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Elden Ring

Overrated. Good, but not everything it's cracked up to be, at least in my opinion. An opinion at least partially formed by how hyped up everyone is about it. Elden Ring is open world Dark Souls. You start out as a nobody, with no idea what's going on, with no real intro or story, and bash your face on the nearest group of enemies until you manage to beat them all in one go, find some loot, then go find the next group of bad guys to kill. Rinse and repeat. The gameplay mostly revolves around not taking too many risks, lots of dodging, and lots of dying. Progress is slow, but sometimes rewarding. Sometimes you're just glad the thing is dead and you can go kill something less annoying.

Pros

  • I did get absorbed in it for a decent number of hours - but eventually got distracted by something else, and never wanted to come back to it
  • Gorgeous
  • Good sound effects. Weapons feel like they connect, and have definite weight
  • I was intially annoyed that you start at level 10, but discovered you can start at level 1 with nothing if you really want to (which I then did)
  • You can fast travel from anywhere
  • Beautiful hand drawn maps
  • Mounted combat
  • Generally excellent level design, with shortcuts back to areas you've cleared etc.
  • Plenty of non-boss things to kill
  • Exploration is rewarding - the map is really well made
  • Weapons have different damage types, which are good against different kinds of enemies

Cons

  • The Intro cinematic is nonsense, as expected. The voice over guy sounds like he's having a nervous breakdown, and it doesn't tell you anything other than vague bad things
  • Calling this an RPG is misleading. After 20 hours, there are no quests, almost no dialogue, one NPC who showed up to give me an item and 19 hours of grinding bad guys to level up enough to try bosses. You have no personality or dialogue, no backstory, and no real context as to why you're here in the first place
  • The frame rate is generally smooth, but often either stutters, or freezes entirely then catches up in sped-up mode (GTX 2080 Ti)
  • Basically zero story introduction to the game other than "you are nobody, and you're going to claim the Elden Ring", whatever that is. They also don't explain what that is or why I want it.
  • The game is littered with messages from other players, which is really immersion breaking. The only way to make them go away is to play offline
  • You also can't disable ghosts of other players killing themselves without going offline
  • No pause
  • Magic and ranged builds are pretty much non-viable. You need a shield.
  • Locked to 60fps
  • Zero direction, and no main quest to follow. It's just a big map scattered with enemies with basically no lore
  • No widescreen support
  • The backstab ability only seems to work about half the time
  • You can't compare gear you're buying with what you're currently wearing
  • Same old annoying system of "if you die twice in a row, you lose everything". You can't bank your runes, ever, even at rest stops.
  • Stamina based combat system
  • The naming convention for items is confusing. "Smithing Stone [1]" means you have one level one smithing stone. "Smithing Stone [2]" means you have one level two smithing stone, not two Smithing Stone [1]s.
  • Long loading screens on SSD
  • The puzzles. Honestly. One of the towers wanted me to find "three wise beasts" (which are spectral turtles). ONE OF THEM IS INVISIBLE. Had to find it online to work that out.
  • No climbing system - can't grab onto ledges
  • No info on what stats do, like how much 4.3 damage negation actually is
  • Trying to quit the game makes you sit through the logo splash screens again before actually letting you quit
  • No indication anywhere of what the icons next to your healthbar mean
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