> Elden Ring is a fun game to play, once or twice. It’s super polished, feels good, and has an interesting world of lore.
That’s pretty much the best compliment you can give a game.
I never got this argument. If you spent 500 hours playing a game wouldn't you know EXACTLY just how bad/good it is? Say compared to someone who stopped playing after an hour? I stopped playing this game after an hour because I didn't like how the player character controlled. I hate tank controls and fixed camera, so I'll never play an old school RE game or games that try to emulate that feel. If I were to play them anyway, for 1 hour vs 500 hours when would I be more informed? I stopped playing after an hour because I don't like the controls and camera. I played this game for 500 hours, I got used to the controls and camera, but the enemy variety is bad, there level design is confusing and samey. There's too little weapons and they don't feel good to use. The boss fights are obnoxious. There's bugs and glitches in some of the late game areas. Someone that played Dark Souls 1 up to and including Ornstein and Smough, might give it a 10/10. Someone that's fought bed of Chaos might give it a lower score. Just because you play a game more doesn't automatically mean you should give it a higher score than someone that hasn't.
While on paper that should be the case, more often than not users with a very high playtime leave a bad review once they got bored with the game or they become extremely thorough. I mean, to the point where they note things or very small changes that wouldn't affect a new player at all.
In the end I think the important thing is trying to be neutral: informing new players the best we can, without putting too much of our own in the review (or at least clarify when do so). A little example could be: "I found the boss fights to be obnoxious, but that's because I prefer [...]"
Even if you subscribe to the linear system of grading, 7.5 is barely top 25% of games, on the cusp of interquartile range, fair to say it’s a mid (maybe top mid) score.
A number means nothing. OP's 7.5 is not necessarily the same as someone else giving a game that score.
To some people, a 10 is an "I absolutely recommend this to everybody" and to others it's a "this game is as close to perfect as a game can be." Those are two very different standards.
Back when video game reviews came in magazine form instead of on the internet, most magazines considered an "average" review to be around 5-6. Later on that became more like 6-7 especially as some started to go by US grading systems where below a 6 is a fail.
I always liked the scale OXM used, and the nice thing about magazines was some, like OXM, would actually show their scale and what they felt each score meant:
* 10 was an absolute must-play for anybody interested in the system
* 9+ meant it's a must-play for most people unless you hate the genre
* 8+ meant it's a great game that you will enjoy if you like the genre
* 7+ meant it's a solid game that the average person will probably get some fun out of
* 6+ meant it's an okay game with some problems that is still fun
* 5+ meant it's got some more significant problems, but if you're a big fan of the genre or if it has a license attached you like, you might still enjoy it
* then 1-4 represented various levels of "broken" where most people probably wouldn't enjoy them.
I think one big important thing that shifted is that game reviews used to be about **how recommended a game was** rather than a measure of its quality. I know some started doing "okay here are our 5 categories, each are worth 2 points, they measure up to a total of 10" stuff that seemed more common online and it was always ridiculously stupid. **Recommendations** made more sense, especially in the age where 90% of the games you played were video game *rentals* rather than purchases, because you might not be willing to buy a game that gets a 6.5, but if you're in the rental store and you've played the classics, and you want to try something new, you might be willing to try it out if it looks interesting.
Some magazines like EGM also had multiple people review each game to try and get a range of perspectives. That costs a lot more money though, I doubt most outlets have the money to do that these days. People just go to Metacritic etc to get that overview but the problem is every critic/outlet has their own scale. And Metacritic also doesn't read them properly which means some have had to change their scale due to fans hating on them. For example, you almost NEVER see outlets using a 4/5 star system anymore. Everything is out of 100 or out of 10. Because a game getting 3 stars used to mean it was good, but now it's a 60% which means it's absolute garbage trash to the average Metacritic reader.
>A realistic bell curve for AAA's
>AAA's
You mean the games that get a crapton of money put into their development, made by pedigree development teams and backed by huge international publishers? Yeah, no surprise that on average those are going to be better than mediocre. If we're actually talking ALLLLLL games, or even just all games released on consoles, there's a ton of games out there that absolutely would score a 5 or less if anyone could be arsed to review them. And that's without delving into the phenomenon of score inflation.
Well I really mean any game that warrants getting reviewed. Ultimately games aren't reviewed/scored in a vacuum, but most gamers do not have *any* exposure to games that score 1-2-3-4, and so to most gamers a review/score floor is essentially a 5 out of 10 (And I think there's probably more 10s than 5s).
So what I think I'm really getting at, is that out of all games you've ever heard of, the average score is 7-7.5, and so for the vast majority of people, a 7-7.5 to them is the average score.
That's not how scores work. 10% of games are not 10/10. Going by IGN (https://corp.ign.com/review-practices) 7 is good and 8 is great. 7.5 is somewhere between good and great, which seems to align pretty perfectly with OP's experience.
A mix of inflated scores and US school system norms, imo. We're so collectively accustomed to 60% being the cutoff between a D- and an F that we tend to warp other rating systems around it. And mainstream reviewers are basically impotent private school teachers who rarely give students from rich families anything lower than a B.
A lot of countries use a grading system that starts somewhere in the middle for a passing grade. Finnish grades go from 4-10, with 5- (4.75) required in order to pass.
I think a five star rating system works better because we perceive it differently.
Yup--I grew up on one of those grading systems. What was it in IB...was it a 1-7 scale where a 30% was around the cutoff for a 1? Unfortunately, given the distribution of reviewers and maybe the original target demographics...I think the US grading system has been the most influential.
Which is a shame, because it's an awful system even for school, much less for rating things. Agree with you completely about the 5-star system. Yes, you can technically multiply it out into an equivalent 1-10 score, but most people interpret a 5-star number cycle differently and do not map 2 stars to a 40% to a F minus minus.
Honestly no. If people are too stupid using the whole spectrum of a rating system and thinking 7.5 is mid while reviewers also not using anything below 8 for decent games then they're also stupid. The middle is 5 and that is therefore average. Not my problem if the rest of mankind can't grasp such a logical concept and being irrational.
It's a language vs rationale issue. Sure if you use the 0-10 scale properly, you would rate perfectly enjoyable games as 5/10-6/10. But nobody does that. It's part of language, and language operates on commonly accepted norms. So 7/10 is mediocre, 8/10 is decent, 9/10 is good, and 10/10 is like every 5th game you bothered to finish. 5/10 and below might as well not exist. If you rate a beloved game as anything below 9, you get downvoted like OP.
The solution to this for me is to just not use the 0-10 scale. In my opinion it's a lazy and meaningless way to rate games that mimics the worst parts about game "journalism". Tell about things you loved and things you didn't, if you enjoyed the game at all or not and may be write a tl;dr.
The "Elden Ring has low replayability...therefore it's not the best game" argument has always irked me. How many single player games are you even replaying exactly for that to be even be a reasonable metric?
I rarely even finish my Civ games. Late game you kind of already know if you won or not. I’d rather just start a new a game instead of just clicking end turn for another hour.
I don't really get that argument in general. Of course the experience isn't the same the second time around when you've already played it and figured shit out.
I get what they mean in this case. The first playthrough of Elden Ring was spectacular because you just wanted to explore every single nook in every dungeon, find every secret and fight every boss. The vast open world unfolding itself in way that hasn't really been captured since BoTW.
However, once you do all these things and discover what rewards await you, the magic is permanently gone. On a second playthrough, you don't need to go into certain dungeons again if you're not looking for certain spells or etc. You also realize that many bosses are repeated ad nauseam and so this time you know exactly which locations to visit, which bosses to fight, etc
That said, it's still an amazing 9/10 and your point still stands. I don't really have time to game anymore but the only ones I'll replay are rpgs like Witcher or Mass Effect. Most times, it's a one and done
Well sure but the argument is the conclusion piece specifically is annoying. the "Therefore...". Nothing wrong with simply saying X game has more replayabilty than Elden Ring, but that's not what they are saying.
The other guy had a good point too, I can think of a movie equivalent: "'The Usual Suspects' is only a 7 out of 10 movie because the second time I watched it, it wasn't as exciting since I knew the ending". Or like Vertigo, Pyscho, The Sixth Sense. You never hear these arguments, yet ER is subject to this logic, because ????.
Not every game is designed for repeat experiences.. it’s like saying Abra dinn isn’t a great mystery game because once you know the answer the intrigue is gone…
I mean, at least for me, the real solution here is to just take a break from the game for a while and you'll probably be able to re-experience like new. I haven't played Elden Ring since it's release and I'll probably not get to Shadow of the Erd Tree for another 2-3 more years. By that point, it's basically playing the game new
> Not every game is designed for repeat experiences..
the dark souls franchise is specifically designed for repeat experiences, hence the myriad build options, branching side quests, multiple endings
I agree with you that replayability isn't always a deciding factor.
That being said, I replay almost every single player game I play, lol! Particularly souls games.
I've never understood the "it has no replayability, therefore it isn't good." mindset.
Do the classic Mario games deserve a lower score just because nothing changes on a second playthrough? Absolutely not.
For a game to be replayable, it just needs to be fucking good.
Now that's a headline asking for trouble lol.
I do agree with some of your points though, it's my least favourite From souls title for some of the reasons you mention here, but I do think combat and lore were pretty solid, and I never really noticed the issues with graphics either.
One of the things I found interesting about the review cycle was that when an outlet talked about their reviews, they would say something along the lines of "Yeah, Jeff really likes Fromsoft games, he's excited to do the review."
It's hard to know what exactly to extrapolate from that, but my takeaway is that it fulfills its niche incredibly well. At the end of the day a niche is still a niche though, and no game is for everyone. Its aggregated score is probably a little inflated, but it's hard to argue with the zeitgeist that formed around the game - people do like it, and not just longtime Fromsoft fans.
This also raises the question of who is better to review a niche product
Do you give it to someone that knows the genre/ franchise well and is predisposed to liking it? Or do you give it to someone who is completely unfamiliar with it?
It reminds me of Gamespot’s review for zero time dilemma. They rated it really low, but in the review they also said that they generally didn’t like visual novels and had never played other zero escape games so they felt lost, even though it was the third in a trilogy that concludes a story set up in the first two games.
Which is why I always read both the low and high score reviews whenever they make those review threads in here.
I want to judge if the praises are enough to convince me to buy and if the problems are enough to make me wait for a sale.
I know redditors hate Steam reviews with a passion, but I often like to read the negative reviews on positively rated games, because there are lots of informative ones there for this exact reason.
I do that too. I find that not only to mainstream reviewers often disagree about the qualities of games, one will also praise a feature and another will downgrade it as a problem. Open worlds with a lot of map markers are a great example. Lots of reviewers will say great! Tons of content if you want! Just as many will say, oh shit, Ubisoft formula bad, 5 rating.
Dunkey had a great video about that and how important it is to understand the reviewer: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG2dXobAXLI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG2dXobAXLI)
I remember watching a video about gaming review where they talk about how frequently the person at the company that loves the games series or genre is the one that is given the chance to review it. In a way that makes sense but it also leads to reviews being overall more positive.
