Elden Ring, but Honestly

My first foray into the From Software universe was roughly 3 years ago-I made it a charity incentive thinking my community wouldn’t go for it and was corrected swiftly. Since then, I’ve cleared Dark Souls 3 with a platinum, Bloodborne with a platinum, Sekiro has two achievements left, a DS3 SL1 run, and Soon(™) a BB Hitless run. I’m telling you this to assure you, dear reader, that I both adore these games and have played them extensively.

Elden Ring is an exceptional game, I’ll never deny that. With everything from a vast, wide, and diverse color palette, to the first real FromSoft installment that embraces any possible build, it’s going to leave a definitive mark on game design and game culture. The collaboration between Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin shows in the remarkable fantasy writing and presentation, the intertwining of beasts and horror, and maybe even a woman who didn’t know her purpose until she could aid yours. The fashion-as always-is on point. I still hold firm in believing there is no better time to get into a From Soft game than Elden Ring, because at its core it is the amalgamation of all of their previous titles, married into one.

This is also why I can’t in good faith give the game a 10/10 the same way early reviews and outlets did. Elden Ring is a gem, I can’t stress that enough, but there are some bumps along the way that need to be talked about.

Like how at roughly the halfway point of the game, things change.  

How when you first reach Altus Plateau, the magic isn’t there the way it was for Limgrave or Liurnia.  Walking out of the catacombs into the bright, blistering sun as Varre sneers at you for having the audacity to exist while not worshiping Mohg is a feeling that is hard to top. Exploration felt rewarded and encouraged.  Spinning in circles trying to find a voice amongst the trees carries through the game as a sweet, heartfelt journey of a demi-human that just wants to make his mum proud. But upon entering Altus?  It starts to feel like nothing.  

The enemies enter what is notably their worst cycle of repetition, with the biggest offender (in my opinion) being a double Tree Sentinel boss matchup.  Poor Margit has been reduced to a mob you can find in an evergoal and out and about.  I get that “many RPGs do that”-but there’s differences. There’s kit changes.There’s updated moves. There’s new reactions.  In ER, I fought the exact same dragon six times and the only thing of note I can tell you is that ‘they had different breath attacks, and some had cool glintstones.’  I can write for days (and probably will at some point) about why Goo Kings in Breath of Fire III keep me awake at night. The only thing I can tell you about ANY dragon is that most players really only care about Ekzyke. In a game that does an exceptional job of introducing you to the first dragon in Limgrave: a grand entrance, decimating a camp of enemies and roaring directly at you to make it clear: “I am Agheel, and it’s boss time bitch”, I got to the Cathedral of Manus Celes, late game, more than 30 hours and roughly 60 or 70 levels later, had a dragon drop in front of me and went: ‘oh.’  I think I’m right in assuming that ‘oh’ is not the reaction they were going for. The interest and feeling were gone. This was just another dragon that I could kill for a dragon heart I didn’t need. I don’t recall the name because I earnestly don’t care.

With the recent release of patch1.04, we’re seeing FromSoftware work tirelessly to implement balance for players, but I hope as time passes that they go back and balance areas and enemies. There has to be something in the Altus water. The health spikes make combat for all builds migrate from satisfying and explorative to frankly, a chore. I grew tired of ‘just hacking away’ at enemies with dual katanas because I often just ran out of stamina.  Frustration sat at every corner when throwing rock sling, comet (not Azur Comet, regular Comet), or even Ranni’s Dark Moon (which got changed effective April 19th) did what felt like scrapes of damage.  I found myself eventually just running through later areas because fights against trash felt like they took forever.  The low rune payout and time spent fighting seldom felt worth the risk when I could just get a large payout for fighting an area boss instead. 

But I realized the reason I noticed my criticisms so profoundly was because the first half of the game was so strong. There was joy and excitement to be had when riding on horseback through Caelid (yes, Caelid) and discovering that the coral looking mound wasn’t a mound, it was a dragon all along. There was purposeful plotting in changing time cycles to see what new bosses would emerge, or perhaps if NPCs would move. The turtle pope is the best thing to happen to NPCs ever and you’ll never change my mind. The distinct contrasts between bosses like Godrick, Renalla, and Rhadan weren’t just interesting, but satisfying.  The main story bosses, while their health remains questionable in my eyes for late game, were generally fun and distinct.  

