I knew this was a classic, going in, but what I hadn't anticipated was just how elemental and minimalistic it would be. It was a pleasant surprise and welcome subversion to discover a game that I had known only to be an innovative open world adventure was in fact set in a barren desert, melancholic from its opening cinematic, and centred around a gameplay loop so simplistic that the weight of its repetitions acquire a purposefully suffocating heft, even as the colossi designs and environmental attention required to topple them remain for the most part fresh throughout the experience.

Shadow of the Colossus is a deeply lonely game. Though accompanied by a reliable steed, the experience of wandering through this world only to devastate it makes you feel more and more like a harbinger of death itself, barely receptive to the emotions and realities of the creatures you kill, just charging forward as a naive emissary, directed by a force you never dare to question.

The gameplay itself is slightly clunky; handling your horse takes some time to master, clambering up surfaces can occasionally feel glitchy if you are being thrown around, and there is a sense that the environment itself has a general antipathy towards you - some surfaces that look like they should be climbable simply aren't, and there is no fast-travel system. All of these may read as flaws but it is to the game's credit that its atmosphere, narrative, and general emotional tone render them as assets rather than liabilities. These things should not be easy. There should be no shortcuts. The world should resist you, because there is still life in it, and you are, ultimately, a threat.

This does mean that sometimes the colossi can feel a little tedious. It is, if not a necessary cost, then perhaps an understandable one, as a product of the game's philosophy. Sometimes you have to wait, sometimes the puzzles can be obtuse, and sometimes you will just feel stupid. Sometimes a jump will feel needlessly finnicky, or a gimmick poorly communicated. But only rarely did that actually take me out of the experience, and ultimately those instances were forgivable for the grandeur and scale on which the game operates, the smallness that you feel, the conflict at the heart of your purpose.

"Shadow of the Colossus is one of the great game experiences everyone should have" is the wisdom I've seen frequently extolled, and for all of my assumptions that this would reflect on innovative gameplay, world building, and narrative impact, ultimately the greatest asset of my experience was the isolation at the core of its protagonist, Wander's, world. For as noble and altruistic his motivations - the desire to save an anonymous companion - the world is resistant, and antagonistic, and content without you. And it is only in accepting that, in embracing that, that you can fully commune with it, and what seems like a chaos coalesces into a harmony. The light that draws you to a single point is not a target, it's a call. It's too late for Wander, but it's not too late for us.

What begins as an addictive deckbuilder with roguelike elements and mysterious puzzles around the margins slowly becomes a transformative postmodern commentary on gaming media, the search for meaning in art, and the relationship between players and the ruthless economy of video game conglomerates - all of this while never losing that satisfying gameplay loop and finding ways to iterate on it and keep things fresh. The enrapturing atmosphere of the game's first act is admittedly missed once its first big twist is revealed, but the way the narrative evolves around the gameplay as the player progresses does a good job of keeping things balanced and intriguing.

Simultaneously the culmination of every game in FromSoftware's modern "Soulsborne" series and a complete resetting of the format into an open world space, Elden Ring is utterly triumphant in its marriage of the standard dungeon procedural with rewarding, motivating, and multi-faceted open world gameplay. Sure, there is inevitably filler content, but it seldom feels boring and there are enough riffs on the format of the game's most copypasted assets (the catacomb and cave mini-dungeons) for them to feel refreshing enough as a break from the frankly overwhelming exploration.

All of this is coupled with practically all of the familiar mechanics from From's beloved trilogy (the level design within the major dungeons is uniformly brilliant, with Leyndell being the most impressive level they have ever crafted in the games I have played, at least). I was particularly struck with the masterful build versatility on display here - the game goes to great pains to make all build options viable, each of its classes uniquely valuable, and all such builds loaded with an incredible diversity of weapons and a complex but somehow still intuitive upgrade system, as well as a dazzling array of unlockable summons to provide assistance for those who struggle with the game's difficulty curve(s).

And on the note of difficulty: as anyone racing into the game's "first" (though entirely skippable) legacy dungeon will quickly realize, the story bosses in this game are no joke, and will absolutely flatten unseasoned or underleveled players, serving as a clever bit of extrinsic motivation to engage with the open world and explore all corners. The game is also littered with personable and idiosyncratic NPCs (another FromSoft staple), and while following many questlines to their conclusion may inadvertantly lock you out of others, they are more forgiving than I anticipated and the rewards are bountiful (the only piece of backseating I will proffer here is to see Ranni's quest through to its conclusion - or don't, as you wish, but hers I found to be the most rewarding for reasons I won't dare spoil).

For all the talk of its incredible length, vast quantities of Elden Ring's content is either entirely missable or freely skippable (or both), so the game is really as long as you are interested in it - or as it takes for you to be sufficiently levelled for its late game bosses, the difficulty of which has become infamous (though I think I was overlevelled as I didn't find them exceptionally unfair).

For the investment required, and for the cost, Elden Ring is more than a bargain, and absolutely worth your time. I played it in five weeks and it felt like it completely consumed my life. As lush and rich as its early areas are, the more dungeon-focused back half was where the game truly blew my mind, as its structure smartly narrows to an intense and visceral climax. As someone who has fallen head over heels for FromSoft in recent months, I think the biggest endorsement of Elden Ring I can give is that it somehow outpaced and exceeded all expectations.