Elden Ring - Review Roundup

We’ll I’m glad people are coming to post even if it’s negative. There was a time here when it wasn’t worth posting in a souls thread because no one else posted. I suppose people thinking the game is worth there time to post that they don’t like these games is a sign fromSoft has finally made it.

I understand the negativity. I bounced off souls games for a long time. Playing a few hours and declaring it masochistic and unfair and quitting. Wasn’t until I made a deal with my brother to play DS1 for 20 hours. He said if I didn’t like it after that he’d stop bugging me to play them. I played 20 hours and I was hooked and have been a fan ever since. Over the 20 hours I got much better and stopped dying every 10 seconds and got to appreciate the combat, progression, exploration, mysteries and atmosphere that I only get from a souls game.

It takes some time to get used to these games and honestly you’ll need to have some twitch skills to survive or it will be a frustrating road. I disagree with people saying you just learn the patterns as there aren’t any true patterns. For example you can’t just go in thinking you will learn the boss’s first 10 moves and get a good start when you die and come back. The ten moves will never be the same. To me guitar hero is a pattern game. Souls games are about identifying “tells” for an enemy’s move, baiting them in to the moves you can handle and then punishing them for it. For example maybe the boss has a big wind up before a certain move or will stomp his foot before a move and then you know what’s coming next and dodge or parry and counter. The difference between a novice souls player is they will die repeatedly and take much longer identifying these “tells” and have to fight the boss over and over. An experienced souls player will identify these “tells” much quicker and has developed the twitch skills to stay alive long enough to identify and defeat the boss in much fewer tries.

For example in DS1 I spent 8 hours one sunday trying to beat Orstein and Smough. Couldn’t even tell you how many tries it was but it was a lot. ( mostly because of my stubbornness and wanting to do it with light armor and a bandit dagger. )

Come DS3 and I didn’t need more than 5 tries for any boss.

Gwydden said:

Wow, that's incredibly condescending and, what is even more impressive, I'm not sure you even realized that while writing. Being condescending by accident is even worse than doing so on purpose

Click to expand...

I know I've written this before on this site, but I'll say it again and expound on it a bit.

I am not that good at games, and I AM a person who gets frustrated when playing them. And yet FROM games are among my absolute favorites. Maybe you'll think this is pretentious too, but you probably can't know how it feels to play a FROM game unless you actually play one (and not for 5 minutes with the expectation that it will play like anything but itself).

The difficulty informs everything about how you play it. The feeling of exploring when you feel as if you could die if you let your guard down is fundamentally different than exploring like a loot vacuum cleaner, like in so many other games. It also completely changes how it feels to find that loot. Every item you find becomes more important. Finding a set of armor or an ember (in DSIII), etc. feels like progress, not just another thing to stuff in a pack.

The difficulty means that when you beat a boss, it matters. It feels like you've actually done something. And not just because of the physical aspect, but because to beat bosses in these games requires that you have learned from your failures. You learn how they move, what their tells are. You learn what weapons/spells/strategies are useful against them.

When you first face a boss, or even a common enemy, the initial reaction is often to feel overwhelmed, at least in my case. Their size, their speed, the viciousness and relentlessness of their movement and attacks. But as you become experienced in fighting them, you can almost feel them becoming mortal in your eyes. Like a basketball player, the game slows down for you. Areas that you once picked your way through with fear and caution become trivial. This happens because the game, though hard, is also fair, and it's more about planning, patience and preparation than the "twitch" gameplay Wolfgrimdark mentioned.

Redglyph said:

I don't get the argument of 5/5 or even 10/10 being wrong.

It's a rounded value, and actually more a message than an actual value, so I don't see anything wrong with that. One reviewer may find a game overwhelming positive and deserving of a 10. Even at the university we could get a 20/20 every once in a while; it was rare but not impossible.

Click to expand...

