Hashing out which games will officially take part in EGM's overall top 5 list every year is definitely a battle, but I'm not sure any year was quite the war that 2011 was. On one side, you had those that were sure that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was the best bet on the year. Alternatively, I led a gang of rebels who refused to down again around the concept that Dark Souls deserved topping spot. Sure, Skyrim's vast open world might have managed to get the bigger experience, but-at least within my mind-it sure wasn't the better one.
And now, 11 years later, the actual reviewing Elden Ring-the Skyrim of Souls games.
Well, “reviewing” isn't quite the best word at this time, because this will not be a full review just yet. As I'm writing these words, I've had my console copy of Elden Ring for just around five full days, nowhere close enough time to come near to beating the sport. I've played enough Souls to state the 35-or-so hours I've spent in the Lands Between are probably a great indicator of the items awaits throughout the rest of my adventure, but that also wouldn't allow it to be right to just slap a score onto this and stop hunting.
Especially due to there being one little problem with that rationale: Elden Ring is not a Souls game.
Now, before I explain that statement, I'm not going you to definitely misunderstand: Elden Ring absolutely shares plenty of DNA with its Souls siblings, the most crucial of which is its combat. If you have be a fan of From's brainy yet brutal battles, then you're going to love what awaits here. The advancements between what we've had before and what we get in Elden Ring aren't always dramatic, but they're appreciated. One of the biggest additional features i believe are Guard Counters, where one can instantly counterattack after blocking an enemy's attack. Parries have always been a fundamental part of the Souls series, but they've been incredibly hard to accomplish for many players. While Guard Counters certainly aren't as powerful as parries-and they can enable you to get in trouble if you rely too heavily on them-they do open up lots of enemies for a riposte, and give a wider array of players the chance to feel cool.
Another addition that i am loving may be the Spirit Calling Bell, something that enables you to summon the spirit of fallen enemies to aid you in battle. As the Souls series has long offered the opportunity to summon other players or certain NPCs into your game, summoning spirits is both more flexible, as it’s available anywhere in which the ability is allowed (I understand that's vague, but it is also kinda vague in-game too), and also at your personal pace, as you don't have to be worried about guest players becoming bored on and on home. Much like I had been saying with Guard Counters, spirits aren't nearly as powerful because the real thing, but they're a welcome choice to give the game flexibility. Flexibility is also the specific game using the new crafting system, which helps you to use materials you've found over the Lands Between to make items rather than always needing to buy them. It seemed like such a strange inclusion in my experience initially, however it genuinely is nice to possess a means through which you could have the things you'll need while also saving your runes (aka souls) for more important uses-even if getting those items for only the cost of your time and effort does feel a bit like cheating. A never-ending quantity of free arrows? In my Souls game?
Also, should you thought things went crazy in Dark Souls III with the development of the Ashen Estus Flask, Elden Ring now gives us a third flask, the Flask of Wondrous Physick. Along your journey, you will find various crystalized tears, each of which offers a certain buff (like gradual HP recovery, stamina boosts, etc.). You can mix any two buffs together in the Wondrous Physick, which in turn becomes usable and refillable much like your other flasks. Despite sorceries and incantations and items and trinkets and lots of other options for buffs, the Flask of Wondrous Physick is a fairly additional option thanks to that customizability. Talking about Dark Souls III, Weapon Arts create a return, however this time they're found separately from weapons. By going to a blacksmith, you are able to embed those arts-now referred to as Ashes of War-onto any weapon you own, as long as that weapon type is supported. I haven't messed around with the Ashes of War as much as I've the Wondrous Physick, but both options point to among the overarching themes that appears to run all through the game: giving you a lot more choice in the way you play.
And it's choice that sits at the heart of the items sets Elden Ring far in addition to the rest of the Souls series.
When Dark Souls came as a successor to Demon's Souls, the progression from one to another made sense. You can feel FromSoftware having fun with intricately designed world areas within the first game, but it wouldn't be until the second when those ideas would come together in a single interconnected, cohesive world. Other elements-like the core combat system, death penalties, overall difficulty, NPC interactions, storytelling style, boss design, item scarcity, and the general pacing of the journey from beginning to end-would all definitely see evolution, but rarely revolution. Even just in From's two big side projects, Bloodborne and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the legacy of the Souls series could still be felt. It had been never that the men and women of FromSoftware were lazy or uncreative. They'd just hit on a winning formula, and fans were always pleased to have more.
Elden Ring doesn't feel like more in my experience. It's a lot of those same elements, like combat, bosses, NPCs, and general atmosphere, but the areas in which it differs makes this game, and From's other recent releases, feel miles apart. My head knows that classifying Elden Ring as a Souls game really isn't wrong, but my heart can see this as nothing but a brand new, separate entity that stands on its own. Undoubtedly the biggest factor in that's the open world, which is a seismic shift not just on a direct in-game physical level, but additionally a mental and emotional one for that player. This isn't just Dark Souls but bigger-it's an entire rethink in how to approach all those encounters we've spent the final 10-plus years encountering.
