So as many of you know, I am a Souls and Elden Ring Enjoyer type person, therefore I've been spending a lot of time playing Elden Ring and occasionally rambling on about said things. And one of high points of these games for me is the level and world design. ER, for the most part, is no exception. I do appreciate the Lands Between feel compelling to explore and make me care about trying to find out what's over the next hill, even if it's often just something awful and/or terrifying. I also appreciate how the World, overall, feels like a place where people can live and get around(or could if the bridges were intact and such), which is always a plus for me. For example, there are roads that run across the world, there are bridges that link the roads(granted most of the bridges are collapsed but they're laid out correctly), forts and castles that command certain points of the map, chokepoints where you'd expect them and so on. Carriages are shown traveling the roads in certain places. You also have the grand lift that allows access between the Plateau and the lower parts of the world.
BUT.....that being said, there's one thing that bugs me. So while it's unclear just how the lands between relate to the rest of the world, it's implied some communication and transport is possible between the game world and elsewhere(The Tarnished are implied to be exiles, just now being summoned back to the Lands Between and there's a "Seafarer" race, who spent their life sailing). You see ships on the map, you see ships wrecked off the coast, Stormveil castle has big ass holes on the seaward side that could only have been fired from the sea(somehow), etc. And yet......as far as I can tell, there is not a single PORT or shipbuilding facility anywhere in the game world and it just bugs me, especially because this is the first FROM game that I can think of where this can't be handwaved somehow(Hell, Dark Souls 2 had a Port even if it makes no sense geographically). There's not even evidence of such a place and it's kind of a shame because a ruined port with half sunken ships would be an interesting place to explore.
Admittedly I haven't explored the whole map yet but I've explored almost all of the early game areas and the Altus Plateau, and from what I can tell, most of the game world I haven't visited at this point is higher up and thus would be ill-suited for a port, so If there wasn't one in Caelid, Luneria or Limgrave, there's likely not one at Mt Gelmir or the Mountains either.
