If you enjoy character creation and giving your characters a theme to stick with and love Dragon Ball, this game is well worth it's sale price. Between the accumulation of minor issues and the most OK story ever though, it's hard to recommend it at full price with the game's age. Still, the game still gets free updates including a new raid boss and has a ton of dlc available to you if you want more. I know that wall of dlc looks intimidating but trust me when I say the base game holds up. Just don't expect a mechanically strong fighter or anything wait for the next budokai tenkaichi or get Fighterz.

For me personally, I've loved my time with the game and the game makes it fun to try build up a cosplay build even if the Dragon Drip is limiting at times. If I could give my biggest gripes to this game, it'd be being unable to change a lot of equipment color, mainly iconic ones from the series, an occasional lack of polish, and the game not giving the player that many chances for serious role playing.

The game is also kind mid visually if you don't mess around with the settings. Here's what I did at a 1080p monitor that satisfied me:
Turn off the glare and Depth of Field.
The glare doesn't really look great but is maybe fine on low, but the depth of field looks rancid and just makes the game blurry rather than actually adding a proper depth of field effect.
Next turn off fxaa and enable anti aliasing via your graphics card software. You'll probably wanna turn this off when you're not playing the game to avoid messing with other games or applications.
Lastly, this was the big one for me and makes the anti aliasing a little redundant, was enabling virtual super resolution and running the game at 4k. I did this just fine on a rx 5600 xt and it's an old game, so I wouldn't worry too much about the words 4k here if performance is a concern. This makes things look really sharp and really clean for me.

To begin, let me make it clear that the game is good, and even brilliant at times! Unfortunately however, this game's writing suffers at times and just does not know how to use Ichiban to his fullest.

Presentation
Visually, zero complaints; this game looks good, the cinematography is good in all the dramatic scenes, and the effects and all that are neat. The sound design and music and all that is also solid, though I wasn't particularly blown away by the music in this one, save for a few stand out tracks.

Dubbing
So, I played this game with the dub, meaning I will address the voice work from that perspective, and on that note, the main cast is all pretty good with some great performances too. I know its a trend to complain about Yong Yea's performance, but I actually think as the game went along, I softened up to his performance and he had some of the standout moments performance wise.

Combat
So, the actual JRPG combat systems at play here I would say have a pretty solid foundation, with the many jobs giving you a lot of ways to play the game. My problem here is not so much the foundations, but rather the fact that the game is too easy if you do side content. It would've been nice if there was a hard mode, but you're stuck with what you get for your first run, DLC or not.

Side Content
So, on one hand, the game has a lot of side content, and I mean, a lot. On the other end though, I don't find the side content to really have a lot of substance. So, first off, there's a food delivery mode, which is funny and all, introduced on the premise that Ichiban needs money; fair enough I guess, though you already did this with the can mode in the previous game and it made more sense there. Then there's a mode where you take photos of guys in tights for some reason, one where you just explore some random dungeon, hell one that takes place on some distant island completely isolated from Hawaii called Dondoko Island?! There's a lot of random side content, but that's just what it is: random. Just compare it to Yakuza 5 where each character's extended minigame was thought out and related to the story that's being told, expanding on things that they've gone through as a person. With these numerous minigames, these all just feel like things Kasuga couldn't have gone through, compared to minigames of the past, with Dondoko island being the most egregiously offensive. Then there's the Sujimon stuff, which while also ridiculous, has a lot more meaningful character work than these minigames, leaving me pleasantly surprised, even if that character work wasn't necessarily for Ichiban. So basically, game has a lot of side stuff, that can be fun, but isn't that meaningful.

Substories
As of writing, I haven't done every substory for Ichiban, but I have done all the Kiryu ones. On the topic of the Kiryu ones, they are fascinating dives into the character and his history, with some funny moments; more reminiscent of the kinda stuff you'd find in older games of the series. On the other end of things, Ichiban's substories while they do have some sincere elements, we don't really get dives into who Ichiban is the same way Kiryu's substories get. A real disappointment given how good this character was in the last game.

Main Narrative
So, remember how I said Kiryu's substories get deeper into the character and provide more substance? Apply that to the narrative, but tenfold. Ichiban has almost no interpersonal drama, at least, not any interpersonal drama that is not immediately resolved. Any conflicts that he should have with a group member are immediately resolved, cause he's Ichiban, and Ichiban forgives everyone, he's just a good guy! And look, I love a loveable idiot, but if you're going this route, force him to disagree with his friends, make something interesting happen, not just whatever happens here. This is doubly frustrating because on the Kiryu side of things, he goes through things and angles we've never seen before for the character, and the amount of games he's in is in the double digits! Never has the character felt this vulnerable and forced to depend on people as this game, and it makes those sections all the more stronger and substantive, and Ichiban's sections all the more frustrating to get through. I don't know what happened, but there was just something deeply missing in the writing of this one. Its the first time in the series where I really went, "Wow, is this the series I fell in love with?" for the first time.

Conclusion
Assuming Kiryu is actually out of the spotlight after this one, I hope Ichiban is treated better in future games. He deserves more substantive writing than what he got here. The work done with Kiryu was good, but he is not the entire game.

I want to give this game a higher rating, sincerely so, but there are just so many problems tied to this game that exist in previous FromSoft games that are only doubled down on here. On top of this there are numerous issues with the combat that make it a frustrating experience, particularly with many boss fights.

