Newly released for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, Elden Ring is a spiritual successor to Dark Souls, a franchise that revels in its difficulty to an almost sadistic level. Winning a game of Souls is a test of patience, dedication, and skill. It’s a badge of honor.
Written with the help of George RR Martin (the creator of the Game of Thrones series), Elden Ring deals with a ring that possesses vast but vague mythical powers, it was fragmented into seven Great Runes by Queen Marika. Those Runes were given to each of the Queen’s demigod descendants, who started a war amongst themselves to secure all the Great Runes and reforge the Elden Ring. The war, known as The Shattering, was unvictorious, but managed to completely fracture Middle-earth, the setting in which you play. It is up to you to kill the seven demigods, reforge the Elden Ring, and become the Elden Lord.
A game of unique dimensions and complexity
Easier said than done. If you’ve never played a FromSoftware game before, the gist is that most enemies can kill you with one or two hits, and progress inherently involves dying over and over again. It is a game of coordination and synchronization, but also of perseverance.
There’s a lot to take in, and it’s overwhelming at first. Elden Ring is a massive RPG and has a giant list of features that you’ll need to familiarize yourself with. You will choose a class that affects the weapons you can initially use. There are melee, magical, short and long range builds. You will learn how to craft items and consumables that improve certain attributes. You can summon monsters that fight by your side. You will loot the enemies in search of treasures and resources. Many things are happening. What separates Elden Ring from other blockbuster action RPGs is that all of this really matters.
Movement in Elden Ring is clumsy, it’s not designed for you to fight your way through a room, it’s designed so that every hit, block and quick turn counts. Mastering this takes many hours of play, but the beauty of Elden Ring is that the player never really understands what exactly they need to do to optimize their moves.
Each new area or major enemy brings with it a new challenge, and overcoming these obstacles is a constant, recurring process that takes you from believing that there is absolutely no way to overcome an obstacle to disbelief in how you just got over it. It would be a lie to say that all of Elden Ring is hard work with a satisfying reward. Sometimes it’s just frustrating. The relentlessness of the Elden Ring can also make you dispirited. No enemy can be taken lightly and death is always a mistake or two away.
