The most overrated souls-like of all time. The game could have been another nice soulsborne but open world completely ruins experience from playing it. This could have easily been a game for like 40 hours but it had to be extended to over 100 hours which makes the game and its pacing so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sluggish. Open world is mostly just lacking actually interesting content. Let me show you my favourite examples:
Normal Dungeons are so repetetive, once you saw every type of those, you saw them all, same with bosses in them cause who wouldnt want to fight, for example, watchdogs more than once, spoiler nobody. The open world also makes the game unnecessarily vertical in many places which doesnt help when using horse is just so wonky that one wrong turn and you will fall down, i swear i dont understand fromsoftware adding platforming to their games.
Another problem with open world is that it tries to be a modern zelda for some reason. We have the map recovering mechanic but it doesnt work cause on the limited map you can litearlly see a point where every map can be gotten. So why is this mechanic here in the first place? My guess, to waste your time even more. Game also has like bazillion different materials as if that was a mobile game. SPEAKING OF MOBILE GAMES, exclusive pay to win classes that were in tarnshied edition is just a final nail in coffin. You are ♥♥♥♥ at game? just buy a better class for $. And it doesnt matter if builds in soulslikes are more flexible in further part of the game, it is still pathetic pay to win and if you are defending this, you are hurting gaming as a whole.
ANOTHER problem with open world is that it completely screws up your feeling of progression. Caelid is the perfect example of this being basically right next to the beginner regions of the game. Why is it here? It serves no purpose being besides frustrating people why suddenly everything got so much harder out of nowhere. Getting to the Redmane castle was the most dreadful, tiring and frustrating experiences in my life.
Also becuase of how big this game is, there is no fun repeating playing from the beginning. Being there, done that.
ALSO BECAUSE OF HOW BIG THIS OPEN WORLD IS, it runs like crap. Playing a game based on reaction time is terrible when you constantly have to experience drops in frames.
Ashes of war are stupid, Im sorry but they seem to be added just for the show cause casuals love flashy lights attacks, they are not subtle, they are tiresome and I was often forgetting they even exist.
I heard that Elden Ring supposadly has such an amazing exploration! This is straight up bs. Such an amazing exploration that all you can count on while "exploring" are useless items as rewards, weapons you won't use, or nothing cause ehem go back here when you will have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stonsword key, idiot. Remember when people were complaining about various keys and those stone statues in DS2 SOFTS that were blocking your path in many places? WHARE ARE YOU NOW?
You know it is also funny how they made such a big and wide world but they didnt apparently have budget to make a cinematic like in every other soulsborne games. Starting a AAA game with a powerpoint presentation is just pathetic for AAA developer. Trailer of the game is better for this than that pathetic excuse of an opening.
And if you want to play this game nonetheless (which i do not recommend), dont play it with friends. You will get attacked by endgame minmaxers every around 10 minutes. Just let them kill, it doesnt make sense even trying to fight them...
Also im not talking about story here cause there is not much to say. Look, Mr J R R Martin, If I wanna read about ancient gods lore for another 100 hours, I will read a book or watch a some lore freak making 2 hour essay. Im playing games, especially those like souls likes for gameplay first and foremost.
Elden RIng just destroyed souls-like's for me. And knowing how trendchsaer the gaming is, we will be propably getting more open world souls likes in future, good for casuals but not for me. I am tired, I treid so much to like this game, I wanted to love this game but now I understand why people did not recommend it as the first souls like. If this was my first souls like, I would have never played souls trilogy, never. Elden RIng is destroying every single aspect i like this genre for.
Methodical progress was exchanged for grind, grind, grind and more grind.
