Recent reviews by Morghyn Le Fae

I'm going to put this forward in my review, first and foremost: I am a writer by hobby and commission.
I work heavily with theme, and especially in regard to thematics, I positively adore games that present a consistent theme throughout, in more aspects than just visuals.

Unfortunately, this game does not do as such. Not even remotely.

In all honesty, even from a purely forwardly gameplay perspective, in correlation to the contemporaries this game has to contend with, I can not recommend this even for a breath of fresh air. There are several notes missed rather thoroughly, blatantly, and frustratingly, across every aspect of every single puzzle that is present in the game so far.

There is a central chess puzzle where, loosely, bypassing the other puzzles in the game, can allow one to very easily skip to a somewhat trial-and-error solution to another clock puzzle, whereby the rest of the game can be ignored; this one is particularly troublesome if one or both of the players are good with chess, or simply go through trial and error over a four-turn, easily telegraphed scenario.

My main qualm, however, is in a single puzzle, and its tedium therefrom.

This puzzle somehow manages to miss the lump sum of what could easily be interpreted as a core theme of the game, by logical deduction:
Black and White. Two players. The first puzzle rewards one player with two books. It is not an insane, nor unintuitive leap to insinuate that the next puzzle will reward the second player with two books, which are used to complete the opposing player's puzzle.

As such, it's similarly not insane or unintuitive to believe that BOTH of these books are required, and applicable for the next puzzle.

They are not. You get two books; one of which is applicable for the next puzzle presented. The other one is irrelevant.
What makes this sting further is, if you apply the logic to both books presented to Player-Black, Player-White then is left with two books pulled from the puzzle's facing.

Two players. Two colors. Two books for one puzzle. Two books, seemingly, as a reward.
Oh, I wish it were this logically quaint. I would be so thoroughly pleased if this were the result.

Though I'm still markedly peeved at this outcome, I've run the logic through several other people, and it's, simply, the most logical conclusion; or if not that, it's one of two; the other being, in loose terms, "You get one book to solve one puzzle. Then, you get another book, to solve the other puzzle."

Somehow, they managed to do neither of these things. Instead, you ignore the first book entirely, you just solve the second book, and Player-Black then has to sit by, idly, and twiddle their thumbs, whilst Player-White goes through several corridors without much puzzle other than referring to the first book. There could be room for another puzzle in the middle, but nope. In the selfsame room you are presented with a new and novel idea of procuring an item to be used as a lever, the item is simply handed to you in a languished waste of potential.

From here, the prologue settles rather firmly into "Alright, let's just get this over with," because you're simply given the solutions--Without much PUZZLING to actively do to get them, and none to deduce them, by the by--and by the time I had to go through a falling-floor corridor the second time, I was already thoroughly done with the game.

Overall, I'm left with a sense of frustration; things started well, and could have leaned heavy into thematics and novel writing; simple solutions, for simply sticking to the themes outlined previously. Instead, everything feels either rushed, forgotten, or otherwise simply...Not thought out properly, inasmuch as ease of intuitive grasp.

The puzzles by their solutions, left me thoroughly dissatisfied in theme, in execution, and importantly, in retrospective difficulty. "Yes, they are really that dumb," is an adequate sum to the entirety of my hour's worth of a prologue; dumb in the puzzles, in their solutions, and in the thematic execution. If you're thinking outside of the box, you're thinking far too much; and "you should feel dumb for having thought too much," is never a good taste to endure.

TL;DR:
If "wasted potential" were an entity, this would be it, by and large.

I gave this game two tries.

To start:
I adore this game's atmosphere. I love the feel and the lore of, honestly, From's entire catalog; from King's Field, to Armored Core, to Demon's Souls and beyond. The fantastic depths of Martin's writing is evident here; and I've similarly been a fan of his since well before the 00s!

...However, I can not in good faith recommend this game to anybody save the most diehard Souls fans, in its present state.

The game's difficulty, even considering the transition to open world, is extremely arbitrary. And believe me, I wish it were only in a pure, simple, raw, "Hey, I'm not supposed to be here" sort of way. Compared to, say, Xenoblade, which historically sticks Rotbart in early game places, or otherwise occasionally locks early game areas behind obvious big bad monsters, Elden Ring simply deposits unwinnable scenarios directly in front of your intended progression from the get-go.

From the Tree Sentinel fresh out the gate, to entire encampments of enemies being the first thing you see, it's simply a struggle to get anywhere safely; especially so if you're new to the franchise. People will tell you to "just go somewhere else," but even the first little area of level-appropriate enemies is simply overrun.

It's a constant struggle to get on your feet; and 95% of people who do so, will do so via cheese-murdering Greyoll with hemorrhage.

More importantly, however, there are enemies that, put simply, are able to hit you dozens of times with a single attack: dogs and anything with a torch chief among them. The former being an enemy that can kill you with a single bite that's so bugged that I'm surprised there even exists QA for this game; and even if there were, it's painfully apparent that any testing that happened, only happened in Limgrave, until you get to Margit.

The real nail in the coffin to all of this, for me, is that after a few patches (1.03.2); albeit perhaps a little early, any and all fixes are not engineered at reigning in the mass amounts of bugged attacks, magnetic tracking, variable attack delays from enemies, and hyper-inflated boss HP values.

No. The fixes and patches are, a few to attempt to introduce smithing stones to drop tables (Which, doesn't seem to have worked one bit) and nerf anything that the devs see speedrunners "abusing."

As I heard one put it, in essence, "If you end up going through all the weapons that we use to beat the game, there's not going to be diversity anymore. All anybody's going to be able to do is use summons and sit behind them." Which, according to the vast, vast majority of people I both know, and have simply heard talk about the game, virtually all of them end up utilizing the crutch of summons; to the point where that's one of only two pieces of advice offered to anybody with gripes for the game: "Just use summons," and "Go grind somewhere else."

Which, presumably, means grinding in real life, until a few dozen patches have hopefully fixed a lot of the arbitrary nonsense that prevents the game from feeling truly rewarding: without crutches, and without being cheesed for the ten thousandth time in a Souls game.