Well, that was the title before I got 30 + 50+ 60+ hours in, stopped writing, and forgot to publish this. I wouldn’t say Elden Ring has taken over my life—seriously, there’s been a lot going on the last few weeks[1]—but it has taken up a lot of my free time. In a good way.

I would recommend Elden Ring, but it’d be a qualified recommendation. This is not Breath of the Wild, this is not a great game for a beginning gamer, but it is a great game. Maddy Myers’ essay at Polygon captures most of this.

But my simple version is: Elden Ring takes what I loved about the Soulsborne series, improves it, gets rid of some of the most annoying things they’ve done in the past, and created something devastating and beautiful and fun.

How’d they do that? [SPOILERS FOLLOW]

First—they created an open world that is both carefully crafted and allows for you to explore things in your own way. This is really hard to do! My wife taught me about sightlines at Disney World, Breath of the Wild really used this well, I think Elden Ring perfected it. Every time you turn a corner, every time you climb a mountain, every time you come out of a tunnel, you see something new that you want to go visit. And then, there’s the small design that happens that allows that. In the first few hours, I:

• Saw this caravan of soldiers and a couple of giant beasts towing a carriage. I tried to sneak in and get stuff out of the carriage but couldn’t. Then I tried killing the giant beasts, but the other soldiers attacked me and I died. So the next time I tried to go around back, kill the soldiers first, but I got distracted by these beautiful poison flowers that attacked me and I died. Finally, on my 4^th try, I was able to circumvent the poison flowers, kill the soldiers at the back of the caravan, take down the two giants in the front, and was rewarded with the treasure in the carriage. This was one of the first things I did in the game, and I sat back like…holy shit. I didn’t know a game could do this.

• There was this island off in the distance I’d been seeing glimpses of for a few hours, but you can’t swim in this game, so I couldn’t really get to it. On a mainland beach, I stumbled into a cave, and got stuck trying to kill this giant Rune Bear. I stopped playing for the night, and then beat it on my first try the next morning.[2] After beating the bear, I got some treasure and then started going through a long tunnel. The tunnel led to the island I’d been looking at for hours!

• In a forest, I came upon a temple with an elevator that led underground. The elevator took me down for an inordinate amount of time, so long that I ended up in a new area, an underground city, so deep under the earth that there were stars in the sky.

• I met a downtrodden sorcerer right after I beat the first big boss. He mentioned that he always wanted to enter the magic academy at Raya Lucaria, but could never find a key. Many hours later, I made my way into Raya Lucaria, using a key I found, but that key disappeared after its use. So he was out of luck. But as I was exploring the castle, I found another key. After beating the boss in that arena, I returned to the sorcerer, and gave him the key. He taught me a gesture. A few hours after that, I entered a tower that had something at the top, but now way for me to get up there. I used the gesture the sorcerer taught me, and a magical ladder appeared, allowing me to collect the treasure at the top. This is what a good quest is.
• Remember that Rune Bear I struggled to beat earlier? Imagine my surprise when I entered a forest FUCKING FILLED WITH RUNE BEARS. Also, one exploded out of the ground at me in a different area. I hate those fucking bears. Sorry, PETA.

• I came upon a merchant in a valley, and all around him were messages like: “wait for night, tough enemy.” I waited for night, and through the valley came trotting a black knight. I wasn’t strong enough to beat him then, but I came back later, bested him, and got this sweet flail.

Second, the developers made a number of “quality of life” improvements for gameplay that are just so fucking great. This is a bit in the weeds if you don’t normally play these games, but oh well.

• Summoning your horse, Torrent: in most games, you can whistle to call your horse, and then it magically appears behind you and then you have to remember what button to press to get on it. It’s not horrible but Elden Ring does this way better. You whistle for your horse and it magically appears under you, and you’re already on it. ALL GAMES SHOULD DO THIS. Look—you’re already conceding some sort of magic when I whistle for a horse that I left on a cliff hours ago, you might as well let me appear on top of it.
• Speaking of summoning…Elden Ring makes it way easier to summon other players to help you fight bosses. In past Soulsborne games, this summoning capability was often tied to valuable, hard-to-find resources, meaning you had to really think about summoning other players. Here, if you need help, you do it, and if you run out of that resource, it’s available in fields all over the game. Why is this important? It changes the difficulty variability of the notoriously hard game.
• Invasions: In past games, they could happen when you’ve used that hard-to-find resource, thus negating its value. Here, they only happen when you’ve summoned another player, and through 60+ hours I’ve not been invaded by another player.
• The primary healing source is your flask: This isn’t new, but they’ve experimented with other things (blood vials in Bloodborne), so I’m glad to see we’re back to the flask. And there are more ways to refill the flask than just resting at a bonfire/site of grace. Now, if you kill a whole set of enemies, your flask refills. There are also these little…balls? That you can kill and they restore charges. Again—this really helps with the difficulty.
• Ashes of War: this is a brand new mechanic that lets you summon these spirits of enemies you’ve killed. It takes resources (renewable, at least), and is only available against tough enemies, but it’s another cool way they’ve allowed for players who want to play a less difficult game to do so.
• The day/night cycle in this game pairs really well with the messaging system between players. I was a bit terrified when I started thinking about all that From Software could hide with that cycle, but reading other players’ messages makes it fairly simple to know if you should just wait for another time of day to be in an area.
• I could be wrong here, but the amount of weapons and items I’m getting absolutely dwarfs what I’ve received in other Soulsborne games. That they’ve managed to do this and STILL keep all the cool items descriptions is rather amazing.
• Others have written about this extensively, so I won’t belabor the point, but the design of the open world also means that in most cases, if you encounter a difficult enemy, you can go explore another area until you’re at a level where that enemy is no longer difficult. In past games, you’d have to either (a) get good enough at the game to beat the enemy, even if you’re fighting the same boss 40-50 times (which, I have definitely done); or (b) go grind levels against enemies you can beat. Option a can be fun, but option b is pretty horrible and I’m glad that I can now just go explore new areas instead.

So yeah, I really, really like this game.

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[1] More to come here soon…

[2] Important Soulsborne lesson: if you’re having trouble, take a break and come back fresh.