Elden Ring Review: Traversing the mist for the first time
Dark Souls difficulty with horseback exploration make this in equal parts enjoyable and frustrating.
By Glenn Chua -
FromSoftware's latest title. (Source: Bandai Namco)
I need to preface this entire review with this: I have never played a Soulsborne game. Not even Sekiro. They’ve never been my personal cup of tea, being what looked like incredibly difficult games, and at most, I’ve only heard about Dark Souls through pop culture references, and “This is the Dark Souls of…” comparisons.
So when I was asked to review Elden Ring, FromSoftware’s latest title, I was a little bit intimidated, to say the least. Being plunged into this large, open world, on top of it coming from a company famous (or infamous) for its frustration-inducing game, it seemed like a bad combination. But I was optimistic; the open-world genre wasn’t unfamiliar to me, and while I’m not particularly into medieval settings in fiction, Elden Ring promised a certain kind of post-apocalyptic fantasy, which was kind of appealing.
So, I gave it a try, understanding that I had a rather unique position as a complete newcomer. And after a week of playing through the game's introductory phase, barely scratching the surface of the world, I’m starting to realise what people like about it. Hopefully you enjoy some of my thoughts as a newcomer.
(Sidenote: The machine I played this on had lower specs than what was recommended on Elden Ring's Steam page, which affected gameplay and graphics quite a bit. I'll explain it below, but keep that in mind as you read the review. And if you're holding off on getting Elden Ring because you're running underpowered hardware too, you might want to take some notes for what your experience might be if you get the game.)
The Lands Between
There's underground cities, too.
The world, in a word, is huge.
But before you start exploring, the game gives you some context. The Elden Ring (the literal one) has been broken, and Queen Marika, the ruler of the Lands Between, is nowhere to be seen. This precipitated the Shattering, a 'war from which no lord arose', and which resulted in the world’s ruined state. Different figures vie to become the Elden Lord through gaining the shards of the Elden Ring, and you, a Tarnished, are among one of those people.
This is about the only exposition you’ll get from the game in a while, so you best pay attention to it. From there, the game drops you into an odd tutorial stage: The first half has you dying to an impossible boss, giving you a smidgen of what to expect with this game, while the second half starts with you waking up in an underground cave. After acclimating to basic mechanics like movement and Lost Graces (the game’s version of waypoints, and the equivalent of Bonfires from Dark Souls), you’re presented with a single door. Upon opening, this is the sight that greets you:
Limgrave, the game's first region, punctuated by the giant 'erdtree'.
This moment itself is pretty Fallout-esque; the light shining as you open a gate into the world is reminiscent of opening the door from Vault 101 in Fallout 3 into the Capital Wasteland. And that comparison is fitting, given the post-apocalyptic world of Elden Ring. Indeed, you can see fallen stone structures resting on the ground, and one of the first merchants and earlier Lost Graces you discover are in the ruined Church of Elleh, of which only the stone walls remain.
The first few moments of Elden Ring are actually kind of peaceful. This field in Limgrave, the game’s first region, isn't covered with many enemies, apart from a giant Tree Sentinel boss which you can avoid, and it’s wide and bright when you step out. This is deceptive, however, as areas like this aren’t ubiquitous. For instance, if you veer to the east of Limgrave, you’re greeted by the sight of Caelid, one of the game’s more aesthetically terrifying areas:
You may not want to venture here when you start out.
But, for me at least, it took a couple hours of venturing to grasp how large this game is. The map already seems large when you start out, but it’s only upon venturing out into the world and expanding the map that you realise how big it can get:
The two regions near where you first spawn containing the regions of Limgrave and Caelid. But up north, there's also an entire landmass waiting to be explored.
That’s not to mention that it’s a three-dimensional map as well. In your journeys you’ll have to traverse dungeons, along with grand caverns that may well be regions in their own right, like Siofra River.
Suffice it to say, you definitely get a variety of environments, even with just the areas near spawn. And with only the vaguest information given to you at the start of the game, you'll have to rely on the world to do most of the story-telling. World exploration is also accompanied by a grand yet melancholic soundtrack, that intensifies if you find yourself in battle, which certainly sells the mood. If you're looking for a time sinker, this game should be a candidate; Limgrave on its own probably has about 10-15 hours of content waiting for you.
Personally speaking, it was a bit overwhelming at first. But, like with most open-world games, as I started exploring, grabbing map fragments to piece the world together, there was sense that a lot of care was taken into fleshing out the world through these designed set pieces alone, which I can respect (no doubt the collaboration with A Song of Fire and Ice author George R.R. Martin helped). That's even if, so far, I barely understand the world around me.
Gameplay
You'll be seeing a lot of this.
Much of the exploring is made easier with Torrent, the spectral horse that can speed up your travels through the Lands Between. Incidentally, another thing Torrent can help you do is run from a fight when you’re not equipped enough to handle it.
