Elden Ring — My First Impressions
Oh my oh my, where should I start?
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Culmination of All Previous Titles
As many people already said, this game is basically the Magnum Opus of Fromsoft games, taking all the experiences culminated from previous games and mashing them together in such a masterful nature, you won’t be disappointed.
Stealth and jumping from Sekiro, aggressive playstyles and (some) Lovecraftian themes from Bloodborne all formed on the basic formula of the Dark Souls franchise and dropped into one beautiful intertwining world filled to the brim with mystery, quests and dungeons.
Story
Like all of you, I’m waiting for the great Vaatividya to drop the lore videos for this game, since Elden Ring includes puzzling lore hidden within npc conversations, items and cinematics as well.
But even though some of it is puzzling, it is much more accessible than older titles. It’s hard to understand the exact details of the different fractions and areas, but at least you know right away what your goal is, and what you need to do to achieve it.
There are much more npc than earlier titles (some of them even start the conversation themselves!), and their dialogues are much more comprehensible.
Open World
The open world in this game has Berserk Written all over it, and It’s beautiful.
From the very first moment you open the door, exiting the tutorial dungeon and entering the first area of Limgrave, you are overwhelmed with this beautiful pastoral scenery, and you are free to go wherever you just want. It’s like Fromsoft slapping you in the face with the “open world” aspect, and it works.
To be honest, anytime I hear the term “open world” I immediately get PTSD flashbacks of games like Assasin’s creed or Horizon Zero Dawn, where being an “open world” is just a technicality and there’s actually not much variety in the world to justify it.
But I couldn’t doubt Fromsoft’s developers, who produced masterful games over and over nonstop since Demon’s Souls, and for the first time ever I pre-ordered a game.
As usual, they did not disappoint. The open world while smaller than other open world games, is full of many different adventures, npcs, dungeons, realtime events and quests, all spread out in a very natural way, allowing the player to breathe between encounters (and use Torrent the GOAT horse) without keeping it too boring.
Gameplay
For combat there’s only one syllable to describe it, “Oof”.
They nailed it again.
The combat in this game feels amazing, the hitboxes have improved exponentially since the Dark Souls franchise and everything looks and feels so clean.
A new game mechanic is introduced, horseback riding. Since it is open world, the developers made the right call of adding horseback riding for traversing it. The horse doesn’t feel out of place and the controls are as smooth as other aspects of the game. It can even double jump! The developers even doubled down and created horseback combat, where not only you but also enemies and bosses can fight while mounting a horse.
The weapon variety is also huge! Not only will you definitely find the weapon most fitting for your playstyle, fromsoft brought back dual wielding big time! (unlike the half-assed attempt at it in Dark Souls 3)
Other than weapon variety, fromsoft brought back Poise from Dark souls 1, where you have an invisible poise bar for enemies, once the bar is full, the enemies will stagger. The poise bar is usually filled faster by heavy attacks or jumping attacks making it more effective than just spamming R1 (the usual strategy in fromsoft games).
Spells also play a much bigger role here, the variety of different spells and spell build is big enough to afford a few diverse builds. From pure Mages, to Spellswords, to Dragon-breath builds, it’s all there.
The enemys are strong as usual, where mistakes even with against most basic enemy could get you killed. Some of the enemies in the late game could be a bit too hard, where they basically one shot you for any mistake you make.
Now for the bosses. Oh the bosses, the main dish of the Fromsoft meal of infinite death. Most of the bosses (excluding the first two main bosses) were not too hard, but even then their design was usually interesting and quirky (some of these boss fights were a spectacle to experience).
The late game bosses felt more true to the famous hard Fromsoft bosses, where you had to die quite a bit while learning their movesets and gathering the experience needed to overcome them.
Even though I liked most of the bosses in the game, there were some late-game bosses that I must say felt a bit too bullshit (luckily most of them are optional). Most of their movesets are usually fine but then Fromsoft had to add this one more bullshit aspect to them, making them too frustrating to enjoy.
Conclusion
All in all, I must say this was one of the most enjoyable Fromsoft games. I’m looking forward to my next few playthroughs, trying out different builds and seeing how they work in this game. But I can say that this one easily challenges Bloodborne as my favorite Fromsoft game.
Some more detailed articles about Elden Ring are sure to follow this one, so stay tuned both here and over at my website! And don’t forget check out my Youtube Channel too!
Have you already played Elden Ring? What are your thoughts so far?
