Elden Ring Review

Elden Ring is the latest action RPG by the creators of the Souls series FromSoftware. This time around, they created a memorable experience by making the game set in an open world, and by collaborating with George R.R. Martin for the worldbuilding. Elden Ring takes all the aspects that FromSoftware is well known for, and then improves on them in various ways.

Due to the previous games of the developer having a very large following and being well received — especially Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice — the game had a lot to live up to.

So, let’s see how FromSoftware fared in their first foray into open world game design.

Genre

• Obtuse storytelling
• Lots of interesting and unique NPCs to interact with
• Fantastic and epic boss fights
• Interesting lore
• Fantastical environments

Elden Ring delivers exactly what one would expect from a FromSoftware action RPG with some very welcome additions and changes. It delivers a bleak and dying world, combat that focuses on stamina management, timing with trial and error, FromSoftware’s signature style of stat management, and so much more. Elden Ring excels at taking an existing formula and putting it into an open world setting. Furthermore, Elden Ring improves on the Souls formula in some very interesting ways: shields have become a more active thing, poise breaking, jumping, and a couple more things.

Not only do all the gameplay classics of FromSoftware make a return, but also story wise it’s very much in line with its predecessors. The storytelling is as obtuse and mysterious as ever; characters are unique and quirky, and there are a lot of item descriptions to read. Yet, partly thanks to the collaboration with George R.R. Martin, the world is more fleshed out and does have much more substance than other games in FromSoftware’s library. The plot and the lore have never been clearer, which they managed to pull off without compromising the signature style of storytelling that is common in the Souls type of games. The player still has to find the lore, which can be found, and is definitely worth the effort.

All in all, it’s a package that delivers exactly what one would expect, but with some very welcome improvements and changes.

Game Play

• Very responsive controls with some hiccups here or there that can cause some frustration in rare circumstances.

• Excellent combat system
• Management of spacing, stamina etc. is very important

• Very challenging and rewarding
• High degree of customization of difficulty with items etc.

• Masterful level design
• Intricate dungeons and an exciting open world.

As an overall package, the gameplay is incredibly solid. The controls are tight, the fights are challenging, and the world is a joy to explore. However, it’s not perfect; there are some issues here and there like seemingly inconsistent input queueing or bad hitboxes.

The controls are overall very responsive. The player character reacts as one would expect. It’s the expected slow and methodical controls that have been tried and tested since the original Dark Souls. However, with that come some issues. For example, the input queueing can lead to some frustration to players who are not used to it. Input queueing is when a game queues up inputs to be executed later if you press a button while the animation of a previous input is still playing. This means that if you press the roll button while the character is still drinking from the flask of Crimson Tears, your character will roll after that animation has finished. While it is a great way to prevent simple button mashing, the timing for queueing up inputs seems to be a bit arbitrary at times, which results in some rare instances of frustration where the player character seemingly ignores certain inputs from the player.

There are some other minor frustrations as a result of the inclusion of the jump button. In order for A (on XBOX) / X (on Playstation) to be the jump button FromSoftware had to switch up the control scheme. One switch up is two-handing weapons, which is now done by holding the Y-button and then pressing RB or LB (triangle + L1/R1 on Playstation controllers) depending on which hand you want to two-hand with. This would not be too much of an issue if it wasn’t so inconsistent with the input queue. If one intentionally tries to queue up two-handing one’s weapon, it does not work, and the character instead usually does a normal attack or block. However, it does sometimes happen that the character two-hands a weapon when the player does not intend to, because the game queued up the action despite the player not intending to do so. It is a rare occurrence, but it can lead to some moments of confusion.

So, all in all, the controls are very good, responsive, and feel right when playing, with just some minor issues that can be irritating when they happen.

The combat is similarly solid to the controls, once again, with some minor issues that can lead to some frustrations, which are partly the control issues mentioned above.

The combat is almost exactly like Dark Souls 3, with some changes that do make it feel fresh. The inclusion of guard counters, jumping attacks, and poise breaks brings some very welcome fresh air to the FromSoftware formula. They all contribute to making the combat more reactive than in previous games in FromSoftware’s library.

The guard counters are a quick counter attack that do quite a bit of poise damage, and it can be executed right after blocking a hit. This makes using a shield much more proactive, and a more interesting option than in previous games where dodging was usually the better option. Furthermore, a guard counter can also be executed after blocking with a weapon, so two-handing a weapon and blocking with it is now also a more viable thing to do. Of course FromSoftware increased the damage reduction numbers of blocking with weapons to make it a more viable strategy.

