100/10 once the stuttering issues are fixed, 9/10 even with the performance issues.

Alright coming back to this review as it's been a couple years now and I've put in a couple hundred more hours.

Elden Ring like Dark Souls 1 primarily, has some issues towards the end despite having a phenomenal start and first 40 to 50 hours (for a first playthrough). Starting out in Limgrave is great, you've got some side dungeons to explore with some bosses that are all unique for this point of the game, you've got the weeping peninsula which is technically part of Limgrave and is entirely optional and you never have to come here unless you're simply exploring and end up here. Towards the end of your time in Limgrave you end up in Stormveil Castle, a "legacy dungeon", this is really just the name of areas in Elden Ring that are about the size and depth of any main area from the other Soulsborne games, Stormveil is fantastic, and is either the best or second best legacy dungeon.

Next up is Liurnia of the Lakes, this area has The Academy of Raya Lucaria, which is basically themed around Hogwarts, as it's just a magic castle pretty much, not much negative to say here. Doing this legacy dungeon unlocks respecing but other than that not much to write home about, gets boring after the first few times.

After that is likely Caelid but could be Altus Plateau. Caelid is undoubtedly a difficult area and likely where some people newer to FromSoft games will say the game starts to dip in quality, in reality it's just a very difficult midway checkpoint, with some slightly annoying gimmicks, but with good prepwork most will be fine here, Caelid doesn't really have a legacy dungeon, I'd say Nokron which unlocks after killing the main boss of Caelid is the legacy dungeon for here, and if it's Nokron then it's one of the coolest but probably fourth or fifth in terms of quality.

That should give a decent idea of what a new players first 50ish hours are going to be like, but you'd be far from done, and I'm going to skip a few parts that I dont feel are worth touching on and get to the negatives that Elden Ring has. Once you start closing in on the end of the game, you get to The Mountaintops of the Giants, this area honestly feels like an afterthought despite having a cool set-piece, and it has the single worst boss that FromSoft has ever made to back up the claim that it feels like an afterthought. The boss is Fire Giant. Fire Giant is exactly what it sounds like, a giant based around fire, fire attacks, projectiles, etc. he has a massive health pool that is a complete pain to get through unless you are using 5 buff spells and a full on build which a new player to this game won't know where to get the items to enable a build that can make him easier, the second option is relying on bleed and frost which trivializes the entire game until you get to the last boss where it's completely immune to bleed which kills your build, which doesn't feel great. The next issue is also right after Fire Giant, and that's Godskin Duo, a duo fight consisting of 2 bosses that you've likely fought already (one of them is from a separate legacy dungeon and the other has multiple copies scattered in a couple areas) this fight without summoning is terrible and requires a build capable of instakilling one of them or abusing the sleep items and putting them to sleep then killing one and cycling sleep on the one you're not working on.

Next up on the negatives, unless you're using all the buffs you can, which as a new player you won't be, enemy/boss hp and damage scaling gets out of hand towards the end of the game, it feels like you're on NG+2 or 3 on one of the souls games but you just can't compensate without abusing certain things.

Last negative, reused bosses. I understand that the game and it's world are massive and that it's not unreasonable to believe that there would be multiple of some boss enemies scattered about, that's even believable from a lore point of view, but it goes overboard. Some bosses are reused nearly 10 times, there's 165 bosses total across the entire map including major and minor bosses and all major/minor dungeons. I don't expect 165 unique bosses, that's unreasonable. I do however expect them to be reused less and for MAJOR bosses to not be reused in side content. We all know what FromSoft is capable of and they are far more than capable of doing better than this. The final boss of the game feels like a reskin of a side boss that they just gave a sword and added 2 or 3 extra attacks. This isn't likely to annoy you and you likely won't even notice it if you don't do every single side dungeon (which most people won't) but it is something that is worth stating in something like an in-depth review.

Shadow of the Erdtree comes out in 3 months and from what we've seen will be amazing and likely the best content Elden Ring has to offer as the DLC is usually the best part of FromSoft's games. I'll return to this review after the expansion comes out and update it again.

As it stands Elden Ring is a solid 9/10 with some glaring issues towards the end of each run, hopefully the expansion will make those issues easier to overlook.