Except Elden Beast. Literally fuck Elden Beast. 

I look back fondly on my time meeting Ranni, on talking to Kale and other merchants, meeting Boc, helping Rodrika.  I look back and feel sadness for Hewg, who deserves so much better. I daydream of hopping on horseback and sprinting through evergreen grass, sword in hand, with a distinct, elegant mission of ‘I’m going to kneecap that giant.’ I stared in marvel at the Academy, despite the aggression of burger king casters, or a red puppy’s malicious urge to wallop me with a sword and cast daggers at anyone in its presence.  I was invested in why Renalla was obsessed with the egg.  I think about my time exploring mausoleums, about crafting new strategies as I traveled, about building multiple loadouts and running them to see how they played and fared against specific enemies. I was ecstatic to try From’s take on a spellsword, and made multiple characters with an explicit end goal of running them all to the end.

But as my first character crossed the finish line, I looked back at my other characters with concern. I was looking forward to running them….but the idea of redoing Altus, Mountain of Giants, and the Radagon/Elden Beast gauntlet just didn’t sound fun.  My late-game excitement was gone-which sucks because late-game is when you want to feel the most powerful, even when it’s challenging.  The visuals and fun doots of enemies at the Capitol didn’t overrule it.  I just could not be arsed to do the empty expanse that is Mountain of Giants again.  I slump in my chair, thinking about how Farum Azula deserved so much more than reused demi-humans and that despite having fun overall on bosses, late game ones especially had kits and moves that had no parameters to make the fight feel feasible-and I want to emphasize feasible over fair. I’m not interested in a back and forth over whether a move IS dodgeable, or a move IS readable-I’m more interested in an everyday player feeling like they have the chops to dodge and read attacks at all.  When Maliketh decides to do the air can opener, followed by a pillar grab, followed by a floor explosion, and then another can opener? Reader, I can pull off some wild stuff in From Soft games, and even THAT is something that I had happen and went ‘I’m not sure how to address the AI having free range to whatever it wants.’  

My other ER children sit on the bench, asking ‘mother, when do we get to go out and murder?’ and I stare, in the distance, smoking a cigarette, and say ‘when they patch the enemy health and damage output, when they finish the AI on the late game bosses, and when the game feels a little more polished overall.’ My bandit sighs, waiting to stab Maliketh. My confessor draws on the ground with a stick, incantations they can’t use yet. My samurai pouts, knowing she can beat the game just fine but ‘mom won’t let me until it’s fair for all of us.’ And my spellsword sits beaten and broken, wondering if the platinum trophy was worth it. She didn’t even get a cool equipable flower trinket from besting the Goddess of Rot, and everyone collectively didn’t care for her loot. Why do we need it?  We’ve done the worst of the worst at this point.  

Elden Ring, by and large, is absolutely a fun and great game. I think its placement in gaming right now is a godsend and deeply challenges what it means to be an open world game.  However, late game bugs, laughable balance, tedious repeat fights, and a story that by mid game is all but reduced to ‘the ring is broken, Tarnished-go fix it!’ makes it challenging to maintain the glowing appeal. The love, wonder and joy that I felt upon boot up, while playing the network test, while exploring Limgrave and finding caves, being pounced on by dragons in Liurnia, or engaging combat with an entire lost city of sorcery, was nowhere to be found running through the barren wastelands of Altus with repeat enemies, the Mountain of Giants with more samey catacomb design and rollout, and the Capitol and Farum Azula, while badass, felt woefully neglected in turn. Enemies feel tanky just to be tanky, bosses feel like they have free range to do whatever they want if they’re past Altus, and it’s evident that we’re going to need a LOT more patches for this game to be where everyone-devs and player-want it to be.

I got my platinum and I immediately uninstalled. 

The slog of getting through to the end and watching as many builds got immediately blockaded solidified my placement that Elden Ring isn’t a 10/10.  I’m struggling to even give it a solid 8 personally-it feels like a 7 with potential to get back up to an 8.5 easily.

Now the question becomes-will they address all the late game issues to make an even, and more widely loved experience? Or will we just continue to see patches that fix one thing, break another, and remove various pieces of terrain to hamstring speedrunners and challenge runners?

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