Thoughts on Elden Ring

I was going to wait to write anything on this game until I had explored it more, but shortly after finishing a first playthrough it decided to stop working entirely so that won't be possible for a while. Bosses in particular are hard to comment on without fighting them with different weapons, spells only, without levelling, etc., so for that I'll just point out some general patterns I dislike (I did make a tier list to be taken salt-infused). I used the Claymore two-handed without any summoning or magic, all Strength and Vigor with a bit of Endurance to wear armor in the second half.

It's entirely wonderful to discover and wander in, thanks to the subdued music and range of aesthetics (from romanticist Limgrave to hellish Caelid). It loves to do teasers, teleporting you to higher level areas to get a glimpse of the future, whether it's all available and just too hard, or an isolated portion of a cool area (via the belfries mainly, but being kidnapped to Lava Manor can be that too). There's a balanced blend of player-driven exploration and more scripted discoveries and locations (particularly underground). Erdtrees as distant landmarks, the loop of exploring for the map which gives you some hints for gaols etc. until you move to the next zone blind again, very well structured overall. Some incredible ideas and contained areas scattered around, like the divine tower of Caelid, and the larger cities and forts have some of the best open level design out there. Towards the end it has some empty space in snowfields and the ashen capital, plus Mohg's palace as the only properly bad area in the game, but that's all fairly brief.

On a gameplay level it largely combines strengths of their previous games, without any major missteps, e.g. healing isn't just "not broken" like in ds3, it's the best it's ever been and even surpasses Nioh thanks to diminishing returns on upgrades and the more reliable refills. Enemy design is nearly as good as DS3 (they turned the worst enemy, dogs, into a highlight!), non-linearity and free exploration is back in full force even if it's different than DS1, and any issues I have are things inherent to the structure, or just individual moves and encounters which I can’t give much weight. Trick weapons, enemies that are challenging to run past, world design, boss design, all the other games still have their ways to shine still not overshadowed, but it's impressive how solid Elden Ring ended up considering the scale and their track record (one step forward, one big step back).

There's a few improvements to the combat system as well which I wasn't expecting. They reduced frame advantage in combos enough to give enemies outs (similar to DS3 / BB's staggerable bosses that break out by dodging or doing a hyperarmor move), but not enough to feel as sluggish as DS2. Stamina isn't just a combo bar, it's more about consecutive frametraps so you may need to mix up even against regular mobs, which goes a long way to make normal encounters more exciting beyond learning enemy moves and placements. Jumping attacks fit in so well, being a niche defensive tool while letting you do heavy attacks with less wind-ups if you were doing movement anyway - great for whiff punishing, and gives you a reward for finding the attacks that are possible to dodge by jumping. Similar to Sekiro's jumping combat arts and prosthetics, but from the get-go and in a more dynamic combat system.

The limb stun from Bloodborne, and DS3's bigger bosses that stagger at certain intervals, have become standardised under the stance system, incentivising jumping and charged heavy attacks as well as giving slower weapons another axis to compete on. It's a bit simplistic, achieving that purpose but not really improving the fights themselves much. Gael in DS3 staggers every 6 hits with a straight sword which you can plan around, stunning him out of an attack and making sure you have the stamina to take advantage of the opening, he's my favorite boss and this is a not insignificant part of that. Encouraging you to keep attacking is good to push efficiency (strafing attacks is the most efficient and interesting way to dodge them, so the game should reward that), but particularly with heavier weapons it just means taking more risks and making unsafe / unreliable plays.

Due to the open structure, replayability is more limited, each build runs around the world for a while to start and can get really powerful without killing anything at all, both having some dead time and making any early content very weak unless you go out of your way to rush it (talisman slots are the main thing that's locked by bosses, so Margit is convenient to fight when he's still a challenge thankfully). Souls games with tight levels are fun to explore first go around, and past that work as navigational challenges with items gated by different bosses so whether you do pyromancy or a faith mace build or a speedrun there's a different order to do things and decisions to make as to what path you'd like to take. This has a lot more meat in that first playthrough (similarly to Hollow Knight's Godhome exhausting all the depth of the boss lineup, even if this isn't to that degree) so I don't think it's that big a drawback, whereas in the others most of my enjoyment were from replaying.

