I quite like Dark Souls. I am so glad I could get that off my chest for the sixth time today. If I don’t express my love enough, I end up doing it just before bed and making myself go blind. So we know how this rollercoaster goes: Demon’s Souls begat Dark Souls, Dark Souls begat Bloodborne, and Bloodborne begat Dark Souls 3. Meanwhile, Sekiro was something to frighten off Sony’s Ghosts of Tsushima. Elden Ring became the latest mystery wrapped in an enigma, shrouded in several delays. To say fanfare for it has been elevated would be an understatement, as only a few seconds of footage sent sections of the internet into an almost catatonic state.

The latest game from Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R. R. Martin is set in the fantasy world of the Lands Between from Limgrave and beyond. You are another one of those sods that I need to use a find and replace tool for, as you are no longer an unhollowed, unkindled, or hunter. You are one of the Tarnished, a group of characters all vying to gain the power of the titular Elden Ring. Shattered and spread across the lands, you will defeat the numerous oversized stabby monstrosities of this world with the aim of becoming the Elden Lord. If some of that sounds similar to fantasy plot one dot alpha, don’t worry, Miyazaki-san has you covered.

Very quickly, we’re taken from the simple mystery of the entire game to asking a fundamental question with only three letters: W, T, and F. It is a bit of Miyazaki’s greatest hits, but with new ideas. It would be remarkably easy (and a little reductive) to say Elden Ring is Dark Souls 4: There is a fantasy world, lords and otherwise to kill, a castle to climb up to, and a few old tricks at this point. The first boss you encounter kills you efficiently, a similar voice to Dark Souls 3‘s Fire Keeper is your entrusted Finger Maiden. No, I am not joking, Melina refers to her position in the plot as that with no hint of irony.

That (and the combat) is where all the similarities live and breathe, but unlike my secret lover, Elden Ring does away with a large number of our comforts. I am looking at the Metroidvania-esque aspects of the entangled map, sending you every which way with a level of progression that’s set almost entirely in stone. That is unless you are stupid enough to, on your very first playthrough, walk right into the Catacombs by Firelink Shrine and expect to walk out unscathed. It is more of an open world this time and unobstructed fields and forests are laid bare for you to explore until your heart is content, or more often than not mushed into a well-ground paste.

The easiest comparison to make would be that we’re playing Breath of the Bloodthirsty Horrors this time around, as you explore atop a horse, experience a day/night cycle that produces Pokémon-style bats at night, and there is all your typical open-world open-endedness. Guided by the sites of Grace, you can run off to the very edge of the world in hopes of fighting something like the Lord of Several Genitals For a Face. This time around, the body-horror has shifted from genitals glued together in Bloodborne and from Dark Souls 2‘s dudes in armor to multi-limbed repulsiveness. Some bring Sekiro‘s speed to Dark Souls‘ contemplative strategy of not getting hit and stabbing the spider woman.

A sentence or two ago, I mentioned the sites of Grace, your bonfires, or lanterns this time around. With your trusted spectral-pony Torrent, you can steal several of them without much actual progression. You can rush into the fray, fighting bears in the forests by the Eastern Tablelands that might maul you to death before you’ve gotten your first swing, slash, or stab of whatever weapon you’ve got by that point. Part of me appreciates the exploration, seeing the horrors I’ll face when I am appropriately over-leveled and better equipped. Though, the nostalgic fan in me prefers to see the natural progression of banging my head against the wall with an angry face drawn on it.

However, I do relish being able to (sometimes in mid-battle) run-off and get a clean pair of underpants after stabbing a lobster that just popped out the ground. A number of things do that this time around. Either what appears to be fallen Shadow of the Colossus monsters will stand after you’ve trotted over them, the aforementioned rock-lobster, or even magic ghostly giants may appear. Nothing has changed, everything wants to kill you, and the expression “curiosity killed the cat” still applies to you. Though, sometimes that inquisitiveness is best used at certain times of the day.

With a day/night cycle, you can undoubtedly be sure to find a clear path on your way to somewhere. However, on your way back through the open-world at night, you may find yourself beaten to death by the local hoodlums. No longer traversing the fog (or rather mist, this time) with every boss fight, you’ll find some extra-big lads that don’t like the cut of your jib ready to chase you back to where you came from, Grace. Though it does raise the question, “if there isn’t a site of Grace outside a door to every boss or even a door at all in some cases, how do you keep your not-estus filled for that fight?”

