In terms of exploration, combat, and character variety, Elden Ring may be the best to ever do it. It's an incredibly fun and engaging game once you learn how it treats fights as a dance and not a DPS exchange. And of course I use all the tools it offers because I'm not a masochist and have a day job.

It is also crippled by asinine quest design, with invisible gates that trip permanent changes that may make quests impossible to complete. It's frustrating because some quests will put markers on your map, and others will be like "Ah, I'm looking for Glup Shitto, keep an eye out for me" and you see them again 20 hours later and they give you a reward for a quest you didn't realize you'd done.

The story is also pretty mid, and it's hard to even understand what the story is sometimes. Who are these people I'm fighting? Why are they fighting me? What the fuck is an Elden Lord anyways? Why do I want to be one? It's a world of rich lore snippets that, if you're lucky, sometimes piece together if you bother to read item descriptions and have the right items.