Elden Ring: The Endless Playground of Modern Gaming
When you're a child, you grow up with a clear and open-minded view of the world. You're not aware of the bad things happening in the world, may that be tense political moments, crimes being committed, or people being hurt, you're innocence covers it all. Meanwhile, all of that is happening in the world, you're just a kid in their own world, playing in their endless playground. When I was a kid, I got lost in the cartoons I used to watch, Pokemon, Adventure Time, and Regular Show were all I used to watch. I loved, and I mean loved Cars 2 so much regardless of what others have said, that was my favorite movie as a kid. I bring this up because this innocence about the world, and being in your own world, will go away as you get older.
The older you get the more aware you are about the injustices in the world, you also develop and grow as a person by having your beliefs or perhaps define who you are with your sexuality or identity. Not everything mentioned applies to every single person reading this, and that's the beauty of it. We all go through different points of life and are all different as a result. As a kid, you have this endless playground of creativity, this clear and super wide imagination of the world. That's why we make up stuff like imaginary friends or our fictional thoughts and ideas. There is so much content inside the human mind, it's a matter of using it to its potential, and Elden Ring is perhaps the best example of that in gaming.
Elden Ring is the gaming equivalent of that endless playground all those years ago as a kid. The amount of content, world-building, weapons, lore, and everything else just adds up to one of the most addictive games I have ever played in a long time. I've been holding off on Elden Ring since I got it for Christmas last year, I played Demon Souls (2020) before trying out Elden Ring, and I tried to get into Demon Souls so many times, but it just gave the whole "Souls-Like" genre a bad taste in my mouth. I've heard online that Elden Ring was a good entry point into the FromSoft Souls games, but I was still hesitant, that was until I saw Kai Cenat complete it after a 100+ hour live stream. I have nothing against Kai Cenat personally at all, I don't watch or follow any of his stuff, but he seems like a cool dude, but seeing him of all people beat Elden Ring made me think "if he can beat it, so can I". So a few days later, I started Elden Ring for the first time.
When you start Elden Ring for the first time, you can choose your starting class to pick out. For me, it was either between The Samurai or The Hero class to start out with. If Sekrio didn't exist, I probably would've picked the Samurai, being a samurai is badass, but I wanted to be more in line with the medieval fantasy setting of Elden Ring so I went with The Hero, which is probably one of the more "basic picks", but hey, don't make fun of me, this was my first souls game. Anyways, before you set foot into the lands between, you listen to this monologue given by this epic narrator to us, the player, a simple tarnished brought back from the dead.
Man, this speech feels so empowering, even after completing the game, it still hits differently, and paired with the illustrations of the events shown on screen is just chiefs kiss. After the monologue, this is where you begin to control your player character. You open the first pair of doors and explore this small bit of land you're on until you face the first boss of the game, the Grafted Scion. To nobody's surprise, I died the first time around with this boss, and that's the point.
The game continues afterward in a new area after your player character gets revived by a mysterious hooded female character, while you'll know later as Melina (you're properly introduced to her a few hours later so I don't consider this much a spoiler). After she revives the player character we are given two flasks, The Flask of Crimson Tears and The Flask of Cerulan Tears. Crimson Tears are the red potions that give back health lost, and Cerulan Tears are the blue potions that give back FP, which you may or may not use a lot depending on the build you decided to go with for your playthrough. This first cave sequence in the game serves as the official tutorial for Elden Ring, and after coming off Xenoblade Chronicles 2 as the last long RPG I played, with its dogshit tutorials, it was so refreshing to play a game with actual good tutorials.
The tutorial gives the basics about Elden Ring like explaining the Sites Of Grace, which are sorta like checkpoints throughout the map and make traveling the world of Elden Ring much easier to travel. It gives the basics of combat, guarding, and parrying as well. I'm sure if you're a souls-veteran who's been around since OG Demon Souls and Dark Souls 1, this is a no-brainer to you, but for someone like me and others who are diving into Elden Ring for the first time, it's great at helping us out with our baby-steps. After completing the tutorial area, you go above the cave area, to a pair of doors, you open these doors and you are officially in the world of Elden Ring.