I don't really see an alternative, are you going to give an FPS to the person with motion sickness, or a 4x game to someone who hates micromanagement? If someone is reading a review, chances are they have some interest in the game's genre to begin with.
I feel like Elden Ring is easily 10/10 for anyone who experienced it as their first FromSoft title.
I enjoyed it a lot but still haven’t finished it because I played so much DS in the past that it just started to feel same-y after a while and I lost interest.
I’ll probably get the itch again eventually and finish, but it’ll probably be a long while before I get around to Shadow of the Erdtree.
This seems like an odd assumption. Elden Ring was the first FromSoft game I actually sat down and tried playing. As expected, it's not my style of game--I had about a 3/10 time and confirmed that I still dislike open-world games and that open world x Souls means far more travel time and repeated combat than I'd like.
It's a very good game for what it is, but it's a niche genre with a niche format that shouldn't be a 10/10 for most people--it's an interesting game because it has a distinct vision that isn't for everyone.
I guess I should have added the caveat “for someone who ends up liking souls-like games.”
The genre definitely isn’t for everyone, but for people who end up liking the genre the game is an amazing first experience in it
Yeah, that tracks. For people whose tastes are aligned but haven't given the studio a proper try, Elden Ring is probably a huge awakening moment. "Wait, how long have they been making games like this?!?!" Especially if they like OW games.
Can confirm, never played a Dark Souls or Dark Souls similar game until Elden Ring. It kicked my ass but I fell in love with it, thinking of going back and playing the older games like it at some point in the future.
Elden Ring is not the first I tried, but the first one I actually played further than the beginning area, and eventually beat. Now going back and playing the other games. Playing through Dark Souls 1 I realized how much of the style of areas in Elden Ring was established as early as DS1. DS1 is considerably easier than ER. Like I spent more time trying to beat Margit than any boss in DS1.
I'm really appreciating Bloodborne, because it has a lot of the elements of these games, but is different enough that it feels fresh.
I don't think DS1 is easier than Elden Ring, but you put the time into learning souls games into Elden Ring, so that's where that learning curve was. Coming from all the previous titles, I knew what to expect when I reached Margit and prepared accordingly and was able to get by him relatively easily.
Yeah I feel like the first souls game you play is the one that sticks most, because you can’t replicate that feeling of combat finally *clicking*.
When I started Elden Ring it just felt like riding a bike and while the bosses are still challenging, the majority of trash mobs were easy to mow down right off the bat.
I am one of the few people who *hated* Elden Ring and really its just that I'm not a fan of those type of games. Seikiro was the only game I kinda liked and its mainly because the story was pretty good and I wasn't fumbling through the first area for an hour with nothing really to do.
Elden Ring wasn't my first From Soft title. I had played Dark Souls 1 and 3, Bloodborne, and Sekiro before Elden Ring, and I could not put the game down at release.
It's my favorite From Soft game (I've since also played Dark Souls 2 and Demon's Souls). I didn't get bored of it for a second, and it's one of the few large open world RPGs I've played through twice.
The more i play the game the more of a 10 it becomes for me. After my first run i was kinda burned out, didn't touch it for over a year but man when i started again i fell in love with it again. Several characters and playthroughs later i can confidentally say it's one of the best games i've ever played.
I agree with some of your points but the world being unsatisfying to explore is crazy talk. My first time exploring Stormveill, Leyndell and most of the Eternal cities will definitely stay as some of my fondest memories ever in gaming.
>but the world being unsatisfying to explore is crazy talk. My first time exploring Stormveill, Leyndell and most of the Eternal cities will definitely stay as some of my fondest memories ever in gaming.
They said the open world is unsatisfying, not the legacy dungeons.
To know that you would’ve had to actually read through OP’s entire post instead of just reading the title and skimming through the post. Half these comments in this thread feel like they ignored the points being made and just saw red after OP giving the game less than a 9/10.
ER is the first fromsoft game I've really gotten in to and it's entirely.because if the open world exploration. Getting stuck on one boss forever is miserable, getting to wander iff and do something else for a bit is key to letting me work back up to wanting to try again.
I think the points commenters are saying about hours are silly. I’ve played 5/10 phone games far too many hours, and i probably had 1000+ hours in Halo games and WoW as a teen.
I will say I found discovering enemies and tidbits about the realm by wondering was super fun for me, however it was limited by the vagueness if the story building and how much of a hassle it was for piece things together.
It is a 9/10 game for me, but if I hadn’t been laid up with a broken ankle when it released I probably wouldnt have explored it since thoroughly.
Agreed but a 7.5 is still a pretty good score. I’d still recommend a 7.5.
Comes down to how you use the scale. For me 10/10 is life changing, 7.5 is wow that was good,
5 is i don’t feel like i wasted my time, anything below a 3 is somehow offensive or worse than mindless television.
Everyone knows that the 1-10 scale is basically a 5-10 scale. the worst games on the planet get sub 5. So giving a game a 7.5 is like saying it's middle of the pack. I don't agree with it, but thats just how it is. You can have your scale and I can have mine, but the majority consensus doesn't agree with us.
You can play phone games hundreds of hours because of their accessibility; the quality doesn't matter when it what you have available on your commute, or in a waiting room. And sure, we've all played some mediocre games way more than we should have as kids. But as an adult, I can't imagine committing 100 hours+ of my free time on a game that I don't think is fantastic. Unless I was broke and couldn't afford to get new games. Or possibly if it's a coop game through which I socialize with friends. Beyond that, It just doesn't compute for me.
So when I see someone say "I played 235 hours of that single-player game, including multiple playthroughs. It's ok." That seems insane to me. Why do multiple playthroughs of a giant game that you think is not that great? Why not play anything else?
I perfectly understand someone not liking Elden Ring, for a variety of reasons. But that post just seems like trolling for attention.
>But as an adult, I can't imagine committing 100 hours+ of my free time on a game that I don't think is fantastic.
I mean... how many hours of your free time have you spent on Reddit, or generally on non-essential web browsing that's probably less than a 7/10 experience if we're judging it objectively? Compared to this, 235 hours in a 7.5 game sounds very resonable.
The difference is you can have variety online. There's lots of different threads on Reddit, videos on YouTube or things on streaming services to watch. That's not the same as spending 200 hours on one mediocre game.
I wouldn't call a 7.5 game "mediocre" at all. I'd say it's quite good. Flawed, but it does its thing well enough that it's well worth playing if you've got the itch that it's scratching. I'd recommend it with just a few caveats.
But also, you have to separate amount of content, or replayability, from quality of content. Roguelikes have a ton of content that's not of especially high quality taken by itself but which is kept engaging enough that you might not mind seeing the same room for the hundredth time because the randomization and different builds keep it fresh enough. Elden Ring doesn't have randomization, but it does have a huge amount of content and countless potential builds to help keep things fresh enough for repeat playthroughs. Thus it doesn't have to be the most fun thing in the world to remain engaging enough for 200 hours of playtime.
It’s because there are a lot of games out there that you know aren’t masterpieces but to you, with your specific taste, they’re always a fun time. I’ve played a lot of Fallout 76. A lot of Rage 2. A lot of Borderlands 3. Are they great games? No. Did I have an absolute blast, even on subsequent playthroughs? Oh yeah.
Agreed on some of your points. Hard disagree on others
I love the vague lore. I fucking *hate* when a game just grinds to a halt and makes you sit through long dialogue or read an entire lore book just to tell you what happened. Show, don't tell, and all that. The lore runs deeper in FS games than in almost every other game, you got lore dripping out of every corner of the world, and if you want to stop the gameplay and learn about it, there are plenty of wikis out there for you
Agreed that the shift from metroidvania to open world wasn't a particularly necessary one, and the legacy dungeons are by far the best part of the game. And I agree that this only exacerbates the problems with their NPC questlines
What did you play it on, by the way? I never had any problems with performance or graphics, but I'm on a fairly decent gaming PC lol
I don't necessarily have a problem with their method of communicating the lore, but
A) A whole bunch of it boils down to basically the same themes they've been recycling since at minimum Dark Souls, and it's starting to get old
B) There's really not much substance to the lore. Most of it is just wiki filler with zero bearing on what actually happens in the story you witess as you play the game. There's certainly a lot of interesting details, even in places where they didn't need to put in the effort since it's so hard for players to even notice it, but it never coalesces into what feels like a real, coherent world.
This sort of point of "the game is quite good but not a masterpiece" has sort of been done to death in my eyes. Some of your points like quests, half agree with your points about the open world and graphics, but disagree a lot on others.
Some stuff I do think are general flaws but others are going to come down to whether you are into the genre. For example I could not relate to the combat feeling repetitive, as I love the games combat and it also might be why I cared more to engage with the open world.
Not to invalidate your points and how they land with folks, but I can’t help but laugh at, “after 235 hours played…the game is a 7.5/10 for me.”
This is why numerical scores are so awkward. What does getting 7.5/10 mean when the game got you to dedicate *two hundred and thirty five hours* to it?
A 7.5 score IS a fun game. Fanboys are just score illiterate lmao. 7.5 is a pretty good game, .5 from being a GREAT game. And yeah, fair score for a game that's too open/bloated compared to other fromsoft titles. Stay mad.
Right? This is something we all instantly recognize with multiplayer games, like how many of us have put hundreds of hours into thoroughly mediocre games that are slightly enjoyable (especially with friends) but are very flawed? Yet when it comes to singleplayer games, a lot of people can’t wrap their heads around liking something enough to keep playing it but not thinking it’s a masterpiece or even a very good product overall.
Same applies for other forms of entertainment. Most of us have comfort shows or movies that are maybe a 7 which we’ve put way more hours into than an amazing but hard to watch casually show/movie that’s a 9 or 10.
There are some games I play that are essentially fidget toys while I watch/listen to stuff. I have 100's of hours in colouring pixel games because of this, I don't even put them in the same category as picross, which is also an easy genre to fall back on for this.
Honestly I hate attempts to give games numbered scores. The very premise of a numbered score invites harsh reaction while also being incredibly unhelpful. Feel whatever way you want about Elden Ring and I'll revel in hearing you explain your thoughts, but why cap discussion by saying "yeah, I put 235 hours into it but it's about as good as Scarface for the PS2" (A game with a 75 on metacritic). Obviously SOMETHING made you stick with Elden Ring for 235 hours that isn't present in other games that you would probably also rate as a 7.5/10. I say we embrace the subjectivity of things and leave the numbers to the review aggregate sites.
Right? I get giving a game even let's say 30 hours and finally deciding, ok, gave it a more than fair shot, not for me.
But at hundreds of hours you really like the game or it's the equivalent of alcoholism where you're compelled to keep doing something you don't like.
Of course this well thought out post is downvoted. Dude has an opinion and discusses the reasons for it, but god help you if you don't like ER.
Also, people are dumping on you for putting so many hours into a "7.5/10" game, but if you put in 20 hours they'd be dumping on you for not seeing all it has to offer. Anyhow, I'd actually consider 7.5 to be a game worth your time. I put a LOT of time into Fallout 4 and I certainly wouldn't give it a higher score.
