This was the first souls game that I decided to dedicate myself to and I'm very glad I did. I originally didn't want to play this due to me not being sure if I enjoyed souls games that much. I had tried before to play DS3 but it ended up with me quitting the game. I am happy to say Elden Ring gave me no feelings from DS3. When I tried the game out I was blown away by the nature of going around and doing what I wanted instead of a linear path even if I could do just that if I wanted. The goal was clear but I was really free to enjoy everything I wanted to do without worry. While I tried to look over mostly every nook and cranny I'm sure I didn't find probably over 50% of the game.
Another one of the biggest things for me going into this was the difficulty. My original thoughts from seeing others play and general opinions of souls games was that this game would break me in half. This expectation was wonderfully put down but not all the way to shatter my expectations. While I still had difficulty with some areas and bosses I never felt like an area was too difficult for my own good. It usually came down to it being my own fault and something I needed to learn and get better at. This same thought process was true for pretty much the entire game. Even when I would face the toughest bosses like Malenia or The Elden Beast I knew that if I just went in and learned the fight I would be able to win. It all felt like a learning process and that over the course of the whole game I was growing and becoming better with each passing battle.
One of the other biggest things to me that I appreciated was the presentation. The game looked absolutely stunning to go through with multiple areas I could stop and look out and the landscapes and see the choices that were made through this. I would always stop at points and think it looked like a painting and the fact this happened multiple times in my playthrough shows the range that the game goes to show off its different areas.
Overall, I enjoyed my time Elden Ring very much. The game was spectacular almost the whole way through and I am very pumped for the DLC now that I am finished with the main game. I'll probably go back around for ng+ sometime and I'll probably find a ton of things that I missed on the original time around. I don't know if I'll do long reviews like this for other games so we'll have to see but I'm glad I was able to get my thoughts out on this fantastic game that FromSoft has made