The lighting and execution of this first real proper introduction to the wider world of Elden Ring is amazing, you can see how big the world is from the first view. After my first few steps, I get called maidenless by some boso and see the first enemy I can fight in the game. It's just a guy in golden armor with a horse, what can possibly go wrong? I got bitched slapped and humbled more times than I ever felt in my life Yeah... if you couldn't tell, I was referring to the Tree Sentinel. The Tree Sentinel is of course way more powerful than you are at this point of the game. You can beat him of course, even at this point in the game if you're talented enough, but the purpose of the Tree Sentinel being in this opening area of the game is to set this idea in your head to explore the world Elden Ring provides. Explore to find new weapons, explore to find anything.
It reminds me of The Legend Of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, with how the introduction of that game was to me when I first played it. Breath of the Wild was large and open like Elden Ring, both have the protagonist wake up after a long time to a large and open world to explore with little to no guidance. It's not too surprising to find out the Director of Elden Ring, Hidetaka Miyazaki, had Breath of the Wild, alongside Elder Scrolls and Witcher 3, as an influence for Elden Ring, and it shows beautifully.
In the starting area, Limgrave, there is already so much to find. There's the Church of Elleh where you can find the first merchant in the game, Kate, who sells different items you can use for stuff like Item Crafting and Smithing Stones which you can use to upgrade your weapons. When you get to the Gatefront Site of Grace, you're properly introduced to Melina, who aids you in your journey to becoming Elden Lord by being able to help by giving you a ring that summons a spectral steed named Torrent who serves as your horse throughout the game, as well as being the one who levels up your stats. and gives you access to spells. Elden Ring has many different stats you can level up such as Vigor, Mind, and Endurance which serve as the main three stats you'll most likely level up often regardless of the build you go within Elden Ring. During the first half of my playthrough, I went with a Strength build. I wanted to have a big sword and look cool.
I decided to go with a Guts build, to make myself like Guts like Berserk. It's surprisingly easy to get the weapon you need for this build early in the game, thanks to the Greatsword being in the neighbor region Caelid, next to Limegrave. As much it fun it was to be like Guts, it didn't feel satisfying to just hit enemies with the Greatsword, I didn't like how slow I was. So I changed up my stats to be an Intelligence build and completed the game with that build forward. You can change your stats and appearance after beating the fourth mandatory boss in the game thankfully, and I love the flexibility of different builds. There is no such thing as a bad build in Elden Ring. "Wanna do a Dex build?" Yeah go ahead. "Wanna do a Faith build?" Yeah go ahead. Elden Ring is flexible when it comes to what you want to be and play as.
Thanks to being an open world, you can explore the lands between and find better weapons and gear to make things easier for yourself. You can find Golden Seeds to increase the number of flasks, and Scared Tears to increase the potency of what you get out of your flasks. There are also Spirit Ashes, aka Summons. You can summon an NPC to help you combat. Summons are completely optional, you are not forced to use them, however, there are annoying fans who shit on anyone who uses them. Not just with summons, but with other stuff like "If you use Mimic Tear you're playing the game on easy!" or "If you use a bleed build your playing the game on easy!" Just ignore them. At the end of the day, it's a video game, just do what works for you and have fun. "You don't like to use summons?" Cool. "Do you use summons?" Cool. Miyazaki said himself, he sucks at the game and uses every bit of help that his own game has. If the very own director of the game sucks and uses help, don't feel bad about being bad and using help.
The difficulty is what scares a lot of people away from Elden Ring, and other souls-likes in general. That's how it was with me, and much like fear, you can always triumph over it. When I got to the first, mandatory boss of the game, I was getting my ass beaten back to back. It was frustrating, but I realized the difficulty is in your own hands. You will die many times throughout, and one key piece of advice I heard was to learn from your mistakes, analyze what went wrong, and attempt to do better. After realizing this, I played passively with the boss, I did my best to memorize his attack patterns and moments to dodge and attack. I still was dying, but I wasn't mad or pissed off.
I made myself feel better after each death by saying positive affirmations about my progress such as "Oh well, at least I got his health lower than I did last time" or "I did better dodging this move than I did before". I also made notes about how I messed up sometimes like "Oh.. I got greedy and attacked too early". With this boss, he has an item you can get after some side activities that can shackle him, giving you a moment to attack him. Regardless of what I did, the moment I finally defeated him gave me one of the biggest dopamine hits I got from a game. it is so satisfying to see "Great Enemy Felled* on the screen after getting my ass beaten back to back. This hit of dopamine just hits a new high each time you defeat more and harder bosses as you go on. When I defeated the final boss of the game, the dopamine hit was probably the biggest and most satisfying hit throughout my playthrough.
