
Even though I never finished it, Sekiro is another great example of focusing on a specific style of play. Mastering the rhythmic flow of combat and continuously pressuring your enemy opponent. Elden Ring goes back to providing the wide options that Dark Souls had, but what it doesn’t do is have encounters which cater. If you want to play a melee character like the Vagabond or Samurai you can, because not many enemies will be fighting from faraway. If you want to play as a sorcerer or pyromancer you can as an enemy have windows for you to fling spells at them. Spells this time around are actually useful and there are builds that allow you to both dominate a melee and ranged style of play. With certain starting classes like the Prisoner and Astrologer starting you with both a powerful melee weapon and spell. I was going for strength build at first with the Vagabond, but then swapped over to a dexterity and intelligence build because there are more swords in Elden Ring which scale with intelligence and faith. You aren’t punished for experimenting this time around and it truly adds to that sense of freedom and having numerous solutions to solve a single problem. We might as well move onto the combat and the significant mechanical changes made here.
Part 3: Combat, Changes Made, and Progression
There’s a couple of reasons why the combat in the Soulsborne series is considered some of the most tightly designed seen combat in modern action games. One of the key reasons being the flow of the fight and mastering that flow. You have a stamina bar which dictates how many actions you can perform at once. You’ll have to wait for it to recharge to perform more attacks, but it doesn’t mean you have to wait for it to completely charge. Pressing a button to perform an action means you commit to that action. You can’t cancel out and transition out like a majority of action games. You have to wait and quickly decide what to do next. These are games that require you to think wisely while playing aggressively. You enter this zen state where you stop worrying about what can kill you and the many factors working against what you can do. You just go with the flow and cut down everything that stands in your wake. Combine that with the pleasure felt from finally understanding how to get through a difficult encounter and move around each attack, and you have one exhilarating to have from winning.
The combat of the Souls series is not for everyone, and to be honest I completely understand because there’s a reason why I tend to reference the combat of Bloodborne more because it design choices that actually made it work. Bloodborne basically got rid of everything that made the combat of Dark Souls confusing and made it more approachable. You no longer had to worry about weapon switching during combat or how heavy your equipment load is. You can carry two extremely heavy weapons without your dodge time slowing down, and each weapon has two forms which can be combo into meaning you don’t have to worry. There’s also a bunch of other design choices, but we'll address this shortly. So Elden Ring had the chance to fix whatever problems that the combat had before. Did it fix every problem that Souls combat had? No, some problems still carried over like the overburdening weight of the equipment load and how shields become useless after a while, but the changes it did make lessened the amount of problems that could pop up. These changes don’t need deep explanations, but it’s a long list so do keep that in mind.
The first problem which Elden Ring fixes is healing and how it affects exploration. In every Soulsborne title besides Bloodborne and Demon’s Souls you have a healing flask. It is an item that can be used an infinite amount of times, but has a limited amount of uses. How is an item with a limited amount of uses somehow infinite? It’s because the flask replenishes whenever you rest at a checkpoint. This is an okay solution as to how you should approach healing. Not a lot of people consider the importance of health as a mechanic. It is not only there to show how many more hits you can take, but show how long you’ll possibly last in a fight. A majority of other action games shower the players in health refills, or refill the player’s health bar when they fail an encounter and allow them to continue through a recent save point. This can be a problem, because it means that if a player enters an encounter with low health then all they have to do is die and reload the fight with maximum health. The other method is also extremely flawed, because you are basically making it impossible for the player to die.
Dark Souls mostly solved this problem. It had an item you must pull out during battles to heal, and you must learn when to use it. Pulling it out before you get hit may cancel the healing animation, or make you lose the health you just lost a waste a flask use. You also aren’t offered any checkpoints during boss fights meaning you must manage your supplies wisely during exploration. Dark Souls probably has one of the best solutions to healing out there, but what’s the problem with it? Let’s say you are an explorer like me. Scouring each level to find everything it could possibly have. You’ll burn through numerous flasks and reach a point where you need more. That means you must travel back to your last checkpoint and have all the enemies you’ve just killed respawn. It’s not a major problem as areas you fully searched can now be ignored, but offering some way to restore your flasks during exploration would have cut away the step of having to run back and forth so much to get the resources you need.
