Elden Ring

"The Fallen Leaves Tell A Story. Of How A Tarnished Became Elden Lord."

Rise, Tarnished, and be guided by grace to brandish the power of the Elden Ring and become an Elden Lord in the Lands Between.

The year was 2019. During E3, Fromsoft announces their new game. Elden Ring. It looks as ambiguous as ever, so, naturally, it's a must-buy. Only this time, it's a collaboration with George R. Martin, famous for writing Game of Thrones. With this news, the game rocketed to one of the most anticipated titles of all time! Then silence. It vanished off the face of the earth. It triggered memes, pleas and all-sorts; to get a sneak peek of the 'new Dark Souls'. It continued this way until June 10th 2021, at the Summer Games show. It is finally happening! A new trailer dropped featuring a massive open world, magic, co-op, horseback combat, dragon, and terrifying bosses. You name it; it was there. It was arriving on January 21st 2022, for current consoles and next-gen. The actual release date was the 25th of February 2022.

Release day; keeping up with tradition. I spend way too long in the character creator. The end result. An eternally shocked man with an enormous pointy nose and arms as wide as tree trunks. He's perfect!

I managed to ignore the Samurai starting class, after my several playthroughs of Sekiro. this time my intention was to be a Faith build, so I picked Confessor. It begins. I make my way through the tutorial. the game opens up to reveal a grassy plateau and in the distance a golden armoured knight on a similarly armoured horse wielding a giant spear. I'm thinking, my first victim. Little did I know I was about to be his *~@# instead. After 10-20 tries of getting one shot, I move on with my tail between my legs. and proceed onwards!

I reach Margit and immediately hit a difficulty spike and a wall which I just can't break. not without more training beforehand. I venture a little south and clear out mini-bosses along the way putting points into Faith and strength, and just like always I end up with a strength build!! So I'm Faith/ Strength now I guess. I picked up a winged-scythe along the way and suddenly start finding my rhythm in Elden ring. I'm playing without looking up any lore, walkthroughs, or anything, so at this point, I don't know about bleed damage being OP and accidentally stumbled onto greatness.

After a good few hours now, I realised just how special this game is. It has totally redefined what an open-world game could and should be. Discussing with friends we very quickly understood that no two players would have the same experience outside of the main story. We found items that the others had never seen, quests, bosses and spells and it blew our minds! we shared tips, theories and locations we'd uncovered and became obsessed with the game. I couldn't praise this game highly enough. it's truly a masterpiece.

So to avoid spoilers, I won't go into too much detail about what's in the game, nor any of the story, apart from some names. but for the fact, I had genuine jaw-dropping moments walking into new locations, like Leydenll and Nokstella.

Onto some of the best parts of Fromsoft games. The bosses!

I had trouble with a lot of the bosses. I had a love/hate relationship with the bosses. On the one hand, they were awesome, they were unique and well designed as you'd expect. On the other some fights just felt plain unfair, more of these were mini-bosses than story bosses but the Crucible knight was absolutely mental. He didn't make sense. He had an unbelievable range, and speed and was lethal. In most cases, you'd expect an exploitable opening but not with these guys, they hit on the counter as well! So you can imagine my reaction when you fight these guys as normal enemies in the late game, not to mention two at once!

Radahn deserves a special mention here. He is an impressive fight which is highly anticipated throughout the early game when first mentioned as hosting a festival of combat. When that festival of combat arrives and you start the fight, you realise the odds are against you from the start. pre-patch he was capable of one-shotting you as soon as you enter the arena (which I am glad they tweaked). It's a unique fight but one that felt totally RNG to me at the time. You could get wiped out in one combo or left alone for the whole fight. In the end, I had a millimetre of health left. He was awesome though.

Speaking of Awesome, the NPCs. They were some of my favourite sections of the game. Blaidd in particular had strong quest lines and all in all, was very likeable. In previous Souls games, you often felt that you were in this nightmare-ish world alone but in Elden Ring, the world was brighter, colourful and had a whole cast of NPC you can encounter, each on their own journey. This made the world alive and I often spent time just riding around on my horse, off the beaten track seeing what else I could uncover.

My absolutely favourite thing in Elden Ring has to be the trophy bosses. These were usually hiding in a large fortress, deep cavern or hidden behind a hard-to-find secret path. I've got nothing bad to say about these fights, they're hard, rewarding, and unique. Ancestral spirit was elegant, Elemer of the Briar was brutal, and Fortissax is just jaw-dropping. They are all absolutely fantastic and you need to experience them.

In short. this game is a masterpiece, everyone who has a console that can play it. Should play it. They have put a lot of work into making the game more accessible with magic builds and co-op and even summoning spirits to even the playing field. It looks great. Plays great and it consumed my life for the last few months. I have played through the game multiple times and achieved all of the trophies. I might delve into that a little more in a platinum journey post in the future. but for now. Elden Ring was released in February of this year and it is unquestionably the game of the year.

Rise, Tarnished!