problems: this games balancing is god awful, the progression is horrendous, bosses are extremely easy, generally consisting of somewhere between two and four easy to dodge attacks, trivialized even further with stamina being extremely easy to manage, and a ton of acess to some pretty insane hitbox manipulation, the only difficulty in them comes from awful balancing or the eventual bullshit attack (like malenias infamous spin attacks, or mohgs hard to read blood), the only fights i felt like were an actual challenge were two of the last three bosses, maliketh/clergyman and godfrey (in his second phase), and morgott, the first boss of the game, while this game is an open world, its mainly in individual areas, since most areas in the game only transition into each other through elevators or dungeons, this is especially bad during the last stretch, where the previous sandbox open world turns into a long corridor, health in this game is really bad, at the start of the game you are really fragile, but investing in health will not get you more tanky, it will only stop you from being more frail, the games mini-dungeons (caves and catacombs) are generally a boring chore, with most being extremely similar generic environments you can run through and fight a boss you have seen before to get boring loot, with only the ocasional exception in the form of npcs or actually interesting items, the bosses generally dont feel special, with most of them fitting into archetypes like knight in horse, or dragon that flies, with generally identical movesets, and a lot of them just straight up repeating, like the tree sentinels, the balancing in the game is also really bad when it comes to favoring the player, with tons and tons of stupid strategies, cheese, gimmicks, and a ton of really broken attacks, and the notorious farm in mohgwyns area, which can be acessed theoretically extremely early in the game, only requiring the player to beat one boss and one player-like enemy, and with the proper equipment, the player can abuse it to reach as high of a level needed in less then an hour, with all these problems, eventually exploring the lands between lost some of its luster

good things: the visuals, this game looks, in both the artistic direction and graphics, purely amazing, the world of this game is wonderful, its gorgeus, everywhere you look there is a brand new beautiful weird thing that you could have never anticipated, be it enemies, items, npcs, locations, it all just shines with criativity, while this wonder weakens after some time, due to problems listed beforehand, you still are constantly bombarded with new shiny oddities, the games big dungeons are amazing, exploring them is a ton of fun, they are really varied, and i just couldnt get enough of going through them, they were all truly wonderful, everything in the game (up to margit) can be done in a million different ways, you constantly have endless options and it never feels overwhelming, the combat is really fun to engage with (even if the numbers are a fucking problem) and i never got bored or frustrated by it for a single second, there is endless variety and option with how you are gonna fight, and what you are gonna use to fight, the armor (which doesnt matter a lot due to the health problems mentioned above) and weapons look amazing and are all a blast to use and see in action, the main bosses (that arent just recycled enemies) all look absolutely amazing and their looks and moveset are all bursting with creativity, my favorites being godrick, radahn, and godfrey, i have to give a special highlight to the volcano manor, which is in my opinion the best area in the game by far, from start to finish, to all the options you are given with engaging with it, its all absolutely brilliant (also my other favorite dungeons are stormveil, academy, leyndell, and farum azula), the underground areas are also amazing as well, one of my favorite things the game does is not show the full map at the start of the game, it helps with the sense of wonder

elden ring is an absolutely amazing game at its core, with amazing gameplay and an endlessly captivating world, but the more time you play it the more its problems become apparent, constant repetition of its ideas, be it with enemies, bosses, or mini-dungeons, the bosses, while amazing visually, are extremely easy to beat and just dont pose a challenge, the end of the game is completely linear, with the game becoming a corridor between the boss of leyndell and the final boss, and, when it comes to balancing and progression, it honestly feels like the devs couldnt figure out how to get it right and just gave up and released the game with these aspects pretty much broken

04/05/2023 edit: i saw the witness developer say that elden ring does not have design and that sums up my feelings pretty well, also i bumped up the score to 9 cause the game LOOKS too cool and awesome and good to give it anything below that even if it kinda deserves it