Elden Ring Review
If you want to ride a horse in a quality open world and fight the hardest boss battles you've ever seen in the game world, this game is for you.
- Great open world
- Excellent enemy/boss designs
- The camera puts you in difficult situations
- Stealth is not that important
Why I Love Elden Ring
Elden Ring is a very classic FromSoftware game in my opinion. It makes you feel it from every angle. Whether it's the character designs or the mechanics, you always feel like you're playing a Souls game. The most distinctive point is its open world. Its open world is so beautiful that I really don't know how to describe it. Frankly, I'm not a person who likes Souls games very much because they are very difficult for me and I really want to break the computer. Souls games are far from everything I'm looking for in a game, as I'm a player who focuses more on the entertainment part and the story part of the games. Likewise, I am not a big fan of open world games. There are two games so far that I think are truly open world. One is Red Dead Redemption and the other is The Witcher 3.
Open worlds are generally only used to prolong the gameplay, and doing the same tasks and visiting similar places in the game after a while reduces my enjoyment of the game. I don't know how, although Elden Ring has everything I don't like, it made me love it so much that I couldn't get over it. It's an extremely difficult game (I think it's even harder than previous souls games) but the character design and combats are so enjoyable that it encourages me to try again. The variety of enemies is so great that there is an incredible variety of combat. As for the open world, you can't have built such a beautiful open world in as short a time as you say. There is literally everywhere else. You take an elevator and discover a completely new place and even spend hours there. You discover new places behind the bosses. Even after 50 hours, you see a place you have never been to, a mountain you have never seen. You enter a castle, you say how big the castle can be, you can't finish it for sightseeing. The graphics are definitely not top-notch, but there is an episode design, in the game you stop and watch the scenery.
In the end, you suddenly shout “Why don't you have a photo mode?”. As for the action part, although the mechanics are very similar to previous souls games, I think the variety of weapons and movement has increased the variety of action. Battles with small enemies are extremely enjoyable because bosses are very difficult. The privacy element is not as good as promised. Frankly, I did not expect it to be good. Sometimes privacy works for you, but it's rare. The number of enemies I killed with stealth was definitely very few. The best place for the action is definitely “Ashes of War”. This mechanic, which you can add various types to your weapons, allows you to increase your other features by giving up some of your features. For example, if you add a sacred Ash named Sacred to a shield, it will reduce your physical damage but increase your sacred damage. Using these ashes correctly, I think, was of great importance throughout the game. Let's come to the most important development for me. There is a player-friendly save system at the end of the game. I am really happy to see these days. Never in my life would I have guessed that any game from FromSoftware would have such a nice save system. Whoever suggested this idea and whoever accepted this idea should not have trouble. Thanks to them, I can say that I was able to stay at the game for a much longer time.
Verdict
When we look at the game in general, it is definitely a Souls Game. Basically everything is the same. Yet, it is a very advanced Souls game. Bosses have improved, mechanics have improved, the save system has improved. I think FromSoftware really raises the bar with each game and continues to take itself a very nice step forward. The open world is very, very magnificently constructed and embedded in the game. There is only one problem, the game does not end. The game is beautiful, everything is fine, yes, but it is very lenghty. After a while, it inevitably begins to fall into repetition, or at least I can say it feels that way. There are things that it does very well and things that it does not. Still, if it fits your wallet and you like souls games, I'd say give it a try. If you say that you have never played Souls games, this might be a good starting point.