Nearly a year removed from its launch, free of recency bias, no longer swarmed by the theses of those more eloquent than I, I'm content in saying I don't like Elden Ring. I've beaten it a couple times, played solo and online, used a variety of builds, gone completionist and not, tackled its world in intended and unintended order, had fun and glazed my eyes over in boredom, been in awe of and readily mocked it through and through. I like so very much of it, but I don't like Elden Ring.

I don't like this GRRM-gilded world. There's a prevailing sense of deliberate obfuscation that apes the peculiarities of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls but it's a mere mimick. It is an inverse Rowling-style approach to worldbuilding -- she fills her holes and says they were always filled, Dark Souls had holes and never noticed them, Elden Ring creates holes to taunt the VaatiVidya watcher with the tar with which to fill them.

I don't like this ocean of content. Even if wondrous tsunamis are few and far between, the impetus to purposefully seek them renders them decreasingly effective. The novelty of Walking Mausoleums, Erdtree Avatars, winding tombs, subterranean cities all turn quickly to routine. I can only laugh so many times at a man getting hit in the groin by a football.

I don't like the perpetual breadcrumbs. Scattered like millet for fowl lay treasures for the taking. Of what use is a thousandth herb, a hundredth spirit, a tenth greatsword? None, so say I, if it caters only to that which I am not: the theorycrafter, the PvPer, the challenge runner. And for these redundant fragments to be handed to me after a repetitious romp through yet another imp infested tileset with a singular twist? I am left wondering why I put in the effort.

I don't like the ramp. Other FromSoftware titles, deliberately or not, have tremendous peaks and valleys in their presentations of power and the scope of encounters. From the terror of Ornstein and Smough to the odd simplicity of Sif to the potential headache of Four Kings to the humour of Pinwheel to the fear of Nito to the melancholic ease of Gwyn. Here, outside of minibosses, I proceed uphill eternal as Sisyphus. On paper it is an ideal, in reality it is a fatigue. Does it seek to frustrate? Does it matter? There is no reprieve on the intended path.

I don't like that this is designed for me to like it. Polished to a mirror sheen, every aspect is intended to appeal to me. A personality in flux to receive my adoration, never showing me that true, imperfect self. I long for the idiosyncrasies of a chance encounter.

I had so much fun with you, and I came away with the understanding it was all a falsehood. The dopamine was real. The sentimentality, a fiction.