Elden Ring

It was hard not hear about Elden Ring the past few months. It was the latest game from the Dark Souls creators, highly anticipated for the open-world and story crafted by George R.R. Martin. Since I haven't owned a video game console since the PS2, I never really got into the Dark Souls games. This was odd considering the considerable influence that Berserk had on the game designers. Everyone seemed blown away by Elden Ring, with the unanimous consensus that it was a masterpiece. With these factors, it seemed like it was time to try it out. 

Atmosphere

It's been a while since I've played a single-player triple A game, but I was very impressed by the game's atmosphere. Needless to say, all the landscapes, creatures, and music are very well-crafted. The framing and reveals of landscapes and bosses were awesome; many of the game screenshots I've taken look like a renaissance painting.   

 The lore is told partially through NPC dialogue and item descriptions, however it's often cryptic or partial information. The world's landscape shows the history through the vast ruins, corpses, and malformed creatures. Each NPC has some deep history that we piece together through their dialogue. There are detailed YouTube videos detailing the story for each character, which makes our interactions with them seem like just another line item. The details reminded of the structure A Song of Ice and Fire, which describes a complex world full of individual characters pursuing their own goals. 

With the open-world gameplay, there is minimal player guidance. This was the intentional design to give the sense of adventure and discovery. The player is supposed to thoroughly comb through all possible paths to find hidden items and encounters. Some areas or questlines are restricted until key events happen, however there's no clear marker to convey that. With no quest log or checklist, it becomes difficult to keep track of everything.

This was ambitious game design, since there are many questlines that most players might not even see unless they carefully tracked each line of dialogue and item description. This is opposite of other modern games, which carefully guides the players down a single path with obvious HUD markers and indicators. Given the amount of resources required to create content, it's risky to make so much content that could be missed. Because of the nonlinear path, I did get stuck several times and I had to look up guides to progress. I found it frustrating to feel stuck and circling around the same areas because I lost my sense of direction. However, there were many other times were I felt clever and was  rewarded for finding hidden pathways, which is a feeling that can only come from a challenge. 

Gameplay

The Dark Souls franchise is well-known for its combat system. The players use stamina for a limited number of attacks, rolls, and blocks. The limited actions force players to play tactically and respect the enemy threats. The combat is much like a fighting game, where combatants square up to carefully exchange attacks. I appreciate this more nuanced gameplay since it raises the skill ceiling considerably.

The game features a wide range of weapons and spells, which allows for a variety of playstyles. My first playthrough was a basic Strength build. What's better than smashing enemies with a huge sword? And of course at the first opportunity I wielded the Dragonslayer-inspired Greatsword. It felt awesome to cleave through multiple foes and bring giants to their knees. Since attack speed is tied to the weapon, the massive weight and power of colossal swords was felt for the whole playthrough.

Eventually I decided I needed TWO colossal swords

Difficulty

First and foremost, the Dark Souls franchise is known for its considerable difficulty. An interesting game design choice was frontloading difficulty to the player first starting. When the player first enters the open world, they're met by a Tree Sentinel. The newbie player might think this as another introductory enemy, but quickly realize it's a powerful boss type. The player is hopelessly outmatched and invariably dies, which suggests they should just explore somewhere to get more powerful and return later. These challenging encounters put a pause on the player's progression, which allows them to backtrack and follow some other paths they saw along the way. 

Since the dodge mechanic provides a brief window of invulnerability, the designers had used that as justification for making very challenging encounters. There are many traps, pitfalls, and enemy attacks that significantly punish (if not kill) the player. Some deaths felt really unfair, so the game forces you to learn from mistakes and adapt to new threats. Keeping the threat levels high makes the game a lot more exciting, since it would be very boring if the bosses weren't any challenge and the same old strategy worked every single time. 

The bosses of Elden Ring are massive and powerful in their own ways. Since the checkpoints are (usually) right outside the boss' entrance, the game challenges the player to try again. Dying to the same boss over and over forces the player to improve their skills by learning the attack timings to dodge and attack properly. Through these deaths, the player is rewarded with a truly deserved victory; a gratifying rush that can't come from an easy game. In summary, the player has to "git gud". 

The boys 

As for me, since colossal swords are heaviest hitting weapons in the game, they would often stagger or poise break enemies. This encouraged me to constantly jump attack aggressively to overpower enemies and quickly end encounters. This worked pretty well for most bosses. Once I got stuck on Melania, I started to pull out the infamous +10 Mimic Ash Tear. For the rest the game, my mimic and I just smashed through the final bosses. I'd say this was effective the game's "easy mode", since I would focus on pure damage output to shorten the fights and ignore mechanics. I felt this was kind of "cheesing" the fights since they were so easy, even though I didn't exploit any broken mechanics or cheats. I just used the tools provided by the game.

Many purists insist on handicapping themselves and completing the fights the "intended" way, with all the dodges and parries to perfectly counter all the boss attacks. But that's really just their preference, and although it's impressive, I don't think I have the patience or skill to go that far. I'm still proud and happy I was able to experience this game, and I was able to do it my way.