The combat of Elden Ring, at its core, is the same as in Dark Souls 3. If you had fun with Dark Souls 3, you're gonna have fun with Elden Ring. Personally, I love Dark Souls 3, so I had fun with Elden Ring. However, there are a ton of issues with this game.

First off, weapon upgrade materials. They’re way too rare, which means you’re never encouraged to experiment with weapons. Getting the ability to buy them eventually helps I guess but even then, they’re way too expensive (getting a new weapon up to level with your current level is pretty much always more expensive than a level up) and the bell-bearings are way too missable for how important they are. Also, the fact that they’re so granular feels like super weird design to me. It means you get punished for doing things out of order/exploring, and it leads to frustrating situations where you could upgrade your weapon to +18 if only you could get it to +12 first. Why even have that many types of upgrade stones if 2 of them are bundled for each bell bearing?

The design of a lot of bosses is also not very fun to me. Too much AOE, too many delayed attacks, which combined means that your dodge roll is less of a repositioning tool and more of a source of iframes than ever before.

The game is also way too large. The game has to constantly recycle things to be full of stuff. Recycled enemies, recycled bosses, and worst of all, recycled dungeon mechanics, are all commonplace in the later parts of the game. Additionally, the pacing of the game is just off to me. At one point, I defeated a boss and felt ready for the game to end soon. Instead I was told to go somewhere entirely new. I went to the next area (which I found incredibly boring), defeated the boss, and did the thing I was told to do. And then I was teleported to some place for some reason. That place was also boring to me so I decided to give the game a break because I could feel myself slowly starting to despise it.

I also don’t like how disconnected the multiplayer features are from the rest of the game. Not linking the ability to summon to anything means you’ll never just randomly see a summon sign and think “sure, why not”, summoning always has to be a conscious choice.
I understand that a lot of people are glad that they won’t be invaded unless they do coop, but I actually liked being invaded every now and then, but I don’t want to be invaded so much that I’ll use the taunter’s tongue.

All that said, there are also many positives to Elden Ring. The game is beautiful, especially the earlier areas. Spirit Ashes and Ashes of War are both incredibly cool new features. Power stance (mostly) being back is great. The worldbuilding is amazing and I do not understand why people say it’s just dark souls with different proper nouns. Radahn is probably my favourite boss fight from any Fromsoft game, the spectacle is just through the roof.
Like I said, despite all of the issues I have with this game, I still had a fun time with it and I will finish it eventually, I just really need a break right now.

Last but not least, performance on the Ps4 was decent. Some loading screens took too long, and the game was a bit chunky in areas with lots of particle effects (that you can’t reduce/turn off) but I was playing a modern game on 9-year-old hardware so I’m not going to complain. Imagine playing Bloodborne on the Ps3.


In conclusion, Elden Ring is a great game for people who like Dark Souls 3, but not quite as good as Dark Souls 3.

This might be nostalgia speaking but I think on the whole I prefer smaller, tighter Zelda games. There’s a certain point where exploration loses a bit of that exciting new sheen. Also, while I appreciate that the Gerudo have had more emphasis placed on their heroic characters and the Hylians themselves are more racially diverse than they’ve been in the past, I’m still not entirely sure that puts to rest the thornier aspects of Ganondorf as a character, a brown, hooked nose, brutal foreigner come to take over Hyrule. The fact that Ganon was the villain in the last game as well just meant that I wasn’t super interested in seeing his human form in the immediate next game. Maybe it’s because my in to the series was the handheld titles but my attitude is that we really don’t need the Same Guy to be the villain in every game.

That’s a lot of complaining but at the end of the day I did like this. I liked the additions to the BoTW formula (fuse especially was my friend, making weapon durability less annoying because even if all you had were sticks you could do something with them). I liked being able to be an intrepid reporter (tho I suspect I’m being underpaid at 100 rupees per story given I almost died for a fair few of them - where are Hyrule’s unions when you need them?) I liked that the dungeons and bosses were more varied in aesthetic than the last game (tho I always thought the map manipulation technique there was neat and I was sad to see it go entirely). At the end of the day, I like Zelda, and I haven’t ever played a Zelda game I disliked. If there are others I liked more than this it just means there are a lot of good video games out there.

I was planning to play through the game 2 more times, once with the Dark Urge Origin and once going the "evil"/absolutist route
But then I saw how much stuff Larian is already announcing to add and idk I am just so fucking tired. Yeah I felt like the ending was a bit lackluster and it's cool that Karlach will be able to get a better ending and all but like.
I would just like to be able to buy a finished game. And then play the game at launch with the knowledge that I'm not missing out on anything by not waiting 5 years until every single patch has dropped. It's so strange to me that there was this huge discussion when this game came out about setting new standards because you can just buy a complete game for 60€ when the game demonstrably wasn't complete.
Of course I like it when things get better over time but I don't have enough time to replay every single game each time it gets a patch so I'd just appreciate it if a game releasing meant it is now as good as it gets. Especially a title that spent 3 years in early access.

My girlfriend loves this game
Ever since she bought this game she hasn't stopped playing not for a single day
sometimes we're together vibing in the same room or watching something and she's playing bloons in the background
I once asked her how the game was and she went "it is very fun!" with a big smile on her face, and seeing that always brings joy to my face

I don't like this game very much because my brain isn't that big and failing gives me a bit of anxiety, but I do notice she does like it and she's very smart and that just shows how cool she is and idk I just fucking love her