Going through my logs and wanted to write a brief retrospective now that I'm no longer blinded by the "it's finally here" hype.
My most anticipated game of 2022 wound up leaving no lasting impressions on me whatsoever. Instead I felt empty after completing it. This was the game I waited so long for? Word of Elden Ring's arrival had been passed down, the coming of the most innovative Soulsborne game yet.
Instead we got a game that showcased more of Miyazaki's favorite tricks, complete with the usual bells and whistles, set to an open world with shockingly little intrigue that we hadn't already seen before again and again. This time, however, it's open world with a crafting system I hardly touched, and a beloved horse.
Well, at least the horse was a fun touch.
Ultimately I'd say the game just feels more like "Dark Souls but BIG" instead of "Dark Souls but open world".
I don't think open world lent itself to this title very well and it critically lacked the intricate and memorable level design of prior levels in favor of, what I would describe as, content bloat. I stopped being excited about those little side dungeons around the time I realized I'd already seen all of the dungeon bosses and had no use for any of the rewards they offered. The highs are as high as ever, the feeling of beating the fight that'd been kicking your ass for five hours straight is hardly matched in gaming regardless of genre. Yet, Elden Ring's runtime is padded with significantly more mids than highs, fights you forget not so long after. What does this equate to? The game's runtime may be twice the length of Dark Souls 1 or 3, but somehow you're left with about as many memorable moments as games that are significantly smaller - but the amount of quality content in those titles is so much more dense.
Frankly another thing Elden Ring lacked for me was a distinct lack of lows that often tend to set the tone of the Soulsborne games, and often are talked about and cherished as much as anything else. Blighttown and Horse Fuck Valley are looked back upon with as much fondness as Artorias and Slave Knight Gael (until it's time to replay those games, and then suddenly they're the worst things ever) but I would argue this game lacks anything of the sort as its broadly generic dungeon layouts sacrifice challenging (and sometimes nonsense bullshit) design in favor of something like conforming to a formula. Shy of the dungeon that requires the key beneath the tutorial area (which I foolishly challenged at a very early level and got walled on the boss for an entire evening), I can hardly recall anything as memorably frustrating that made me reassess my approach and question if I was getting skill issued or not.
Overall Elden Ring was an interesting experience, and I'm sure it was for the devs as well, but I'm hoping for a return to form in their future projects. It's still a solid title, but I couldn't rate it any higher than anything but DS2 as someone who really wasn't engaged by the idea of "you can go anywhere". Open world is hard to get right, I'd even argue it's a flawed concept inherently in many cases, and I think Elden Ring really did miss the mark on this.
My most anticipated game of 2022 wound up leaving no lasting impressions on me whatsoever. Instead I felt empty after completing it. This was the game I waited so long for? Word of Elden Ring's arrival had been passed down, the coming of the most innovative Soulsborne game yet.
Instead we got a game that showcased more of Miyazaki's favorite tricks, complete with the usual bells and whistles, set to an open world with shockingly little intrigue that we hadn't already seen before again and again. This time, however, it's open world with a crafting system I hardly touched, and a beloved horse.
Well, at least the horse was a fun touch.
Ultimately I'd say the game just feels more like "Dark Souls but BIG" instead of "Dark Souls but open world".
I don't think open world lent itself to this title very well and it critically lacked the intricate and memorable level design of prior levels in favor of, what I would describe as, content bloat. I stopped being excited about those little side dungeons around the time I realized I'd already seen all of the dungeon bosses and had no use for any of the rewards they offered. The highs are as high as ever, the feeling of beating the fight that'd been kicking your ass for five hours straight is hardly matched in gaming regardless of genre. Yet, Elden Ring's runtime is padded with significantly more mids than highs, fights you forget not so long after. What does this equate to? The game's runtime may be twice the length of Dark Souls 1 or 3, but somehow you're left with about as many memorable moments as games that are significantly smaller - but the amount of quality content in those titles is so much more dense.
Frankly another thing Elden Ring lacked for me was a distinct lack of lows that often tend to set the tone of the Soulsborne games, and often are talked about and cherished as much as anything else. Blighttown and Horse Fuck Valley are looked back upon with as much fondness as Artorias and Slave Knight Gael (until it's time to replay those games, and then suddenly they're the worst things ever) but I would argue this game lacks anything of the sort as its broadly generic dungeon layouts sacrifice challenging (and sometimes nonsense bullshit) design in favor of something like conforming to a formula. Shy of the dungeon that requires the key beneath the tutorial area (which I foolishly challenged at a very early level and got walled on the boss for an entire evening), I can hardly recall anything as memorably frustrating that made me reassess my approach and question if I was getting skill issued or not.
Overall Elden Ring was an interesting experience, and I'm sure it was for the devs as well, but I'm hoping for a return to form in their future projects. It's still a solid title, but I couldn't rate it any higher than anything but DS2 as someone who really wasn't engaged by the idea of "you can go anywhere". Open world is hard to get right, I'd even argue it's a flawed concept inherently in many cases, and I think Elden Ring really did miss the mark on this.