Jumping attacks are made possible in Elden Ring, because it has a dedicated jump button, like Sekiro before it. The jumping attacks are very strong due to them doing more damage than regular attacks, being very quick, and they do a lot of poise damage, thus making it easier to stagger an enemy. Furthermore, they also allow one to jump over certain attacks of bosses and enemies, and get in a quick hit. Overall, it’s a very strong addition to the moveset of the character and like the guard counters, jumping attacks make gameplay more reactive.

Last but not least of the new additions to the combat mechanics is the poise break mechanic. Every enemy, bosses included, have a hidden poise metre and if the player does enough poise damage, the enemy gets staggered; one can get in a critical attack that does a lot of damage. Both the above mentioned additions, guard counters, and jumping attacks, work incredibly well with this mechanic that clearly was inspired by Sekiro’s posture system. The fact that jumping attacks and guard counters do high posture damage make them very effective attacks to be used in any fight in Elden Ring.

Now, while this game gives one a lot of options in terms of different attacks that are very good, it does in no way mean that the game is not challenging. Be assured the game is challenging. There are some key mechanics and design choices that do give players the edge when needed. But the bosses still are very capable of making the words “YOU DIED” show up on your screen quite often during a playthrough.

The well known Dark Souls co-op mechanics also make a return in this game, which are largely unchanged from Dark Souls 3. Some players may dislike that they are not able to play the entire game with a friend, but the system was never intended to be used that way. Summoning was designed as a system to help players defeat bosses that cause them troubles, and the system in Elden Ring is just like that; it works as that system. Of course, the open world nature of Elden Ring makes this system seem more limited, because it limits the playable space in the open world, and it disables horse riding. However, since the system is intended for a struggling player to get an edge over a boss, be it in a boss in a dungeon or a boss in the open field, that they are struggling with it makes sense to have these limits in place.

A completely new addition to Elden Ring is spirit summoning. Spirit summoning allows the player to summon NPC spirits to help them in battle; but, only for most boss fights and some areas that the developers deem challenging enough to allow the player to summon spirits. In order to summon spirits, the player first has to find the spirit ashes and get the item that summons the spirits that is available very early in the game. The spirits are upgradable and some of them are very strong, especially some of the unique ones like the Mimic Tear or Black Knife Tiche. It is an interesting system that is a bit less limiting than summoning another player or an NPC phantom. Though, just like summoning a friend or friendly NPC, it is a system intended to help a player struggling with a difficult area or a difficult boss.

The best thing about these additions to the gameplay is that they are tools that a player can choose to use, but does not have to use. Furthermore, the spirit summons and summoning another player do work much better in terms of making the game more manageable in terms of difficulty than traditional difficulty options would.

The level design in this game is excellent and it is quite remarkable what FromSoftware has achieved here.

Not so great variable Dungeon Complexity & Quality

First of all, the not so great. The various smaller dungeons that can be found around the open world have various degrees of complexity and quality. Some are very simple, while others are a bit more complex and interesting. However, there’s one upside here as well: they are all unique to some degree. While the dungeons share similar, or sometimes even the same elements, they all combine those elements in different and unique ways. This keeps the small dungeons from becoming too repetitive.

Excellent Open World

The level design of the open world is absolutely excellent. It looks great, there are always several distinct landmarks that can be seen when exploring the world and the high degree of verticality in combination with the (mostly) great horse controls make it a joy to explore. There are very few open worlds that are as easy and as interesting to navigate as this one is.

Last but not least, the legacy dungeons. The legacy dungeons are most like the levels of previous Souls games but thanks to the additional verticality of Elden Ring, FromSoftware just went above and beyond to create interesting dungeons to explore. There are so many ways to get through the dungeons and there are so many nook and crannies where stuff is hidden, that it can take several hours just to find most of what a dungeon has to offer. It is hard to explain it in writing, but the pure sense of exploration and curiosity that the very open — yet also very labyrinthian — legacy dungeons evoke in the player, are truly a rare sight in gaming these days.

All in all the gameplay of Elden Ring takes everything that FromSoftware is known for and takes it up a notch. It does not fix some of the issues that previous games had, and it introduces several issues of its own, but it is nonetheless an excellent package.

Story

• Encourages exploration
• Rewards effort put into the game
• Can be a bit obtuse
• Parts of the story can be missed

• Part of the plot is in the gameplay and part of it is in the lore.
• Very interesting story to follow.
• It’s like a playable myth of old.

• A lot of unique and interesting characters.

• Several endings.
• The endings can be a bit hard to understand if one has not followed the plot.

The storytelling in Elden Ring is rather obtuse and for new players, or for players who are not big fans of the type of storytelling that is common in FromSoftware titles, it can be a bit tough to follow.

The storytelling technique used in Elden Ring heavily relies on the player seeking out the story themselves. It is “hidden” in the item descriptions and dialogues with npcs that can be missed. To figure out the history of the world of Elden Ring, the player has to explore, talk to npcs and read the item descriptions of relevant items.

