My mini-review after pretty a dozen or so hours.
Souls games and their clones were never really my thing. Dark Souls eventually bored me, never bothered with the sequels, The Surge's sci-fi spin kept me entertained enough but I kinda had enough by the end, never bothered with the sequel. Never tried Sekiro or Bloodborne, from what I saw they were more of what I disliked about Dark Souls. Elden Ring is a somewhat mixed bag for me, despite my fascination for it and the fact I pretty much spent the whole of Sunday playing it.
First off, the open world is fascinating. Incredible enemy variety, secrets everywhere, new gameplay ideas at every corner, fun hidden collectibles, you name it. The game's combat mixes fantastically well with these open areas, as you can combine stealth, acrobatic kills, horseback escapes or circling around and more. I am still rocking more or less the starting weapons (sword and shield), though I upgraded the former a lot to keep up with the challenges. I'm playing it much like how I typically do open world games: find where's the next big story moment, clear everything secondary in said region, then finally move on with the story which, by now, should probably be fairly easy.
So that means that I completed the starting region pretty much and the one South, I have like 2 things I didn't necessarily finish that I'll come back to eventually. I'm now clearing the first castle and... I think this is the point I'm least enjoying in the game so far. Nevermind the difficulty spike, one I did prepare for with the wolf spirit summons getting leveled up, good gear and being level 30+ by now, this part has tons of what I eventually gave up on Souls for. Tight corridors, small ledges, tons of high damage enemies that aren't very fun to fight as there's no room to move or to pull cool stuff like the jump lunges, etc..
I just don't think the game's core gameplay is quite good enough for this sort of thing now. The AI is pretty bad (you can still cheese them behind doors and such), the platforming is pretty janky and yet there's a lot of it, the maze-like dark environments offer none of the excitement of the open areas for me, and with checkpoints so sparse it's more an exercise in attrition than actual combat skills. It also doesn't help that the game seems to start enjoying placing traps, exploding barrels, enemies hiding behind corners, etc. too, further slowing down a part that is already feeling painfully slow and annoying.
As for the technical aspect, the game is fine I guess. It doesn't quite compete with the bests, and it's far away even from Ubisoft's own open worlds (Valhalla looks miles better, for example). Elden Ring does make up for it with some fantastical landscapes and brilliant monster design. I can notice the unstable framerate and it usually annoys me, but I've found it surprisingly bearable in gameplay, as I don't really notice it during battles. I would like some better colour grading at times and some more consistent hit detection and landings on platforming, but it's fine for the most part in the open world.
So, in short, I enjoy this game quite immensely when it's Elden Ring, and a lot less when it's Dark Souls 4. Not a surprise, given how I'm not a Souls fan, but what did surprise me is the amount of fun I'm having anyway. I can see myself finish just about everything in this game once, but not so much going back to the old games where nearly every area is tighter, there's no horse, there's no jump (I think Sekiro has it?), and there's none of the fascinating open world exploration I so love here. I'm glad I managed to find a cheap code for this online, I surely would have skipped it at full price but it's great to be playing it now when everyone's still discovering what's what.