I don't follow all arguments here, but I did touch on this when writing about sites taking average scores (Meta- and Opencritic). The rounding bloats up the scores toward extremes and this effect is stronger the fewer levels the review has because the average scores are rescaled to 0-100 scale. Do you understand that or should I try to explain using an example?

largh said:

I don't follow all arguments here, but I did touch on this when writing about sites taking average scores (Meta- and Opencritic). The rounding bloats up the scores toward extremes and this effect is stronger the fewer levels the review has because the average scores are rescaled to 0-100 scale. Do you understand that or should I try to explain using an example?

Click to expand...

I don't think that's what Red is talking about.

I think what they mean is that a 10/10 (or 100/100 or 5/5) doesn't mean that the game is perfect, anymore than a 93/100 is a precise indication that the game is 93% of perfect. A "perfect" score is an indication that that particular game, within the realm of gaming as a whole, is an exemplary game, a game at the very top of what has been created. Numbers are a useful shorthand, but in the realm of reviews (of anything) they should not be mistaken for a scientific measurement of any kind.

JFarrell71 said:

I know I've written this before on this site, but I'll say it again and expound on it a bit.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the input, but their alleged difficulty is not really the reason I'm reluctant to try FromSoft games, including this one. I don't consider myself all that good at games either, but I've enjoyed supposedly hard games in the past.

The problem is rather that I derive little pleasure from overcoming challenges in games. It's just not why I play. Nor am I usually drawn in by the gameplay in third person action titles. And setting that aside, I fail to see what is so appealing about FromSoft games. I'm usually more of a narrative-driven player, and defenses of their stories are typically along the lines of "the lore is great!" But lore is not story. I don't care about lore.

Besides, I find their dour aesthetic and its awkward mix of grimdark and shounen anime to be on the ugly side. Admittedly, Elden Ring seems to improve on this, though the character design is still less than great.

@sakichop;

About patterns, I wasn't really referring to boss fights. I kinda get why boss fights have to be like that, even if I don't personally agree that's the most interesting way to challenge players.

In fact, I think the boss fight paradigm is a relic of the past that's long overdue a complete removal from most CRPGs - but that's me

But there are definitely these patterns in standard enemies - and they're almost 100% predictable once you learn them - and they're a very big part of "learning the ropes" in Souls games.

I think some of the divide is that some players consider Souls games "more fair" - because they tend to not overwhelm you with 100 enemies or ridiculous amounts of hit points. Something many modern CRPGs tend to do as a "challenge" - but that's equally uninteresting to me.

Instead, in Souls, they ask you to be careful and "learn the tells" as you say - and I can see that point.

It's a fair point, but to get *my* point - it's key to realize that I'm not saying it's "unfair" or that it's not challenging. I'm saying it's not what I, personally, consider a meaningful challenge.

I do NOT enjoy trial-and-error gameplay in general. I feel the very same way about many dungeon crawlers when it comes to puzzle design. Most puzzles are based on timing and learning certain patterns of movement.

I consider that incredibly boring and overly time-consuming.

My kind of puzzle is much more about things you can solve through using your "thinking brain" - rather than your "observing/timing" brain - if that makes sense.

As in, I greatly enjoy classic riddles or tactical challenges that ask me to prioritize cleverly.

But killing me as a "lesson" is not something I particularly enjoy - and I don't think the challenge of observing and timing my movements is all that enjoyable.

In that very same way, I also absolutely DESPISE jumping puzzles - and when games go overboard with climbing and stuff like that.

I say this as a person who's actually really good at them. I almost never feel challenged in games like Tomb Raider/Uncharted or what not when it comes to jumping or climbing - because I've played so, so many much, much harder platform games back in the 80s. Modern games are trivially easy compared to them.

I mean, seriously - have you played Manic Miner?

We're talking 1 pixel off and it's game over. No save game - no nothing. Game over.

I found Demon's Souls pretty easy for the most part - but I absolutely had to keep observing and I could never "relax" - which I think is what appeals to so many people.

