Elden Ring Review

 Good game but it's waaaay to long. I loved DS2 but people complained about that because to many bosses and this game just keeping it going. I hate bosses they have more than one phase and if any boss has a split from one to another and if you die you have to do the entire thing again. Any boss that has a dumb easy first phase will 100% have a second one that is way more hard but you have to do the boring part every single time and it's terrible. Boss design in DS1 and DS2 was better overall. **Have a good solid boss design and not a boring first part**

The endings are fucking terrible. I had an ending with my favorite character and it was literally nothing. I looked up another ending and the was the same exact thing but one word was changed, this sucks and ruins a lot of it.

Overall game is good but it should not have been 100+ hours long with only about maaaybe 5 cool dungeons. Stormveil castle was the only real part of the game that feels like old school DS. Other parts are neat but a lot of stuff that is just meh.

Open world is cool but clearly they are treating items and NPCs similar to earlier DS games and the issue with that is you can find an item after you have explored an area so you will never see the character that needs the items unless you look it up or retrace every single grace/area again and again. The "quest" design is based on older DS games but does not really fit with the open world.

The game is a solid 3/5 and that's it. It's good but a lot of issues that hopefully they fix in the next one.

Edit: Changing to negative review. I've had more time to think about the game and it's as follows.

1. They took covenants out of the game and to me that is a core pillar of the series. Nothing added replaces them and it's noticeably missing.

2. The quest design was not updated to account for an open world game. If you can never find core NPCs needed because you explored first is not okay. It's possible to never find the faith trainer because you explored first and just don't come across him. He may tell you where he is going but it's poor design to not have a log or something in game.

*before people try to say that would ruin it....people...I had the tutorial in my inventory the ENTIRE game, they could do NPC logs or something. I should not have to go out of the game to find the main guy for me*

3. Bosses are fuckers in this game. Maybe just for faith build but they require a "cheese" weapon to beat or you chip tiny health away very slowly. Game more so than the others encourage str/endurance or OP magic spells (as seen in all the videos)

4. Boss design overall. Almost every late game major boss has a dead easy first phase and then a shit you second phase. Redoing these fights are boring and honestly leads to boring design. It was cool the first few times seeing them change (Godrick) but after a while I just knew any time the boss just walks to me all slow and I can destroy them they will have a second phase. I would rather better boss flow and design.

5. The open world is neat and gives a ton of very pretty framed shots but it does nothing for the game at a whole. I am sure they will do better next time and maybe learn some things from Zelda BOTW on how to design an open world but this was not it.

6. The game should not be 100+ hours long. People made fun of EA for what the UI would look like if they made it.....but the open world is almost straight out of an EA game. It's mostly pointless and could have been streamlined a lot.

7. Spells, there are just to many. Most of the spells feel pointless and like they are fluff just to check off a number that could say more than 1k builds...etc. A lot of late-game faith spells feel pointless and MAYBE they are pvp but honestly thats just not fun and poor design.

Overall Elden Ring is a good game but it is by far the worst game that From had made....again. The game is good as all From games are but it is the bottom of the pile.

*Ending Spoiler...sort of*

8. The ending fucking suck ass. I did the ending with Fia as she was the best character and the ending was literally nothing. I sit in a throne and nothing happens and Fia was basically all but forgotten....nothing....NOTHING? I checked another ending out and it's the same thing just a different word is spoken for that specific ending...that some Mass Effect changing color bullshit.

I expected more as they spoke on story more but also the game was marketed as working with the GOT guy and I assumed that meant something. Why have any story at all if there is literally no payoff that matters with the story you went with? Garbage.