Elden Ring solves this problem pretty well by having your flask refill whenever you kill a certain amount of enemies or a powerful foe. It only works when you are exploring the open world as within Legacy Dungeons they work as they normally would in Dark Souls. It’s a good solution though, because while it doesn’t completely refill your flask it does offer you more resources and allow you to keep going through a long area. There’s also these sparkling dung beetle enemies that when defeated will completely refill your flasks. This is a genius design, because now you created a proper way to gain more health refills without having to backtrack or shower the player in resources.
I also really like that when you are outside of combat you can run as long as you want without having to expend stamina. Previous Soulsborne suffered from the problem that when you are running through an empty area you can’t just continuously run. Your character runs out of stamina and you have to wait for a short bit before you continue running. It gets annoying, because players sometimes have places to be. Well in Elden Ring they added this change and it’s nice. What they also added back in was power stancing from Dark Souls 2. The black sheep of the series. It’s easy to understand why Dark Souls 2 ranks the lowest on a lot of people’s lists, but I still consider it a great game and it had some great ideas. One of which was power stancing where if the player dual wielded two of the same weapon type they could initiate a stance that unlocked them a powerful set of attacks designated to that combination. It expends more stamina, but allows them to chain two hits into a single attack. There wasn’t a point in Dark Souls 2 where they explained this mechanic to the player, but allowed for players with an aggressive play or those who were good at dodging to sacrifice protection in favor of more damage. That is what Dark Souls 2 does well.
They removed power stancing around Dark Souls 3 in favor of weapon arts, and there were certain weapons where instead of two handing you instead pulled out a copy and dual wielded them. It wasn’t terrible in fact the player was able to figure this out easier than the power stance initiation in Dark Souls 2. However, dual wielding was restricted to these types of weapons which kind of sucked. You somehow solved and worsened a problem the greatest feature of Dark Souls 2 had. How does Elden Ring fix this? When you equip two of the same weapon type you no longer have to press a button to initiate the power stance. Dual wielding combos are not designated to the left shoulder button and can be performed at any time. You can still perform weapon arts with your right hand weapon even if you are dual wielding. There’s even a special dual wield jump attack. This is truly great! You open up more combat options with existing tools.
Weapon upgrading and infusions in Elden Ring have received a massive overhaul as well. In Dark Souls you had the infusion system which could change the damage type of your weapon. You could infuse a weapon with a fire gem or lighting gem to give the weapon that type of elemental damage. However, there was one trade off to these infusions. You risk losing some of your physical damage to get this elemental boost, and these gems were one use items so if you plan to remove the gem in the future then it’s gone forever. Besides the reinforcement gem, half of these in fusions made your weapon worse as some encounters are elemental resistant entirely. I still love the blood gems in Bloodborne more as they can be taken in and out at will without having to spend resources or risk losing a rare item. Elden Ring still has the risk of sacrificing damage type with its infusion system, but now there’s a better encouragement to try it out. A new system added to weapon upgrading are Ashes of War which can be obtained by killing certain enemies, purchasing them, or finding them throughout the world.
Ashes of War can be fused into weapons to not only change the damage type of your weapon and what stats they scale in, but also the weapon art of your weapon. This is great, because if your weapon has a weapon art you personally don’t like then you can trade it out with one you would rather prefer. Let’s say your sword has an upward strike which does a decent amount of damage. You find your sword useful and have been upgrading with materials for awhile, but discover it’s not great for clearing out a group of enemies at once. You don’t want to swap over to a different weapon with a better weapon art, because it means you’ll have to start upgrading it back to the level your previous weapon was. So what is the solution to this problem? You then discover an Ashe of War which can give your sword a powerful charged up slash which can deal heavy damage to a wide area of foes. Now you have the ability to take a weapon you loved and make it more viable. Ashes of War is a great incentive to try out infusions.
I just rambled on about what should be two extremely minor features in this series. This last one though should be a big one. Character progression, scaling, and leveling. The amount of leveling and experience points you will get early game won’t be that much compared to other Souls games. No matter how hard an optional boss may be they may just drop a couple thousand Runes. This may discourage some players to discover some of the optional content lying around Limgrave, because the rewards aren’t really that worth it when you aren’t being given that much. However, the amount of Runes you get from defeating foes does start to pick up as the game goes on and it’s understandable as to why the game doesn’t shower you early on. If the player could become overleveled without even reaching the second boss then it breaks the balancing of the first area entirely. Not saying that people haven’t broken the game yet, because Liurnia and Caelid are accessible without having to beat a major story boss. There’s even a guide created by Iron Pineapple as to how to acquire a giant magical laser and one shot a majority of story bosses without having to learn their moveset.