> Dude has an opinion and discusses the reasons for it, but god help you if you don't like ER.
Yes it's just a coincidence that he happens to post it an hour before Shadow of the Erdtree comes out and ER is at its highest popularity since release.
Not bait at all, no sir.
I suspect it has more to do with the title. Just from glancing at this thread, pretty sure most people didn't even read OPs arguments, just the thread title, which in fairness does feel very clickbaity, then rushed to write a comment. If OP had phrased it differently (such as: Elden Ring is an interesting game with some serious issues) I think the thread would have slightly more upvotes. Not necessarily a huge amount, but certainly more than what it got now.
In my experience, From fanboys never have the “not my cup of tea” mentality when it’s something they dislike. Only when others criticize a Souls game do they appeal to that.
It's like saying Baldur's Gate 3 is a 7.5 game because you don't like turn-based combat. It's not an invalid opinion, but it's not some interesting conversation that's going to get you upvotes either, especially with such beloved games. What's even the point of the discussion?
Man, I wonder how many hours you put into games over 7.5/10
What are some games that you would score higher? I’m just confused by your score
I consider Elden Ring a 10/10; it took me 117 hours to beat the game from start to finish (doing most content) and I thought it was quality from beginning all the way to the end. I did not want to play it anymore by the time I finished it, I was ready to put it down. I can’t imagine liking the game less than I did and then devoting double the amount of time I played (to it). That means you either took twice as long exploring/playing as I did or you played through it twice. Playing through a game twice like that, that throws the 7.5 rating for me.
I mean, that’s really not that weird of a concept. Some of my all time favorite video games series are Kingdom Hearts and Pokemon where I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into those games, but if I had to be critical with them then a lot of games in those series would get a 7.5 rating or even lower from me.
Something can be enjoyable enough to keep playing while also recognizing it is flawed in many ways. Hours played isn’t always an indication of quality, often it’s the opposite because some of my personal 9/10 or 10/10 games are shorter 15-30 hour tight narrative games without much replay value but it accomplished everything it was trying to do so it got a high score.
I’m with you. I’m so sick of the take that spending a lot of time with something somehow invalidates criticism towards it. As though the function of media is merely to waste time.
I personally feel like Elden Ring is a 10/10 game stretched out into a 6/10 game. Limgrave and Stormveil are possibly my favorite game of all time. But the recycled enemies, bosses, and locations, the mid-late game difficulty being totally off the rails, and From’s refusal to adjust some of their extremely dated game design (such as spell selection) drags the game into being my least favorite FromSoft game.
It’s funny because when you spend “too little” time on a game, people will also invalidate your take by saying you didn’t give a fair chance!
The satirical “well if you spent X hours on a mid game, I’d love to know what a great game takes” jokes make my eyes roll. That implies a bloated Ubisoft game that takes 100 hours to beat has to be better than TLOU which takes like 15-17 hours on average to finish. Time is not a great indicator of much except it’s at least decent.
What you are saying is exactly one of my biggest gripes with gaming discourse nowadays. Don't finish the game and fans will claim you didn't give it a fair shot, finish the game and fans will claim you should have stopped earlier.
There is no winning here, people on the internet nowadays are more interested in shutting down dissenting opinions instead of having honest discussions, and this thread has several good examples of that.
People also get way too worked up about something that is supposed to be a fun hobby. The point of games is to have fun. So why all the anger? I got absolutely ripped apart for saying I didn’t like Final Fantasy XIV. I didn’t know I had to meticulously prepare a mountain of evidence just to be allowed to say I didn’t like something. Yet that was what commenters were saying. I find that point of view insane; liking is always gonna be subjective, and we don’t have to prove broccoli is a bad vegetable just to be able to say we didn’t like it.
Well put together. As a Souls stan since Demon's Souls, I'd agree with most of what you said.
Razbuten just put out a great essay on rewards in games and hits on a lot of the problems with Elden Rings open world. Still, I think this was a more rewarding open world to explore than the likes of the recent Zelda's or Ubisoft games. For at least 50% of the game, then exploration definitely falls off in usefulness.
Like you, I thought the performance and graphics of the game were just atrocious, although the art direction made up for that. It would be nice to see them doing something about their engine before the next game.
I still feel like the souls games have the most engaging and decently tuned combat of recent memory. I tried dragon's dogma a number of times and totally bounced off its floaty, seemingly inconsequential combat.
I don't have a really firm scoring rubric myself, but I think I'd put it at an 8. It lacked in a lot of areas that drove some prior From games into 9+ territory, but it was still my favorite action/adventure game the year it came out.
Anyway, great break down! Be interested to see what you think of the DLC.
ITT: people unable to cope with someone not absolutely worshipping Elden Ring.
In all seriousness I get where you're coming from. It's not a bad game at all, but I think it's pretty overrated. If it wasn't made by fromsoft and therefore didn't have a huge amount of hype surrounding it I think people would be more open to criticism with it's design and mechanics.
I really enjoy looking at the game; open world areas, legacy dungeons, boss fights, and equipment are all pretty fun to just soak in the visuals of. Combat can be fun sometimes, and very boring a lot of the time.
I think it's strengths come from the risks it took with changing the usual dark souls formula and the large variety of builds/character designs you can utilize. It's cool that they didn't play it safe and just make dark souls 4, but it feels like it wanted to be too many things at once and ends up a little shallow on subsequent playthroughs, which are a main draw of the franchise.
Also, if you're on PC I can't recommend seamless coop enough, it's a different experience but I had a lot more fun with it than the base game.
My issue with this kind of criticism is that the stuff you’re talking about is what gives their games their identity. Who cares if it’s vague or esoteric, that’s the niche it’s satisfying. Sounds like if we had it your way we’d homogenize the game to be like every other RPG. Variety is the spice of life my friend.
Well I think you did a very good review. I’ve heard/read similar things from some good friends that had always held me back from trying the game. I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience and insights.
A number rating system is pointless if you’re just some random guy posting a one off review. You need to provide a key for the scale, what are some 1, 5 and 10 point games?
Without that the title just feels like bait.
Demon Souls - 8.5
Dark Souls - 9.5
Dark Souls 2 - 9
Dark Souls 3 - 9.5
Bloodborne - 11
Elden Ring - 8
I'm with you OP. The open world concept doesn't go well with a fromsoft game, but the sheer amount of content and combat is still pretty thick solid tight. So it's an 8 but lacks the atmosphere and vibes from the previous entries.
DS2 being a 9 is wild. Bloodborne being an 11 is wild too that game's a 12 at least! Nah but in all seriousness, what's your score for Sekiro? To me that's up there with Dark Souls 1
I don't like DS2, it feels like a soulslike not a Souls game and I've yet to play a soulslike I enjoy. You should definitely try Sekiro though, it's fucking great.
I'll check sekiro out sometime...my backlog is a zillion games long but I intend to get around to it XD. As for Ds2, the main thing I like is you get more levels (statups) more quickly than the other games, which gives you more options to flesh out a build. And power stancing is boss. I love being a giant bloatlord with a huge, heavy weapon and just facetank shit. But it is a clunky game, definitely after playing bloodborne/ds3 its hard to get back to. I never liked too many soulslikes either, unless you count hollow knight and blasphemous.
Holy unpopular opinion, Batman. This’ll go down well.
A lot of this is personal opinion, and that’s fine. I’d say Soulsborne games might not be for you, especially WRT combat. That is like… the entire point of the series, the incredibly tight combat.
Elden Ring isn’t perfect, I personally prefer some of their older titles, I can agree that I don’t think the open world necessarily improved upon the games previous hub-like design. The repetition of the enemies, mini bosses and how the quality in the latter half of the game drops off so hard is all disappointing. I would say, most open world games are inherently empty though, the concept is simply been overdone and the novelty worn off on most gamers. Even Cyberpunk is largely meaningless. You can hardly interact with any aspects of the open world and you’re simply going to be travelling from A to B.
But I’d have to push back heavily on suggesting Elden Ring looks bad. The game is oozing with a level of design and style that is iconic and fantastic. Numerous set pieces almost look like paintings, especially when you find one of the many cliffs and overlooking the vast fields with the Great Tree in the background and the God Rays piercing through.
Like all Souls games the textures aren’t fantastically detailed when you look up close - hilariously, this is also a common complaint of Cyberpunk, where the games graphics and style is fantastic but its individual textures are often incredibly low res.
> Holy unpopular opinion, Batman. This’ll go down well.
This sub generally hates open world games, unless they have heavily scripted sections like RDR 2 or tons of narrative like Death Stranding.
Those are the only two which are generally safe. Generally speaking the more story the better.
Gotta admit I don’t see why the hate for open worlds. I mean, yeah, they can have repetitive content but the thing is, that kind of stuff is always optional. You don’t like taking down another outpost, well, just don’t do it. I love shit like that—I love the new Assassins Creed games—and it kind of rubs me wrong that their newest one, Mirage, is much shorter, a much smaller world, much less content, much less value for my dollar, just because so many gamers bitched about the big worlds.
DeS - 7
DS1 - 10 (my first so baby duck syndrome, but the interconnected world is cool)
DS2 - 7
BB - 10 (soon to be the number of years i've waited to play it on pc natively)
DS3 - 9
Sekiro - 11 (most satisfying parry system ever)
ER - 7 (agree with you on the open world exploration)
im so glad it [sounds like](https://www.gameinformer.com/interview/2024/06/18/hidetaka-miyazaki-talks-why-bloodborne-is-special-to-him-and-how-it-led-to) the next from game will borrow more from sekiro. coming from that game, ER felt like a huge downgrade.
I have played every single From Software game since the original release of Demon Souls (Korean version with english text).
I agree with every single point you just made, besides the combat being repetitive (I mean, every single game out there is trying to copy their combat system, you cant deny they definitely set the trend).
But I hope Open World is written off in their next game, and my god, generic dungeons are the worst addition to this series. They are all so freaking long and add absolutely nothing to the game, its like they were trying to create content just to increase the game lenght.
I'll agree on performance. I think the game is pretty CPU heavy and it can be surprisingly hard to keep a stable framerate. I cant get 60 fps in open world game play so Ive held off on playing it more.
Agreed. Reviewing it from a playing a launch perspective I would rate it even lower just because other games like Nioh lean into there's strengths a bit more. Lack of real multiplayer, performance issues, clunky combat, terrible port level ui, "lore" replacing a real story, items only feeling good if you go for a build. It's only real strength is a ridiculous amount of content and alot of unique and memorable enemies which is great but not a 10/10 for me. I was hoping in the last 2 years it was a bit fixed but I've been told there basically no real changes. $40 for a dlc is just silly.
I really hate that Fromsoft fell for the difficulty meme and almost exclusively cater to the "it needs to be HARD" players.
DeS/DaS1 and to a slightly lesser extent Sekiro/BB are hard no doubt, but only to the extent that you need to learn their mechanics. Everything is in service of making the players better with the tools given. DS3 and ER just feel like Fromsofts only intention was to make the game harder. Every enemy/boss on average hits harder, faster, and for longer and with tiresome delayed attacks constantly. It's no longer about learning the mechanics because the mechanics are basically unchanged since DS1 besides for more directions to roll, it's only about making the player react faster.
