The world of Elden Ring , which has been a critical and bestselling success at its launch, is divided into six distinct zones, each with their own dungeons and story lines. Experienced players of similar titles like Dark Souls will know that learning how to control the character and squeeze out their every move can take hundreds of hours, so at first you’ll basically spend most of your time dying.
For the uninitiated, Elden Ring is the latest version of FromSoftware. Known for creating such difficult games like Dark Souls and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Elden Ring is probably the most ambitious title the developer has produced to date. Moving away from the closed and interconnected settings of previous games, this is FromSoftware’s first game to venture into an open world, bringing its challenging and uncompromising gameplay with it.
An open world full of possibilities
Similar to games like Skyrim or The Witcher III, Elden Ring is an open-ended RPG where you travel through a huge world filled with monsters, friendly and not-so-friendly characters, and a wealth of treasure to discover. The experience emphasizes freedom of exploration, allowing you to lose yourself in a world where you can discover the story and build your character at your own pace.
For this game, the developers have improved the movement engine, giving your character much more realistic abilities, but sometimes it can also be a plus of difficulty when you want to run, jump, draw your sword or change weapons quickly to eliminate to the multiple enemies that you will find throughout the extensive map of the game.
But in Elden Ring, your character can easily be killed by enemies and traps, sending you back to your last save point, without your hard-earned money or experience. The only way to get it back is to retrace your steps to collect the lost resources without dying.
This live, die, and repeat model isn’t new to video games, but Elden Ring, which shares DNA with Dark Souls, emphasizes that every death you experience matters. It’s a game that encourages you to learn from every kill, but those kills invariably make traversing the Elden Ring universe more time consuming.
A very long game, with a lot of mysteries to discover
For games like Elden Ring, you are expected to invest a lot of time and patience. It’s a difficult journey riddled with cunning enemies and ruthless traps, but overcoming these grand challenges with your character can lead to spectacular feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment (if you don’t, you can also feel frustrated, but that’s normal). However, that drive to expand your arsenal of weapons and abilities to prepare for the next dangerous enemy will keep your adrenaline pumping.
As one of the most anticipated games of 2022, Elden Ring manages to offer an intriguing world to explore and battle that will have you smirking as you take down the toughest enemies. The journey is much longer than you probably think it is. But it is worth investing your time in discovering it.