I’m about to say something that will upset the die-hard group that yells about how accessibility isn’t allowed in video games: This is where Elden Ring is more forgiving than its predecessors. Similar to Bloodborne‘s health-bar trick, you have to still attack to gain your Crimson Tear flasks back, or you can attack the Teardrop Scarabs around the map and replenish them that way without sitting at your bonfire or lantern equivalent. The former requires killing the one enemy that wants to slit you up like a kebab and is presently glowing a bit red, sometimes it is from the only smashed-up monster (or wolf) you are fighting or within the small area of the group you’ve trotted up to atop Torrent.

Some of the more toxic fans will undoubtedly exclaim that it is different, and therefore ruined, however, it is a mechanic that changes with the world itself. Unless you want to level up or pass time, there is very little reason to sit at your site of Grace, as you can craft and do almost everything (including fast travel) without sitting. That is, aside from replenishing your Ashes of War, a powerful special attack that is often weapon-specific. They tend to be continuous thrusts with light swords, slams, or otherwise all draining your Dark Souls 3-style Focus Points. Admittedly, Stabarella and I weren’t too focused on using magic (Stabarella being my bearded hero) so I would very infrequently change those up.

Nor was I swapping weapons, as I could quite easily find or upgrade early weapons to cross 200-300 damage with each swing or thrust. Some weapons are slower than others, of course, though some have the trade-off of being a golden halberd I could use atop a horse and effectively break combat with standard enemies. I found myself grinding the mutilated trolls which drop runes by the thousands, and as usual with the extra big lads with two feet, bite at their ankles while running away. Once again, die-hards that scream about anything else having accessibility will be upset that with the return of flasks upon killing the trolls, it doesn’t matter if you get hit a couple of times.

Combat is still very much locked into that deliberately strategic art of rolling about the floor like a child on mescaline. Only now, when Thing T. Thing’s many more fingered cousin, Susan H. It, jumps out in the middle of a forest, you can run away and attempt to clean yourself up when you find another point of Grace. In other games like this, there isn’t time for that in one of those many jump-scare moments. I still find the idea of parrying about as useful as speaking to the magic bloke at the Magic Circle where you all your friends congregate, Bloodborne-style. Though overall, something you are vested in well enough several games in at this point.

Crafting takes a larger presence this time around, de rigueur for the open-world it seems as birds and goats that roll about as much as you do drop fundamental but significant items. Near enough everyone or thing does, with flowers and golden excrement lining your pockets for days and often providing little help overall. Octopus Ovaries and all, the most useful things to craft are what you’ve used a million times before, fire pots and arrows/bolts. The latter two are found within typical knights all over the place.

Another change to the formula, though one not exactly for the better or worse, is the world map. Yes, the philosophy of “if you can see it, you can go there” still stands, and that’s one of the most important parts of a Souls–Borne game. While it is only filled in once you’ve found specific shrines but not filled in like a Ubisoft sandbox, the exploration is nevertheless continually dependent on you and your general ability to remember the map well enough.

Personally, I don’t see much of the benefit or shortcomings from it other than it being open world, one the size of a small country. Without a map, it could be easy to get lost but equally, if you’ve played a From Software game, you’ll be used to maps with more detail and unintuitive design than a modern political system, or more aptly the Undead Burg. It is nice to see where I’ll be heading once I’ve downloaded fantasy world Grindr and spent more time in the Lands Between than my own bed, but I could already see it in the distance.

Speaking of visuals, it might be easy to say that with an 8th and 9th generation port alongside PC, there will be disparities between the ports. I wouldn’t know. We’ve been under embargo for a little over a week and I’ve avoided footage from others for months, foliage and lighting are the biggest changes between the relatively low options of the Xbox One and PS4’s releases. Though that’s not the only difference, of course, the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S both boast 4K and 60 fps alongside their graphical enhancements. Personally, I don’t care too much for the highest possible graphical fidelity for Elden Ring.

From Software games aren’t often the most beautiful thing in the world anyway. Design-wise they are otherworldly, and Bloodborne‘s design team made that world both horrifying and enchanting in a grotesquely beautiful way. Elden Ring is once again akin to Dark Souls, a fantasy land that is grubby and otherwise not as focused on such detail as gothic horror London. All of this is to say that while Elden Ring‘s design is nightmare-inducing hell as multi-limbed and multi-fingered monstrosities grab and thrust at you, the aesthetic outside the body horror is very much “seen it.”