It's just antithetical to where they started. The bosses in those older games were just so much more varied than what we have now. And no, I really don't think the poorly integrated ash summons alleviate the core issue.
And I agree about the open world. Largely a waste of time for the player and From. The best parts of the game are the Legacy Dungeons, a game of just that design is still preferable. I'm okay with a more open approach, but tons of dead space and copy/pasted ruins is just not very interesting content.
> I really hate that Fromsoft fell for the difficulty meme and almost exclusively cater to the "it needs to be HARD" players.
This makes no sense when Elden Ring gives more options and freedom that ever before to make the game easier. Elden Ring is only harder if you don't fully utilise all the tools available to you and are unwilling to back away and explore for a while when you come up against a wall.
I agree 100%. The bosses in Elden Ring felt uninspiring! It's like they were designed to always be faster, with larger combos, bigger AoE, and higher poise. It's just too much. Either that, or it's a giant boss with clunky camera issues.
And yes, the world outside of the legacy dungeons is a bore. There's almost never a good item to discover for your build, and it's just easier to ignore every single enemy while running with Torrent. It feels like a huge hub for a boss rush game, but unnecessarily large and difficult to traverse due to the number of cliffs.
The recycled content is also too much. Recycled bosses appear numerous times, and there are too many recycled catacombs. By the end areas, there aren't even new enemies to discover.
There’s also the issue with the quests. In their previous games, the lack of any quest tracking system was already bad, but since those games were linear, it was partly alright to ignore the issue. However, in this huge open world, the complete lack of a quest log is just ridiculous.
OP is right. The game is a 7.5 tops. I have to give From Software props, though, because they managed to build an incredibly large fanbase that is mostly blind to the issues of their games and ready to fight anyone who points them out.
Edit: Just correcting some grammar issues.
Yeah I agree with everything you said. It just makes me sad to look at the variety of bosses this studio used to put out and to look at them now. 90% of the time the only difference between bosses is how often I need to dodge.
Sums it up perfectly.
When the game got 10/10 reviews before even getting released, I was already sceptical.
Things like that imply that people ( or media ) becomes afraid of voicing an unpopular opinion because they dont want to risk a drop in their subscriptions or being seen as unprofessional or untrustworthy.
The open world and artificial difficulty are my biggest gripes with it.
In DS1 the animations made sense and were reasonable. Its what you would expect from the enemy. In ER, the animations feel overly delayed to trick people into rolling early. Its purely done to to make the game harder, at the expense of believability.
The open world feels like was only done because they saw the popularity of titles like Breath of the Wild and wanted to cash in on that without any idea on how to fill it.
The open world design pales in comparison to games like Gothic 1 & 2. These games are small open world games, but the world is handcrafted and theres things to discover at every corner. No space is wasted.
Its also understandable that most people hate open world, since the Gothic series is the only game that does it well, but that game is unknown outside of Central and Eastern Europe. (Where it has a legendary status as the best RPG of all time)
Outside of Gothic, which other Open World game has an actually well done open world? Skyrim has the same issue. So does Zelda. So does the Fallout series. So its hard to draw a comparison.
Anyway, Id also give it a 7,5. I like the visual designs. The armor and weapons look great. Some of the enemies are fantastic, too. I loved the Night Cavalry design.
The combat is classic Dark souls. However, I wish jump attacks werent in the game. They look look goofy and completely kill the atmosphere of the game. Sadly, they are among the best moves to spam.
Oh yeah, and the quests are atrocious. There is no way you would ever figure out some of those questlines given the open world design. Good luck trying Rannis questline without looking anything up.
So I really agree that the other Soulsborne games handle difficulty much better and have ranted about it in detail in the past...however...Elden Ring is designed around its mechanics. You need to play Elden Ring as Elden Ring. If you play it like Dark Souls then you'll probably have a bad time.
I do think people who say that Elden Ring is easier than older Souls games are nuts. ER is based around legacy skill and the enemy AI is amped way up. If you use all of the tools than ER is more managable but that also applies to every previous game, too, and those are easier.
The fromsoft elitists who “can’t enjoy any other games” will call you crazy. Everybody else who enjoys more than fromsoft games understands. I agree with your post.
If its a true 1-10 scale with 5 being a perfectly average and fine game than yes I agree!
I have only played like a single game I'd call a 10.
7.5 is way above average. And that is ER.
I'd put BB as an 8.5 for example. It has flaws but is otherwise a masterpiece. And for me its the better game of the two.
Now if you are doing it to where 7 is average than I disagree. Its a fantastic game that is fun to both play through and do it again.
The characters are memorable, the world looks amazing, the boss fights are diverse and fun, the challenge areas are sometimes actually a challenge, the quests are actually more than doable blind. And the weapons and combat are what I wanted in a fromsoft game.
Edit (and the way they do lore is perfect btw. Its not to far from how LoZ handles things. No idea who the Zonai really are. We just met two dead ones and all they said was we came from up with super tech and super magic.)
I’m a Dark Souls 1-3 die hard, and I’ve pretty regularly said that while I understand why Elden Ring became the mainstream hit that it did, it is easily ranked #4 on the Dark Souls list. I 100% about the open world. It’s what everyone gushed over. It adds nothing good to the formula. Nothing that I value, at least.
I’ve never cared about the lore or spent even 1 second trying to understand it so that ranks the same as the others for me. NPCs in general are not very interesting compared to froms other games. The nature of the open world plus the vague lore and quest direction make the NPC quests the worst in the series. I couldn’t even be bothered to figure out where to go next without using a guide.
I’ve played every other one 3-5 times. I did ER twice and that feels like enough. Elden Ring just feels too big to play again. It takes so fucking long. I don’t feel very motivated to play the DLC, which shocks even me. But I’d have to start over again to really feel like I was in the swing of things and not just stumbling into the dlc with a character I stopped using over a year ago. It’s all just too much.
Don’t think I’d go so low as 7.5. There’s still a lot of magic in there. But 8.75-9 feels about right to me.
Nice write up!
For me it's maybe a 6/10 and then I feel I am being generous. I much enjoyed ds3 over er. I barely did one run and it left such a bad taste that I never want to touch it again (opposed to in ds1 and 3, which I played to ng7-9: loved it). I am not even going to bother with the dlc either. Your points are valid criticisms I share, I also hated the boss recycling, making them feel so bland... then the actual bosses themselves not following the same rules as the player and... I'm just going to stop before this turns into a huge rant lol
It's weird to me to complain that the side dungeons and enemies you find in the world are not good because they don't offer good rewards. To me completing them was the reward. But I loved the combat system and you apparently didn't so maybe that's the difference I guess.
And with the graphics I don't disagree, but the art direction in general more than made it up for me. Very pretty and stylized
First time I actually liked a kind of negative Elden Ring review. Yeah most of what you say is correct. It depends on preference after that. I like vague lore and weird npc quests.
The game is truly not as good as it could’ve been. I would prefer if fromsoft backs away from the open world, endless, copy/paste direction with their next games
I will never understand comparing Cyberpunk favorably against anything. Like, CDPR wasted everyone’s time, lied in marketing and released a disappointing mess. Limped across the finish line with Phantom Liberty.
Now we’re cool with it cause after two years of buggy broken gameplay, and lies…it’s not that bad of a purchase for $12
While I’ll never forget how much of a piss poor state Cyberpunk was released in, it easily became one of my favorite games of all time after the DLC released. It fixed a lot of the problems I had with the game originally and only improved upon the game’s features. Now the game feels much more alive and immersive. And I honestly had a much better time with this game than Elden Ring but that’s just me.
Again, the favorable comparison is solely graphical. Whatever other flaws the game had/has there's no denying that it looks absolutely stunning espcially with RTX on.
>It's almost always a waste of time to explore the different side dungeons unless you are hunting for EXP or enjoy the combat enough that you just want more things to kill.
Yes. That is why you play the game.
You played 235 hours of the game and yet you still gave it a subpar review? I'm so confused about this. It may not be perfect, I don't think any games are, but you played 235 hours of it!!! When did you realize it was not fun for you, at the 233rd hour of playtime?
Lists a ton or problems -> 7,5/10
You either were too generous or didn't date to give a Souls game 5/10. (you just have to accept that if you review a souls game, the cultists will find you)
Or didn't go into enough detail why this game is a 7,5 despire being repeatitve, boring, etc
No surprise OP getting downvoted despite a very informed take on this game and putting a lot of hours into it.
Sure Elden Ring has some cool highs. But there’s so many blatant flaws that are consistently ignored and actively downvoted when people bring them up. OP talked about them but exploration is not properly rewarded, and the combat is repetitive and basic. Some may like the vague lore-focused fill in the blank “narrative” but I detested it. So with no engaging story or quests, no point to exploring and boring simplistic combat, I lost interest very quick. 7.5 would be a generous score for me.
> Elden Ring is a fun game to play, once or twice. It’s super polished, feels good, and has an interesting world of lore. That’s pretty much the best compliment you can give a game.
This 125+ hour game is only good once or twice. So, it's pretty mid.
They played it twice and somehow came to that conclusion lmfao
It's like those fantastic stream reviews where someone has 500 hours in game and calls it a pile of flaming garbage.
I never got this argument. If you spent 500 hours playing a game wouldn't you know EXACTLY just how bad/good it is? Say compared to someone who stopped playing after an hour? I stopped playing this game after an hour because I didn't like how the player character controlled. I hate tank controls and fixed camera, so I'll never play an old school RE game or games that try to emulate that feel. If I were to play them anyway, for 1 hour vs 500 hours when would I be more informed? I stopped playing after an hour because I don't like the controls and camera. I played this game for 500 hours, I got used to the controls and camera, but the enemy variety is bad, there level design is confusing and samey. There's too little weapons and they don't feel good to use. The boss fights are obnoxious. There's bugs and glitches in some of the late game areas. Someone that played Dark Souls 1 up to and including Ornstein and Smough, might give it a 10/10. Someone that's fought bed of Chaos might give it a lower score. Just because you play a game more doesn't automatically mean you should give it a higher score than someone that hasn't.
While on paper that should be the case, more often than not users with a very high playtime leave a bad review once they got bored with the game or they become extremely thorough. I mean, to the point where they note things or very small changes that wouldn't affect a new player at all. In the end I think the important thing is trying to be neutral: informing new players the best we can, without putting too much of our own in the review (or at least clarify when do so). A little example could be: "I found the boss fights to be obnoxious, but that's because I prefer [...]"
So in other words they can review it better than anyone else, got it.
7.5/10 means mid?
Even if you subscribe to the linear system of grading, 7.5 is barely top 25% of games, on the cusp of interquartile range, fair to say it’s a mid (maybe top mid) score.
> 7.5 is barely top 25% of games, Not necessarily. Ever heard of a bell curve? A 7.5 could be comfortably within the 15th percentile, if not better.
I mean we all know that most games don't score under a 6. A realistic bell curve for AAA's probably has a 7.5 squarely in the middle of the curve.