As for the story and lore, Elden Ring keeps things limited. You have to search extensively for lore and read every item description and NPC dialogue to piece things together. Plenty of things get brought up, such as Queen Marika, The Shattering, and the Elden Ring. Thanks to George R. R. Martin and Miyazaki, the world of Elden Ring feels lived in, and realistic fantasy world. There's so much to go with the lore, it is so big and expansive, very similar to what I assume Game of Thrones is like. It'd be awesome if we got a prequel series leading up to the events of the game, the potential is there and would be a hit. It's hard for me to go in-depth with the lore and analyze it because there is so much in this damn game, and I want to keep this spoiler free as much as I can. It's truly something you should play, and watch YouTube videos about later.
Elden Ring is a once-in-a-lifetime game. This must have been how Skyrim felt back then to people when it was released, or when Super Mario 64 was released back in the 90's. Considering the landscape of gaming today, it is a miracle we have a game like Elden Ring to exist. I believe Elden Ring lowkey changed a part of my philosophy when it comes to giving up and losing. Sometimes I feel that I go through a day with nothing done, feeling like I wasted time on something instead of doing something productive. But ever since I completed Elden Ring, my view of that mindset morphed into something more... gentle.
I started to view things in a way that made me feel better about what I did. I may have not done much, but any amount of progress you give yourself and develop yourself into what you want to be, is still adding up to the result you'll ultimately get if you don't give up. It's like fighting a boss in Elden Ring, your gonna get your ass beaten many times, your also gonna get your ass beaten many times in life. But you know damn well you don't just sit down defeated and take those ass beatings as a result! No! You improve yourself, you analyze what you did wrong, and how you can improve next time. As long as you live, you will always have to possibility of improvement, we are not perfect, but we can always work towards what we think is "perfect" and try to be what we want to be. You learn, adapt, change, evolve... so rise Tarnished... and go claim the title of Elden Lord!
Stats:
Played on PS5
Hours into Game: 60 Hours
When you're a child, you grow up with a clear and open-minded view of the world. You're not aware of the bad things happening in the world, may that be tense political moments, crimes being committed, or people being hurt, you're innocence covers it all. Meanwhile, all of that is happening in the world, you're just a kid in their own world, playing in their endless playground. When I was a kid, I got lost in the cartoons I used to watch, Pokemon, Adventure Time, and Regular Show were all I used to watch. I loved, and I mean loved Cars 2 so much regardless of what others have said, that was my favorite movie as a kid. I bring this up because this innocence about the world, and being in your own world, will go away as you get older.
The older you get the more aware you are about the injustices in the world, you also develop and grow as a person by having your beliefs or perhaps define who you are with your sexuality or identity. Not everything mentioned applies to every single person reading this, and that's the beauty of it. We all go through different points of life and are all different as a result. As a kid, you have this endless playground of creativity, this clear and super wide imagination of the world. That's why we make up stuff like imaginary friends or our fictional thoughts and ideas. There is so much content inside the human mind, it's a matter of using it to its potential, and Elden Ring is perhaps the best example of that in gaming.
Elden Ring is the gaming equivalent of that endless playground all those years ago as a kid. The amount of content, world-building, weapons, lore, and everything else just adds up to one of the most addictive games I have ever played in a long time. I've been holding off on Elden Ring since I got it for Christmas last year, I played Demon Souls (2020) before trying out Elden Ring, and I tried to get into Demon Souls so many times, but it just gave the whole "Souls-Like" genre a bad taste in my mouth. I've heard online that Elden Ring was a good entry point into the FromSoft Souls games, but I was still hesitant, that was until I saw Kai Cenat complete it after a 100+ hour live stream. I have nothing against Kai Cenat personally at all, I don't watch or follow any of his stuff, but he seems like a cool dude, but seeing him of all people beat Elden Ring made me think "if he can beat it, so can I". So a few days later, I started Elden Ring for the first time.
