Possibly the best title made by Fromsoftware as a complete package?

Does it have the best combat? Not necessarily, BloodBorne and Sekiro have more interesting playstyles but it absolutely makes up for it in terms of diversity of what a player can do to express their way of playing. This comes through the sheer number of armours, weapons and weapon ARTS (which is essentially an added attack to any given weapon thus increasing how much depth each weapon has) that exist in the game.

Does it have the best bosses? Some would say Dark Souls 3 still takes the cake for that but I would make the case that this game still has some top contenders for some of the most epic fights in gaming and if you care about lore, you are in for a TREAT with this.

Best Soundtrack? Not even close to DS3 but still has some major bangers.

World Building? Probably yes. JRR Martin did his magic, named 7 characters some combination of Morg Moe Margret whatever and called it, but on the real this is the most densly packed lore for any of the Fromsoft games.

So what else makes this the best one out of all the Fromsoftware's catalogue? Well the same way how each of the other entries take the cake for their respective categories like art direction, combat, bosses, etc, what Elden Ring does so beautifully is sample the things that make those games so great and compiles it into one of the best open world experiences, individually, the components aren't the best that they have been, but as A SUM OF PARTS, the game works incredibly well.

It doesn't go without saying however that there certainly are some things that irk me about the game but its mostly related to performance and stutter. It doesn't even happen when there is a lot of enemies on my screen or anything graphically insane occurring, seems to be somewhat random, I could be walking down some cave hallway and my frame rate goes down to single digits.

I will say however, this game seems to have a hard on for making dungeons that have those stupid chariot enemies that almost always one shot you, they never posed an interesting challenge and will continue to fail to make the game any more interesting after your 3rd encounter with them. The game also claims that it has 100+ bosses but a MAJORITY of those are just rehashes of previously encountered ones with either another henchmen added to the mix or literally the same boss with a couple different moves added to arsenal, lazy if you ask me. I'd take half the bosses of Elden Ring if it would mean they were at least somewhat unique. Like seriously, it takes away the thrill of ever coming across the boss room, the game has less unique bosses than DS3 and people will still defend the game for having so many bosses.

I've never enjoyed PVP as much as I have in this game, so many cool ways of making your build, so many unique weapons and ashes of war, etc etc all culminate into a nearly endless number of builds and play styles. You can build your character either around a single weapon or the concept of poison itself. Only issue that arises for me is, once again, lag and stutter as a whole, its caused me a bunch of deaths in combat but otherwise I can confidently say that this is the best PVP experience out of all the games in terms of customisation and breadth.

The game map is great but the fact that it does not tell you that you have completed/cleared a dungeon/cave is very annoying and you end up using third party tools like the IGN map to tick off items on your list as you go for a 100% run. Aesthetically its masterful and I love the inclusion of picking up map scraps deep within the region itself so you get a feel for the area before you hit up all the points of interests immediately without getting an appreciation for the amazing world building that the devs have done by organically exploring the region and seeking out locations with just your compass and player view.

Limgrave will most likely go down as one of the best and memorable starting areas of an open world gaming.

Item crafting has made it such that a lot of the archetypal consumables from previous games that you were normally too afraid of using (because you thought you'd need them in the future) you can now more freely consume and utilise within your play through. A lot of people still go through the whole game not crafting a single item just fun and they treat it just like the old games but if you ask me that's just under utilising a feature that they clearly put a lot of thought and effort into in regards to its progression and purpose within the games environment/ethos. It is there to be used but if you really want to go around it no ones stopping you and im sure you will have a good time regardless.

The lore? From the parts I was able to piece together and research, its phenomenal, however, ♥♥♥♥ the naming scheme, I got confused between Melina, Malika? Malenia, Malaceth, Mohammamed, Godrick, Godfrey, so many ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ similar sounding names so it naturally posed a higher barrier of entry for someone like me who already sucks with names. I don't want to go on a whole lore side ramble here but there is so much more to the Dung Eater and his ending then I thought (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvTM03_8elE&ab_channel=VaatiVidya) this video is incredible in terms of telling his story.

Oh yes, the other issue I have is that INVADING other people has been somewhat neutered entirely because theres really no point in doing it aside for the rune arcs which, lets be real, no one cares about because that whole mechanic is incredibly undercooked. No real covenants which is disappointing.

