I got super into Elden Ring when it came out and really loved it, but I started a replay earlier this year to prepare for the expansion, and that plus the expansion has made me realize how overrated Elden Ring is and how much it gives up of what makes the games good, while not gaining as much in return:
I hope they at least remaster Dark Souls 2 and 3 (I have given up on Bloodborne).
- The boss reuse is insane. Literally every boss seems to be reused at least once. The thrill of encountering bosses is gone after the first third of the game, especially if you have been exploring and doing the optional content, because many bosses you encounter will be reused and repeats.
- In and of itself this is a big issue, but an even bigger issue is the design of the boss fights seems to be very poor a lot of the time. By this I don't mean they are difficult, but the exact opposite. Most of these bosses are damage sponge tanks that hit hard, meaning almost every battle becomes the same grind of outlasting the enemy while repeating the basic attacks. If you have spirit ashes like Mimic Tear, then it becomes even more laughably easy. And Elden Ring's idea of making a fight difficult? Face the same boss as before, but two of them! That's not difficulty, that's a lazy attempt to brute force the player.
- Bosses aside, the mini dungeons (the caves/tombs/etc.) are all very poor and maddeningly repetitive. There are far too many of them, almost none of them is well designed, and they contribute to the problem of areas, enemies, and bosses feeling reused (because there are so many of them, of course the game has to reuse things)
- The game is open world but it seems to be designed to be at odds with itself. You get locked into your build early on - the only way to switch it? A rare consumable resource. Which means the bulk of the loot you come across in the world is useless to you, because it doesn't fit your build. And you can't respect to try out the new loot you get, because some genius had the idea of tying respeccing to a rare consumable in a gigantic open world game that just drowns you in loot otherwise. So the end result? Most loot you find is useless, meaning most rewards are useless.
- If you're keeping up, this means that the bulk of all content in the game - whether it be repeating bosses, poor mini-dungeons, or useless loot - actively deters you from exploring the open world, because all of the things that would otherwise be a reason to engage with the world are irrelevant. So what is left in the world? Big huge expanses of land just spacing the actual good content (the legacy dungeons) out with useless padded filler. Give me the tighter pacing of Dark Souls or Bloodborne over this any day, please.
- I am not even talking about the technical issues with the game. The poor framerate, the horrible optimization, the fact that the game seems to be built on tech from the PS3 era. Ordinarily I don't care, but these little issues are just adding to the bigger ones I noticed.
I hope they at least remaster Dark Souls 2 and 3 (I have given up on Bloodborne).