I simply don't enjoy that kind of challenge - and I don't actually feel challenged by it, sadly. I feel bored and I lose motivation - because I've never felt timing movement or avoiding special attacks was a particularly fun kind of difficulty. It reminds me of WoW raids - which I mostly found painfully easy as a DPS player - because the challenge is about coordinating 40 people, not any individual role. You typically have to jump here and there - and click some thingy or kill some add or whatever - but that's about it. You'll absolutely 100% wipe the raid if you don't pay attention - but if you DO pay attention, it's trivially easy - because you can't design a challenge that's hard when 40 people have to be good at it - or you'll have no audience for your content

I guess that sort of pattern what you call a tell - but the skilled player you're talking about didn't start out like a skilled player. He started out as a n00b like anyone else - and died repeatedly due to having zero chance of seeing the "tell" the first few times. The enemies are very obviously deliberately designed around having surprising and unexpected attacks - which are meant to kill you the first few times.

But obviously the more you play - the more things will repeat to a certain degree - and I'm sure veterans of Dark Souls will be much better at Elden Ring - but I'm also 100% sure they'll be killed dozens if not hundreds of times no matter how good they are - because they haven't learned the NEW patterns.

But, again, those patterns aren't that hard to learn for the most part - they just need to be learned, if you take my meaning.

Beyond that, you have the patterns of various traps and things you have to avoid in the environment - that you absolutely CAN NOT know until you experience it. They love their large rolling rocks that flatten you if you're not fast enough - and I get that it's sort of amusing, except I hate wasting time walking back and repeating the very same fights over and over because I missed a trap like that.

Sure, you can walk 1 centimeter every 10 seconds and "be skilled" by playing in that way - but that's not at all what I consider a meaningful challenge.

I'm also an impatient gamer

Also, perhaps even more key, I don't enjoy the story, the NPCs or even the exploration much in Souls games.

So, I don't even have a reason to overcome my dislike for the kind of challenge it offers.

I don't know what it is about exploration - but I just don't feel the environments are interesting. The levels are beautiful and so are the vistas - but the actual locations and rooms are extremely sparsely populated with very limited detail and a complete lack of feeling like someone having actually lived there. At least that was true in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls.

I'm more into exploring areas that feel lived in and which tell a story - and I prefer the story to be tangible rather than opaque. Beth games or - even better - immersive sims are vastly superior in that way to me.

All you're likely to find in a Souls game is a white glowing orb in the occasional chest - and they don't even bother to display the items in any physical sense.

Again, terrible exploration game considering it's supposed to have such great exploration.

Gwydden said:

Wow, that's incredibly condescending and, what is even more impressive, I'm not sure you even realized that while writing. Being condescending by accident is even worse than doing so on purpose

Click to expand...

wolfgrimdark said:

Not to mention someone can have any number of reasons they might not be good at twitch style games such as health issues. People can also be poor in one style game but excel at another type of game. Frustration also depends on personality and one persons frustration can be another persons type of enjoyment. Some might love the challenge of survival games but dislike reflex based games, or like tactical games over FPS style games.

Based on this persons post history, however, it clearly wasn't an accident.

Click to expand...

Sir James is well known in the political threads. He often writes intentionally provocative, ie flamebait.

Gwydden said:

The problem is rather that I derive little pleasure from overcoming challenges in games. It's just not why I play. Nor am I usually drawn in by the gameplay in third person action titles. And setting that aside, I fail to see what is so appealing about FromSoft games. I'm usually more of a narrative-driven player, and defenses of their stories are typically along the lines of "the lore is great!" But lore is not story. I don't care about lore.

Click to expand...

You are 100% correct. You would not like their games, based on these three things.

Btw, I'm usually big on story too, but FROM games prove what I've otherwise suspected: I care about plot least of all story elements, and I care about setting/atmosphere as much as I do story. I've heard Elden Ring has more of a central narrative than their other games, but I think it's still probably much less of a traditional narrative than in other RPGs.

What I like about the way FROM tells stories could maybe be called the iceberg method. In most adventure games, our character is at the center of everything that happens, and as a result, everyone tells him or her everything. Usually several times. Random folks on the street seem to hang around just so you can show up and give them the chance to tell you their life stories and/or offer to let you help them. And I love conversations, if the writing is good! I exhaust dialogue trees and never skip through it.