I do think Elden Ring makes it more clear as to what stats a weapon or scale will scale with. Magical weapons and sorceries will always scale with intelligence. Holy weapons and miracles will always scale with faith. Weapons that focus on quick attack patterns or efficiency will always scale with dexterity. You also can’t just pour points into one category as some weapons will need two stat categories balanced out to continue scaling efficiently. Leveling stats has been made more satisfying and it’s easier to form what type of play style you want. Especially now you can form playstyles that are a mix of two. I said this earlier, but I have a katana which scales in both dexterity and intelligence. Meaning I don’t have to stray away from my melee build just to get a couple of useful sorceries. There are even times where you must switch between melee and magic. To adapt on the fly and keep the pressure up. I’ve rambled on enough about some of the unique mechanical changes that Elden Ring has made. What about the story and the overarching themes? Well, the story is the grandest one yet.
Part 4: The Demigods and The Raging War
The lore of Elden Ring is difficult to decipher. To the point where even myself, someone who loves to consume the lore of each Soulsborne game, struggles to piece together what exactly is going on due to how much the lore spans out across each location and character. Well thanks to the help of some friends I was able to simplify it for you. Elden Ring takes place in a fictional land known as the Land’s Between. Where multiple races coexist together and sprawling cities have been formed to study the wildlife and prosper off of the resources it offers. Located across the land are these glowing trees known as Erdtrees which offer guidance, but the most special one is the Great Erdtree, the mother of all the Erdtrees. The beings of the Land’s Between are also given the guidance of the Elden Ring, a magical ring which balances the flow of life and the universe. If the Elden Ring were to break or one of its major components was removed then balance would be broken. Luckily, the ring is held by Queen Marika who is viewed as a god. She once faithfully ruled over the Land’s Between, having numerous lovers and children during the process. Her children weren’t great and soon they competed over who would take their mother’s inheritance and bear the Elden Ring.
Attempting to prevent her children fighting one another and all out war spreading across the Land’s Between, Marika attempted to shatter the Elden Ring. She risked disrupting the balance of life, but it was to prevent the corrupted hands of others like her children from obtaining it. However, she didn’t destroy the ring and it was left fractured. That was when her recent lover stepped in. Radagon, a male copy created from Marika for the sole purpose to protect and love her. Technically she was f*cking herself and that’s really hard to think about. Yet again, George R.R Martin helped write this game and Dark Souls 3 had what was basically incest brothers waiting for you in their bed chambers so I really shouldn’t be surprised. Radagon was a legendary blacksmith and he attempted to fix the fracture created by Queen Marika. He struck the Elden Ring with his hammer, but this then led to the ring shattering in numerous pieces. Scattering across the land and bringing chaos onto life. The shattered pieces of the Elden Ring soon became the Great Runes and each of Marika’s children soon gained hold of them. Now there was something to go to war over. Cities and towns were brought to ruins, and the Great Runes started to morph the bodies of Marika’s children due to the uncontrollable power they had. One of the runes, the Death Rune, disrupted the flow of life by preventing almost all basic life in the Land’s Between from truly dying. Queen Marika soon disappeared and her children reside in specific regions. Left alone in a ruined world to sob alone. Knowing their mother would never return.
This is where the player character comes into play. The Tarnished One. One of several warriors who once was guided by the Elden Ring, but soon lost grasp of its guidance and was banished for falling out of tradition. The Tarnished should have moved on and never returned to the land, but they were called upon after the shattering of the Elden Ring. Your Tarnished finds themself in Limgrave, right on the outskirts of the most desolate regions. You are then greeted by a young girl named Melina who wishes to be your maiden, and she gives you the task to become the next Elden Lord and bring balance to the Land’s Between. Make your way to the Great Erdtree located in the capital city, defeat whatever lies within, mend the Elden Ring, and become the next lord to protect and bear the ring. Melina even sends you to the Roundtable Hold, where other Tarnished are plotting out how to take out Marika’s children and offsprings. You must search the land of demigods and rid them of it. Remove the corruption which taints the world and take your place. Become the next Elden Lord.
