Recent reviews by Jon

First and foremost, Elden Ring is a great "souls" game. The very first things my friends and I noticed when getting into it, the Dev Team learned from each of the previous Dark Souls and even Bloodborne and Sekiro games what parts really stood out and worked incredibly well, and worked to include most of these aspects in Elden Ring. This makes the actual gameplay feel incredibly solid and even an upgrade over Dark Souls 3, which at the time, felt like it couldn't be improved. For some quick little highlights, a lot of the basic gameplay comes from DS3 with how weapon and spells are handled, adding on the ability to sneak and freely jump around like Sekiro, the different backstabs from Bloodborne along with the Rally mechanic later in the game if you choose, and power stancing dual weapons like in DS2. Add on an open world feeling similar to Breath of the Wild, but even more in-depth, with a crafting and harvesting system and you get a good feel for the game. It's been nothing short of wonderful to explore and play.

The different areas are all incredibly interesting and beautiful to behold, and even if you have to run it on older hardware, they look amazing. With the Erdtree looming over you the whole time you wander, it really brings out this sense of wonder as you get closer and closer to it, digging deeper into the story as a whole. The story is brand new to go with the new title, but in classic FromSoft fashion, there are certainly callbacks to other games as well as George R.R. Martin's own works. I don't want to spoil much of the story, so all I will say is that they did amazing to explain and build a setting and a world that feels alive and well thought through, and it is a joy to read through the tidbits in the classic Souls way.

Finally, the Dev Team and Bandai Namco have also been working tirelessly to fix any bugs and issues that have been showing up, and they have been releasing patches fairly quickly after receiving bug reports on the Bandai Namco site. I respect all the time they are putting in to fix these issues in a timely manner, and it really shows that they are taking it seriously to fix the port issues. I recommend the game if any of this sounds good, or if you want more of the Souls style of games and have enjoyed the previous titles. Just know that it will be a challenging game, but one that tries to be incredibly fair to the player!

This game is honestly really great. It is a blast to play with friends, and it sits at that perfect difficulty scaling where it can be fun and fair with any number of people. What is the most important though, is the Devs. They are an incredibly rare bunch that actually joke along with the community and they listen to us all. When they were adding the Drilldozer mission, people couldn't stand leaving Doretta behind, and within a little while of it being released, they patched it to allow you to carry her back to the drop pod and escape with her. All of the new mission types they have added recently have been incredible and really fun to play, this game is an absolute gem, and you can just feel the passion and care these Devs have put into it. At the price it is going for, they absolutely deserve the amount they ask and more, so feel free to grab it whenever, and if you like the (entirely) cosmetic DLCs, grab those as well. No content apart from a few cosmetic sets are locked behind any DLC. They deserve the support for all the free content they release for this game.

This has to be one of the most unique games I have played in a very long time. Not only are the different areas that you go to interesting and wonderous, the puzzles are well done, and the voice-controlled spells are very well executed. The fact that the spells are all cast by speaking them yourself has the potential for disaster, but the dev team behind this game really made the detection for the spoken words quite professionally, and as long as you speak clearly, it never has trouble determining what you are saying. On a huge plus side for me, the fact that I was actually speaking the spells made it that much more immersive to play, and it also makes you feel like a real wizard - That is, if you panic and fail to speak clearly as a result, or blank on a word or pronouciation, you have real concequences.

All in all, it was a very intense and amazingly crafted game, it is certainly worth looking into if any of this appeals to you. I had a damn blast playing this, as well as goofing off at times and figuring out what other silly words I could shout to have a reaction ingame.