There are a handful of cutscenes and some npcs that are placed in such a way that they basically cannot be missed by any player. Now, for some players these cutscenes and npcs give enough context but for others they don’t.

The plot of the game suffers from this way of storytelling to some extent. While the director Hidetaka Miyazaki has said in interviews, that the gameplay is intended to be the players’ stories, it is still somewhat of an issue, that the player may not understand the context around the gameplay to piece it all together. Now, while this is typical for FromSoftware games and it’s part of their charm, it still creates a bit of an issue with players that are not aware that they have to seek out the story. It also creates issues for players that like more direct storytelling, so it can be off-putting to some players.

However, leaving these issues aside, this game has one of the most interesting and unique casts of characters of any game in FromSoftware’s roster. All their quests are engaging, albeit hard to find in some cases, and the rewards are worthwhile. The lore of the game is also absolutely excellent and incredibly interesting to get lost in. George R.R. Martin and Hidetaka Miyazaki really did create an interesting world with a host of interesting characters in it.

Additionally, like every FromSoftware game before it, Elden Ring has several endings. A standard and not particularly interesting one and then several that all have to do with npc questlines. All the endings are interesting to some extent, but some of them are really difficult to get, because of the difficulty of finding the relevant steps of the npc questlines. Furthermore, some of the endings can be a bit disappointing due to relevant lore being missable and them being very short cutscenes. Overall, however, the endings are good and some of them even excellent, if one has gotten all the context.

In conclusion, the story of Elden Ring is great, but the way it is delivered can lead to players completely missing it. While this is exactly what fans of FromSoftware want and appreciate, it certainly can lead to frustrations for some players and it could’ve been handled a bit better.

Visuals

• The world of Elden Ring looks absolutely fantastic.
• The art style lends itself very well to this mythological world that is in ruin.
• It is like a Romanticist — or rather Dark Romanticist — painting come to life.

• While overall a competent package, there are some shadows, textures, and models that look a bit off.
• Quite heavy pop-in for foliage.
• Great render distance
• Great enemy animations
• A lot of reused animations

Imperfect Romantic beauty

Visually, Elden Ring is a beauty to look at. This is largely thanks to the excellent art design. Graphically, however, there are some issues here and there as well as some things that may not distract from the game, but still could be improved in the future.

As mentioned above, the art style is absolutely outstanding, and it clearly takes inspiration from Romanticist art. Some of the main characteristics of the art of the Romantic era are: appreciation of the past, mystery, and a love for the mythical. All of this is found in the way Elden Ring presents its world. Ruins are all around the place, and distant fog hides away parts of the landscape. Let us not forget the towering Erdtree that is dominating the landscape. This art style does an excellent job at presenting the world of Elden Ring as a mystical and mythological world with history and depth. Nothing feels out of place and everything appears to be where it is for a reason.

A few graphical issues

However, while the art style is outstanding and makes up for the graphical shortcomings, these graphical shortcomings are there nonetheless. The shadows, especially those on trees and on the ground in some areas, don’t work properly and fade in and out of existence. Furthermore, some shadows have a tendency to flicker when moving near them. The game also suffers from quite heavy pop-in when it comes to the foliage on the ground. The render distance is pretty good, and the fog that hides away some of the scenery, which seems to be more of an artistic choice than a trick to hide poor rendering distance, so it’s not really an issue. Apart from the pop-in of the foliage and the shadow issues, there are a few other graphical issues. Some textures and models don’t look too great if looked at closely; some of the animation of trees swaying in the wind make it look like the leaves are dancing, rather than blowing in the wind.

Re-used animations

Another graphical aspect that is very good and not so good at the same time are the animations. The animations for both enemies and the player character are good overall, with some not being too great; there sadly being quite a few reused animations from previous games. Generally speaking, reusing animations is not a negative point per se, but Elden Ring does re-use quite a lot of animations from other games that FromSoftware has developed, e.g. the door opening animation has been the same since at least Dark Souls. There is a silver lining here though, as the animations are solid to begin with, and there is a large amount of completely new content, so the re-use of animations is not too big a deal.

The same male and female character animations

A further area where it would be nice to see some changes are player character animations. The male and the female character models use the same animations. For that to work, the developers had to make the female character model fit with the same animation rig as the male character model. This means that the female characters in the game tend to not have a very feminine shoulder width and physique. This is not an issue that impacts gameplay in any way, and thus does not lead to any point reduction, but it would be nice to see the female player character look and move more feminine in future games.

All in all, though there are some graphical issues which could be improved, these rarely if ever distract one from the game. Also, the absolutely fantastic art style more than makes up for some strange shadows, the pop-in, some not so great textures, and re-use of animations.

