Recent reviews by RedKaiser

I really regret what has happened to this game. Yager has created good games in the past but they fumbled with this one due to lack of listening to the community. That said, this was still a good game and certainly earned my time. I hope Yager learns from their mistakes and creates something more polished and better managed. Corporate greed be damned, they have a talent and I hope they know that.

Let me start by saying that I have been playing Souls games since 2016. I've played through DS1, 2, 3, Demon Souls, and Sekiro. Let me also state that this is the first serious review I have ever made for a game, so bear with me on poor formatting and sometimes rambling thoughts. Elden Ring is mostly good, but it is far from perfect, lets get into it.


Graphics
This game is gorgeous. It is one of the best looking games I have ever played. It looks distinct enough from other Souls games that it feels completely new, without feeling unfamiliar. The enemies are designed in such a way that compliments the world and vice versa. I found myself for the first time in a while saying out loud how phenomenal everything looked. 10/10

Gameplay/weapon variety
There are incredible amounts of options to take in this game. No one trait felt underpowered (though some feel overpowered, more on that later) and I never felt like there was any task/boss that couldn't be overcome with a tweek to fighting style or weapon/spell choice. The weapons are all so unique that no two weapons feel completely the same. Added with the new Ashes of War to change your weapon art really shakes up the monotony of some melee combat felt in previous titles in the Souls series. Shields have so many purposes and there is always one that can better suit your needs. Spells are flexible and frankly sometimes absurd. Quick, low damage, high dps to status effects to buffs for you and teammates to huge windup, easily punished but powerful spells. There is so much here to explore and test that this alone makes me want to replay again and again. Tons of unique armors. 9.5/10

Challenge
As this is a Souls game, I feel a challenge review is needed. This game can be very hard, though very rarely did anything seem unfair. I can't recall a time that I died and didn't immediately realize I was either not playing well enough or I was simply under prepared. Lots of different bosses with unique learning experiences makes for some very fun and testing fights. 9/10


Exploration/Open world
I have very mixed feelings about the world being so open. Firstly, it is a clear departure from the previous much more linear Souls games. A welcome one, but a change nonetheless. The good thing is that it, combined with the graphics and landscapes, allows for some great looking sets and a world that truly feels rich. This leads to caves/dungeons. Normally I find in many games that dungeons are bland, often reused textures and sets to throw some arbitrary prize at the end and fill it with monotonous enemies. I never truly had that feeling in Elden Ring. The dungeons felt mostly unique. At least unique enough that it was easy to ignore the reused textures/sets. This all said, I think the open world aspect somewhat hurts this type of game. Many times I found myself getting either lost in how to progress the story or in many cases skipping over things that friends playing the same game found with no issue. Some of this is unfamiliarity, however the fact that I have heard of people skipping bosses that are crucial to plotlines or gear without even realizing leaves something to be desired. Overall good, with some head scratching. 7/10

Balance and PvP
Remember when I said that there were so many options for weapons and spells that you likely will never become bored on that alone? While that is true, the balance is not entirely there. Many late game bosses suddenly becoming very resistant to Faith or Intelligence builds, the overall busted nature of Intelligence builds in the early to mid game, insane poise rates and buffs making PvP flat out unfun at times. It can get old. This however I think is a small gripe on my part that can luckily be fixed (and is being fixed) by fromsoft with balancing patches. 6.5/10 with plenty of time for improvement.

Performance
For context, I am running an i9-9900K, RTX 2070 SUPER, 64 GB RAM. I am playing at 2k res at 60fps on highest settings. Some stuttering, though less than 20 some odd times across 200 hours of gameplay and luckily never really during any fights. Very little fps drop below 60, though there is a 60fps cap that I know many do not like. On a personal experience, I had very few performance issues. Though I feel it was necessary to add this as many have, so, you know, surgeon generals warning and all that. For what its worth, this is also something they can fix with future patches. Perhaps wait a little if you're concerned about the performance. There is a fair amount of connection issues in multiplayer with enemies or friends dcing often without using the separation tool. Personal 8/10


Boss/enemy variety
This is truly the one part that I hated about the game. With the bosses and enemies designed as well as they are, it really is upsetting to see so many units reused at various parts of the game. Starting with the tutorial boss. You fight what is essentially a Man-at-Arms for your first boss. Up to this point, you had been fighting basically trash mobs as a test to understand the game. Then the boss, at this moment he is unique. You fought a couple guys that look similar to him, though this one is particularly aggressive with a different move set. Though, as you progress only a short distance past him and you find that this enemy is actually one of the most common enemies in the game. As a tutorial, I can forgive this, but it concerned me for the future. This fear was proven with a boss named Astel. This is an optional boss you face to progress in unlocking one of the endings you can get. It's a unique boss who gives me similar vibes to Seath the Scaleless. Very cool, challenging fight. Imagine my disappointment when, 10 or so hours of play after, while diving a random cave you find a slightly tougher, same look, almost exact same moveset version with a slightly different name at the end. And going back to the tutorial boss, the trend of making bosses a regular enemy further in the game continues throughout. I know bosses take time to develop and balance, but was it really necessary to have either so many caves they ran out of bosses and started reskinning? Or develop more bosses to fill out the numerous caves with a boss/enemy you haven't already fought half a dozen times? This, for me, is truly the biggest disappointment about the game and it becomes much more noticeable in the final 1/3 of the game. Maybe they can fix this with DLC or updates, but I won't hold my breath on this one. 4/10


Its fun. So long as you have the proper requirements on your PC to run the game you will have fun for hours and hours. Towards the end you will notice some repetition, but by then the game is nearly complete and you can NG+ and play the really fun bits again. Overall 8/10.