Aside from those points, I truly think there is a game for everyone in Elden Ring, you like just exploring a vast and detailed universe? You want to just spend 90% of your playtime trying out weapons in PVP and learning new combat arts? You want to just grind out enemies and go for a very satisfying completionist run? Elden Ring offers that and more, they continue to update the game and add in major changes and balances and I CANNOT wait to see what they come up with for any future DLC.

This game was made by ants. Take everything, story, gameplay, characters, UI, location, and overall appearence, the game is ♥♥♥♥ on all ends. Litteraly every character important to the story that ive come across has major issues. No clipping through the ground and flying around with them repeating their dumbass diologe over and over, them simply just not regocnizing your existance leading to them just playing their same 3 second animation of fidgeting with their ♥♥♥♥♥, they are just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awful. No interesting characters beside the guy who your trying to kill the whole game and "buddy" system is a complete joke to me. Your companion/buddy does ♥♥♥♥ all and is pretty much used as a second life everytime you die with a short cinematic playing everytime you die and your buddy showing up and carrying you away (which for some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason takes away your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ secondary weapon because everytime they take you away they give you a pea shooter pistol.) There pretty much isnt a story or any reason for there to be one because the games series of events are so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ poorly put together. So your some jackass mercenary who is sent from god knows where to kill some other jackass (the Jeckle or someshit) and on you first ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ day you get MELERIA (Nice one you ♥♥♥♥). So you get meleria after getting off in a city looking for leads to get to this Jeckle guy but are too sick so you sit in your bed all day like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ moron when a bunch of african tribes start a gunfight in a peacful city and kill everyone and you get taken away while your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ screen is having a seziure with all sorts of annoying blur and particle effects. So you are taken and litteraly the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ second you wake up your hired for some other people, and you just roll with it. They send you on a god awful mission mixed with a tutorial and you sorta just work for them now. SIKE, you dont really have to work for them cause right after that first mission you can just ♥♥♥♥ right off and do some other boring ♥♥♥♥ for other people. So at that point I was confused if there really was a """"story"""", what the ♥♥♥♥ was happening, ive done some side quests for this guy who told me to stop some weapons from going from point a to b, I have meleria and there is a companion guy who gives me medicine for it. WhAt? Whats happening? Then the game sorta tells you "oh yeah you have this guy who you need to kill ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ but ill hide this information behind three other menu's so you slowly start to forget". Then you have the """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""UI"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""". JESUS ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ CHIRST, the games UI is primary evidence that the game was made by non human organisms. You hold the shift button down for around 4.5 seconds and your guy just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tumbles on the ground with your UI just losing its ♥♥♥♥ with you running out of breath. This happens over and over again, the blur effect just murders your eyes after an hour of gameplay and the walking speed by itself is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ PAINFUL. So you're forced to keep sprinting with 1 second delays in order to avoid the god awful blur effects so you end up with 3.5 second burts of mediocre speed. This is what leads to getting from point a to point b take half an hour depending on where you are going (unless you are using the cars with the painfuly sluggish contols). Maybe the species that made this game cant see the blur? Maybe they gain a boost of melatonin everytime they see it? Who the ♥♥♥♥ knows. More on the UI, THE MAP. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ could they not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ make the map and the GPS two seperate things? Like have the map be its own menu kind of thing with the GPS scanner being a holdable object? LIKE A NORMAL GAME? Cause you have the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ map take up 85% of your screen while you have some 10% covered by the GPS and then you have the remaining 5% (mainly the sky) be the actuall ♥♥♥♥ infront of you that you are walking on. So you have to keep ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ switching between map and weapon in order to see where the ♥♥♥♥ you are going and after a while you get a headache from this and just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ quit the game. Then you have the location and appearence of the game. Its boring, the art style and the way they tried protraying Africa is just done awfuly. I have seen games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R show off a grim and dark environment while NOT BEING BORING, THERE SOME INTERESTING ♥♥♥♥ HAPPENING AT LEAST. With this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game its all just brown and maybe some dark green if you make it to the northen forests and more brown if you go south into the desert. In terms of rain and environment systems its also pretty ♥♥♥♥, youve had older games that have done it much better, Half life 2, Uncharted 1, Oblivion. This games only decent feature are the dynamic fire mechanics which can lead to small fires set by the player turning into full on forest fires and the slightly nice looking water in the savanah region. Otherwise, ♥♥♥♥ game, dont buy even when on sale, it WILL hurt your eyes and waste a lot of your time.


2.5/10
1.5 for the level editor, and 0.5 each for the dynamic fire and water.