If the prior games were a 2,000 piece Lego set, each and every piece dedicated to building one elaborate and detailed structure, Elden Ring is those self same pieces disseminate across a table to craft a number of buildings. Every moment of Dark Souls, or Bloodborne, or Sekiro was purposeful. Every square inch of the terrain felt planned, every enemy placement carefully considered, every action intended. Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team were built with a pretty good concept of what you would be doing at a moment, even though you yourself didn't know. There was very little wasted space, few meaningless inclusions, along with a sense of pacing and progression that always pushed you as a player forward. In comparison, Elden Ring is big. It's wasteful. It's directionless. It's confusing. It's cumbersome. It's even, at times, boring.
And I've loved every minute from it.
Elden Ring will probably be incredibly divisive amongst Souls fans. Some are going to absolutely hate it, or at least remain constantly annoyed by it, for those reasons and more. While examples of that much cla of meticulous FromSoftware design definitely still appear here, they'll be not enough and between for many. For me, though, I never knew how much I wanted or needed a game title like this until now. I still love everything completed with the Souls series over the years, and I absolutely do not want the type of games to go away. But I'm also ready to obtain a break from that style of game design and keep the aspects that may and will work in other kinds of games. This is the good parts of open world games combined with the steller parts of Souls, and man is the fact that a potent concoction.
As someone who's long loved exploration in games only for the sake of exploration, riding my spectral steed Torrent round the Lands Between continues to be so exhilarating. Everywhere I've gone, there's been something interesting to see-even if there hasn't been something interesting to do there. While Elden Ring can be even more cryptic in letting you know what you need to do or best places to go next, I've savored that freedom from being stuck on any given path. Typically in Souls games, if I'm stuck on the particularly infuriating boss, my choices are with the idea to keep banging my head against that wall, or scrounge around to many other task I possibly could be completing instead. After i got stuck on Elden Ring's first major boss, Margit the Fell Omen, I left and didn't return for hours. There were so many other things readily available for me to do, from fighting other bosses, to cleaning caves, to farming materials, to simply filling in more of my map. I've yet to seem like I have to behave specific at any given point, whether I wish to or not. We obtain the task, the lore, and also the creativity of Souls games, using the freedom to experience these when we're prepared to. And I love it. I love it.
I don't love everything, though, even if playing with the patch that Bandai Namco recommended we be on when you are performing our reviews. I've been returning and forth between playing on the 1080p monitor at my desk and our family room 4K TV, as well as when at lower resolution and running in performance mode, Elden Ring still can't conserve a steady 60 FPS. It's FromSoftware, right? Framerate and frame pacing are always going to be a few of the studio's weaknesses. But, maybe at this point, they shouldn't be.
There's also elements that I simply do not understand, like why I can not always use my map even when not in a fight, and why I can't always summon spirits even after activating the summoning idols. There are several parts of FromSoftware's obsession with obscurity that I still appreciate, but others that I've long grown fed up with. If I'm attempting to apply certain basic game function, and that i can't, let me know why. Don't merely have my character shrug, and that's it.
Any gripes I've at this time, though, are very minor within the grand scheme of things. Each time I believe I might be growing fed up with FromSoftware's modern-era releases, the studio does something to rekindle my interest again-and Elden Ring has me feeling like the Bed of Chaos. Given my current understanding of and expectations for what still lies ahead, I've probably got at least another 40 hours until I see the finish credits. Could something happen in that time to create me change my feelings on the game? Absolutely. For now, though, I will be shocked if Elden Ring doesn't become certainly one of my favorite games of the year-if not my #1 spot, much like Dark Souls once was.
Update: March 11, 2023
When I was writing the very first 1 / 2 of this review, my plan ended up being to come back after i had fully finished Elden Ring to give some conclusions and slap on a score.
Now, as I've crossed the 100-hour mark in the game, those plans have changed. To become fair, I'm not all that not even close to being able to beat Elden Ring. I've a good handle on where to go and what to complete to finish up those final required tasks and bosses. I've been to all from the map's late-game areas. The finish credits haven't rolled yet, however i can see them queuing up over the horizon.
So why don't you just beat the sport before finishing this review?
Two reasons, really. The very first is which i don't think I have to in order to properly judge Elden Ring. While that is the opposite of our policy here at EGM to continually make an honest attempt to beat any game we're reviewing, I can unequivocally tell you that there's nothing at this time that will change my mind on FromSoftware's latest release. When I was still only 30 hours in, I gave consideration towards the concept that something might happen past that point to make me like the game less. With every hour that's passed by, however, my appreciation for and love of what Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team have done here has only grown. Elden Ring may be the culmination of all things FromSoftware continues to be building toward since the release of Demon's Souls. While I still argue it isn't technically a Souls game, it is the Souls experience of its most refined, enhanced, and approachable state. I still cannot bring myself to state which i like Elden Ring a lot more than Dark Souls-because that game just affected me so deeply in the time-but it's clearly the very best game the studio has ever produced. (Sorry, The Adventures of Cookies and Cream.)
