Elden Ring (Video Game, Soulslike, Open World, High Fantasy, Medieval Fantasy) Reviews and Ratings - Glitchwave (2023)

Elden Ring is the newest entry in the modern AAA open-world genre, garnering the highest critical acclaim imaginable immediately upon release. Many argue that this game is a pure manifestation of adventure, the culmination of modern open world games. I don't count myself among those people, but I also don't want to say that I don't agree with that sentiment. What I find much more fascinating is why open world games, or more specifically in this case Elden Ring, represent an incredibly immersive experience for some, but sadly fall by the wayside for a small minority.
So first, let me try to define what I take to be the modern open world problem by taking what is probably an unnecessarily long jaunt and going from there.

In my opinion, modern expectations of open worlds still seem too far ahead of their time. With teams regularly struggling to achieve unrealistic goals, it's unreasonable to think that developers today have the resources and tools to consistently deliver quality content in a massive playground. If you tell a team to create massive amounts of content while cohesively connecting all of that content in the same world while potentially gaining a few more years of development compared to releases that don't release in an open world, then you just have to accept that concessions will have to be made.
As an apt example, Dark Souls III received about three years of development. Elden Ring only got two extra years on top of those three years. Heck, Sekiro was even being developed during the making of Elden Ring. But somehow there is now roughly three times the content as in Dark Souls III? This discrepancy between the amount of content and the time it takes to create that content should be enough to argue the trade-offs that arise from that ambition.

The most common tradeoff in open world games is that the organic world creation follows a theme park-like pattern to accommodate the scale of the massive world.
Typically, developers create blocks of content, place them on a flat surface, then fill in the empty spaces between those blocks and add verticality to create the feeling of truly being in a living, open world. The larger the desired world, the less time can be spent on each individual block of content. This encourages content blocks to follow similar repeating layouts that can be bulk injected into the world to scale to the desired world size.
Also, by improving the quality of the environments between the content blocks, the developer has even less time to improve the content blocks themselves. Of course, the exact methodology varies by developer. Some focus on creating the environment first, then adding the content blocks, etc., but the general approach seems to boil down to a very formal and instantly recognizable cartridge.
With open worlds expected to be absolutely massive, developers are faced with an agonizing balancing act of never having enough time to show off all aspects of the open world without compromising something else.
The desired modern open world simply cannot consistently deliver high quality given what is expected, whereas a high quality realistic open world would not have the desired size that is expected of a modern open world.

This dilemma seems to drive all modern open-world games to pursue a simple goal: to create the illusion of an immersive world. It doesn't really matter if the content is mass-produced or placed in the world inorganically if the player doesn't even notice these patterns, right? When you feel like you're immersed in a world, even though it's technically quite formal, when you look at the world from a clinical perspective, that seems to be all that matters.

I'm not sure if illusions are a good thing or a bad thing. They seem to offer incredibly powerful experiences if you successfully trick yourself into the illusion, but if you find out that the trick is happening it could ruin your entire game. At this point the discussion needs to return to Elden Ring, as this seems to be the root cause of why Elden Ring's open world failed for me, but it worked for most.
The game goes out of its way to make you feel like you are walking in the best open world ever made. There are stunning views of positive spots to be found everywhere. Just about every location that each view invites you to explore actually becomes explorable at some point in the game. There are certain locations (known as ancient dungeons) that rival the best From Software locations in terms of quality. Areas like Stormveil Castle, Leyndell, and the Crumbling Farum Azula are certainly unique in size and beauty. And yet the rest of the game falls down the same rabbit hole as every other modern open world. There's a lot of repurposed content, sometimes used so blatantly that it retroactively ruins many powerful moments from before. When you're not exploring a content block, ride your horse through completely empty areas until you find the next task. Almost all optional content blocks that aren't an ancient dungeon follow a set and highly repetitive pattern.

