I've put a couple hours in and I just can't get into it. If I had to describe the game in one word it would be, "unfocused." Tons of confusing, overlapping, seemingly redundant systems, a bajillion items whose uses are vaguely described at best and just pile up in my inventory, imprecise combat mechanics that seem to encourage cheesing, and not even much of an explanation about why my character is doing what they're doing or why I should care. Like I get FromSoft games purposefully don't use straightforward narratives but I just don't see any narrative hook to grab my engagement other than that I should want to be "Elden Lord," for some reason.

So what's the attraction? It looks gorgeous, I'll give it that. But so did Sekiro, which felt a lot more focused mechanically and narratively.

Not trying to be contrarian, I genuinely want to know what people see in this game that I'm missing.

  • LeninsRage [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    TVTropes actually had a good summary:

    Newbie Boom: Oh Elden Ring. Thanks to the nature of its hype cycle (years of silence followed by a lot of information all at once creating buzz), followed by absolutely incredible reviews on release (it charted a 97 on Metacritic, which is the highest average score a From game has ever gotten by at least 7 points) has led to the most incredible newbie boom the "Souls series" has ever seen. By March 5th, it had managed almost nine times the peak player concurrency of Dark Souls III on Steam, and outside estimation put the total sales of the game worldwide at somewhere between five to ten million copies in the first week. By comparison, DS3 took a year or more to accomplish that.

    I actually see references to Elden Ring IRL, before I even knew what it was and that it was the latest FROMSoftware game.