Well, I was up at 2am to start playing Elden Ring today and to say I have been excited for an new FromSoftware Souls game is putting it a bit mildly. When the reviews started dropping for the game I was on a business trip and in an airport where I couldn't really watch or do much with anything outside of written reviews. Nevertheless, the 10/10's pumped out by every outlet were exciting. Here I am now 10 hours into Elden Ring and I have to say, it's got some issues that to me keep it well away from the 10/10 scores reviews have given it.
Elden Ring is best described as Dark Souls in a Breath of the Wild world. It's completely open form and with the invention of a jump button it is the most explorable thing FromSoft has ever made. That exploration comes at a cost within a FromSoft world and i want to express my biggest issue with the game right off the bat. The explorable world means you encounter a lot of scaling problems. What happens is you roam around trying to find things, but your ultimate goal is to find things that you can actually fight. You see because Elden Ring is a Souls game, it can be difficult to tell whether you suck at the game or you've stumbled across enemies too high of a level for you.
So your first few hours are going to be running around just trying to see what you can fight. Which leads to another problem. This exploration yields power and that power seems to scale faster with you than it does with the enemies. So as you've been running around just trying to keep things managable, you'll then start stumbling into the true low-level stuff and you'll faceroll it, which in turn yields you more power. And admittedly the power is a lot of fun, especially the spells, and so you won't turn it down because it's so fun to use.
Basically you are either too weak for shit, or too strong for it. And I feel like the exploration could have been a bit more directed in this regard. Perhaps some minor objective markers, or just overall better enemy placement.
With enemy placement Fromsoft has decided the more the merrier, as many many many of enemies are almost always placed in groups of 2-10, and while stealth is sort of an option to pick out a few, eventually you'll have no choice but to agro the whole party. In other games this isn't much of an issue because usually your resources aren't so limited. But Souls games have never been great games for mob combat. While the open world does let you run away, fight on your horse for hit and run tactics, do so removes a lot of the epic dueling feel that previous games have had. Plus once you start getting strong, often you can charge in on your horse and cut the whole group down with one or two swings before they even know you are there.
The other problem with the open world design is that I can't seem to memorize the levels the way you used to. Part of the fun of Souls games was the mastery of the map, the earning of shortcuts, and memorization of enemy placements. That doesn't happen here because the open world is often painfully plain in a lot of places and one group of rocks looks like another group of rocks. I guess that's why we have a map now.
Basically I don't think the open worldness of the game helps the Souls formula. While it sounds cool on paper, you lose a lot of that tight design work and challenge that FromSoft is known for. And it has crafting now, because it's an open world game so you MUST have crafting. So the whole world is litered with animals to hunt, flowers to pick up, and moss to loot. Which....I mean....fucking why? That's not what I want in a Souls game, to grind harmless animals and pick a bunch of fucking flowers so I can keep craftable supplies on hand for whatever the fuck the game throws at me at any given time. This shouldn't be here, full stop, there is no reason for it, there is no benefit to having it in a game like this and all it does is distract the player from finding loot and enemies to fight which is the joy of playing a Souls game.
Outside of that the other problem I have is that the lock on is really fucking unreliable. An enemy will come rushing out me and I'll be pressing the R3 trying to lock on and nothing happens, I don't know if this is another open world problem or what, but often I can't seem to lock onto enemies until they are close enough to hit me and I need the lock-on to happen well before that. This has led to unearned panic moments from the game.
Otherwise, I mean this is Dark Souls 4 basically. Souls has gone open world, and exploration is more annoying now, but outside of that it's Dark Souls 4. The combat has been cleaned up and the player has a few new tricks thanks to being able to jump without a running crazy button combo. And for what Souls combat is worth it is everything you want it to be. The bosses are where the game really shines and they are pretty great.
I wonder is things will change as I get deeper into the game because it is still obviously very early and I will update this post if something "clicks" which is often the case with a lot of FromSoft games.
Elden Ring is best described as Dark Souls in a Breath of the Wild world. It's completely open form and with the invention of a jump button it is the most explorable thing FromSoft has ever made. That exploration comes at a cost within a FromSoft world and i want to express my biggest issue with the game right off the bat. The explorable world means you encounter a lot of scaling problems. What happens is you roam around trying to find things, but your ultimate goal is to find things that you can actually fight. You see because Elden Ring is a Souls game, it can be difficult to tell whether you suck at the game or you've stumbled across enemies too high of a level for you.
So your first few hours are going to be running around just trying to see what you can fight. Which leads to another problem. This exploration yields power and that power seems to scale faster with you than it does with the enemies. So as you've been running around just trying to keep things managable, you'll then start stumbling into the true low-level stuff and you'll faceroll it, which in turn yields you more power. And admittedly the power is a lot of fun, especially the spells, and so you won't turn it down because it's so fun to use.
Basically you are either too weak for shit, or too strong for it. And I feel like the exploration could have been a bit more directed in this regard. Perhaps some minor objective markers, or just overall better enemy placement.
With enemy placement Fromsoft has decided the more the merrier, as many many many of enemies are almost always placed in groups of 2-10, and while stealth is sort of an option to pick out a few, eventually you'll have no choice but to agro the whole party. In other games this isn't much of an issue because usually your resources aren't so limited. But Souls games have never been great games for mob combat. While the open world does let you run away, fight on your horse for hit and run tactics, do so removes a lot of the epic dueling feel that previous games have had. Plus once you start getting strong, often you can charge in on your horse and cut the whole group down with one or two swings before they even know you are there.
The other problem with the open world design is that I can't seem to memorize the levels the way you used to. Part of the fun of Souls games was the mastery of the map, the earning of shortcuts, and memorization of enemy placements. That doesn't happen here because the open world is often painfully plain in a lot of places and one group of rocks looks like another group of rocks. I guess that's why we have a map now.
Basically I don't think the open worldness of the game helps the Souls formula. While it sounds cool on paper, you lose a lot of that tight design work and challenge that FromSoft is known for. And it has crafting now, because it's an open world game so you MUST have crafting. So the whole world is litered with animals to hunt, flowers to pick up, and moss to loot. Which....I mean....fucking why? That's not what I want in a Souls game, to grind harmless animals and pick a bunch of fucking flowers so I can keep craftable supplies on hand for whatever the fuck the game throws at me at any given time. This shouldn't be here, full stop, there is no reason for it, there is no benefit to having it in a game like this and all it does is distract the player from finding loot and enemies to fight which is the joy of playing a Souls game.
Outside of that the other problem I have is that the lock on is really fucking unreliable. An enemy will come rushing out me and I'll be pressing the R3 trying to lock on and nothing happens, I don't know if this is another open world problem or what, but often I can't seem to lock onto enemies until they are close enough to hit me and I need the lock-on to happen well before that. This has led to unearned panic moments from the game.
Otherwise, I mean this is Dark Souls 4 basically. Souls has gone open world, and exploration is more annoying now, but outside of that it's Dark Souls 4. The combat has been cleaned up and the player has a few new tricks thanks to being able to jump without a running crazy button combo. And for what Souls combat is worth it is everything you want it to be. The bosses are where the game really shines and they are pretty great.
I wonder is things will change as I get deeper into the game because it is still obviously very early and I will update this post if something "clicks" which is often the case with a lot of FromSoft games.
