"Hello, My Name is Tarnished, and I'm an addict"
- "Hello, Tarnished."
I already have 250 hours in 20 days since the release (3 weeks ago)... Yes. Thank you FromSoftware.
I'm a hardcore Dark Souls fan with 100% completion and about 3000+ hours across all 3 Dark Souls and Sekiro masterpieces, who needed a DS-fix for a long while now; so most probably I might be biased reviewing Elden Ring.
Nonetheless, Elden Ring is the crowning of all things Dark Souls, my favorite Soulslike game thus far.
The influence of the great fantasy novelist George R. R. Martin's is very clear throughout the story which is very well written.
The legacy of your very own sadist of a director Hidetaka Miyazaki lives on.
The game's progression is pretty decent.
The Music is simply genius.
The Graphics are great (I'm surprised that the 60-fps cap is not bad at all).
Some new boss mechanics are well developed.
But with that being said, I have to add that difficulty wise, I personally think that this game seems to be the easiest out of all 3 dark souls and definitely Sekiro; either that or I'm becoming a better souls/hack-and-slash player now with all the hours I've put in this series and others games in the hack-and-slash genre too.
Overall, Elden Ring is an excellent game that deserves winning GOTY (and yes, taking into consideration that we are still in Q1 of 2022).
After completing all achievements across 3 main characters now, I have replayed the game with 2 other new characters (and definitely more to come) pushing the limits of how fast I can beat the game while experimenting with the different endings to up the RPG factor in this masterpiece, in addition to going through some important side quests and the numerous diverse play-styles this game has to offer (so far).
2 weeks after the release, an update nerfed some of the very OP weapons making those crazy speed-runners angry AF; as it has additionally boosted spell-casting in order to push players into playing more caster builds.
I cannot wait for even more content and expansions to get here, especially so that I can stop pvp-ganking and bullying the noob "Graceless Tarnished"s out there.
PS: Kudos to the great community of the 12 million copies sold for their discoveries of secrets and easter eggs that keep popping every other day.