Finished last night.
I've been doing this whole song and dance since '09 when Demon's Souls came out. Uncharted 2 won 'most' GOTY awards that year, but I remember seeing that GameSpot awarded their GOTY to a different game that I had no idea about. I had to find it (if you were around back then, you likely remember it was also kind of hard to track down a copy of Demon's Souls).
I immediately fell in love with the 'dance' that we used to exclaim was the real beauty of FromSoftwares game design. It was challenging, but it was fair and it felt like you were often on even footing. Dark Souls comes out and that is where they landed on peoples radars finally and I also remember it had that same 'dance' that you felt with the previous game, just a bit more refined. There was a give and take rhythm to it all that was intoxicating and a joy to play. Genuine reward felt after almost every boss.
...but I could see what lay on the horizon. When Dark Souls exploded and as the fanbase grew, there was this very mistaken idea that these games were good because they were 'HARD'. It's the biggest mistake centered around a fanbase that is, to be quite frank, fucking insufferable lol. There is way more that goes into a game that makes it great than just 'difficulty' and it's sadly what many hold FromSoftware games up to. Demon's Souls / Dark Souls / Bloodborne weren't great simply because they were difficult. What was on the horizon in my eyes was that because of this 'reputation' they became known for, there would inevitably be that moment where they would develop themselves into a corner: THE NEXT LEVEL. What is the next level of difficulty we can throw at them?
With Elden Ring, the 'greatest hits' design of the game that pulls from each and every game they have made to date worked against itself and it landed in a territory of some of the most imbalanced design I've seen. It's kind of a mess. The DLC extrapolates on this immensely in my opinion. The dance that I once loved is now something where both partners are out of step and rhythm with each other. One partner (the player) and the other partner (the game) are not dancing to the same song. It's messy.
CAN you beat this DLC and every boss? Absolutely. For me, just because you 'can' doesn't mean it was great / satisfying. I finished up the final fight yesterday after hours of trial and error against [redacted] and when I finished it, it was NOT that classic sense of reward and accomplishment. No, it was replaced by exhaustion and relief that it was 'finally over' and I could move on. I felt this a few times in the base game, but with this DLC, I felt it way too many times to ignore. (Shoutout to Midra for being the best thing in the DLC though, stellar moment).
I do recognize I'm perhaps in the minority here and Elden Ring 'likely' goes down as the Magnum Opus of the FromSoftware collection (maybe, who knows what they follow up with). For me, it's like that really ambitious double album where some tracks have a very clear vision and others you feel like the band wasn't entirely sure what they were doing with it. Yeah, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is a pretty legendary record, but I still vastly prefer Siamese Dream.
I've been doing this whole song and dance since '09 when Demon's Souls came out. Uncharted 2 won 'most' GOTY awards that year, but I remember seeing that GameSpot awarded their GOTY to a different game that I had no idea about. I had to find it (if you were around back then, you likely remember it was also kind of hard to track down a copy of Demon's Souls).
I immediately fell in love with the 'dance' that we used to exclaim was the real beauty of FromSoftwares game design. It was challenging, but it was fair and it felt like you were often on even footing. Dark Souls comes out and that is where they landed on peoples radars finally and I also remember it had that same 'dance' that you felt with the previous game, just a bit more refined. There was a give and take rhythm to it all that was intoxicating and a joy to play. Genuine reward felt after almost every boss.
...but I could see what lay on the horizon. When Dark Souls exploded and as the fanbase grew, there was this very mistaken idea that these games were good because they were 'HARD'. It's the biggest mistake centered around a fanbase that is, to be quite frank, fucking insufferable lol. There is way more that goes into a game that makes it great than just 'difficulty' and it's sadly what many hold FromSoftware games up to. Demon's Souls / Dark Souls / Bloodborne weren't great simply because they were difficult. What was on the horizon in my eyes was that because of this 'reputation' they became known for, there would inevitably be that moment where they would develop themselves into a corner: THE NEXT LEVEL. What is the next level of difficulty we can throw at them?
With Elden Ring, the 'greatest hits' design of the game that pulls from each and every game they have made to date worked against itself and it landed in a territory of some of the most imbalanced design I've seen. It's kind of a mess. The DLC extrapolates on this immensely in my opinion. The dance that I once loved is now something where both partners are out of step and rhythm with each other. One partner (the player) and the other partner (the game) are not dancing to the same song. It's messy.
CAN you beat this DLC and every boss? Absolutely. For me, just because you 'can' doesn't mean it was great / satisfying. I finished up the final fight yesterday after hours of trial and error against [redacted] and when I finished it, it was NOT that classic sense of reward and accomplishment. No, it was replaced by exhaustion and relief that it was 'finally over' and I could move on. I felt this a few times in the base game, but with this DLC, I felt it way too many times to ignore. (Shoutout to Midra for being the best thing in the DLC though, stellar moment).
I do recognize I'm perhaps in the minority here and Elden Ring 'likely' goes down as the Magnum Opus of the FromSoftware collection (maybe, who knows what they follow up with). For me, it's like that really ambitious double album where some tracks have a very clear vision and others you feel like the band wasn't entirely sure what they were doing with it. Yeah, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is a pretty legendary record, but I still vastly prefer Siamese Dream.
2 Comments
I feel that Smashing Pumpkins analogy :') But, similarly for records and for games, I sometimes wonder if I love the "old stuff" more because of the nostalgia lens. And because the simpler, more focused games/albums are comforting. But imagine how boring things would get if everyone said "Dark Souls was good, let's keep making that" instead of pushing and iterating (despite making a bunch of mistakes along the way)
akulette
11 days ago