But I also love how FROM does it. In their games, you are not at the center of anything. NPCs care about you exactly as much as people in the real world do: so far as you are important to their own goals and desires. They certainly don't tell you, over and over, about the great calamities in the land and how they need you to solve them. I wouldn't enjoy this nearly as much if there was no actual story or history in place, but there is. It's just that you're not told all of it as if you've wandered into a university lecture. You get bits and pieces, and the more you explore and the more people you talk to and find items, the more of that story coalesces.

DArtTooEarly said:

Beyond that, you have the patterns of various traps and things you have to avoid in the environment - that you absolutely CAN NOT know until you experience it. They love their large rolling rocks that flatten you if you're not fast enough - and I get that it's sort of amusing, except I hate wasting time walking back and repeating the very same fights over and over because I missed a trap like that.

Click to expand...

I agree (or at least understand, but feel differently) with most of what you wrote, but not this part. I can't offhand remember a trap in FROM games that it was impossible to predict if you were observant and careful enough. It's actually funny sometimes because you can see traps waiting to be sprung if you look at the environment from certain angles (like the dudes hanging off of ledges, waiting to clamber up and stab you).

There's a boulder trap in Sen's Fortress where they deliberately drew the stairs as worn and chipped away to give the player at least the possibility of surmising that a large heavy object came down them. Is it likely that anyone would notice that and put two and two together? Probably not, but it isn't true that you "absolutely" can't know about it. Things never just materialize in FROM games. They are always physically present in the world at all times, and as such, there is the chance that you can detect them before it's too late.

(Btw, you added the last part after I started writing this and oof, do I not agree with you about the exploration aspect, but I'll just leave it there)

JFarrell71 said:

I agree (or at least understand, but feel differently) with most of what you wrote, but not this part. I can't offhand remember a trap in FROM games that it was impossible to predict if you were observant and careful enough. It's actually funny sometimes because you can see traps waiting to be sprung if you look at the environment from certain angles (like the dudes hanging off of ledges, waiting to clamber up and stab you).

There's a boulder trap in Sen's Fortress where they deliberately drew the stairs as worn and chipped away to give the player at least the possibility of surmising that a large heavy object came down them. Is it likely that anyone would notice that and put two and two together? Probably not, but it isn't true that you "absolutely" can't know about it. Things never just materialize in FROM games. They are always physically present in the world at all times, and as such, there is the chance that you can detect them before it's too late.

(Btw, you added the last part after I started writing this and oof, do I not agree with you about the exploration aspect, but I'll just leave it there)

Click to expand...

I probably phrased that wrong.

It's true that you can avoid the traps if you're careful - but I certainly feel like I've died countless times because I just didn't have a clue what was coming and lost my focus for a second. Potentially struggling with the camera angle or the terrible lock-on system

Not just traps, though - but also enemies being deliberately placed in blind spots - or Dragons flying over an area and wreaking havoc etc.

I could also be mixing some of my experiences with other Souls-likes.

For instance, I've played a lot of Nioh 2 - which also had a large rolling boulder that killed my brother and myself numerous times

Not necessarily because it was unfairly placed - but due to the chaos of combat going on.

Now Nioh, THAT game wasn't for me. I died all the time, but the rewards and the world weren't as compelling so my motivation to soldier through ran out fairly quickly. The endless Diablo style loot drops, c'mon... who needs to have 87 versions of the same sword?

JFarrell71 said:

Now Nioh, THAT game wasn't for me. I died all the time, but the rewards and the world weren't as compelling so my motivation to soldier through ran out fairly quickly. The endless Diablo style loot drops, c'mon… who needs to have 87 versions of the same sword?

Click to expand...

Nioh 2

The key was proper co-op - which can make most games a lot better.

That said, I found the arsenal vastly superior to anything I've seen in any other Souls game. The amount of weapon types and unique abilities for each and every one of them is pretty staggering.