Since I've been writing relatively broadly so far, I'm finally going to be more specific. Other than the old dungeons, Elden Ring only features a handful of different types of content blocks, which are repeated liberally across the country, namely:
A) remote areas of sufficient quality to be comparable to old dungeons but relatively much smaller, like Castle Morne or The Shaded Castle.
B) Side Dungeons, which are non-randomized versions of Chalice's dungeons in Bloodborne and mostly offer smaller adventures with frequently recurring enemies, bosses, and scenarios.
C) Ruins with nothing but treasure, sometimes preceded by a repurposed boss.
D) Wizard Towers that contain a reward behind offensively low puzzles.
E) small earthen trees with a single resident head that you will see a dozen times.
F) enemy fields, which contain, well, enemies. And if you're lucky, an article.
G) "wandering" bosses like dragons that repeat themselves to the absurd.
H) traveling mausoleums, which are really not even worth mentioning.

Of all these, only A) seems to be a suitable filler for the rest of the world. But no, he must share his space with his other seven abandoned siblings and desperately cling to your attention.
It seems impossible to truly immerse myself in a world where every optional block of content is so painfully obvious through its repetition and crude execution. You can tell that every side dungeon is placed seemingly randomly on pointless cliffs, that every ruin is a combination of the exact same assets, that the dragon bosses are so poorly implemented in their respective areas that they disappear and reappear multiple times during the game. fight, due to the content density of each main area continues to decrease as the game progresses, so there is a lot of empty and dead space between the content blocks. For me it's like slipping and falling on your face every time you try to immerse yourself in this open world.

And yet, for most, it doesn't matter at all. In fact, many would probably agree that there are a lot of things in the open world of Elden Ring that just aren't that great, and yet don't really matter. The illusion of the open world seems to be underpinned by some immensely powerful standalone moments found as you progress through the game. Like the sheer wonder you felt whenExplore the totally optional area called Nokron to then find the second Hallowhorn terrain which ends at Siofra Aqueduct and think its over but no you continue to Deeproot Depths and after that you still find a new area called Nokstella which then leads to a new area called Lake Of Rot which finally culminates in a secret boss fight which makes you think this side journey is over but no if you continue the side quest you found in the starting areas you will get amazing unlocks and a new hidden area final.
I get the feeling. Even with all the low-quality filler in the world, there are some magical moments. But despite the incredible experience I've just described, I had to ignore the fact that at least four of these areas are incredibly similar, though not even close to the quality of the old dungeons (and that secret boss is later revealed). to some reused). reason) - again, this whole detour could be ruined if you dare to look beyond the illusion.

For me, those moments weren't enough to carry the open world experience behind me, but I can understand if some of them were. It's just that when the veil of illusion falls, there are objectives in every open world that I have to complete. That I'm really exploring a world that exists organically and not because it was the most convenient way for developers to create that world in a tight time frame. That each area is given the same attention to detail, instead of losing more and more content and quality as the game draws to a close.
Maybe I have unrealistic expectations of open world games, but it seems to me that any open world game that doesn't immediately compare to the obviously awful Ubisoft-style open world games should immediately qualify as a world masterpiece. open while In reality, the games are far from achieving what they set out to do, even if admittedly they perform slightly better than the current competition.
I can appreciate the sometimes wonderful things that come to the world of Elden Ring, but the immersion feels so fleeting. If the game crashes too many times, it becomes extremely difficult to control again.

To top it all off, the combination of open world design and soulful gameplay devalues ​​a lot of what the open world is trying to achieve in the first place, especially considering how little effort From Software put into the previous games. Optimize game systems. . . Specifically, there are three core issues that I have been able to identify so far.
1. The damn horse
Adding a horse to a game series that has always struggled to engage players in dealing with enemies, you can now skip pretty much all of the content you'll find in the open world where the horse is allowed to be used. That means you'll spend most of your time in the open world frantically driving around every corner, looking for an item you can quickly pick up before an enemy can react, then nonchalantly moving on. However, the meager rune rewards would initially not reward enemies.
2. Over leveling
Leveling up and upgrading weapons have always been the most powerful changes you can make to your character in Souls games. Now it is also one of the best ways (the best one will be shown later) to accidentally minimize most of the content this time. Also, if you accidentally complete part of a later game too early, you may have trouble finding challenges until late game. If the main fun of trashy content is completing challenges with your own build, setting up enemy levels is probably not a good idea.
3. Useless rewards for exploring
Almost all of the powerful items you can find while exploring are weapons and Ashes of War (weapon skills that can be freely linked to weapons). In theory, you can upgrade 21 weapons to the maximum. In practice, however, this is too annoying for most people, mainly because you have to respect your character every time you make more drastic changes to your build. As such, you'll likely only use a few weapons/spells in a typical game, rendering optional areas that don't require items for your build somewhat useless. Perhaps removing levels and upgrades, like Sekiro did, would have been a great way to incentivize the use of what you find (just like Axis of War already does), but I realize that goes against the whole game of role.

