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Elden Ring: A Very Honest Critique
a year ago
General
So about a month ago I decided to buy Elden Ring. Let's talk about it.
I have been a massive fan of the Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro and Demons Souls franchises from From Software for a while now. So it was only natural that at some point I would buy Elden Ring and check it out.
Well...
In short, I didn't care for it much. In fact some of it I absolutely hated. After beating it, I uninstalled the game. I have no interest in getting its DLC or playing it ever again. After beating it I think I know why I don't like it now.
The reasons why I don't like Elden Ring very much are numerous but I think I can break them down to about three things:
1. The game is simply too big for its own good.
2. The quest design philosophy of Dark Souls does not translate well in an open world video game.
3. There is an identity crisis in terms of combat for the game.
Allow me to further explain those points.
1. The game is too big. Simply put. There are vast swaths of land with almost nothing interesting to the point where it feels tedious to explore. Most of the time, its about going from point A to point B. It does not help that its also unclear about where you are supposed to go or if you are underleveled for a specific area. This is the least problematic part of the game but I got a bit tired with how massive it was. But it does lead to reason 2's problem.
2. The design of quests in this game do not translate well with its open world. I have never had much issue finding NPCs when I am trying to do specific quest lines in Dark Souls or Bloodborne. They were cryptic but the game world was designed to mitigate chances of not running into characters important for quests to progress. And they were usually close by to areas of interest anyway. Elden Ring's NPCs on the other hand either will sometimes tell you where they are going or just straight up vanish and you have to play detective and scour the world to find out where they are. Millicent is one of the worst offenders here but one of my biggest problems was when I was doing the Ranni quest.
Blaidd the wolf is an NPC I ran into and wanted to help out. But at some point I could not find him anymore. Turns out, he had been sealed in some other world I had to go into. How the fuck was I even supposed to know that? There is no hint. The only way I found out was through a guide. And that was not the only issue I had with the Ranni quest. Another involved Ranni herself. But I digress.
By far the biggest issue I had with the game is reason number 3.
3. The combat is having an identity crisis. This game wants you to feel like you are playing a slightly faster Dark Souls 3. Except the enemies. They seem to believe that they are playing Bloodborne or Sekiro. This is a MASSIVE problem. Especially for melee builds and even moreso for heavy melee builds.
Bosses in this game are RELENTLESS. They seemingly never stop attacking. Some of them have, I am not even joking, 14 hit combos. With attacks that can kill you in two or three hits. With that kind of damage, it is baffling to me that the devs thought they needed to be able to spam attacks like no tomorrow. Unfortunately I was a heavy melee build, as I was cosplaying as my character Raiser. He uses a greatsword so I went with a greatsword strength build.
The bosses do not seem to have big windows of opportunity when they have finished, as they seem to be able to ignore recovery frames for their attacks. They also input read and will pretty much the very next frame attack you if you try to heal. It's obnoxious. Many of their attacks have janky hitboxes too and nearly all of them have at least two AOE attacks. And these AOE's seem to be absolutely brutal too, usually being the strongest attacks they have. They either do huge status affect damage or hit you so hard, you can be one shot if you don't have above 40 vigor.
Fortunately I had Raiser at 60 vigor by the mid game. But that still meant I was getting two shot most of the time.
Anyway the bosses in this game are hyperaggressive, do an immense amount of damage, have some questionable hit boxes, can react to your healing down to the frame and also have massive health bars. And then you have bosses like Godskin Duo which are just... god awful design. They were already stupid on their own and the fact that not only do you have to deal with two of them but in reality it will be more like four of them because they respawn and the health bar is too big to just kill two of them under is just shit. Honestly I think a lot of the complaints I have would be fixed if they were just less aggressive or at least didn't deal fuckloads of damage each hit.
I think my favorite boss is Radahn. I thoroughly enjoyed his fight. The spectacle was amazing, the fight was the right balance of tough but fair, his moveset was monumentally awesome and he was just straight up fucking FUN.
I wanted to love Maliketh but despite his amazing design and badass moveset, once again he was playing a different game than I was. One more akin to Metal Gear Rising as opposed to Elden Ring. I won't spoil much more because I did like the third to last and second to last bosses but fuck the actual final boss.
I have uninstalled the game now so I am going to just wait for the next From Software game. I won't be getting the DLC. I got Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne still. I am good lol.
TL;DR: The game was bogged down by its scope, cryptic quest design and the bosses are way too overtuned for the game they were making. For every good boss fight, there were at least five shitty ones. I would say its a 6/10 honestly. I am baffled this won game of the year.