Part 5: There Is No Perfect Ending (Spoilers)
So the Tarnished Ones ventured out to slay each of the demigods. Obtain their Great Runes and get one step closer to becoming an Elden Lord. However, the more the player explores the more they should realize the state of the world. This is a place beyond fixing. The war has destroyed all life with the Land’s Between and anything that is still alive is either a monster or someone who has gone completely insane. Marika’s children do whatever they can to protect their Great Runes, but you sense emptiness within them. That they know what they have become and can’t change what they are now. You’re even given hints by some of your companions that what you are doing isn’t completely worth it. Everyone you have made friends with will die at some point, and there isn’t much left to rule in the Land’s Between. All you will do is restart the cycle and continue the age of suffering. This is a recurring theme throughout the Souls series and it’s one ever more prevalent in Elden Ring. The three major endings are drastically different and decide what will be done with the Land’s Between and what remains.
The first is simply taking the throne and becoming an Elden Lord. You get a zoom out of the Great Erdtree slowly mending itself after being burned and that the war had finally ended. You restarted the age of balance, but something just doesn’t sit well. You aren’t offered this grand celebration commemorating the duty your character has acquired. You just see them sitting there upon a throne. Staring into nothingness as dust begins to surround them. What could our Tarnished One possibly be thinking? That there is nothing left to rule. That they will forever be left alone with no more purpose in life. That another champion may come some day and remove them from their position, but thankful as they will be removed from the burden of being an Elden Lord. The basic ending just feels empty and that’s why it’s not the greatest ending. Your actions didn’t do much to change anything, and mankind will continue making the same mistakes even if the source of balance was mended back together. It’s a cycle we cannot escape.
The second ending is the Age of The Stars which can be acquired by assisting an NPC known as Ranni the Witch. A living doll originally created to become Marika’s next vessel, but refused and fled with her companions. By aiding this little witch you can help her ascend to godhood and a new age for the world. Ranni can be brought to the body of Queen Marika and from there she will usurp her. Summon a glistening moon and replacing the Elden Ring with it. No longer shall the balance of life be disrupted by demigods, runes, or a magical ring. A new order can be placed and with your help Ranni can get further towards this goal. Now I’m not saying this ending is the best, but it’s the closest thing to trying to fix the fractured world you live in. You aren’t left alone in the end to rule a dying world. New hope has been created and you can follow a new purpose to protect it. The stars of the full moon shall guide us all to prosperity.
The final ending is the Frenzied Flame where if the player journeys to the right location then they can absorb the power of a flame capable of burning the entirety of the Land’s Between. You basically become a Lord of Cinder in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Your head becomes this void of fire, and by raising your hands towards the skies the manic Frenzied Flame lights the Great Erdtree and the Land’s Between. You doomed the entire world, but is this choice truly evil. Remember that the Land’s Between is now tainted by sin and corruption. Imagine that hundreds of years from now another world or society will take its place. Possibly learn and improve upon the mistakes made in the past. The Frenzied Flame is a chaotic ending, but it’s not an evil ending because the reasons for achieving this ending are justifiable. No one should discover the power of the Great Runes. No one should become the Elden Lord. No one should bear witness colossal warfare. The Frenzied Flame will cleanse the land of corruption, greed, and sin. Burn it. Burn it all into a blackening ash.
There is no perfect ending in Elden Ring. Each one has its own pros and cons, but the game never hints towards what the player should ultimately choose. All they can do is decide, consider the factors of each one, and choose what they think is the best outcome for the world they are trapped in. Elden Ring retells the tale of what came before and it the chaos brought from it carries on even when new order is brought. A s tory that probably wouldn't be possible if it weren't for the player discovering it.
Part 6: Some Criticisms (Nitpicking)
I’ve been gushing about how great Elden Ring is and how every design choice adds up perfectly, but this wouldn’t be a review without mentioning some of the flaws the game has. Even masterpieces are bound to fall short of problems. However, these problems are more like nitpicks and they don’t detract all that much from the core experience. So prepare to get a little ticked off over what minor problems and complaints I had with Elden Ring. A lot of major story bosses seem to have an attack I like to call, “Spazzing Out.” They either whirl around the arena like a tornado or unless a flurry of blows designed to kill you instantly. These are attacks you either run away from and avoid entirely, or get shredded by because once you get hit they are inescapable and rip through your health bar. This can lead to some unfair moments, because there is very little window of opportunity to follow up after these spaz out attacks because most likely the player will have to run away to avoid them entirely. Take Margit the grafted for instance. He tornadoes around the arena before jumping into the air and slamming onto the ground. Starscourge Radahn can turn himself into a needle and zoom into towards your position. Then there is Malenia, Blade of Miquella, who basically has an attack that is unavoidable once triggered. She is also the same boss which recovers health everytime she hits you so good luck dealing with that bullsh*t.