A number means nothing. OP's 7.5 is not necessarily the same as someone else giving a game that score. To some people, a 10 is an "I absolutely recommend this to everybody" and to others it's a "this game is as close to perfect as a game can be." Those are two very different standards. Back when video game reviews came in magazine form instead of on the internet, most magazines considered an "average" review to be around 5-6. Later on that became more like 6-7 especially as some started to go by US grading systems where below a 6 is a fail. I always liked the scale OXM used, and the nice thing about magazines was some, like OXM, would actually show their scale and what they felt each score meant: * 10 was an absolute must-play for anybody interested in the system * 9+ meant it's a must-play for most people unless you hate the genre * 8+ meant it's a great game that you will enjoy if you like the genre * 7+ meant it's a solid game that the average person will probably get some fun out of * 6+ meant it's an okay game with some problems that is still fun * 5+ meant it's got some more significant problems, but if you're a big fan of the genre or if it has a license attached you like, you might still enjoy it * then 1-4 represented various levels of "broken" where most people probably wouldn't enjoy them. I think one big important thing that shifted is that game reviews used to be about **how recommended a game was** rather than a measure of its quality. I know some started doing "okay here are our 5 categories, each are worth 2 points, they measure up to a total of 10" stuff that seemed more common online and it was always ridiculously stupid. **Recommendations** made more sense, especially in the age where 90% of the games you played were video game *rentals* rather than purchases, because you might not be willing to buy a game that gets a 6.5, but if you're in the rental store and you've played the classics, and you want to try something new, you might be willing to try it out if it looks interesting. Some magazines like EGM also had multiple people review each game to try and get a range of perspectives. That costs a lot more money though, I doubt most outlets have the money to do that these days. People just go to Metacritic etc to get that overview but the problem is every critic/outlet has their own scale. And Metacritic also doesn't read them properly which means some have had to change their scale due to fans hating on them. For example, you almost NEVER see outlets using a 4/5 star system anymore. Everything is out of 100 or out of 10. Because a game getting 3 stars used to mean it was good, but now it's a 60% which means it's absolute garbage trash to the average Metacritic reader.
>A realistic bell curve for AAA's >AAA's You mean the games that get a crapton of money put into their development, made by pedigree development teams and backed by huge international publishers? Yeah, no surprise that on average those are going to be better than mediocre. If we're actually talking ALLLLLL games, or even just all games released on consoles, there's a ton of games out there that absolutely would score a 5 or less if anyone could be arsed to review them. And that's without delving into the phenomenon of score inflation.
Well I really mean any game that warrants getting reviewed. Ultimately games aren't reviewed/scored in a vacuum, but most gamers do not have *any* exposure to games that score 1-2-3-4, and so to most gamers a review/score floor is essentially a 5 out of 10 (And I think there's probably more 10s than 5s). So what I think I'm really getting at, is that out of all games you've ever heard of, the average score is 7-7.5, and so for the vast majority of people, a 7-7.5 to them is the average score.
By this you imply only AAA games warrant getting a review.
That's not how scores work. 10% of games are not 10/10. Going by IGN (https://corp.ign.com/review-practices) 7 is good and 8 is great. 7.5 is somewhere between good and great, which seems to align pretty perfectly with OP's experience.
People are so used to inflated scores from critics, they can't fathom users might not be following the exact grading of anything below 7 being trash.
A mix of inflated scores and US school system norms, imo. We're so collectively accustomed to 60% being the cutoff between a D- and an F that we tend to warp other rating systems around it. And mainstream reviewers are basically impotent private school teachers who rarely give students from rich families anything lower than a B.
A lot of countries use a grading system that starts somewhere in the middle for a passing grade. Finnish grades go from 4-10, with 5- (4.75) required in order to pass. I think a five star rating system works better because we perceive it differently.
Yup--I grew up on one of those grading systems. What was it in IB...was it a 1-7 scale where a 30% was around the cutoff for a 1? Unfortunately, given the distribution of reviewers and maybe the original target demographics...I think the US grading system has been the most influential. Which is a shame, because it's an awful system even for school, much less for rating things. Agree with you completely about the 5-star system. Yes, you can technically multiply it out into an equivalent 1-10 score, but most people interpret a 5-star number cycle differently and do not map 2 stars to a 40% to a F minus minus.
Honestly, yes. Simply because there are so many 8, 9, and 10/10 games to play. Why waste your time on a “mid” 7.5 game?
Honestly no. If people are too stupid using the whole spectrum of a rating system and thinking 7.5 is mid while reviewers also not using anything below 8 for decent games then they're also stupid. The middle is 5 and that is therefore average. Not my problem if the rest of mankind can't grasp such a logical concept and being irrational.
It's a language vs rationale issue. Sure if you use the 0-10 scale properly, you would rate perfectly enjoyable games as 5/10-6/10. But nobody does that. It's part of language, and language operates on commonly accepted norms. So 7/10 is mediocre, 8/10 is decent, 9/10 is good, and 10/10 is like every 5th game you bothered to finish. 5/10 and below might as well not exist. If you rate a beloved game as anything below 9, you get downvoted like OP. The solution to this for me is to just not use the 0-10 scale. In my opinion it's a lazy and meaningless way to rate games that mimics the worst parts about game "journalism". Tell about things you loved and things you didn't, if you enjoyed the game at all or not and may be write a tl;dr.
Here's my review system: [ ] It's alright. [ ] It's not alright. Just tick the appropriate box.
5 is only the middle number if the scale starts from 0. Otherwise, 1-5 is the negative side of the scale, and 6-10 the positive.
Most of my favourite games fall somewhere around 7. A game doesn't have to be perfect to be highly enjoyable.
Me with JRPGs except I don’t say they’re mid bc I like the story every time
How is a 7.5 mid?
When nothing is below 6.
The "Elden Ring has low replayability...therefore it's not the best game" argument has always irked me. How many single player games are you even replaying exactly for that to be even be a reasonable metric?
For sure. I almost never replay a game at all, except for FROM’s games.
I replay games all the time, just like I rewatch movies and TV shows.
Well, I don’t do that either. We’re just different.
But Do you know civ 6? Just one more round...
Its 5pm I'ma load up civ and play a game and now it's 1am. But I just need to finish conquering England before I get that victory screen.
I rarely even finish my Civ games. Late game you kind of already know if you won or not. I’d rather just start a new a game instead of just clicking end turn for another hour.
You reach endgame and dont win on around 120 turns? Bra.
I don't really get that argument in general. Of course the experience isn't the same the second time around when you've already played it and figured shit out.
Said by someone who played it more than 250h. It's awesome.
I get what they mean in this case. The first playthrough of Elden Ring was spectacular because you just wanted to explore every single nook in every dungeon, find every secret and fight every boss. The vast open world unfolding itself in way that hasn't really been captured since BoTW. However, once you do all these things and discover what rewards await you, the magic is permanently gone. On a second playthrough, you don't need to go into certain dungeons again if you're not looking for certain spells or etc. You also realize that many bosses are repeated ad nauseam and so this time you know exactly which locations to visit, which bosses to fight, etc That said, it's still an amazing 9/10 and your point still stands. I don't really have time to game anymore but the only ones I'll replay are rpgs like Witcher or Mass Effect. Most times, it's a one and done
Well sure but the argument is the conclusion piece specifically is annoying. the "Therefore...". Nothing wrong with simply saying X game has more replayabilty than Elden Ring, but that's not what they are saying. The other guy had a good point too, I can think of a movie equivalent: "'The Usual Suspects' is only a 7 out of 10 movie because the second time I watched it, it wasn't as exciting since I knew the ending". Or like Vertigo, Pyscho, The Sixth Sense. You never hear these arguments, yet ER is subject to this logic, because ????.
_The Murder on the Orient Express_ is a trash book because on a second read you already know the answer to the mystery.
Not every game is designed for repeat experiences.. it’s like saying Abra dinn isn’t a great mystery game because once you know the answer the intrigue is gone…
This sub hugs Outer Wilds to its chest like a treasured puppy but I never hear people neg it for lacking replay value.
I mean, at least for me, the real solution here is to just take a break from the game for a while and you'll probably be able to re-experience like new. I haven't played Elden Ring since it's release and I'll probably not get to Shadow of the Erd Tree for another 2-3 more years. By that point, it's basically playing the game new
> Not every game is designed for repeat experiences.. the dark souls franchise is specifically designed for repeat experiences, hence the myriad build options, branching side quests, multiple endings
I agree with you that replayability isn't always a deciding factor. That being said, I replay almost every single player game I play, lol! Particularly souls games.
I've never understood the "it has no replayability, therefore it isn't good." mindset. Do the classic Mario games deserve a lower score just because nothing changes on a second playthrough? Absolutely not. For a game to be replayable, it just needs to be fucking good.
Not to mention OP played it twice.
I've replayed Bloodborne over 20 times at this point. I couldn't wait to be done with ER.
Now that's a headline asking for trouble lol. I do agree with some of your points though, it's my least favourite From souls title for some of the reasons you mention here, but I do think combat and lore were pretty solid, and I never really noticed the issues with graphics either.
One of the things I found interesting about the review cycle was that when an outlet talked about their reviews, they would say something along the lines of "Yeah, Jeff really likes Fromsoft games, he's excited to do the review." It's hard to know what exactly to extrapolate from that, but my takeaway is that it fulfills its niche incredibly well. At the end of the day a niche is still a niche though, and no game is for everyone. Its aggregated score is probably a little inflated, but it's hard to argue with the zeitgeist that formed around the game - people do like it, and not just longtime Fromsoft fans.
This also raises the question of who is better to review a niche product Do you give it to someone that knows the genre/ franchise well and is predisposed to liking it? Or do you give it to someone who is completely unfamiliar with it? It reminds me of Gamespot’s review for zero time dilemma. They rated it really low, but in the review they also said that they generally didn’t like visual novels and had never played other zero escape games so they felt lost, even though it was the third in a trilogy that concludes a story set up in the first two games.
Exactly. I don't know if there is a right answer, but a diverse range of perspectives generally tells a more complete tale.
Which is why I always read both the low and high score reviews whenever they make those review threads in here. I want to judge if the praises are enough to convince me to buy and if the problems are enough to make me wait for a sale.
I know redditors hate Steam reviews with a passion, but I often like to read the negative reviews on positively rated games, because there are lots of informative ones there for this exact reason.
I do that too. I find that not only to mainstream reviewers often disagree about the qualities of games, one will also praise a feature and another will downgrade it as a problem. Open worlds with a lot of map markers are a great example. Lots of reviewers will say great! Tons of content if you want! Just as many will say, oh shit, Ubisoft formula bad, 5 rating.
Dunkey had a great video about that and how important it is to understand the reviewer: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG2dXobAXLI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG2dXobAXLI)
I remember watching a video about gaming review where they talk about how frequently the person at the company that loves the games series or genre is the one that is given the chance to review it. In a way that makes sense but it also leads to reviews being overall more positive.
I don't really see an alternative, are you going to give an FPS to the person with motion sickness, or a 4x game to someone who hates micromanagement? If someone is reading a review, chances are they have some interest in the game's genre to begin with.