100/10 once the stuttering issues are fixed, 9/10 even with the performance issues. Alright coming back to this review as it's been a couple years now and I've put in a couple hundred more hours. Elden Ring like Dark Souls 1 primarily, has some issues towards the end despite having a phenomenal start and first 40 to 50 hours (for a first playthrough). Starting out in Limgrave is great, you've got some side dungeons to explore with some bosses that are all unique for this point of the game, you've got the weeping peninsula which is technically part of Limgrave and is entirely optional and you never have to come here unless you're simply exploring and end up here. Towards the end of your time in Limgrave you end up in Stormveil Castle, a "legacy dungeon", this is really just the name of areas in Elden Ring that are about the size and depth of any main area from the other Soulsborne games, Stormveil is fantastic, and is either the best or second best legacy dungeon. Next up is Liurnia of the Lakes, this area has The Academy of Raya Lucaria, which is basically themed around Hogwarts, as it's just a magic castle pretty much, not much negative to say here. Doing this legacy dungeon unlocks respecing but other than that not much to write home about, gets boring after the first few times. After that is likely Caelid but could be Altus Plateau. Caelid is undoubtedly a difficult area and likely where some people newer to FromSoft games will say the game starts to dip in quality, in reality it's just a very difficult midway checkpoint, with some slightly annoying gimmicks, but with good prepwork most will be fine here, Caelid doesn't really have a legacy dungeon, I'd say Nokron which unlocks after killing the main boss of Caelid is the legacy dungeon for here, and if it's Nokron then it's one of the coolest but probably fourth or fifth in terms of quality. That should give a decent idea of what a new players first 50ish hours are going to be like, but you'd be far from done, and I'm going to skip a few parts that I dont feel are worth touching on and get to the negatives that Elden Ring has. Once you start closing in on the end of the game, you get to The Mountaintops of the Giants, this area honestly feels like an afterthought despite having a cool set-piece, and it has the single worst boss that FromSoft has ever made to back up the claim that it feels like an afterthought. The boss is Fire Giant. Fire Giant is exactly what it sounds like, a giant based around fire, fire attacks, projectiles, etc. he has a massive health pool that is a complete pain to get through unless you are using 5 buff spells and a full on build which a new player to this game won't know where to get the items to enable a build that can make him easier, the second option is relying on bleed and frost which trivializes the entire game until you get to the last boss where it's completely immune to bleed which kills your build, which doesn't feel great. The next issue is also right after Fire Giant, and that's Godskin Duo, a duo fight consisting of 2 bosses that you've likely fought already (one of them is from a separate legacy dungeon and the other has multiple copies scattered in a couple areas) this fight without summoning is terrible and requires a build capable of instakilling one of them or abusing the sleep items and putting them to sleep then killing one and cycling sleep on the one you're not working on. Next up on the negatives, unless you're using all the buffs you can, which as a new player you won't be, enemy/boss hp and damage scaling gets out of hand towards the end of the game, it feels like you're on NG+2 or 3 on one of the souls games but you just can't compensate without abusing certain things. Last negative, reused bosses. I understand that the game and it's world are massive and that it's not unreasonable to believe that there would be multiple of some boss enemies scattered about, that's even believable from a lore point of view, but it goes overboard. Some bosses are reused nearly 10 times, there's 165 bosses total across the entire map including major and minor bosses and all major/minor dungeons. I don't expect 165 unique bosses, that's unreasonable. I do however expect them to be reused less and for MAJOR bosses to not be reused in side content. We all know what FromSoft is capable of and they are far more than capable of doing better than this. The final boss of the game feels like a reskin of a side boss that they just gave a sword and added 2 or 3 extra attacks. This isn't likely to annoy you and you likely won't even notice it if you don't do every single side dungeon (which most people won't) but it is something that is worth stating in something like an in-depth review. Shadow of the Erdtree comes out in 3 months and from what we've seen will be amazing and likely the best content Elden Ring has to offer as the DLC is usually the best part of FromSoft's games. I'll return to this review after the expansion comes out and update it again. As it stands Elden Ring is a solid 9/10 with some glaring issues towards the end of each run, hopefully the expansion will make those issues easier to overlook.