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Elden Ring Review: Traversing the mist for the first time

By Glenn Chua - 25 Mar 2022

Gameplay, Bugginess and Conclusion

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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8.0
  • Playability 7
  • Graphics 8.5
  • Sound 9
  • Addictiveness 7
The Good
Large, varied map = Long playtime
Exploration is really fun, and filling the map with map fragments makes it satisfying
Running from a fight is now possible, to a degree
The Bad
Playing on lower-end hardware (for PC) adds another layer of difficulty
Combat is still a barrier to entry if you enjoy fast-paced action
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