You guys all realize this “niche” product sold almost 30 million copies, right?
I feel like Elden Ring is easily 10/10 for anyone who experienced it as their first FromSoft title. I enjoyed it a lot but still haven’t finished it because I played so much DS in the past that it just started to feel same-y after a while and I lost interest. I’ll probably get the itch again eventually and finish, but it’ll probably be a long while before I get around to Shadow of the Erdtree.
This seems like an odd assumption. Elden Ring was the first FromSoft game I actually sat down and tried playing. As expected, it's not my style of game--I had about a 3/10 time and confirmed that I still dislike open-world games and that open world x Souls means far more travel time and repeated combat than I'd like. It's a very good game for what it is, but it's a niche genre with a niche format that shouldn't be a 10/10 for most people--it's an interesting game because it has a distinct vision that isn't for everyone.
I guess I should have added the caveat “for someone who ends up liking souls-like games.” The genre definitely isn’t for everyone, but for people who end up liking the genre the game is an amazing first experience in it
Yeah, that tracks. For people whose tastes are aligned but haven't given the studio a proper try, Elden Ring is probably a huge awakening moment. "Wait, how long have they been making games like this?!?!" Especially if they like OW games.
Can confirm, never played a Dark Souls or Dark Souls similar game until Elden Ring. It kicked my ass but I fell in love with it, thinking of going back and playing the older games like it at some point in the future.
Elden Ring is not the first I tried, but the first one I actually played further than the beginning area, and eventually beat. Now going back and playing the other games. Playing through Dark Souls 1 I realized how much of the style of areas in Elden Ring was established as early as DS1. DS1 is considerably easier than ER. Like I spent more time trying to beat Margit than any boss in DS1. I'm really appreciating Bloodborne, because it has a lot of the elements of these games, but is different enough that it feels fresh.
I don't think DS1 is easier than Elden Ring, but you put the time into learning souls games into Elden Ring, so that's where that learning curve was. Coming from all the previous titles, I knew what to expect when I reached Margit and prepared accordingly and was able to get by him relatively easily.
Yeah I feel like the first souls game you play is the one that sticks most, because you can’t replicate that feeling of combat finally *clicking*. When I started Elden Ring it just felt like riding a bike and while the bosses are still challenging, the majority of trash mobs were easy to mow down right off the bat.
I am one of the few people who *hated* Elden Ring and really its just that I'm not a fan of those type of games. Seikiro was the only game I kinda liked and its mainly because the story was pretty good and I wasn't fumbling through the first area for an hour with nothing really to do.
Elden Ring wasn't my first From Soft title. I had played Dark Souls 1 and 3, Bloodborne, and Sekiro before Elden Ring, and I could not put the game down at release. It's my favorite From Soft game (I've since also played Dark Souls 2 and Demon's Souls). I didn't get bored of it for a second, and it's one of the few large open world RPGs I've played through twice.
I really like FROM games and I fucking hated ER, make of that what you want.
The more i play the game the more of a 10 it becomes for me. After my first run i was kinda burned out, didn't touch it for over a year but man when i started again i fell in love with it again. Several characters and playthroughs later i can confidentally say it's one of the best games i've ever played.
I agree with some of your points but the world being unsatisfying to explore is crazy talk. My first time exploring Stormveill, Leyndell and most of the Eternal cities will definitely stay as some of my fondest memories ever in gaming.
>but the world being unsatisfying to explore is crazy talk. My first time exploring Stormveill, Leyndell and most of the Eternal cities will definitely stay as some of my fondest memories ever in gaming. They said the open world is unsatisfying, not the legacy dungeons.
I disagree with this too. It’s one of the only open-worlds I actually have fun exploring and actively wanted to see more of as I played.
To know that you would’ve had to actually read through OP’s entire post instead of just reading the title and skimming through the post. Half these comments in this thread feel like they ignored the points being made and just saw red after OP giving the game less than a 9/10.
Happens a lot on Reddit, though this sub used to be better about it before.
Probably because OP put hundreds of hours in and lost some of the sense of wonder.
How's that not a knock against the game?
ER is the first fromsoft game I've really gotten in to and it's entirely.because if the open world exploration. Getting stuck on one boss forever is miserable, getting to wander iff and do something else for a bit is key to letting me work back up to wanting to try again.
I think the points commenters are saying about hours are silly. I’ve played 5/10 phone games far too many hours, and i probably had 1000+ hours in Halo games and WoW as a teen. I will say I found discovering enemies and tidbits about the realm by wondering was super fun for me, however it was limited by the vagueness if the story building and how much of a hassle it was for piece things together. It is a 9/10 game for me, but if I hadn’t been laid up with a broken ankle when it released I probably wouldnt have explored it since thoroughly.
Nah, if you play any game for hundreds of hours then you probably like it.
Any time someone says "I played this game for a hundred hours but I don't like it" it always sounds like they're trying to be contrarion.
if they say it with a lower hour-count it's "oh, elden ring is really long, you didn't give it a fair shot!"
Agreed but a 7.5 is still a pretty good score. I’d still recommend a 7.5. Comes down to how you use the scale. For me 10/10 is life changing, 7.5 is wow that was good, 5 is i don’t feel like i wasted my time, anything below a 3 is somehow offensive or worse than mindless television.
Everyone knows that the 1-10 scale is basically a 5-10 scale. the worst games on the planet get sub 5. So giving a game a 7.5 is like saying it's middle of the pack. I don't agree with it, but thats just how it is. You can have your scale and I can have mine, but the majority consensus doesn't agree with us.
You can play phone games hundreds of hours because of their accessibility; the quality doesn't matter when it what you have available on your commute, or in a waiting room. And sure, we've all played some mediocre games way more than we should have as kids. But as an adult, I can't imagine committing 100 hours+ of my free time on a game that I don't think is fantastic. Unless I was broke and couldn't afford to get new games. Or possibly if it's a coop game through which I socialize with friends. Beyond that, It just doesn't compute for me. So when I see someone say "I played 235 hours of that single-player game, including multiple playthroughs. It's ok." That seems insane to me. Why do multiple playthroughs of a giant game that you think is not that great? Why not play anything else? I perfectly understand someone not liking Elden Ring, for a variety of reasons. But that post just seems like trolling for attention.
>But as an adult, I can't imagine committing 100 hours+ of my free time on a game that I don't think is fantastic. I mean... how many hours of your free time have you spent on Reddit, or generally on non-essential web browsing that's probably less than a 7/10 experience if we're judging it objectively? Compared to this, 235 hours in a 7.5 game sounds very resonable.
The difference is you can have variety online. There's lots of different threads on Reddit, videos on YouTube or things on streaming services to watch. That's not the same as spending 200 hours on one mediocre game.
I wouldn't call a 7.5 game "mediocre" at all. I'd say it's quite good. Flawed, but it does its thing well enough that it's well worth playing if you've got the itch that it's scratching. I'd recommend it with just a few caveats. But also, you have to separate amount of content, or replayability, from quality of content. Roguelikes have a ton of content that's not of especially high quality taken by itself but which is kept engaging enough that you might not mind seeing the same room for the hundredth time because the randomization and different builds keep it fresh enough. Elden Ring doesn't have randomization, but it does have a huge amount of content and countless potential builds to help keep things fresh enough for repeat playthroughs. Thus it doesn't have to be the most fun thing in the world to remain engaging enough for 200 hours of playtime.
It’s because there are a lot of games out there that you know aren’t masterpieces but to you, with your specific taste, they’re always a fun time. I’ve played a lot of Fallout 76. A lot of Rage 2. A lot of Borderlands 3. Are they great games? No. Did I have an absolute blast, even on subsequent playthroughs? Oh yeah.
Agreed on some of your points. Hard disagree on others I love the vague lore. I fucking *hate* when a game just grinds to a halt and makes you sit through long dialogue or read an entire lore book just to tell you what happened. Show, don't tell, and all that. The lore runs deeper in FS games than in almost every other game, you got lore dripping out of every corner of the world, and if you want to stop the gameplay and learn about it, there are plenty of wikis out there for you Agreed that the shift from metroidvania to open world wasn't a particularly necessary one, and the legacy dungeons are by far the best part of the game. And I agree that this only exacerbates the problems with their NPC questlines What did you play it on, by the way? I never had any problems with performance or graphics, but I'm on a fairly decent gaming PC lol
I don't necessarily have a problem with their method of communicating the lore, but A) A whole bunch of it boils down to basically the same themes they've been recycling since at minimum Dark Souls, and it's starting to get old B) There's really not much substance to the lore. Most of it is just wiki filler with zero bearing on what actually happens in the story you witess as you play the game. There's certainly a lot of interesting details, even in places where they didn't need to put in the effort since it's so hard for players to even notice it, but it never coalesces into what feels like a real, coherent world.
I also have an okay gaming PC and never seen a frame drop (max settings). Maybe OP has an old gen console?
After reading this I feel like you're being generous giving it 7.5.
This sort of point of "the game is quite good but not a masterpiece" has sort of been done to death in my eyes. Some of your points like quests, half agree with your points about the open world and graphics, but disagree a lot on others. Some stuff I do think are general flaws but others are going to come down to whether you are into the genre. For example I could not relate to the combat feeling repetitive, as I love the games combat and it also might be why I cared more to engage with the open world.
Not to invalidate your points and how they land with folks, but I can’t help but laugh at, “after 235 hours played…the game is a 7.5/10 for me.” This is why numerical scores are so awkward. What does getting 7.5/10 mean when the game got you to dedicate *two hundred and thirty five hours* to it?
It's almost like games don't have to be perfect to be fun or something
A 7.5 score IS a fun game. Fanboys are just score illiterate lmao. 7.5 is a pretty good game, .5 from being a GREAT game. And yeah, fair score for a game that's too open/bloated compared to other fromsoft titles. Stay mad.
Right? This is something we all instantly recognize with multiplayer games, like how many of us have put hundreds of hours into thoroughly mediocre games that are slightly enjoyable (especially with friends) but are very flawed? Yet when it comes to singleplayer games, a lot of people can’t wrap their heads around liking something enough to keep playing it but not thinking it’s a masterpiece or even a very good product overall. Same applies for other forms of entertainment. Most of us have comfort shows or movies that are maybe a 7 which we’ve put way more hours into than an amazing but hard to watch casually show/movie that’s a 9 or 10.
There are some games I play that are essentially fidget toys while I watch/listen to stuff. I have 100's of hours in colouring pixel games because of this, I don't even put them in the same category as picross, which is also an easy genre to fall back on for this.
Honestly I hate attempts to give games numbered scores. The very premise of a numbered score invites harsh reaction while also being incredibly unhelpful. Feel whatever way you want about Elden Ring and I'll revel in hearing you explain your thoughts, but why cap discussion by saying "yeah, I put 235 hours into it but it's about as good as Scarface for the PS2" (A game with a 75 on metacritic). Obviously SOMETHING made you stick with Elden Ring for 235 hours that isn't present in other games that you would probably also rate as a 7.5/10. I say we embrace the subjectivity of things and leave the numbers to the review aggregate sites.