In closing, I'd like to say that this time around, the decision to move to the open world prevented From Software from trying enough on the combat, which is probably some of the most blatantly flawed game design I've ever seen from such a talented company. Although the combat is basically the same as in the other Souls games, there is something that is not quite right.
It looks and sounds great, feels relatively smooth, and offers a decent number of late-game build options. The stealth enemy's stance meter, leap/leap attack, and shield counter aren't particularly impressive, but they're still welcome additions.
The cooldown of weapon skills that can be freely switched between your non-legendary weapons seems to further increase the build variety, though most of the skills seem to be glammed up as R2-boosted flashy attacks with variable stance damage and stat builds. However, this has yet to be tested in many games.
I suppose there are horse fights as well, but he's so underrated and underused in most matches that he ends up having no real impact on the overall fight. There are many encounters that seem to be designed around the horse, but apparently the decision was made not to include it after all, possibly because the horse lacks mechanical depth and was deemed too unfinished prior to the game's release, the quest was valid. In boss fights involving the horse, he will typically circle the boss's toes, forcing him to dodge light hits until he dies.
Overall, the good old principle of "set the pace with visual and aural questions and sometimes punish, hit the invincibility button" still applies with little real change, though a solid result handles the unimaginative combat system that very reminiscent of what you would find in any other Souls game.

Still, the enemy design appears to be an incredible parody of previous Souls games. Almost all of the enemies and bosses have very long combos, little to no cooldowns, and a lot of damage. Many animations are artificially drawn in weird ways to encourage early entry. Most attacks are disproportionately difficult or impossible to respond to. The read input is in his most egregious state yet, causing bosses to finish combos only to then read his punishment and inexplicably punish him. All of these design choices work together to greatly encourage memorization and passivity, or at least if you plan to really get into the core mechanics of combat.

This only gets worse as the game progresses, although you can get the same insights from early bosses in the game like Margit. While I wouldn't say exploring endgame areas is as irritating as it often gets, since you'll likely be massively powerful by then and most normal enemies are on relatively low health, later game bosses feel which is definitely an irredeemable mechanical design in their lives.
I just don't understand why every boss has to be designed in such a way that your time is wasted as much as possible. In all previous Souls games, it's become clear that while boss fights are undoubtedly one of the main draws of the overall experience, they need to be carefully balanced so that they don't feel easy while also not overpowering. its popularity. forcing them to take advantage of every animation the bosses can do to memorize too much.
Also, since these games have never been particularly mechanically deep, the best case scenario is to create boss fights that feel, sound, and look interesting and challenging (even if they aren't that mechanically deep). ) so that you are really immersed and challenging Forget all that. What you do is hit an invincibility button at certain saved times.
However, when the scales tip in favor of boring memorization, the entire combat system in these games simply falls apart. You should never go into that powerful flow state where you rely on your instincts to correctly dodge certain attacks in flight because they give you enough visual feedback to react the way they were intended and punish when you feel right and of course occasionally. . Hiccup when the boss presents you with interesting tricks. Instead, as in Elden Ring, you're painfully reminded that you have nothing more interesting to do than guess and memorize the cast and penalty times for dark animations until you finally get it right and can move on to the next area. Even the consistently fantastic aesthetic boss designs weren't enough to deter me from these themes.
I want to make it clear that I am not complaining that the game is too difficult. In fact, all of the bosses are definitely doable, even with serious player-imposed challenges. Rather, the problem is that the process of learning and then defeating a lot of bosses isn't very fun this time around.
There is so much guesswork in every fight: how long is an attack artificially delayed? Will this combo consist of three or better thirty attacks? Is this multi-hit attack even avoidable? When can I hit the heal button without being instantly hit by an attack? When can I finally punish something safely?
You will eventually get the answers to your questions, but not without being severely punished for every time you ask. So why not hang back to stay away from those ridiculous combos? Why try to punish anything other than the slower attacks that take longer to recover? Why not use ranged attacks so you never get caught up in the crazy blender that almost all big bosses are? There's just no reason not to play very passively and barely interact with bosses unless you feel like you'll be overwhelmed by the hard memorization.
For me, the balance just isn't right here: instead of a healthy combination of some memorization, but also using reaction time and intuition to create the illusion of exciting melee encounters, you get the terrible mess with which fight the boss in Elden. Call often. The memorization alone should serve as a sort of countdown to how to beat a boss over time if you keep going. Being so far ahead of the boss design just shows a complete lack of understanding as to why the boss fights in the previous games managed to feel engaging from the start.
But maybe I'm in the minority here; I can imagine people preferring this new way of designing bosses, as for some the most satisfying aspect of Souls combat is memorizing entire move sets and eventually defeating bosses to near perfection. In theory, making them remember you even more and for longer should only add to that satisfaction when they finally beat a boss.
However, my penchant for rapidly progressing boss fights, close drops where I have to trust my instincts, and my love of mastering a combat system and then being massively rewarded for it (as in Sekiro) are just "" Those aren't things that the Elden Ring offers, so I find the fight really awful.

