Elden Ring just came out a few days back and people are heaping praises over it. Review after review, we see high numbers and stellar feedback. But is Elden Ring really worth the wait? Is it actually worth buying? Read this review to know more!
Like in every game that FromSoftware spawned in recent years, you start as a nobody in Elden Ring. This time, you are a “Tarnished”. Your quest is to get to the Elden Ring to become an Elden Lord. I won’t spoil much as there’s really too many things to dig into. Also worth noting that the story has been influenced by George R.R. Martin, legendary author known for the Game of Thrones books. With that said, let’s play safe and not delve deeper into the plot (not like I understand it).
As usual, the lore is presented sparsely with the game leaving the player to piece things together. You get snippets of what happened or what should happen from time to time. Items, the environment, and the characters that you encounter all offer descriptions that give more clues as to what actually happened. Unfortunately, you might also get bogged down by the number of tales here. Thankfully, we have Youtubers that compile the lore so we can easily digest it in a single hour or so.
On the other hand, you can play the game without minding the story behind things.
Graphically, everything looks splendid and there’s this feel of grand adventure coupled with solemn loneliness as you travel the planes and weird vistas of Elden Ring. The environment certainly does not look like a copy-paste endeavor usually found in open-world games. Everything looks like it has been handled with care and deliberately placed. In Elden Ring, if you can see it, you can get to it.
Another thing worth mentioning is the character editor. Taking advantage of the latest systems, we now have a character editor that does not look like it came from the PS2 era. We finally have something resembling current-gen games. A plus especially if we talk about FromSoftware games.
A massive change here is that the whole game is now open-world. While Dark Souls is considered an open-world game, it still is a guided experience with the difficulty man-handling you to different sections. Here, the whole world is open from the get-go. While you do get the serious difficulty jumps from time to time, most of the world is open and free to explore. You can even get mid-game items a few hours, or even mere minutes, after the game starts!
From the menus, the controls, and the overall feel. Elden Ring is just Dark Souls 4.0. If you have played any of their games in the past, including Sekiro and Bloodborne, you’ll notice that Elden Ring has the same DNA. From the stats down to the rolling, everything is just the same. Not that it’s bad though. And with that said…
Ah, the difficulty. It’s still here. The lessons I learned from the previous Souls games still rings true here: learn from mistakes, observe enemies, and power up. The game is punishing and difficult – if you don’t know what you are doing. Trial and error is key here and knowing what mistakes you made and how you can counter them is the key to winning this game.
If you want a game to test your patience, your problem-solving skills, or to gauge your resistance to stress, Elden Ring is for you. Kidding aside, the loop that FromSoftware continues to use is very apparent here. Getting that satisfaction of beating that difficult boss is a feeling worth having. Elden Ring has little to no hand-holding and that makes it all the more worth it when playing the game.
As mentioned above, reviewing this on the PC has been troublesome at times. I experienced stutters from time to time, mainly because of the game world loading as you travel along. But sometimes, the game just stutters to a degree that is unacceptable during tense moments. An example that I can give is the fight with a dragon during the early stages of the game. The fight is arguably easy if you know that boss’ moves but can be difficult during certain ones as the flames can hit your FPS to a grinding halt. This is quite weird as I can maintain a healthy 60 FPS (framerate is locked on PC) like 95% of the time. I even had to reduce my resolution from 3440×1440 to 1920×1200 to have it run without any problems. But regrettably, the change did not fix things. Hopefully, this issue will be fixed in the future.
Elden Ring is definitely the best Souls game to date. While I still am bitter about the lack of Bloodborne 2, this one is more than enough to make for it. Elden Ring is bigger, more ambitious, and is chock full of content due to its open-world nature. The weapons here are quite numerous and you can try a myriad of sick builds, further increasing the game’s replay value. Add the multiplayer and you essentially have game that can give you a hundred hours in a single playthrough. Elden Ring is a game that is, without a doubt, worth every penny spent on it.
If you are a fan of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, or Sekiro, Elden Ring is a definite must-buy. For those still on the fence, check out previews and watch streams. This is a genre that I shied away from and I got into it because of Bloodborne. The same might happen to you.
Elden Ring is available on the PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. On Steam, it is currently reasonably priced at PhP 1,999.95. For consoles, Elden Ring retails at PhP 2,990.00. You can buy the physical version of the game at your favorite gaming stores here in the Philippines.
Buy Elden Ring from Steam here. For all platforms, you can buy it from Bandai Namco Entertainment here.