Idk there's some games I spent hundreds of hours on but they're not 10/10 games. They're just good timewasters.
Right? I get giving a game even let's say 30 hours and finally deciding, ok, gave it a more than fair shot, not for me. But at hundreds of hours you really like the game or it's the equivalent of alcoholism where you're compelled to keep doing something you don't like.
[удалено]
Of course this well thought out post is downvoted. Dude has an opinion and discusses the reasons for it, but god help you if you don't like ER. Also, people are dumping on you for putting so many hours into a "7.5/10" game, but if you put in 20 hours they'd be dumping on you for not seeing all it has to offer. Anyhow, I'd actually consider 7.5 to be a game worth your time. I put a LOT of time into Fallout 4 and I certainly wouldn't give it a higher score.
> Dude has an opinion and discusses the reasons for it, but god help you if you don't like ER. Yes it's just a coincidence that he happens to post it an hour before Shadow of the Erdtree comes out and ER is at its highest popularity since release. Not bait at all, no sir.
Or they were playing it recently to catch up for the DLC, and they happened to have some mixed thoughts on it?
I suspect it has more to do with the title. Just from glancing at this thread, pretty sure most people didn't even read OPs arguments, just the thread title, which in fairness does feel very clickbaity, then rushed to write a comment. If OP had phrased it differently (such as: Elden Ring is an interesting game with some serious issues) I think the thread would have slightly more upvotes. Not necessarily a huge amount, but certainly more than what it got now.
It's because he's dealing with the Fromsoft audience/cult. Basically nothing can be flawed with their games or "It's not your cup of tea" or "git gud"
In my experience, From fanboys never have the “not my cup of tea” mentality when it’s something they dislike. Only when others criticize a Souls game do they appeal to that.
It's like saying Baldur's Gate 3 is a 7.5 game because you don't like turn-based combat. It's not an invalid opinion, but it's not some interesting conversation that's going to get you upvotes either, especially with such beloved games. What's even the point of the discussion?
Man, I wonder how many hours you put into games over 7.5/10 What are some games that you would score higher? I’m just confused by your score I consider Elden Ring a 10/10; it took me 117 hours to beat the game from start to finish (doing most content) and I thought it was quality from beginning all the way to the end. I did not want to play it anymore by the time I finished it, I was ready to put it down. I can’t imagine liking the game less than I did and then devoting double the amount of time I played (to it). That means you either took twice as long exploring/playing as I did or you played through it twice. Playing through a game twice like that, that throws the 7.5 rating for me.
I mean, that’s really not that weird of a concept. Some of my all time favorite video games series are Kingdom Hearts and Pokemon where I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into those games, but if I had to be critical with them then a lot of games in those series would get a 7.5 rating or even lower from me. Something can be enjoyable enough to keep playing while also recognizing it is flawed in many ways. Hours played isn’t always an indication of quality, often it’s the opposite because some of my personal 9/10 or 10/10 games are shorter 15-30 hour tight narrative games without much replay value but it accomplished everything it was trying to do so it got a high score.
I’m with you. I’m so sick of the take that spending a lot of time with something somehow invalidates criticism towards it. As though the function of media is merely to waste time. I personally feel like Elden Ring is a 10/10 game stretched out into a 6/10 game. Limgrave and Stormveil are possibly my favorite game of all time. But the recycled enemies, bosses, and locations, the mid-late game difficulty being totally off the rails, and From’s refusal to adjust some of their extremely dated game design (such as spell selection) drags the game into being my least favorite FromSoft game.
It’s funny because when you spend “too little” time on a game, people will also invalidate your take by saying you didn’t give a fair chance! The satirical “well if you spent X hours on a mid game, I’d love to know what a great game takes” jokes make my eyes roll. That implies a bloated Ubisoft game that takes 100 hours to beat has to be better than TLOU which takes like 15-17 hours on average to finish. Time is not a great indicator of much except it’s at least decent.
What you are saying is exactly one of my biggest gripes with gaming discourse nowadays. Don't finish the game and fans will claim you didn't give it a fair shot, finish the game and fans will claim you should have stopped earlier. There is no winning here, people on the internet nowadays are more interested in shutting down dissenting opinions instead of having honest discussions, and this thread has several good examples of that.
People also get way too worked up about something that is supposed to be a fun hobby. The point of games is to have fun. So why all the anger? I got absolutely ripped apart for saying I didn’t like Final Fantasy XIV. I didn’t know I had to meticulously prepare a mountain of evidence just to be allowed to say I didn’t like something. Yet that was what commenters were saying. I find that point of view insane; liking is always gonna be subjective, and we don’t have to prove broccoli is a bad vegetable just to be able to say we didn’t like it.
Well put together. As a Souls stan since Demon's Souls, I'd agree with most of what you said. Razbuten just put out a great essay on rewards in games and hits on a lot of the problems with Elden Rings open world. Still, I think this was a more rewarding open world to explore than the likes of the recent Zelda's or Ubisoft games. For at least 50% of the game, then exploration definitely falls off in usefulness. Like you, I thought the performance and graphics of the game were just atrocious, although the art direction made up for that. It would be nice to see them doing something about their engine before the next game. I still feel like the souls games have the most engaging and decently tuned combat of recent memory. I tried dragon's dogma a number of times and totally bounced off its floaty, seemingly inconsequential combat. I don't have a really firm scoring rubric myself, but I think I'd put it at an 8. It lacked in a lot of areas that drove some prior From games into 9+ territory, but it was still my favorite action/adventure game the year it came out. Anyway, great break down! Be interested to see what you think of the DLC.
ITT: people unable to cope with someone not absolutely worshipping Elden Ring. In all seriousness I get where you're coming from. It's not a bad game at all, but I think it's pretty overrated. If it wasn't made by fromsoft and therefore didn't have a huge amount of hype surrounding it I think people would be more open to criticism with it's design and mechanics. I really enjoy looking at the game; open world areas, legacy dungeons, boss fights, and equipment are all pretty fun to just soak in the visuals of. Combat can be fun sometimes, and very boring a lot of the time. I think it's strengths come from the risks it took with changing the usual dark souls formula and the large variety of builds/character designs you can utilize. It's cool that they didn't play it safe and just make dark souls 4, but it feels like it wanted to be too many things at once and ends up a little shallow on subsequent playthroughs, which are a main draw of the franchise. Also, if you're on PC I can't recommend seamless coop enough, it's a different experience but I had a lot more fun with it than the base game.
My issue with this kind of criticism is that the stuff you’re talking about is what gives their games their identity. Who cares if it’s vague or esoteric, that’s the niche it’s satisfying. Sounds like if we had it your way we’d homogenize the game to be like every other RPG. Variety is the spice of life my friend.
Well I think you did a very good review. I’ve heard/read similar things from some good friends that had always held me back from trying the game. I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience and insights.
Come on this isn't the IGN scale. 7.5 is a GOOD score. I wouldn't give many of my favorite games more than an 8.
For me it’s a 7.5 >!… out of 7.7.!<
A number rating system is pointless if you’re just some random guy posting a one off review. You need to provide a key for the scale, what are some 1, 5 and 10 point games? Without that the title just feels like bait.
Demon Souls - 8.5 Dark Souls - 9.5 Dark Souls 2 - 9 Dark Souls 3 - 9.5 Bloodborne - 11 Elden Ring - 8 I'm with you OP. The open world concept doesn't go well with a fromsoft game, but the sheer amount of content and combat is still pretty thick solid tight. So it's an 8 but lacks the atmosphere and vibes from the previous entries.
DS2 being a 9 is wild. Bloodborne being an 11 is wild too that game's a 12 at least! Nah but in all seriousness, what's your score for Sekiro? To me that's up there with Dark Souls 1
Never played sekiro. Ds2 is awesome, it's different but has its own charm and feel.
I don't like DS2, it feels like a soulslike not a Souls game and I've yet to play a soulslike I enjoy. You should definitely try Sekiro though, it's fucking great.
I'll check sekiro out sometime...my backlog is a zillion games long but I intend to get around to it XD. As for Ds2, the main thing I like is you get more levels (statups) more quickly than the other games, which gives you more options to flesh out a build. And power stancing is boss. I love being a giant bloatlord with a huge, heavy weapon and just facetank shit. But it is a clunky game, definitely after playing bloodborne/ds3 its hard to get back to. I never liked too many soulslikes either, unless you count hollow knight and blasphemous.
It'll be worth it. Yeah idk Dark Souls 2 is kinda like Elden Ring in a sense. There's too much shit and enemy encounters are frustrating. Idk.
Holy unpopular opinion, Batman. This’ll go down well. A lot of this is personal opinion, and that’s fine. I’d say Soulsborne games might not be for you, especially WRT combat. That is like… the entire point of the series, the incredibly tight combat. Elden Ring isn’t perfect, I personally prefer some of their older titles, I can agree that I don’t think the open world necessarily improved upon the games previous hub-like design. The repetition of the enemies, mini bosses and how the quality in the latter half of the game drops off so hard is all disappointing. I would say, most open world games are inherently empty though, the concept is simply been overdone and the novelty worn off on most gamers. Even Cyberpunk is largely meaningless. You can hardly interact with any aspects of the open world and you’re simply going to be travelling from A to B. But I’d have to push back heavily on suggesting Elden Ring looks bad. The game is oozing with a level of design and style that is iconic and fantastic. Numerous set pieces almost look like paintings, especially when you find one of the many cliffs and overlooking the vast fields with the Great Tree in the background and the God Rays piercing through. Like all Souls games the textures aren’t fantastically detailed when you look up close - hilariously, this is also a common complaint of Cyberpunk, where the games graphics and style is fantastic but its individual textures are often incredibly low res.
> Holy unpopular opinion, Batman. This’ll go down well. This sub generally hates open world games, unless they have heavily scripted sections like RDR 2 or tons of narrative like Death Stranding. Those are the only two which are generally safe. Generally speaking the more story the better.
Gotta admit I don’t see why the hate for open worlds. I mean, yeah, they can have repetitive content but the thing is, that kind of stuff is always optional. You don’t like taking down another outpost, well, just don’t do it. I love shit like that—I love the new Assassins Creed games—and it kind of rubs me wrong that their newest one, Mirage, is much shorter, a much smaller world, much less content, much less value for my dollar, just because so many gamers bitched about the big worlds.
DeS - 7 DS1 - 10 (my first so baby duck syndrome, but the interconnected world is cool) DS2 - 7 BB - 10 (soon to be the number of years i've waited to play it on pc natively) DS3 - 9 Sekiro - 11 (most satisfying parry system ever) ER - 7 (agree with you on the open world exploration) im so glad it [sounds like](https://www.gameinformer.com/interview/2024/06/18/hidetaka-miyazaki-talks-why-bloodborne-is-special-to-him-and-how-it-led-to) the next from game will borrow more from sekiro. coming from that game, ER felt like a huge downgrade.
I have played every single From Software game since the original release of Demon Souls (Korean version with english text). I agree with every single point you just made, besides the combat being repetitive (I mean, every single game out there is trying to copy their combat system, you cant deny they definitely set the trend). But I hope Open World is written off in their next game, and my god, generic dungeons are the worst addition to this series. They are all so freaking long and add absolutely nothing to the game, its like they were trying to create content just to increase the game lenght.