Audio

• Fantastic orchestral score by several contributors: Shoi Miyazawa, Tai Tomisawa, Tsukasa Saitoh, Yoshimi Kudo, Yuka Kitamura.

• All the sound effects are sound spot on and impactful.

• Very solid voice acting.
• All the characters sound unique and different.

The audio design in Elden Ring is top notch with barely anything that one could find fault with.

Perfect Music

The music is very good; it perfectly fits with the different themes and ideas the game is trying to portray. Unlike previous Souls games (except for Sekiro) Elden Ring has music that plays outside of boss fights or important areas. In most previous games, there only was music during either boss fights or in very significant areas such as Firelink Shrine in the original Dark Souls. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice also had area music and combat music for general enemies, but it was a bit overbearing at times and could distract from the gameplay in some rare instances. Luckily, Elden Ring does a great job with background music being very subtle and atmospheric when it needs to be, but it also manages to be bombastic and epic when the gameplay demands it.

Perfect Sound Effects

The sound effects are similarly excellent to the score; they are exactly the way they need to be. The sounds of impacts sound meaty and heavy, the moans of enemies sound creepy and nasty, the spells and incantations sound the way one would expect, and the really big earth shattering attacks from bosses really make use of the bass in headphones or speakers. Overall, the sound design is consistently very good and nothing really could be improved here.

Top-Notch Voice Acting

Just like the music and the sound effects, the voice acting is top notch. There are one or two lines that are delivered a bit clunkily, but for the most part, they are excellent. Stand-outs are Roderika, Rykard and the various Fingerreaders the player can encounter; the voice actors really did a great job with these characters.

From music to sound effects, to voice acting, the game just sounds great.

Replay Value

• New game plus. Albeit basically no changes except for enemy damage and health, and more runes.
• Numerous build varieties.
• Several Endings.
• A lot of content.

Elden Ring is highly replayable just like most other games in FromSoftware’s library of games. This is largely because of the new game plus feature, the different endings, the various build options, and the way that the quests are designed.

Why replay? New Game+

As with the other FromSoftware game there are a lot of reasons to play the game again. Biggest among them being new game plus. New game plus allows the player to play through the story again but with all the levels and upgrades, except for certain key items, from their first play through. Furthermore, new game plus increases the runes enemies drop, damage the enemies inflict and their pool. Elden Ring also keeps in tradition with all the previous games by FromSoftware in allowing the player to enter new game plus up to seven times before the damage, health and rune drops of enemies stop scaling upwards. In other words, this allows players to increase the base difficulty of the game up to seven times, keeping in mind that the player character will also have increased strength every time they start another new game plus. The only point that makes this somewhat unattractive is that nothing apart from the increase in difficulty changes in new game plus; the content is still great, but some additional things in new game plus would have been a welcome sight.

Try a different build

Another reason to play the game again is the large number of different builds a player can create. One can create a build around specific stats, such as strength or faith builds, or one can create an entire character around a specific weapon. If you want to be a spell slinging samurai, you can. If you want to be a faithful warrior that uses healing incantations and a big hammer to smash heretics to pieces, you can. If you want to cosplay as a boss, you can (at least with some bosses, not all of them.) This creates a great incentive to play the game more than once, and try out all the different things one could do with one’s character.

Try to get different endings and missed quests

The last major factors that would make a player want to play the game again are the different endings and questlines that are quite easily missed during the first playthrough. Different endings always create an incentive to play the game again to see in how many different ways the story can end, and Elden Ring is no different. In fact, it might be even more enticing with this game since it is quite easy to miss relevant steps for the questlines that open up different endings. However, this is a bit of a double edged sword. The fact that the endings are quite easily missed also make it a bit tough in a second playthrough to find all the steps to get to them. So, while it is an incentive, the steps could be a bit clearer to avoid frustration for some players. Same goes for the NPC questlines that are not relevant for the endings. They also entice the player to play the game and experience all of them, but it can be frustrating to some players that some of the quest steps are very easy to miss.

Overall, the game does give the player a lot of good reasons to play the game more than once, even if there are some things that could make it a bit of a smoother process.

Conclusion

With everything considered, Elden Ring is an outstanding action RPG. It has good controls, a cool world, interesting lore & story, and bosses that make you feel a sense of achievement when defeating them. The game is certainly not perfect, and there are issues that should be fixed or improved in the future or in future games; but as the package that it currently is, it is an excellent game that I would highly recommend to anyone with even a passing interest. FromSoftware have once again shown that they are capable of delivering a game that is just great fun to play.

This was the criteria I used to break down and weigh each of the categories of analysis. This pie chart represents the denominators.

• Genre Expectations
• Game Play
• Story
• Visuals
• Audio
• Replay Value