FromSoftware are well known for their enemy design and bosses. Not every fight in these games feel perfectly balanced, but the spectacle of them and joy for when you finally conquer a ferocious fiend. However, outside of story related bosses none of the other fights feel that memorable. One moment you may have this epic duel against Margit the Grafted, and then the next you are fighting a boat guy for the third time. Speaking of which, Elden Ring likes to reuse bosses a lot. I know FromSoftware couldn’t create a unique boss for each optional dungeon and that would have stretched the development time even further, but after a while it gets annoying. Some of these fights become really trivial, because you fought them more than three times already. You know that Burial Tree Watchdog. You can encounter him like four times and there’s a point where he shows up as a standard enemy in a dungeon. Same goes for The Scion at the beginning of the game. They too show up as standard enemies later on. Then there’s the more lazier designed boss fights. The designers thought the best way to make a fight harder was to make you fight two of the same boss enemy at once. This can be unfair to those going through fights solo, but the player can always summon other players and spirit to aid them in combat. Providing a distraction to eliminate one boss enemy and focus on the other. It’s not on the level that Dark Souls 2, because Dark Souls 2 used basic enemies as bosses rather than taking bosses and transitioning them into basic enemies was on with encounter design, but it does feel lazy.
My final complaint with Elden Ring is probably the biggest nitpick of them all. You all know how important Bloodborne is to me and how it’s my favorite game developed by FromSoftware. Elden Ring has just topped the rest of the Souls series and everyone is confirming it as the best game by FromSoftware, so does it top Bloodborne? To be honest, no, but it did come close. I still like the combat and design choices of Bloodborne more as I wished Elden Ring carried over the rallying mechanic. I know one of the Great Runes you can obtain gives you a mechanic similar to rallying, but you have to fight one of the toughest demigods in the game and it can only be activated using a Rune Arc which loses its effects upon death. The lore of Elden Ring comes close to out matching Bloodborne, but I still love the sense of mystery and awe which Bloodborne provided. Being disturbed by the cosmic wonders above. The Land’s Between is more memorable and outstanding than any of the kingdoms in Dark Souls, but hasn’t outmatched all my time in Yharnam. There aren’t many lovecraftian inspired kingdoms out there, and there especially isn’t anywhere close to Yharnam. I’m a little worried about where FromSoftware will go next, because they have reached the highest position possible. There is nowhere else to go after the open world. They could make a Bloodborne 2 or Sekiro 2, but that would be extremely difficult and those games really don’t need sequels. Everything added up perfectly, and any unanswered questions were best left for the imagination. I’d be excited, but ultimately I do not want to see Bloodborne get a sequel because it would have to struggle finding out how to outdo the original. Besides that there aren’t any more complaints. Elden Ring is practically perfect and the best FromSoftware has achieved. It’s the masterpiece of 2022.
Thank You, Again, FromSoftware
This is probably the longest critique I’ve written for this website. As I’m typing this is about sixteen pages with up to nearly fifty five thousand plus characters. Elden Ring is one of the best things to happen in recent memories and has gotten me through the last few weeks which have been tough. I currently have seventy hours in the game and right at the final boss now. Normally I’d finish a game before typing a review, but I had enough experience to type about it to you now. I just couldn’t hold it in any longer. Elden Ring is an absolute strong recommendation in my book and is one of the most accessible Souls games to date. It’s still really hard and not everyone will fall in love, but give this one a shot and you’ll understand why FromSoftware is considered one of the biggest names in gaming. In the end I’m going to give Elden Ring a 10/10 for being incredible. I just want to thank the team at FromSoftware yet again for making such an experience. Thank you for making these works of art. Thank you for sticking to your vision. Thank you for taking us on these journeys. Thank you for reinventing the wheel time and time again. Thank you for helping me and several others feeling down prove that we can achieve anything through hard work. Thank you for bringing us Elden Ring, and most importantly I want to thank the big man himself. Hidetaki Miyazaki. You guys are truly amazing and I hope whatever plans you have next go brilliantly. Don’t any of you dare go hollow, and I hope the sun shines above us the lords of the world.
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