The only reason we didn't complete it was that we eventually got bored of the nonsense story and mostly boring levels. But we did get 50-60 hours out of it - so it was well worth it.

Also, I think combat was significantly harder than Demon's Souls - but because of the shared experience - and the progression and loot - I felt it was worth the investment.

But there's no doubt Nioh 2 is full of sadistic encounters and bosses.

Not the part of it that I enjoyed at all.

largh said:

I don't follow all arguments here, but I did touch on this when writing about sites taking average scores (Meta- and Opencritic). The rounding bloats up the scores toward extremes and this effect is stronger the fewer levels the review has because the average scores are rescaled to 0-100 scale. Do you understand that or should I try to explain using an example?

Click to expand...

I understand, and that's a good point, although it depends on what you call "bloat up to the extremes". To me, the uncertainty introduced by less precise scores (more quantized values) drowns the precision of the other scores. Said otherwise, it concentrates the values around the low-precision values (0 ... 5). The problem is coming from not expressing the precision of the measure and its confidence, but it doesn't matter to most people anyway, they would find it strange.

But I was not talking about averages, only as @JFarrell71; thought: "10" means "10 with a precision of 1", it could be 9.5. Actually, most of the time "10" doesn't even mean that, it just means "it's awesome". It's not as if those scores could be measured in the first place.

"souls-like" to me is immediate don't buy but I'm glad it's out and looking good - there's been a lot of people out there clamoring for a 50 shades of gaming smack down that can take their punishment now.

Wow, just WOW, can't wait to play this! Just let a few patches come in first.

One of the good things about TES IV: Oblivion, is that it made me impervious to hype. This game looks good, and I might check it out later. I haven't played any of the Souls games, but they seem to emphasize the "action" part of "action RPG" a bit much for my taste.

The upcoming game I'm the most excited about right now is Elex 2. Piranha Bytes lost a little bit of my trust with Risen 2 (which I still completed), but they pretty much won it back with Elex. I'll be getting the sequel on launch day.

sakichop said:

For example in DS1 I spent 8 hours one sunday trying to beat Orstein and Smough. Couldn't even tell you how many tries it was but it was a lot. ( mostly because of my stubbornness and wanting to do it with light armor and a bandit dagger. )

Click to expand...

There's no way my keyboard (or gamepad) would have survived that.

rjshae said:

The game even got a mention today on NPR:

Review: How I learned to stop worrying and love the deathly delights of 'Elden Ring'

Click to expand...

What's NPR ?

National Public Radio, one of the very few reasons to still own an actual radio. The news they put out tends to be spot-on, as well.

As for the game, yeah, all these good reviews are almost making me twitchy. I'll be on the hype express once the dust settles down with some updates/patches, might even wait a tad to make sure future content hits as well.

JFarrell71 said:

I know I've written this before on this site, but I'll say it again and expound on it a bit.

I am not that good at games, and I AM a person who gets frustrated when playing them. ... snips ...

Click to expand...

Yes I remember you frustration with WOTR.

While I have only ever played one DS game, and only for abou 10 hours, and I get the idea of overcoming challenge being exhilarating, and the suspense and tension death can bring, I don't care for this particular kind of challenge anymore due to age and eye/hand issues. I also am not into bosses with bloated HP although dealt with them in Technomancer and Greedfall and other games.

Playing a survival game on hard or ironman mode can give me the same sense of suspense and thrill if I want it. As can playing a game of chess or even scrabble.

In general I prefer real life challenges and the rewards, and lessons, they bring, over artificial ones in a game. Games for me are more about escaping into another world and a way to wind down from stress and pressure in real life. I don't particularly need that in my gaming activities unless it fits in well with a world I enjoy.

So great you, and others, get a sense of achievement and pleasure from taking down a boss and enjoying the suspense of death around every corner ... but one can still enjoy that in games that aren't twitch based just as one can enjoy games for a more relaxed experience or a more mental challenge (puzzles, tactical) versus how good their reflexes are and how good their endurance is to whittle down a 10K HP creature.