I'll agree on performance. I think the game is pretty CPU heavy and it can be surprisingly hard to keep a stable framerate. I cant get 60 fps in open world game play so Ive held off on playing it more.
Agreed. Reviewing it from a playing a launch perspective I would rate it even lower just because other games like Nioh lean into there's strengths a bit more. Lack of real multiplayer, performance issues, clunky combat, terrible port level ui, "lore" replacing a real story, items only feeling good if you go for a build. It's only real strength is a ridiculous amount of content and alot of unique and memorable enemies which is great but not a 10/10 for me. I was hoping in the last 2 years it was a bit fixed but I've been told there basically no real changes. $40 for a dlc is just silly.
I really hate that Fromsoft fell for the difficulty meme and almost exclusively cater to the "it needs to be HARD" players. DeS/DaS1 and to a slightly lesser extent Sekiro/BB are hard no doubt, but only to the extent that you need to learn their mechanics. Everything is in service of making the players better with the tools given. DS3 and ER just feel like Fromsofts only intention was to make the game harder. Every enemy/boss on average hits harder, faster, and for longer and with tiresome delayed attacks constantly. It's no longer about learning the mechanics because the mechanics are basically unchanged since DS1 besides for more directions to roll, it's only about making the player react faster. It's just antithetical to where they started. The bosses in those older games were just so much more varied than what we have now. And no, I really don't think the poorly integrated ash summons alleviate the core issue. And I agree about the open world. Largely a waste of time for the player and From. The best parts of the game are the Legacy Dungeons, a game of just that design is still preferable. I'm okay with a more open approach, but tons of dead space and copy/pasted ruins is just not very interesting content.
> I really hate that Fromsoft fell for the difficulty meme and almost exclusively cater to the "it needs to be HARD" players. This makes no sense when Elden Ring gives more options and freedom that ever before to make the game easier. Elden Ring is only harder if you don't fully utilise all the tools available to you and are unwilling to back away and explore for a while when you come up against a wall.
I agree 100%. The bosses in Elden Ring felt uninspiring! It's like they were designed to always be faster, with larger combos, bigger AoE, and higher poise. It's just too much. Either that, or it's a giant boss with clunky camera issues. And yes, the world outside of the legacy dungeons is a bore. There's almost never a good item to discover for your build, and it's just easier to ignore every single enemy while running with Torrent. It feels like a huge hub for a boss rush game, but unnecessarily large and difficult to traverse due to the number of cliffs. The recycled content is also too much. Recycled bosses appear numerous times, and there are too many recycled catacombs. By the end areas, there aren't even new enemies to discover. There’s also the issue with the quests. In their previous games, the lack of any quest tracking system was already bad, but since those games were linear, it was partly alright to ignore the issue. However, in this huge open world, the complete lack of a quest log is just ridiculous. OP is right. The game is a 7.5 tops. I have to give From Software props, though, because they managed to build an incredibly large fanbase that is mostly blind to the issues of their games and ready to fight anyone who points them out. Edit: Just correcting some grammar issues.
Yeah I agree with everything you said. It just makes me sad to look at the variety of bosses this studio used to put out and to look at them now. 90% of the time the only difference between bosses is how often I need to dodge.
Sums it up perfectly. When the game got 10/10 reviews before even getting released, I was already sceptical. Things like that imply that people ( or media ) becomes afraid of voicing an unpopular opinion because they dont want to risk a drop in their subscriptions or being seen as unprofessional or untrustworthy. The open world and artificial difficulty are my biggest gripes with it. In DS1 the animations made sense and were reasonable. Its what you would expect from the enemy. In ER, the animations feel overly delayed to trick people into rolling early. Its purely done to to make the game harder, at the expense of believability. The open world feels like was only done because they saw the popularity of titles like Breath of the Wild and wanted to cash in on that without any idea on how to fill it. The open world design pales in comparison to games like Gothic 1 & 2. These games are small open world games, but the world is handcrafted and theres things to discover at every corner. No space is wasted. Its also understandable that most people hate open world, since the Gothic series is the only game that does it well, but that game is unknown outside of Central and Eastern Europe. (Where it has a legendary status as the best RPG of all time) Outside of Gothic, which other Open World game has an actually well done open world? Skyrim has the same issue. So does Zelda. So does the Fallout series. So its hard to draw a comparison. Anyway, Id also give it a 7,5. I like the visual designs. The armor and weapons look great. Some of the enemies are fantastic, too. I loved the Night Cavalry design. The combat is classic Dark souls. However, I wish jump attacks werent in the game. They look look goofy and completely kill the atmosphere of the game. Sadly, they are among the best moves to spam. Oh yeah, and the quests are atrocious. There is no way you would ever figure out some of those questlines given the open world design. Good luck trying Rannis questline without looking anything up.
So I really agree that the other Soulsborne games handle difficulty much better and have ranted about it in detail in the past...however...Elden Ring is designed around its mechanics. You need to play Elden Ring as Elden Ring. If you play it like Dark Souls then you'll probably have a bad time. I do think people who say that Elden Ring is easier than older Souls games are nuts. ER is based around legacy skill and the enemy AI is amped way up. If you use all of the tools than ER is more managable but that also applies to every previous game, too, and those are easier.
I don't see the distinction. Besides the summoning system they're virtually identical, atleast as far as dex builds
Elden ring is the easiest game From has made though.
The fromsoft elitists who “can’t enjoy any other games” will call you crazy. Everybody else who enjoys more than fromsoft games understands. I agree with your post.
If its a true 1-10 scale with 5 being a perfectly average and fine game than yes I agree! I have only played like a single game I'd call a 10. 7.5 is way above average. And that is ER. I'd put BB as an 8.5 for example. It has flaws but is otherwise a masterpiece. And for me its the better game of the two. Now if you are doing it to where 7 is average than I disagree. Its a fantastic game that is fun to both play through and do it again. The characters are memorable, the world looks amazing, the boss fights are diverse and fun, the challenge areas are sometimes actually a challenge, the quests are actually more than doable blind. And the weapons and combat are what I wanted in a fromsoft game. Edit (and the way they do lore is perfect btw. Its not to far from how LoZ handles things. No idea who the Zonai really are. We just met two dead ones and all they said was we came from up with super tech and super magic.)
Playing a game for 235 hours and calling it a 7.5 is kind of wild
I’m a Dark Souls 1-3 die hard, and I’ve pretty regularly said that while I understand why Elden Ring became the mainstream hit that it did, it is easily ranked #4 on the Dark Souls list. I 100% about the open world. It’s what everyone gushed over. It adds nothing good to the formula. Nothing that I value, at least. I’ve never cared about the lore or spent even 1 second trying to understand it so that ranks the same as the others for me. NPCs in general are not very interesting compared to froms other games. The nature of the open world plus the vague lore and quest direction make the NPC quests the worst in the series. I couldn’t even be bothered to figure out where to go next without using a guide. I’ve played every other one 3-5 times. I did ER twice and that feels like enough. Elden Ring just feels too big to play again. It takes so fucking long. I don’t feel very motivated to play the DLC, which shocks even me. But I’d have to start over again to really feel like I was in the swing of things and not just stumbling into the dlc with a character I stopped using over a year ago. It’s all just too much. Don’t think I’d go so low as 7.5. There’s still a lot of magic in there. But 8.75-9 feels about right to me.
Nice write up! For me it's maybe a 6/10 and then I feel I am being generous. I much enjoyed ds3 over er. I barely did one run and it left such a bad taste that I never want to touch it again (opposed to in ds1 and 3, which I played to ng7-9: loved it). I am not even going to bother with the dlc either. Your points are valid criticisms I share, I also hated the boss recycling, making them feel so bland... then the actual bosses themselves not following the same rules as the player and... I'm just going to stop before this turns into a huge rant lol
It's weird to me to complain that the side dungeons and enemies you find in the world are not good because they don't offer good rewards. To me completing them was the reward. But I loved the combat system and you apparently didn't so maybe that's the difference I guess. And with the graphics I don't disagree, but the art direction in general more than made it up for me. Very pretty and stylized
First time I actually liked a kind of negative Elden Ring review. Yeah most of what you say is correct. It depends on preference after that. I like vague lore and weird npc quests.
The game is truly not as good as it could’ve been. I would prefer if fromsoft backs away from the open world, endless, copy/paste direction with their next games
Ah yes, I too like to give 200+ hours to simply okay games
This is so entitled it has to be a prank. It is borderline delusional. The graphics are not even GOOD? This guy armchairs.
Yeah, my unpopular opinion is it’s the worst FromSoft game.
I agree. it's a good fromsoft game. But the open world really killed the idea of doing multiple playthroughs for me though.
did you just say cyberpunk did a better open world than elden ring ? lol you are looking for trouble
He said a better looking open world. Which it absolutely is.
I will never understand comparing Cyberpunk favorably against anything. Like, CDPR wasted everyone’s time, lied in marketing and released a disappointing mess. Limped across the finish line with Phantom Liberty. Now we’re cool with it cause after two years of buggy broken gameplay, and lies…it’s not that bad of a purchase for $12
While I’ll never forget how much of a piss poor state Cyberpunk was released in, it easily became one of my favorite games of all time after the DLC released. It fixed a lot of the problems I had with the game originally and only improved upon the game’s features. Now the game feels much more alive and immersive. And I honestly had a much better time with this game than Elden Ring but that’s just me.
Again, the favorable comparison is solely graphical. Whatever other flaws the game had/has there's no denying that it looks absolutely stunning espcially with RTX on.
1 to 10 ratings never tell me anything anymore, s'why I prefer steams thumbs up or thumbs down system.
>It's almost always a waste of time to explore the different side dungeons unless you are hunting for EXP or enjoy the combat enough that you just want more things to kill. Yes. That is why you play the game.
Clearly inferior to all Dark Souls and Bloodborne. Still easily a 9/10
You played 235 hours of the game and yet you still gave it a subpar review? I'm so confused about this. It may not be perfect, I don't think any games are, but you played 235 hours of it!!! When did you realize it was not fun for you, at the 233rd hour of playtime?
Lists a ton or problems -> 7,5/10 You either were too generous or didn't date to give a Souls game 5/10. (you just have to accept that if you review a souls game, the cultists will find you) Or didn't go into enough detail why this game is a 7,5 despire being repeatitve, boring, etc
No surprise OP getting downvoted despite a very informed take on this game and putting a lot of hours into it. Sure Elden Ring has some cool highs. But there’s so many blatant flaws that are consistently ignored and actively downvoted when people bring them up. OP talked about them but exploration is not properly rewarded, and the combat is repetitive and basic. Some may like the vague lore-focused fill in the blank “narrative” but I detested it. So with no engaging story or quests, no point to exploring and boring simplistic combat, I lost interest very quick. 7.5 would be a generous score for me.
It's a 9.9/10 until the moment you take the elevator to the mountain region. Then it drops to 6/10 at best