When you start Elden Ring for the first time, you can choose your starting class to pick out. For me, it was either between The Samurai or The Hero class to start out with. If Sekrio didn't exist, I probably would've picked the Samurai, being a samurai is badass, but I wanted to be more in line with the medieval fantasy setting of Elden Ring so I went with The Hero, which is probably one of the more "basic picks", but hey, don't make fun of me, this was my first souls game. Anyways, before you set foot into the lands between, you listen to this monologue given by this epic narrator to us, the player, a simple tarnished brought back from the dead.
Man, this speech feels so empowering, even after completing the game, it still hits differently, and paired with the illustrations of the events shown on screen is just chiefs kiss. After the monologue, this is where you begin to control your player character. You open the first pair of doors and explore this small bit of land you're on until you face the first boss of the game, the Grafted Scion. To nobody's surprise, I died the first time around with this boss, and that's the point.
The game continues afterward in a new area after your player character gets revived by a mysterious hooded female character, while you'll know later as Melina (you're properly introduced to her a few hours later so I don't consider this much a spoiler). After she revives the player character we are given two flasks, The Flask of Crimson Tears and The Flask of Cerulan Tears. Crimson Tears are the red potions that give back health lost, and Cerulan Tears are the blue potions that give back FP, which you may or may not use a lot depending on the build you decided to go with for your playthrough. This first cave sequence in the game serves as the official tutorial for Elden Ring, and after coming off Xenoblade Chronicles 2 as the last long RPG I played, with its dogshit tutorials, it was so refreshing to play a game with actual good tutorials.
The tutorial gives the basics about Elden Ring like explaining the Sites Of Grace, which are sorta like checkpoints throughout the map and make traveling the world of Elden Ring much easier to travel. It gives the basics of combat, guarding, and parrying as well. I'm sure if you're a souls-veteran who's been around since OG Demon Souls and Dark Souls 1, this is a no-brainer to you, but for someone like me and others who are diving into Elden Ring for the first time, it's great at helping us out with our baby-steps. After completing the tutorial area, you go above the cave area, to a pair of doors, you open these doors and you are officially in the world of Elden Ring.
The lighting and execution of this first real proper introduction to the wider world of Elden Ring is amazing, you can see how big the world is from the first view. After my first few steps, I get called maidenless by some boso and see the first enemy I can fight in the game. It's just a guy in golden armor with a horse, what can possibly go wrong? I got bitched slapped and humbled more times than I ever felt in my life Yeah... if you couldn't tell, I was referring to the Tree Sentinel. The Tree Sentinel is of course way more powerful than you are at this point of the game. You can beat him of course, even at this point in the game if you're talented enough, but the purpose of the Tree Sentinel being in this opening area of the game is to set this idea in your head to explore the world Elden Ring provides. Explore to find new weapons, explore to find anything.
It reminds me of The Legend Of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, with how the introduction of that game was to me when I first played it. Breath of the Wild was large and open like Elden Ring, both have the protagonist wake up after a long time to a large and open world to explore with little to no guidance. It's not too surprising to find out the Director of Elden Ring, Hidetaka Miyazaki, had Breath of the Wild, alongside Elder Scrolls and Witcher 3, as an influence for Elden Ring, and it shows beautifully.
In the starting area, Limgrave, there is already so much to find. There's the Church of Elleh where you can find the first merchant in the game, Kate, who sells different items you can use for stuff like Item Crafting and Smithing Stones which you can use to upgrade your weapons. When you get to the Gatefront Site of Grace, you're properly introduced to Melina, who aids you in your journey to becoming Elden Lord by being able to help by giving you a ring that summons a spectral steed named Torrent who serves as your horse throughout the game, as well as being the one who levels up your stats. and gives you access to spells. Elden Ring has many different stats you can level up such as Vigor, Mind, and Endurance which serve as the main three stats you'll most likely level up often regardless of the build you go within Elden Ring. During the first half of my playthrough, I went with a Strength build. I wanted to have a big sword and look cool.
I decided to go with a Guts build, to make myself like Guts like Berserk. It's surprisingly easy to get the weapon you need for this build early in the game, thanks to the Greatsword being in the neighbor region Caelid, next to Limegrave. As much it fun it was to be like Guts, it didn't feel satisfying to just hit enemies with the Greatsword, I didn't like how slow I was. So I changed up my stats to be an Intelligence build and completed the game with that build forward. You can change your stats and appearance after beating the fourth mandatory boss in the game thankfully, and I love the flexibility of different builds. There is no such thing as a bad build in Elden Ring. "Wanna do a Dex build?" Yeah go ahead. "Wanna do a Faith build?" Yeah go ahead. Elden Ring is flexible when it comes to what you want to be and play as.
