Through its distinct uniqueness and vivid locations, Elden Ring provides new players with an excellent introduction to the game series while not deviating far from its roots.
Elden Ring improves on many aspects of prior games made by the same creator, FromSoftware, known as the “Soulsborne” games.
These aspects of previous games turned a lot of people off from trying this new game in the first place.
The “Dark Souls” games are notoriously challenging, with punishing mechanics that make it very difficult for a player to progress through the game quickly.
Elden Ring’s open-world experience makes it so that if you get stuck on a certain area you can always leave and get stronger before you come back again.
This circumvents a lot of the game’s more challenging aspects because it allows you to take the game at your own pace.
The open world of Elden Ring is immensely large, being over 30 square miles of explorable area.
The designers of the game added features so that the large open world feel was not too overwhelming, including adding a horse named Torrent, and making it so that you can teleport to any checkpoint in the world you have previously visited.
One aspect of the game that further demonstrates the amount of effort in the development is the diversity and uniqueness of the bosses within the game.
With over 100 different boss fights within Elden Ring, the game offers a large amount of content which doesn’t make any corner of the huge map feel dull.
Along with these bosses is the variability of weapons, abilities and tools found around the map.
Every explorable location has vast amounts of items which oftentimes correspond to the area they are in.
For example, the Raya Lucaria Academy, an area littered with magical themes, also has a large amount of magic weapons and incantations.
Another great aspect of the game is the time that developers took when designing certain areas.
Stormveil castle is a ruined stronghold that sits atop a cliff with large towers and a gothic architectural theme that players can explore as soon as they start playing.
The castle is full of difficult enemies and hidden areas which players can explore for hours.
Stormveil castle is just one example of the dozens of unique locations in Elden Ring with intricate design and jaw-dropping visuals.
Another interesting aspect of the game is the freedom that it offers its players.
Those who play the game can choose to either jump right into the main story and finish relatively quickly while having a pretty general understanding of the lore.
However, if you want to delve deeply into every corner of the game, you can.
Being such a large game with so many different items, there are also a large variety of “loadouts” that players can choose from.
There are hundreds of viable options for a player’s desired loadout which can each change how the game feels and add an even further level of variability to a playthrough.
Elden Ring is a great game for someone who has never played a Dark Souls game before as it offers options for those who do not want to get stuck doing the same thing for hours. With so much to experiment within the game, there are rarely dull experiences which makes for an amazing gameplay experience.