Elden Ring alludes my ability to create a concrete opinion on a thing. Generally, I don’t like the game. I think it taxes the player more than it rewards, and that dichotomy of experiences makes for a frustrating playthrough. All the same, I find myself replaying the game in an attempt to make another video on it.
After producing about 2.5 hours worth of commentary on Elden Ring, I decided to scrap the project and start again: something about the angle of the video seemed off to me. It isn’t that I can’t talk about the game at length, it’s more that the game doesn’t really deserve, or need, that kind of attention.
In fact, I’d say what I really need to do with Elden Ring is put together a small video that summarizes my thoughts on the main game so that I can move on to a longer video about the DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree.
After making that video, I’ll finally be able to move on from Elden Ring and go on, both physically and emotionally, to play and review other games. Frankly, I’ve been in a sort of rut when it comes to playing other titles due to the somewhat annoying hold Elden Ring has on my mind.
Elden Ring is a Tale of Three Development Cycles
The first cycle is concerned with the bottom trilogy, as I like to call it: Limgrave, Caelid, and Liurnia. These three portions of the map are designed in similar fashion to all of the portions that come after, but for the fact that the late-game design of Elden Ring is hidden from the player when moving through them.
Here, the player is generally motivated enough to clear out each catacomb, encampment, boss fight, evergaol, and every other form of content in an attempt to find all of the rewards and enemies.
Limgrave is a lush greenery with evenly spread-out content, Liurnia is an area that allows for fast boss rushing and opens the mind up to alternate mage builds, and Caelid provides a break in the monotony with a new area and extremely punitive enemies.
The second cycle is concerned with the mid-game Duo: Mt. Gelmir and Leyndell / The Altus Plateau. These two areas start putting pressure on the player to ignore many of the enemies they come across. Not only are these enemies starting to get quite annoying scaling HP/Damage, but they are positioned in ways that generally ask the player to deal with ambushes and collective mobs more often than usual, resulting in encouraged cheese or outright ignoring of the open-world.
The boss fights featured here begin to show just how re-used enemies are. Caves, catacombs, and evergaols will house the same bunch of mini-bosses that were littered throughout the bottom trilogy: Giants, stone meow meows, black knife assassins, and even Godrick the Grafted.
The third cycle is everything late game: The boss rush. Here, the player will be expected to skip the little enemies in the open world, who have banana nut busted scaling and are all bunched together with ranged attacks and 1/2 HP dealing abilities. The bosses are the main course at this point in the game, and so the player will find themselves running through in speed-run fashion.
First, the Captain in the snowy mountaintops, then the Fire Giant to burn the Erdtree. Then Maliketh for Destined Death. After Mally, players with a chip on their shoulders will go after Mohg in his woeful palace, and then go to fight The Blade of Miquella, Melania.
After The Blade, which is both a great fight and a terrible one, players will go back to Leyndell to rush the final Four bosses: Sir Gideon, Godfrey, Radagon, and, finally, the Elden Beast. This time, FromSoftware doesn’t even give you the option to choose between rushing them and taking it slow: they are latched onto one another, one after the other, without pause. Fun.
Finally
I believe one’s opinion on Elden Ring will stem from whichever cycle they finish playing on. Players whose last memory of the game comes from the third cycle will strongly dislike the game. Those who finish during the second cycle may be inclined either way. And those who finish, probably on NG+ will remember the strong promise the bottom trilogy have and will look back on the entirety of the game fondly.
Ultimately, I feel this is why I’ve had a hard time coming to a conclusion about how I rate this game: its good early game obfuscates the poor quality of its late game.
GLHF,
-E