Speaking of which, being an open-world game, running is a viable strategy so long as you’re not in a boss fight. There are moments where the game seems to encourage this, too; in Stormgate, the entrance leading up to Stormhill and Stormveil Castle, the game presents a gate guarded by a giant troll, flanked by enemies to the side, both ranged and melee. But, being a straight line, as long as you run past the troll, either with Torrent or on your own two feet, you can make it to Stormhill.
This happened a couple of times.
When you do find yourself in combat, though, you can only get so far with button mashing. Against groups of mobs, the game encourages you to target a single enemy (there’s even function in the game to do so), in order to engage them in one-to-one combat, as being mobbed by several enemies at once is a bad idea. In fact, getting good in combat means getting the hang of mechanics such as parrying, or deflecting melee attacks, riposte, a critical counterattack, and of course, dodging. Physical damage isn't the only way to do it, of course, as the game offers ranged weapons and the ability to create an builds based on magic, which requires a whole separate strategy of keeping your distance.
That same spirit of strategy carries on to boss fights; although you only have one or two bosses at a time to worry about, in order to engage them effectively, understanding their movesets and developing combos of your own through trial and error is important. Though, it's this same 'trial and error' part that may alienate some people more used to fast-paced combat in other action games, or players who (like me) are just impatient. That's not to mention that, in general, enemies just hit hard, making the margin of error in battles a lot smaller.
Finally, it's worth mentioning that you'll probably have a better experience playing on a controller. Controls are listed with Xbox buttons in in-game menus, which take some time to figure out and re-bind if you're on a keyboard.
A Caveat
I will have to mention that this is where some of my hardware limitations affected the game experience, and where I want to note some of the odd situations I found myself in. My hardware was below the recommended spec on Elden Ring’s Steam page (for context, I was running it on a laptop with an i5-8250U and NVIDIA GeForce 940MX), and as a result, the best graphics option I could choose was Medium, which made the game run between 15-30FPS. The rather low frames weren’t the greatest of my problems though, because, for some reason, the game wouldn’t render some mobs correctly:
Merchant Kalé is supposed to be resting on the column, but he doesn't appear unless I stand next to him. This happens on both Low and Medium.
Luckily, this was only for smaller mobs like knights and undead soldiers, so bosses were completely fine. But apart from having to focus on combat, I now had to look out for shadows and sound to judge whether there were any enemies nearby. This was a bit of a double-edged sword, as the extra layer of difficulty was really annoying, but after getting somewhat used to it, I found that it added to the already somewhat tense atmosphere of the game. It’s also a reason why I allowed myself, on many occasions, to book it and run if I had no interest in engaging mobs.
This rendering issue also extended to Torrent, which resulted in some goofy-looking exploration.
I doubt that FromSoftware would've allowed this to happen with two of their graphics presets, but I never really managed to figure out how to fix this. With some graphics tweaking, you might be able to avoid this issue. I ended up deciding to keep it this way, partially to keep with the spirit of the game's difficulty.
The low FPS did affect some major elements of gameplay, however. Stormhill causes the game to drop to a barely playable framerate. The boss battle with Margit the Fell Omen, one of the game's earliest Great Enemy Bosses, was made all the more frustrating when there's a delay between pressing the roll key and actually rolling. I won't say that lag was the reason why I couldn't get through him (more so my ineptitude with this game and my shoddy character build), but in a game where rhythmic dodges and attacks are important to beating a boss, it added to the frustration factor.
One more thing to note, I couldn't test out features like co-op or bloodstains (the latter of which, as I understand it, is also a big part of gameplay), as the workaround I used to get Elden Ring to work on my DirectX 11 card resulted in having to bypass anti-cheat, which disabled online mode. At the very least, you know that I didn't get any help from more experienced players during my time playing it.
A Huge Game
It's not just a difficult game (although it is very difficult).
There's a lot of other factors that I didn't mention in this review, including Status Effects such as Frostbite and Bloodloss, different character builds and levelling up, and the game's entire crafting system. I'll admit, most of my time in Elden Ring was exploring and gathering map fragments, and running past enemies to see the sights of the Lands Between.
I'm not sure that's how you're supposed to play Elden Ring, but with it being a fully open-world game, that's how I did it. Apart from enjoying strategic boss fight planning, you get to marvel at the spectacle of Elden Ring's world. Of course, you can't run forever, as the easiest way to gain runes, the game's currency and XP, is to defeat enemies.
In regards to the difficulty of the game, yes, it does kind of suck that you'll have to die a lot in order to beat bosses, or just get through certain areas. But apart from that being the point of these games, as a complete newcomer, I can sort of appreciate the sense of danger you get when you're exploring a new area for the first time. That relief you get when you spot a Site of Lost Grace in the middle of a dungeon, the wonder and fear when you see a giant mob in the distance, or the thrill when you go up against a boss.
It's a little bit hard to deliver a verdict that's fair to Elden Ring, but that might not matter, as, after a month since its release, most FromSoftware fans have likely already picked up the game. If, however, you're someone who has held off on it because of the price, you might want to give it a try if you want a slow burn experience, especially since exploration now takes a similarly-sized role as combat. If you're running lower-end hardware though, you may want to tweak some graphics settings to make it playable.
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