Elden Ring: Review

Elden Ring is the newest game released by FromSoftware, I have played well over 140 hours of this game and I thought I would give my honest thoughts about the game. This review will be broken down into; Story, Difficulty, Gameplay, accessibility and overall impression. This game can be played single-player or co-op with up to 3 players, So here is my review of Elden Ring.

Story:

The Story of Elden Ring overall is pretty average as is the case with almost all FromSoftware games, it’s not overly complicated and there’s nothing particularly unique about the story itself, basically, your goal is to hunt down demigods to receive their great runes to restore the shattered Elden Ring. However where FromSoftware excels at is world-building and Elden Ring has certainly led up to fans' expectations around that aspect, with lore given for every item you encounter, and the dialogue of the NPC’s teaching you more and more about the world you’re immersing yourself into.

Difficulty:

FromSoftware is known for their difficult games such as Dark Souls, Sekiro and Bloodborne. Where you are made to learn the patterns of each enemy or react fast enough to their attacks to overcome the challenges you face. A big part of these games is that you will die over and over again. However when you finally are able to beat that one boss that gives you trouble or get past that one particular level you’re struggling with, the satisfaction you gain from it is significantly higher than most other games because you feel a sense of accomplishment from having to work for the win.

Elden Ring is brutal in a lot of ways, massie monstrosities, other players invading your world to try to kill you, ambushes, traps and much more, but even in death, you will keep coming back for more because that’s just the nature of FromSoftware games, Difficult but fair. For me personally, I find that the game is really challenging and I have been stuck on many bosses throughout the game but I love the difficulty and I love how this game doesn’t hold your hand to gain victory in combat

Gameplay:

In terms of gameplay, it varies depending on the build you go for whether it’s magic or strength or dexterity builds, etc. However, with all of these, it’s a third-person experience matching your player character against sometimes overwhelming odds. What makes this game unique is the fact that it’s basically a much-refined mixture of the soulsborne games and sekiro, whilst maintaining the difficulty that FromSoft is known for it creates an experience that only this developer can create.

One particular aspect of the gameplay that I thought was really good was the significant difference between single and multiplayer. In single-player you’re able to summon spirits and use your horse to traverse the map, however in multiplayer you don’t get either of those things to assist you, which unlike previous FromSoft games means that it’s actually easier if you decide to go solo than if you were playing with a friend, however, in my opinion, the game is significantly more enjoyable when you have someone to play with however that’s just up to personal preference.

Accessibility:

In terms of accessibility, Elden Ring offers various options such as subtitles and voice chat toggles as well as showing the controls of the game from the settings menu, however, this game doesn’t have much more than that in terms of the accessibility menu, no colour blind mode or text to speech or anything like that.

Compared to other Souls games FromSoft has made there is much more in terms of gameplay accessibility, examples of this are in the fact that Elden Ring gives you a bit of leeway in terms of fall damage, a significantly more user-friendly multiplayer. When playing single player you get the option to use ‘Torrent’, a spirit horse that can help you traverse around the world and can double jump, as well as being able to use spirit ashes to assist you in combat which is basically monsters you can summon.

So whilst the accessibility options can certainly be improved there are improvements made from other fromsoft games in general in that department.

Overall Impression:

Elden Ring is honestly a masterpiece, and I am excited to continue playing this game in the future with different builds. The music, worldbuilding, combat, continuous exploration and knowing that I'll always find new things to do in this game will have me playing for hundreds of hours of this amazing game. Overall I hope that FromSoftware don’t make a sequel to this game and instead make DLC for it, that they continue as they have been to improve their games and that whatever their next game will somehow be even better than this one

And there you have it, my Elden Ring review. Tell us your thoughts in the comments below. And if you have any questions about other aspects of this game that I haven’t touched on then they can be answered in the comment section as well

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