JimmyBaginski

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

After playing 129 hours of Elden Ring I've realised I just dont have the constitution for massive open worlds anymore. They are just too big now. The problem, in one word, is 'burnout'. More is not always more. And if you're like me, you want to see and do everything in every area before moving on, it starts to feel like it will never end. Loose ends and open loops quite literally give me acute anxiety. With a game as massive and jam-packed as ER the feeling of busily trying to cover every inch of the map becomes overwhelmingly stressful. And it's not to say that fromsoft haven't gone balls out with this game. They def have. It's big, in-depth, connected and mostly awe-inspiring. It's just, **** much. Especially for a semi functioning adult with other things in life to think about. You can have too much **** thing. So, it feels like this game is my life now until I complete it and honestly I dont think I want to even attempt another run. It takes so much effort and burden. The only thing that makes it tolerable now is how easy it is to summon helpers. When that eventually dies down and signs start to dry up there will be portions of the game that will be an even greater time sink. Also, yes, I like exploration but so much of this is repetitive. Caves, ruins, rune towers, bosses, dragons, castle, caravans etc. In previous Fromsoft entries each area had unique flare and individually crafted, specific detail incorporated into it. There's that here too. But, the sheer size of this game is made of quite bland filler. I guess that's the trade-off. But for me I'd gave preferred something 30% tighter, more focussed and memorable than this never ending cycle of busy work unearthing things you may or may not use. It's exhausting. Also, the NPC questlines are ridiculously obtuse. There's absolutely no way you could complete them without the use of guides and the internet. Fine. That's always been the case in DaS to some extent. But, these make no sense. The whole game is just so proud of the fact it leaves you to figure it out that it's actually silly. So much so I'm almost agreeing with the critics that say it's just needlessly hard. 129 hours of my run time could've been cut down by 50 hours of going online to search for answers. This game is not self-contained enough. Lastly, I've had this feeling with two other big games in recent years 1. RDR2 2. BOTW. By the end of both these games I just wanted it to end. I'd had enough of collecting every last trinket to the point of drudgery. You might say "just do the main questline". Well, FOMO is a strong emotion in these kinds of games and one that is hard to fight when its intentionally utilised and when you've spent £50 on it. There's so much to love about ER. It is stunning in places. So why do I feel like I'm burning out? It's just too much game. Too much quantity not enough quality. Less is more. Get rid of Torrent, pin back some of the scale, up some of the unique detail of repeated areas, tighten her up and we have a game that doesn't ask that you must cease all other things in your life to complete. Just wanted to add a somewhat crass analogy to sum it up. Have you ever been in bed with a girl you're really into, and it all feels exciting, sensuous, sensitive and horny, but at some point it just goes on that little too long and you're both carrying on to try to get back that earlier feeling, but by now youre only sinking more and more cost and energy into it, and the fun bit is now dwarfed by the effort bit, you're just covered in sweat and you start to forget the beautiful bit and question why you're still plugging away, but you still don't want to give up before you finish, but when you do it's not that romantic and beautiful? That's ER. I can't put it any other way. Apologies if that's too sexual but the shoe fits.