From what I've seen and experimented with, it also accommodates challenges as well as the souls trilogy. No-level runs are a good indication since it's the lowest common denominator, and it has a lot of tools that let you rely less on stats (statuses dealing % damage, weapon skills that do flat damage) or give you greater bonuses at lower level (Radagon's Soreseal and +damage/defense at full hp talismans). Compare to Bloodborne which is more fun to run through the levels of, but at blood level 4 you just get oneshot by everything and deal no damage since the scaling in that game is bonkers (on the other end of the scale you have even DLC bosses being a complete joke if you do chalice dungeons).

When it comes to content design there's some weirdly bad encounters in otherwise good areas (Godskin Duo in Farum Azula, erdtree avatar with knights and ballistae in Elphael, giant ghost skeletons in snowfield), and weirdly bad moves in otherwise good boss fights (Malenia's Waterfowl Dance being most indefensible and infamous, but there's also Mohg's vague unavoidable bleed, Astel's grab, Elden Beast's stars). The Godskin Apostle is a great fight, if they managed to make a good duo fight with that it could be up there with the greats, but like with almost all their attempts at multi-boss fights in this it falls completely flat (joining triple Crystalians, double pumpkin head, double gargoyles). They just put two Pursuers in a NG+ room in Dark Souls 2 and that was better than these bosses that are required to beat the game (i.e. they should be considered and tuned a lot better)! I don't fully get how this happened besides just generally cut corners and it being hard to design content with such wild customization. Hopefully future patches can change and refine some of these attacks and overall behaviours, though I doubt it given Oceiros' instacharge still downgrading that fight in DS3.

There's two main patterns to boss (and enemy) design I'm not a fan of that go beyond weird design or lack of polish. First is how much keep-away there is, the giant plants are the best example as every move just requires stepping back from melee for 3 seconds or half a minute, only serving to drag things out. Like Soul of Cinder and Manus doing combos that you need to outdistance (or any boss with AoEs lasting more than your iframes), Mohg calling down blood on himself or the Tree Sentinel shield slam work to mix up how you need to respond to their attacks and resets your positions (so you can't always stay at Tree Sentinels' shield side where many of his attacks miss you). But many of these are so poorly considered and don't add this kind of dynamic on the whole, while being bad individual attacks that strip away the usual interaction between offense and defense - instead of having all these considerations about whether you can avoid an attack with jump to do a jumping heavy or dodge into two R1s or strafe to get a charged R2 (the optimal choice depending on your current position and stamina), your only consideration is how far away you need to be and how quickly you need to get there. Waterfowl Dance is the big one again, but also the gargoyles' vague poison that makes it impossible to focus them down, Malenia's phase change explosion where you just have to wait 10 seconds for the AoE to fade, Niall's huge AoE attack he only does once per fight, Fallingstar Beast's self-AoE with a hitbox that lingers until the attack is completely over, the avatars' AoE with homing lights, and Elden Beast's elden stars attack.

The other frequent issue is with big enemies, so many both regular and boss encounters where you can only see part of the boss and most of their moves will just miss you without you doing anything intentionally. It's initially annoying because of poor conveyance, making it harder to learn their moveset and recognise your mistakes (I didn't even use lock-on for these, which is even worse). They tend to have big (but unclear) safe spots for each attack so once you know the fight well it's almost cheesy. The dragons in Farum Azula are so awkward to fight from the front with heads moving out of melee erratically and frequently (as opposed to the two-legged dragons), but you can just run to their hind legs and hit those. Most of their attacks are hard to tell apart there, but you don't have to since they just miss you, or they reset by flying up/back in which case you run to the same spot and in the process bait out front attacks (Fortissax has some nice AoEs but this still applies). Elden Beast, Fire Giant, Radahn, Astel, dragonkin soldiers, tree spirits, gargoyles, all to varying degrees are like this.

On the other hand, one of my favorite points of the game was to encounter Agheel and Tree Sentinel, two reasonably sized solid bosses, before even unlocking levelling. While From's best bosses have always been in DLCs, given the length of this and how well it starts out I expected to find something at least approaching Artorias, Fume Knight, Gael or Orphan in quality as an endgame humanoid boss. While cool for spectacle and scale, the monstrous bosses like Placidusax aren't exactly Ludwig / Demon Prince / Lud & Zallen tier either. Of base game boss lineups this still beats everything but DS3 though, so this is more about missed potential than a flaw (similar to the catacombs which aren’t nearly as interesting as the castles, but no detriment to the game).