I also realize that balancing all of these encounters could have been a real challenge for From Software, knowing that exploring and leveling up the open world allows the player to gain tremendous power, but that seems like just another argument against the game. engagement of the modern open world. World design philosophy in a Souls game. You could certainly say that leveling up helps counter the problematic aspects of most bosses, but, as mentioned above, most of the time the fights become so easy that they feel completely ineffective anyway (aside from maybe two or three boss fights in Endgame). , where... Excessive leveling seems to have little or no effect).

Of course, I didn't mention the summoning of Ghost Ash, which is very similar to the NPC summoning in the previous games. When you're ready to use them, all those annoyances will be gone, since you won't have to worry about the game mechanics from the start. Combine that with all the incredibly powerful ashes from wars and spells and you're pretty much capable of rolling anything. As a power fantasy, this kind of work works, but even if all the mechanical issues are now technically resolved, what's left of the battle anyway? I'm not necessarily against a "simple mode" but when it's designed so unattractively I just don't get the appeal.
It could even be argued that summons is not the easy mode of this game early on, but something almost mandatory to get involved with, as many bosses almost seem geared towards it. It couldn't explain the chaotic state most of the bosses are in otherwise, Malenia, Godskin Duo (and all the multi-boss fights) and the final boss in particular are great examples.
And when you consider that one of the biggest flaws in the Soul Combat formula has always been that combat with multiple enemies or allies doesn't work at all, the supposed focus on summons gets even weirder.
Some of the few multi-boss fights that ever worked, like Ornstein and Smough, only worked because they were built specifically for pretty much 1v1 combat anyway.
Similarly, using a summoned ally only breaks the aggressive priority for each boss. Again, this only works if you're fighting two bosses early on, where your ally can focus on one boss while you fight the other, but that really just makes for another practical 1v1 situation.
Van Software's decision to not only add widely available and easily upgradeable summons, but to seemingly focus combat encounters on them without modifying the AI ​​was completely wrong. You'll be doomed when you're doomed unless you find yourself in a situation where not using summons forces you to join the fight, as do downright nasty bosses while using summons resolves these encounters, but then in turn causes all the combat experience just feel completely empty.

I'm not sure what went wrong here. It's very confusing to make a game like Sekiro, which managed to create such a refreshing feel and criminally entertaining combat system with minimal but clever changes to Souls' core combat formula systems, and then came the Elden ring. Again, my best guess would be that this is due to all the challenges that came with creating a massive open world and the lack of development time that probably involved, but who knows?
It just feels like there's a clear lack of intent in all of these design decisions and a struggle to form a cohesive whole. Add to this the redundancy of once again replacing significant narrative elements with very familiar lore and slightly charming but ultimately boring and too dark side quests and you have a game that is too similar to its predecessors but fails. invent something useful in the new areas you are trying to explore.

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