Thanks to being an open world, you can explore the lands between and find better weapons and gear to make things easier for yourself. You can find Golden Seeds to increase the number of flasks, and Scared Tears to increase the potency of what you get out of your flasks. There are also Spirit Ashes, aka Summons. You can summon an NPC to help you combat. Summons are completely optional, you are not forced to use them, however, there are annoying fans who shit on anyone who uses them. Not just with summons, but with other stuff like "If you use Mimic Tear you're playing the game on easy!" or "If you use a bleed build your playing the game on easy!" Just ignore them. At the end of the day, it's a video game, just do what works for you and have fun. "You don't like to use summons?" Cool. "Do you use summons?" Cool. Miyazaki said himself, he sucks at the game and uses every bit of help that his own game has. If the very own director of the game sucks and uses help, don't feel bad about being bad and using help.
The difficulty is what scares a lot of people away from Elden Ring, and other souls-likes in general. That's how it was with me, and much like fear, you can always triumph over it. When I got to the first, mandatory boss of the game, I was getting my ass beaten back to back. It was frustrating, but I realized the difficulty is in your own hands. You will die many times throughout, and one key piece of advice I heard was to learn from your mistakes, analyze what went wrong, and attempt to do better. After realizing this, I played passively with the boss, I did my best to memorize his attack patterns and moments to dodge and attack. I still was dying, but I wasn't mad or pissed off.
I made myself feel better after each death by saying positive affirmations about my progress such as "Oh well, at least I got his health lower than I did last time" or "I did better dodging this move than I did before". I also made notes about how I messed up sometimes like "Oh.. I got greedy and attacked too early". With this boss, he has an item you can get after some side activities that can shackle him, giving you a moment to attack him. Regardless of what I did, the moment I finally defeated him gave me one of the biggest dopamine hits I got from a game. it is so satisfying to see "Great Enemy Felled* on the screen after getting my ass beaten back to back. This hit of dopamine just hits a new high each time you defeat more and harder bosses as you go on. When I defeated the final boss of the game, the dopamine hit was probably the biggest and most satisfying hit throughout my playthrough.
As for the story and lore, Elden Ring keeps things limited. You have to search extensively for lore and read every item description and NPC dialogue to piece things together. Plenty of things get brought up, such as Queen Marika, The Shattering, and the Elden Ring. Thanks to George R. R. Martin and Miyazaki, the world of Elden Ring feels lived in, and realistic fantasy world. There's so much to go with the lore, it is so big and expansive, very similar to what I assume Game of Thrones is like. It'd be awesome if we got a prequel series leading up to the events of the game, the potential is there and would be a hit. It's hard for me to go in-depth with the lore and analyze it because there is so much in this damn game, and I want to keep this spoiler free as much as I can. It's truly something you should play, and watch YouTube videos about later.
Elden Ring is a once-in-a-lifetime game. This must have been how Skyrim felt back then to people when it was released, or when Super Mario 64 was released back in the 90's. Considering the landscape of gaming today, it is a miracle we have a game like Elden Ring to exist. I believe Elden Ring lowkey changed a part of my philosophy when it comes to giving up and losing. Sometimes I feel that I go through a day with nothing done, feeling like I wasted time on something instead of doing something productive. But ever since I completed Elden Ring, my view of that mindset morphed into something more... gentle.
I started to view things in a way that made me feel better about what I did. I may have not done much, but any amount of progress you give yourself and develop yourself into what you want to be, is still adding up to the result you'll ultimately get if you don't give up. It's like fighting a boss in Elden Ring, your gonna get your ass beaten many times, your also gonna get your ass beaten many times in life. But you know damn well you don't just sit down defeated and take those ass beatings as a result! No! You improve yourself, you analyze what you did wrong, and how you can improve next time. As long as you live, you will always have to possibility of improvement, we are not perfect, but we can always work towards what we think is "perfect" and try to be what we want to be. You learn, adapt, change, evolve... so rise Tarnished... and go claim the title of Elden Lord!
Stats:
Played on PS5
Hours into Game: 60 Hours