Beat game. Janky. Not even the barest hint of game balance lol. Still probably falls in my usual Souls-barometer of good but so overblown.
I think time may be less kind to impressios this one. After everyone gets over the OMGerd Open World 100 hour Souls Game and starts looking at the cracks. A ton of filler, re-used bosses (some of which are already reused from prior games. No points for Gargoyles, but we'll alot you some if you can name the reskinned Asylum and Capra demons).
Then by the end game you're just dealing with ludicrous HP bloats, 8000hp rats and shit. Its like a trip back to DS1 when I didn't know upgrading weapons and spent 50 minutes killing the Sewer Dragon. Patterns learned but just exhausting.
The story is.... well, 95% the same as any Sous game. Flip a few names around. As expected. Whatever Martin gave them as "a backbone over a couple days" doesn't seem to have done much. Maybe explained why some of the human civilization has a bit of depth beyond being a vague name of somewhere far away.
From the specific first playthrough perspective. Faith build SUCKS. All the Faith weapons show up late to endgame. The spells are a mess of being so incredibly slow and half them are dice roll on even hitting. Even your spells and baseline gear don't show up til around 50% in (Leyndell). And no Faith spell does stagger damage (Except via blood loss ticks on one) so good luck with anything like the Tower Knights (another copyover) that is built around that mechanic. (Boulder might, but it was so late in the game to get that many Deathroots I'd just gotten used to melee by then)
PVP has been strange because my go to farming spot requires me to complete a pvp invasion quest where i have to invade three people. The quest is easy because I don't have to win, I just have to invade so there is no pressure. But you cannot invade solo players so I've always faced groups. And I have won a shocking number of times. To the point where I genuinely don't understand why or how they didn't just merc me. But my bleed swords also will kill someone if I hit them two or three times outright so...even the dude powerstancing greatswords just couldn't keep out of my way and melted.
PVP in ER is pointless tbh, becuase it's so unfair to the invader (in theory) and the builds in this game are not designed for pvp in mind, Arts will pretty much instantly kill anyone they hit so it just becomes a duel of who gets hit first.
Eh you can get to that bloody place "legitimately" via a portal (although at that point, you should be like, maybe 3 bosses from the end of the game and the runes are about the same everywhere, though that ones the least risk).
PvP is either one shot griefing or just annoying everytime I've dealt with it. They went all in on actually adding so many diverse and viable mechanics/spells/arts that it's almost impossible to balance. And the PvE would suffer hard if they took that out (if not outright need to be totally rebalanced).
The bizarre decision to make using co-op the opt-in for PvP.... is... baffling. The people who are explicitly the ones who are playing the reverse experience get invaded. Its basically a guarantee to generate toxicity. But after like a week and increasing, Elden Ring has much like any other souls game, devolved into invasions either being someone brand new who dies immediately, or hardcore smurf characters loaded up with X-ferred endgame gear.
And Invaders still have all the advantages. They aren't downscaled, at all. Seem to be able to invade at a massive level gap (cause I've been invaded on level 1 Wretch in Limgrave by a dude non-fat rolling in Radahns armour and using the 70 int moon spell).And they have one objective, bum rush and kill the host. The host has to contend with the entire level of enemies before and after the invader (and during, since many invaders still are the non-engagers who just hide amidst the enemies and flee immediately if the NPCs go down).