I have been a massive fan of the Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro and Demons Souls franchises from From Software for a while now. So it was only natural that at some point I would buy Elden Ring and check it out.
Well...
In short, I didn't care for it much. In fact some of it I absolutely hated. After beating it, I uninstalled the game. I have no interest in getting its DLC or playing it ever again. After beating it I think I know why I don't like it now.
The reasons why I don't like Elden Ring very much are numerous but I think I can break them down to about three things:
1. The game is simply too big for its own good.
2. The quest design philosophy of Dark Souls does not translate well in an open world video game.
3. There is an identity crisis in terms of combat for the game.
Allow me to further explain those points.
1. The game is too big. Simply put. There are vast swaths of land with almost nothing interesting to the point where it feels tedious to explore. Most of the time, its about going from point A to point B. It does not help that its also unclear about where you are supposed to go or if you are underleveled for a specific area. This is the least problematic part of the game but I got a bit tired with how massive it was. But it does lead to reason 2's problem.
2. The design of quests in this game do not translate well with its open world. I have never had much issue finding NPCs when I am trying to do specific quest lines in Dark Souls or Bloodborne. They were cryptic but the game world was designed to mitigate chances of not running into characters important for quests to progress. And they were usually close by to areas of interest anyway. Elden Ring's NPCs on the other hand either will sometimes tell you where they are going or just straight up vanish and you have to play detective and scour the world to find out where they are. Millicent is one of the worst offenders here but one of my biggest problems was when I was doing the Ranni quest.
Blaidd the wolf is an NPC I ran into and wanted to help out. But at some point I could not find him anymore. Turns out, he had been sealed in some other world I had to go into. How the fuck was I even supposed to know that? There is no hint. The only way I found out was through a guide. And that was not the only issue I had with the Ranni quest. Another involved Ranni herself. But I digress.
By far the biggest issue I had with the game is reason number 3.
3. The combat is having an identity crisis. This game wants you to feel like you are playing a slightly faster Dark Souls 3. Except the enemies. They seem to believe that they are playing Bloodborne or Sekiro. This is a MASSIVE problem. Especially for melee builds and even moreso for heavy melee builds.
Bosses in this game are RELENTLESS. They seemingly never stop attacking. Some of them have, I am not even joking, 14 hit combos. With attacks that can kill you in two or three hits. With that kind of damage, it is baffling to me that the devs thought they needed to be able to spam attacks like no tomorrow. Unfortunately I was a heavy melee build, as I was cosplaying as my character Raiser. He uses a greatsword so I went with a greatsword strength build.
The bosses do not seem to have big windows of opportunity when they have finished, as they seem to be able to ignore recovery frames for their attacks. They also input read and will pretty much the very next frame attack you if you try to heal. It's obnoxious. Many of their attacks have janky hitboxes too and nearly all of them have at least two AOE attacks. And these AOE's seem to be absolutely brutal too, usually being the strongest attacks they have. They either do huge status affect damage or hit you so hard, you can be one shot if you don't have above 40 vigor.
Fortunately I had Raiser at 60 vigor by the mid game. But that still meant I was getting two shot most of the time.
Anyway the bosses in this game are hyperaggressive, do an immense amount of damage, have some questionable hit boxes, can react to your healing down to the frame and also have massive health bars. And then you have bosses like Godskin Duo which are just... god awful design. They were already stupid on their own and the fact that not only do you have to deal with two of them but in reality it will be more like four of them because they respawn and the health bar is too big to just kill two of them under is just shit. Honestly I think a lot of the complaints I have would be fixed if they were just less aggressive or at least didn't deal fuckloads of damage each hit.
I think my favorite boss is Radahn. I thoroughly enjoyed his fight. The spectacle was amazing, the fight was the right balance of tough but fair, his moveset was monumentally awesome and he was just straight up fucking FUN.
I wanted to love Maliketh but despite his amazing design and badass moveset, once again he was playing a different game than I was. One more akin to Metal Gear Rising as opposed to Elden Ring. I won't spoil much more because I did like the third to last and second to last bosses but fuck the actual final boss.
I have uninstalled the game now so I am going to just wait for the next From Software game. I won't be getting the DLC. I got Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne still. I am good lol.
TL;DR: The game was bogged down by its scope, cryptic quest design and the bosses are way too overtuned for the game they were making. For every good boss fight, there were at least five shitty ones. I would say its a 6/10 honestly. I am baffled this won game of the year.
