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Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 649.2 hrs on record (151.7 hrs at review time)
Posted: 17 Mar, 2023 @ 1:49pm

A modern tour de force in the gaming industry.
Fromsoftware has proven themselves time and time again to be one of the most groundbreaking and innovative studios, pumping out masterpiece after masterpiece.
Elden Ring was my first souls game on steam (I had previously played Bloodborne and Sekiro for a couple hours on PS4.) and I spent every single second loving it.

THE POSITIVES:

GORGEOUS open world, challenging Breath Of The Wild and Ghost Of Tsushima as the best I've ever explored, with jaw dropping areas like Nokron, the Haligtree, and the Capital being standout locations of beauty.
AMAZING and SATISFYING combat. The amount of ways to play this game due to the ridiculous amount of weaponry at your disposal is insane. Every weapon I picked up I attempted to use against enemies, allowing me to pick standout weapons to model my build around. The customization with the ashes of war and incantion abilites allows for near endless posibilities with your favourite arnaments, and allowing players to use up to six was a FANTASTIC choice. Speaking of incantations, the magic in this game is incredible, allowing players to use up to 12 incantations at a time for both offense and defense.
CREATIVE AND SPECTACULAR BOSSES. The main bosses, as well as the ones that are repetitive, one of the few things Elden Ring makes tiresome, are awesome. The bosses you will fight to get to the end, such as Morgott, Godefry, Radahn and others are INCREDIBLE. Fromsoft proved to me that they understand how difficulty can be challenging and fun at the same time, with some of the toughest bosses being my personal favorites, like Astel, the Ancestor Spirit, and Placidusax, bosses I missed in my first playthrough due to the games massive scale.
THE BREATHTAKING MUSIC. It's a CRIME that the Elden Ring score is talked about as little as it is. Bangers like the Godskin Apostles, Starscourge Radahn, and Lichdragon Fortisaxx are all amazing, making some of the most difficult and gorgeous fights even MORE epic. THE MAIN THEME is one of the greatest musical achivements in the gaming industry, one of the most legendary feelings in the game is just opening it and listening to this song. And when it comes back for one of the last bosses in the game OH MAN it was amazing!
TRAVELLING AND UI. Some of the less talked about aspects of this game are the simple and efficient ways to get around the map. The fast travels, similar to bonfires in other games, act as the areas for you to level up, learn spells, allocate your healing items and customize your weaponry skills (called ashes of war) The UI in the game is FANTASTIC, barley anything on the screen EVER unless your in combat. Because this game doesn't have a camera mode, the lack of minimap, questlog or other garbage on your screen that Elden Ring PROVES you can live without makes up for it, allowing for amazing shots to be captured while your just riding through a field or climbing up a ladder. Games made by studios like Ubisoft, EA and even nintendo at times feel like your edging a seizure with all the random stuff on your screen, making it more difficult to focus on whats actually HAPPENING. Elden Ring NEVER does you dirty like this, in combat, the only things that show up NEED to show up, like the checkmarks for summoning, your health, mana and stamina, and your arnaments (weapons, incantations and healing items)

THE CONS:

Some bosses did get a little too repetitive for my liking, such as the Crucible knights, erdtree spirits and basic dragons. HOWEVER, these bosses are not required for you to beat the game (mostly) and the only thing they provide is either a cool new item for you to use and always have more runes for you to collect, allowing for you to level up more. ALSO, considering this game has almost over 120 bosses, and around 80 of them are unique in some way.

The game DOES suffer with some hit regulation issues and lag, even on better hardware (I have a ryzen 7, a radeon 6650xt, and 64 gigs of RAM.) however, these moments are sparse and spread, and usually only happened if a large group of large creatures just loaded in, such as areas like dragonbarrow getting particularliy laggy when I walked near it.

Other than these two very small issues, I have no issue calling Elden Ring the NEAR PERFECT video game, and hopefully, by the time i finish the rest of his work, I can call it Miyazak'is MAGNUM OPUS.
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