To start with my single player concerns, you start with incredibly low vigor regardless of the character, but luckily you're able to mend that fairly quickly if you just level up vigor for basically all of the early game. Now, for my major combat gripe, there is not a single boss in Elden Ring with maybe the smallest of exceptions that I would genuinely call fun or good; as for what my big problem is with most of them, they suffer from one of if not all of the following frustrations that make them a pain to fight against. Note that my issues are compounded by the bosses sharing these characteristics rather than being isolated to certain encounters.
1. Obnoxious roll catching moves. Its fine to have a few roll catches here and there, but my issue here is that almost all the fights in this game have some. This game especially has some very frustrating ones that look incredibly stupid, like when Godfrey holds up his hammer for god knows how long, shouting "I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it!" in his head. (No, he doesn't actually say that). By the end of the game you're gonna get sick of this gimmick.
2. Bosses don't give you clear openings or reasonable room to breathe. This applies to some bosses much more than others (basically stuff like beasts and what have you). It kinda ruins the pace of the combat for me and adds a lot more waiting or forces trades.
3. Bosses that just leap and zoom around the place. I don't mind this when its a horse boss, but this happens a fair few times when you're not on a horse. I don't think running across the arena to maybe get one swing in before it attacks you and runs away again is engaging gameplay.
4. This is kind of blend of everything described here, but I don't think the speed of this game works with the game's mechanics. The methodical foundation from essentially Demon's Souls just doesn't support the fast anime fights of bloodborne, especially with how often they happen. If this game had stuff like that game's life recovery mechanic maybe my feelings would be different but as is I think the enemy's are too fast for what the game provides to be satisfying combat.

Okay, that's enough shitting on the game for now, what praises can I give it?
For starters, the game's just drop dead gorgeous; it might have some of if not the best art direction from games I've played as of late, and this is not an overstatement. Just about every area in this game is beautiful, each one trying to outdo the last. The character models and character creator themselves are fine, but the armor sets (AKA, the Souls Drip) leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion. All the effects and weapon arts look pretty cool as well. All this does come at a small cost of performance in my experience, not so much in average frame rate, but for me on my RX 5600 XT and Ryzen 5 3600 in the form of what I dub Elden Buffers, short windows that generally last a second of the game's sound continuing but the image on the screen being frozen, till the Elden Buffer ends, playing out the missed time quickly before resuming the action. Your experiences may be different.

Another point I have to give is just how fun it is to explore the worlds Elden Ring provides. The vibes I get from riding my horse and visiting areas for the first time and just hopping about is unique to this series and honestly a welcome change. Its also nice to have a game where walking away from an encounter and coming back to it later and checking out other areas is reasonable. You don't really have to grind since "grinding" is just playing the game normally in different areas. The dungeons and catacombs do reuse bosses a fair amount, but I don't really mind this at all, even if I don't like the bosses in this game; if anything there's a certain charm to gaining some familiarity with foes.

The combat itself outside bosses is usually on the positive side, albeit with some caveats. When you're fighting certain fuck you enemies, like the giant hands or that one enemy that I swear belongs in bloodborne that just pounces on you relentlessly and screeches endlessly, the combat does kinda suck a little and makes me wanna close my game, but most enemies in this game I do enjoy fighting to some degree. It's also fun testing all cool incantations or sorceries you find in this game; for those on a first run, I highly recommend doing a hybrid build in this game since having a little bit of faith provides a ton of utility and a lot of cool little tricks for sticky situations while still having access to the melee combat for most encounters. The perceived weapon/build diversity is also incredibly high, though viability is another issue.

Okay, back to grievances, this time about the rune arc system. The long story short on this one is that there just isn't enough rune arcs for single player gamers. I can understand not caring to give as much since they are effectively buffs and not a way to obtain your default stats, but it is still frustrating how sparse they are in this game compared to say, Dark Souls 2, where the first NPC you meet in the game is capable of giving you 5 at once if you come back at a later time. I thought that you'd find more in later game areas, but you really don't. This would be less of a problem if the multiplayer foundations of this game were good, but that's far from the case.

If you're familiar with any of the previous Souls games, like DS3 or Bloodborne, you'll also be familiar with this game's mishandling of Co-op. The invasions in this game use a system that by default sends you into a co-op world, meaning that co-op players get invaded constantly, generally within a 15 minute loop where invasion cooldowns happen. This unfortunately discourages co-oping through entire levels online as no one wants to get invaded every 15 minutes, and would rather just want to get a boss done and over with. This also makes invaders forced to use super optimized builds since taking on 2 or 3 foes at once requires you to kill each of them quickly, reducing the capacity for build diversity in achieving success. All in all, nobody wins, and participating in this game's online kinda just sucks aside from aiding people with bosses. On that note, clearing area bosses for hosts is one of the few consistent ways of getting rune arcs, and I just failed to enjoy doing so at the rate I got summoned compare to other entries. At this point I'd rather Fromsoft do away with online or rework it completely if its just making their game dramatically worse having it.

On a final note, I think there's something very, very good in Elden Ring, plagued by Fromsoft failing to learn from previous mistakes while somehow making new ones. A part of me loves this game, but another part of me seriously loathes this game and is frustrated by the encouragement of Fromsoft's shortcomings. Its beyond me how a game this flawed got game of the year and is so universily praised.