Okay. I want to start off by saying that this game is an immensely huge achievement by Team Cherry. They have crafted a world full of charm, detail and richness that grounds you in a place that feels like it was there long before you arrived. The backgrounds, the character design and the music are top-tier. The mechanics are well-executed, responsive and intuitive enough to allow a seasoned practitioner to feel in full control of their actions and progress. Also, as has been stated, the world is a massive, sprawling maze of variety, unique enemies and new challenges that keep you guessing. Big, obvious influences on this game are classic elements from DaS, Super Metroid, Castlevania and Rayman etc. And it borrows from all these games and combines these elements in ways that are both familiar yet just the right side of new to make this game feel like its own entity. The retrievement of your currency by backtracking to where you died ala DaS is there, the unfurling, slow-reveal of connecting rooms and areas on the map screen ala Castlevania 'Symphony of the Night' etc, the double-jump ability that opens up previously unreachable areas etc. These are all derivative, predictable but, as stated before, there's something about the world that draws you into it, willing you to keep going. It all just feels so of-a-piece. The boss battles, too, are challenging, surprising encounters, full of variety, unexpected twists, phases and attacks. And, there are so many that you'll likely be reaching for Google to find one you should have encountered 10 hours previously into your gameplay but holds an imperative upgrade or item to allow you to march to the next area, so you have to find it. And, this brings me to some of the downsides to this game... The game time on my first playthrough is upwards of 50 plus hours. During that time I must have backtracked at least 50% of my time, trying to reach a previous area, planning my route and trawling through challenges and obstacles I'd previously, emotionally moved on from. Guys, this is a huuuuuge time ****. Fast-travel is limited to hitching a ride with an awesome stag beetle character who has stations scattered at various points in the game world. Sadly, many important vendors, NPC's and bosses are far from these stations, leaving you to pump time into navigation and retreading old steps. As the game is so massive and impressively so, the desire for more bus stops looms large by the end. I know that Dark Souls did this, but that game was interconnected, employing short-cuts and time saves as the world opened up to you. In HK, this just doesn't happen. instead, it all just feels out of control by the end. Another drawback is how un-signposted both the story and the next direction of travel feels. Where I'm used to this in games I love, like Dark Souls, Hyper Light Drifter, those games used the environments to punish you into the right direction, or used cut scenes to elucidate where you had to go next. Things generally pointed their way towards a specific destination or goal. Many times in HK I was lost, unable to know what to do and reaching for Google, youtube videos and walkthroughs to help me gain clarity where none was given by the game. So, I guess you can add all those hours to my overall game time also. Very, frustrating and disappointing considering what joy it is to discover these places the first time around. The boss battles, too, were sometimes excruciatingly hard, making you Git Gud to a degree that simply demands too much time, and then so remedially easy, you smash them first try. Very inconsistent. Also, many bosses were recycled into OP versions of previous iterations, by simply making them faster, more aggressive and a slightly different colour scheme. This feels cheap at times, especially when the reward for beating these bosses is simply the knowledge of knowing you beat them. After a while of this, the difficulty starts to feel arbitrary, or intentionally hard just to draw more time out of you, instead of more joy. An example of this was The Path Of Pain area. Needless to say, it is painfully hard. Without adding spoilers, the reward for this area does not match the effort in completing it. And, so much of it feels this way. Lastly, there is no NG + where you get to carry all your rewards, skills, charms and ability into a fresh, slightly harder playthrough. That's a gigantic missed opportunity from Team Cherry, in my opinion. What a joy it would have been to traverse the world again, knowing where to go and what to do, defeating it with style. I enjoyed parts of the DLC's. But, again, they were so hard to find, I started to feel like Team Cherry were being deliberately obtuse, almost relying on the existence of Google as a crutch for badly implemented world design. So, in closing, I both in awe and in frustration at this game. I just hope Team Cherry's 'Silksong' sequel learns from some of this, imo, fair criticism.

As a guy who would credit DaS as the game that singularly reignited my love of video gaming, it's hard to see it prostituted for a quick buck in such a lazy and disrespectful manner. 1. It looks worse. The textures are bland, dull and plasticy. The original game was grainy and weathered in such a beautifully rustic and authentic way. It had charm/atmosphere for days. But, all this dark beauty has been downgraded for lifeless, washed out visuals to save on CPU, maybe. I hope so, because if this WAS an artistic choice then they really **** up. Big time. The armour, shields especially look more like toys you'd use with a little miniture figureen you'd play with as a kid. It looks that bad. Really dissapointed. A few torches and some weeds that sway about a bit are o consolation for what it's taken away. 2. The price is astronomically high for what is a remaster with more cons than pros. You're getting very little for 35 pounds if you're a veteran, especially. If you are a newbie then you won't know you're being stiffed. But I'll just say this to any newbs reading this now: get an old Xbox 360, download it or get the original on disk and play that. You'll save cash and you'll experience the clunky, yet beautiful original as it was without getting **** in the arse. Suffer through its flaws, because nothing beats your first run of this masterpiece. Don't spoil all its charm by shelling out for a shiny, superficial facimile of a masterpiece. Put up with **** framerate here and there and just go for it. 3. From/Bandai/Industry reviewers should all be ashamed of themselves for selling us this **** But, they're all bound by one motivating factor: money. You're money, to be precise! I spent mine so you don't have to. Follow step 2 to avoid feeding this mockery of an industry practice. Folks saying "don't buy it if you don't like it". Well, genius, I bought to see what it was like. Now, I got to see it for my damn self I can hate on it and pre-warn others as to its lack of true value.