FromSoftware's latest "Souls" installment has set a new bar for the videogame industry. With an expansive and immersive world that sucks you in from the start, Elden Ring encapsulates the odyssey of starting as nothing but a lowly tarnished to becoming a god-slaying Elden Lord. New weapons, armor, ashes of war, spirit summons, and a catalog of visually-stunning spells makes combat amusing yet still challenging, and has you constantly wanting to try different builds to play with everything the game has to offer. Every area in the Lands Between is distinct and recognizable from the rot-stained lands of Caelid to the golden Royal Capital Leyndell, the map takes you through a cascade of beautifully rendered and creatively designed environments with unique and dangerous enemies that fit the themes of each. The open-world of Elden Ring lets you go wherever you please from the start of the game with no minimap marker telling you where you need to be. The Lands Between is masterfully designed to keep you exploring and constantly discovering new things as you curiously go from one POI to the other. FromSoftware is known for obscuring the lore of their Souls games through minimal character dialogue and item descriptions, but Elden Ring takes a more direct approach with telling the story throughout the game, with more characters that are more present throughout your journey. You immediately meet Melina, who is by your side on your quest for Elden Lord and periodically joins you at Sites of Grace to tell you stories or fill you in on the mission at hand. You meet Sir Gideon Ofnir, The All-Knowing who leads the Roundtable Hold, and after proving your worth, lets you in on the secrets of the Two Fingers and the Golden Order. It's clear that FromSoft wanted Elden Ring to be more prolific with its story-telling, and it executes it in a master-full way. After finishing the game multiple times, the loose ends in the lore of the world make me exceedingly eager to see what they have planned for future DLC. Overall, Elden Ring is my GOTY and I have not had such enjoyment playing a game in a long time.

FS does it again...