After around 10 hours in Elden Ring, I was ready to write the most scathing review of a game which takes pleasure in torturing its fan base. Upon reaching 20, I couldn’t stop thinking about jumping back into the action. This is the relationship shared by developer FromSoftware and their die-hard hordes of fans, who enjoy the grind and almost vertical learning curve of games born out of the success of the Dark Souls series.
Let’s set the scene. As an exiled Tarnished, we are called back into the Lands Between some time after an event known as The Shattering, which saw the destruction of the titular ring and the scattering of seven runes which, when combined, would allow the owner to become the Elden Lord. Our job? To defeat the handlers of said Runes, who have been corrupted by power, bringing them back together and claiming the aforementioned Elden Lord title for ourselves. Sounds simple enough, but countless deaths later, you’ll be hard-pressed not to want to fling your controller or mouse across the room.
Before doing that though, make sure you check out every inch of the stunning open world on offer. Going into Elden Ring, players knew that there would be complete freedom in exploration from jump, but the sheer magnitude and scale of what is available here completely blew me away. From one location to the next, there are both beautiful and grotesque monuments, creatures and characters that will leave you open-mouthed.
This is undoubtedly FromSoftware’s most ambitious release to-date, forcing you to take on the role of clueless wanderer both in-game and from your seat at home. You really do learn as you go here, with no hand-holding, no compass with objectives marked and no user interface overlay to guide you. This is YOUR world; do in it as you see fit.
That also means that you’ll have to do quite a bit of research and reading if you want to amplify your experience. Whether that’s through carefully-crafted online guides from other members of the Elden Ring community or, by picking through the details that are listed in item descriptions or conversations with characters at the Roundtable Hold, is left up to you. It’s just another way to immerse and envelop the player entirely, forcing you to commit fully to the narrative if you want any chance of success.
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Having said all of that, there could have been even more risks taken in the style of gameplay and mechanics handed to us. Whereas Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice felt like a completely unique title, Elden Ring plays more like an expansion on one of the Dark Souls games. Hidetaka Miyazaki absolutely made the right choice in allowing players to forge their own path, but adding to the relatively basic combat mechanics would have allowed for a little more excitement going into boss battles. Still, there will be those who relish the commitment to the classic hack, slash, duck, roll and parry move-set, which long-standing Souls players will have become accustomed to.
That’s not to say that these showcase fights are boring. Seeing Godrick the Grafted chop off his own arm so that he can shove his bloody stump into a dead dragon, before reanimating it as a fire-breathing deadly new limb, is a scene that will stick with me for some time. I’m not sure I would have ever defeated him if it weren’t for one very friendly and skilled axe-wielding tank of a player, who I summoned in to kite the big fella whilst I shot star-fuelled magic pebbles from a distance.
Yes, I chose the Astrologer class, because I like to attack from afar and not get my hands dirty. Helpful at times for sure, but it did leave me a little broken down at others…
Elden Ring is a game I both love and hate and in that perhaps lies its ingenuity. With a staggering six endings available based on the choices made throughout the game by the player, there’s a high level of replayability. I can’t say I’ll be plugging countless more hours into the game, however. I think I’ve tortured myself enough.
Though I get the hype to a certain extent, for me, this isn’t the be all and end all of gaming. It’s certainly got a well fleshed-out story and the single most breathtaking open world I’ve ever experienced, but the narrative beats aren't hit quite as often as I would have liked. When there are titles out there like The Last of Us, it's hard to place this game above that.
Elden Ring is available now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. A code for the game on PC was given to Female First in exchange for a fair and honest review. The game was played on an MSI GF65 Thin 10UE gaming laptop with NVIDIA RTX 3060 graphics card.