Just as Dark Souls once changed how I saw other video games, also does Elden Ring. I dread playing an open-world game from another company following this, a minimum of not for some time. Going through the Lands Between-devoid of any hard-set goals, a roadmap crowded with icons, mundane quests from NPCs, or often even any idea where I might end up-was always this type of joy. No matter where I went, there is something worth seeing, and nothing that I found ever felt like it existed so I'd have something to do or so that area wouldn't look so barren. I honestly never expected FromSoftware could expand its type of world design out to how big a real world, but they did, to some degree which i can't believe this game didn't take years longer to develop. Every time I thought I'd hit the perimeters of the map, it grew in size, and no matter where I went, I came across areas that felt full of detail, beautiful in aesthetics, and alive using their own enemy types and unique landmarks. Elden Ring is certainly not the most visually impressive game you will see on the technical level, but few other releases can match it when it comes to its artistry, complexity, or meticulous design.
Elden Ring can also be just so utterly enjoyable with regards to its gameplay. Using the carefully crafted enemy encounters and slower, more thoughtful combat of the Souls games and moving everything to wide-open fields and less-cramped locations also shouldn't been employed by as well as it will. Not only does it work, but all those moments of battle now feel even better. It's the smaller things, like jump attacks actually being useful, or shields being much more powerful for individuals who love defending. It's horseback combat while riding Torrent, which becomes an essential tactic for certain fights. It is the Ashes of War, which offer a remarkable amount of depth for both adding new skills to your favorite weapon or changing their elemental affinity. It's in how, in a shocking twist, stealth has become a legitimate strategy option, and that I don't hate this. Or it's the choice of spells and incantations that feel a lot deeper now, that has been especially thanks for visiting me as somebody who loves Faith-based builds.
None of my opinions on those elements can change at this point-nor will my head on Elden Ring's weaknesses. Despite the fact that I've long stopped caring about the game's framerate, it remains frustrating that FromSoftware continues to struggle with game performance, especially around the newer consoles. (I understand PC players have experienced some bigger issues, and that there has been specific problems on both Xbox and PlayStation, but I've personally experienced none of what others have reported.) Talking about new-gen hardware, load times could possibly get annoying even if running on SSD, and environmental details -especially grass-often pop into view far after they should. There are a few areas of the world where asset reuse is especially noticeable (like the catacombs), and some from the impact of bosses could be lost when you initially stumble across and defeat their clones before meeting the actual deals. There is an unforgivable insufficient spider women, and a surprising shortage of spiders period for a FromSoftware game. Even just in listing off these negatives, though, I'm desperate for things to say. Elden Ring absolutely isn't perfect-no game is-but none of its weaknesses have hurt my opinion of the experience of any meaningful way.
Much more than feeling like I haven't got to beat Elden Ring allow it an effective review, however, is that I do not want to conquer it. Not yet, anyway. I wish to be selfish, and provide myself just as much time as I need in order to finish it my way, rather than rushing through to the finish so I can allow myself to form a final opinion. Above all else I've said within this review, I think that's the strongest argument I can alllow for how good I believe Elden Ring is. I'm the kind to locate most games too much time, even if being “too long” means lasting 12 hours rather than Eight to ten. But, even at 100 hours in, I wish to carry on. I want to see all I can tell and do all I can do before I close the book about this playthrough.
That's in large part to my final piece of praise for Elden Ring: its storytelling. George R.R. Martin supposedly helped craft the mythos that fuels the Lands Between. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't-I can't really tell. These seem like traditional FromSoftware characters and stories to me. Unlike in a lot of other games, where I'm forced to play the good guy since i don't have the stomach to be bad when lines are more clearly drawn, I enjoy the moral ambiguity from the Souls series. Everyone is really a scheming asshole. Every action you take is the wrong one. If every path will result in chaos anyhow, then I do not have to feel bad about deciding on the one I truly wish to walk. And, unlike the fencesitting I've often done in the Souls games, within Elden Ring, I'm all in on the scheme of my own. I've formed bonds with a small group of co-conspirators. We've set the wheels in motion. I'm probably going to still another Twenty to thirty hours to be able to both beat the sport and do all the required side content necessary to make happen what I'm hoping is going to happen. Basically beat the sport now, I won't get the chance to see things through to the end my way.
For now, I can't tell you about which ending I got, or what strategy I made use of against the end boss, or what level my character was at once those credits finally rolled. What I let you know is that, even with its flaws, Elden Ring is the most impressive, exhilarating, and engrossing adventure Miyazaki and the team have ever provided us with, and it shows simply how much life the Souls series continues to have left inside it. When I ended this review the very first time, I expected that Elden Ring would definitely show up on my top 5 list with this year. Now, I'm left wondering whether it won't end up as certainly one of my favorite games ever.
And God assist me to if, come December, I've found myself needing to argue why it will need the very best spot over Starfield.