That’s not what you want to hear. You want to hear about how performance shakes up for the 8th generation ports and how it handles some often more busy sections. With the multi-platform release and multi-generation release, it shouldn’t be too surprising to hear that there will inevitably be a few dips in frame rate for those on base PS4s and Xbox Ones. Is it Cyberpunk 2077 levels of chunking itself off a cliff anytime anything gets a touch busy? No, but it is noticeable, especially in later stages such as the Eastern Tablelands, just a bit up from Liurnia of the Lakes and Raya Lucaria.

I’ve said it multiple times before, and with the fantasy names, it sticks out like a sour thumb: I’ve never been one for fantasy, specifically high fantasy. I tend to dislike your Potters, your Baggins, Your Damodreds, or your Starks, Lannisters, Greyjoys, other than the only one I do like, Targaryen. Yes, the R. R. Martin hangs over this like a demi-human seeking a jump on you to cause bleeding, but surprisingly his presence nor the heavy fantasy-based lore bother me so much as elsewhere. In fact, I’d argue it is once again one of the better ways of telling a fantasy story, letting the world and characters breathe in the world without long-winded exposition about how the world is in terribly grave danger.

Like any embargo, I’ve been asked to avoid late-game spoilers, so I won’t go into great detail though it would be difficult to do so anyway. I may have had the week to play, but I didn’t have enough time to get through the deep sea excavation society’s initiation, and thus I’ve been unable to take a team with me into every milometer of the Lands Between. The typical phrase is “as wide as an ocean, as deep as a puddle,” but that’s not how either Miyazaki or Martin work, therefore it is oceanic in width and depth. It is crammed with lore and exploration that made me ask on several occasions, “what is that doing there?”

I’m returned to the phrase about killing cats with curiosity from several paragraphs ago, as that’s exactly what happens. You’ll wander off into some bit of the map that is filled with death and novel curiosity, only to be accosted by NPC invasions, trolls, a dragon, a boss in the open world, or an oversized sloth hanging out with a bear it could eat for a snack. Elden Ring is rich with lore, exploration, and the excitement of swearing profusely at something that is infuriatingly just a bunch of pixels and lines of code. All of this is in a land fit to lose yourself in with great aplomb.

All of this said, Elden Ring isn’t the kindest to new players and I think it was most evident 25-hours in when I did the tutorial. Right after being killed and Melina doing her mystery thing at the beginning, you are left alone in a dark crypt with a dark hole on the right and a lit-up doorway straight ahead. I opted for the doorway, getting out into the world, and ended up spending 25-hours killing bosses and getting to level 50 before getting a prompt about backstabbing or even the use of stealth. It is a great idea for players several games deep at this point, but it is still an odd choice that made killing the very first boss in-game something done in three hits.

There is a presence of stealth, and for once in his life (we’re ignoring Sekiro for now), Miyazaki decided that map the jump button to something sensible. Neither of those are central to a significant portion of the game. Stormveil requires a little bit of platforming thanks to the awkward design, and stealth is an option, I suppose. When you spend a large portion of your time in the open areas atop Torrent, with the ability to double jump with a twinkly little bell on the second jump, I see the reason for mapping A as jump. As the lead character, it is nice to have it with awkward terrain but once again doesn’t do much more than cater to the open-world aspect.

Overall, and this shouldn’t be too surprising, I enjoy Elden Ring. Awkward at times and often in that way a From Software game tends to be, it has its faults and has performance issues too. More of what I love, with an all-new world and lore, I expect to find myself putting Elden Ring in my regular rotation of playing the Souls–Borne series’ and endlessly enjoying four of the five. With a deep and rich world containing more of the gameplay continuing the Dark Souls tradition of bending me over a table, Elden Ring is everything I could have wanted from it.

An Xbox One copy of Elden Ring was provided by Bandai Namco for the purposes of this review.

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Elden Ring

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Lore so deep you could be enveloped by it.
• The natural evolution of the Dark Souls formula.
• A near endless fantasy world to explore and enjoy.

Cons

• Minor performance and graphical issues.