Elden Ring2022

Elden Ring is fantastic. I had, admittedly, my initial difficulties with the game. That’s why I paused it after a week and first played through Horizon II Forbidden West. (https://ggapp.io/jannik 1904/reviews/horizon-forbidden-west/BIB D79T) After I had Horizon through and really started with Elden Ring again at Easter, it really hooked me and let me play nothing else besides work for a week. However, there has also been a lot of criticism of Elden Ring. However, I do not want to be too profane, as I have seen a video in which my criticism of the game is described almost 1 to 1. Just to the bosses! Open World: Let’s start with the biggest change over other From Software games: The Open World. I am honest: I have had enough of open-world games and hope that this trend will flatten a bit in the near future. Elden Ring is praised for the fact that there are no markers on the map and the player is free to choose where he wants to go next at any time and yes, that’s true. However, there are also repeating passages in Elden Ring, as they occur in every other open-world game: repeating dungeons, repeating ruins, repeating churches, etc. I have, as in other games, farmed them. The difference is that I haven’t found all of them. (I was over-powered from mid to endgame anyway, more on that later). Bosses in particular repeated themselves too often. Even story bosses partly looked the same or were repeated in dungeons. The Earth Tree Avatar or the Earth Spirit certainly occurred 10x in the game. Nocturnal cavalry riders, birds of death or magma worms could also be sighted very often in the intermediate lands. However, despite the repetitive game elements, this open world was as unique as all other From Software worlds before, only much, much larger. That’s why I personally had the rather difficult game start: I went here for a long time, sometimes there, then came through a trap in a completely different area. This annoyed me a bit and made me read a rough direction in a guide, after that it was better and I could enjoy the game. After I was Op, I was also able to explore the different areas of the world. Balancing / Boss Fights: Due to the open world is of course hard to balance the game and it came naturally also that I was much too strong for everything and everyone. Bosses were a no-brainer and the game was all in all too easy. And when heavy bosses came along, especially Malekith, Mogh, Lord of Blood and Malenia, I didn’t find those boss fights fun. I summoned my ashes to defeat the bosses as I had no ambition to learn these bosses. The problem, in my opinion, is that these bosses do not fit into a combat system like that of Dark Souls, and what else is the combat system of Elden Ring does not: It is too slow. It seemed to me that they were better off in Bloodborne (Malekeith) or Sekiro (Malenia). Mogh I found by the blood magic he puts on the player, however, simply unfair. Unfortunately, the developers have come up with nothing better to make bosses harder by simply chasing through the Boss Arena at maximum speed. Through Sekiro I was also accustomed to aggressive play, which often led to death, because I could not block the attacks by missing stamina. After playing with the Moonvail Katana, I completely renounced the shield and only used one attack. The Rivers of Blood Katana that I had taken at the end was completely broken. But as mentioned, I chose the easiest method, as I had no desire for the bosses. Conclusion: I think I learned through Elden Ring why I play games primarily because of good gameplay or because of a good story. The world in which the game plays is rather secondary. Of course, this must not be bad, as e.g. in Dark Souls 2. At least I don’t like to explore in huge areas. That’s why I probably like Sekiro and especially Bloodborne so much better, as these games place the emphasis on perfect gameplay rather than on the game world, which is not even true with Bloodborne. Elden Ring has areas that are reminiscent of previous Soulsborne games, and I found them much better than the open world itself, but they are much smaller and faster to master in comparison. As mentioned above, the quality of the bosses is not nearly as high as in previous games. All in all, Elden Ring is a very good game that lags behind Bloodborne, Sekiro and Dark Souls in my favor. However, I think it is great that a single-player game could trigger such a big hype. Perhaps this triggers a rethink among some publishers that not every game has to be littered with microtransactions and a multiplayer. Rating: Graphics/game world: 90/100 Gameplay: 85/100 Total: 87,5 The mentioned video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEyjdc-DIb8

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