Masterpiece? I'm playing through it right now and honestly, I would rather take the other two souls game I played (DS3 and 2) over Elden Ring any day of the week. If you haven't played it, I recommend you don't buy into the fanboy hype about it being "one of the best games of all time". I made that mistake, and whilst it sounded like a sound take at the beginning of the game with the novelty of the open world, QoL changes and a horse, once all of that newfound charm wears off and you enter the end game where people legit have to respec just to beat one fucking boss because the game is ridiculously unbalanced and the boss design is objectively trash, you quickly begin to realize that giving this game GOTY inspite of its quite blatant flaws was a major fucking mistake.
Agreed, Elden Ring is a bit too big for its own good. Considering how popular open world games are, I suppose that's why it's so well so well regarded. DS2 is definitely better imo.
I had some of the most fun I've had in a fromsoft game up until finishing leyndel. Although I did think the game was spread a bit thin at times I'm not sure moments like siofra well would work if you expected to consistently find cool reveals like that.
Almost everything after that was a tedious slog. It's a crying shame since places like haligtree brace have some stellar level design ruined by cut and paste spam of annoying enemies and completely bonkers damage scaling.
I bounced hard off the dlc although I don't know what I was expecting.
DS, DES, and sekiro are all wonderful in their own way. I think they excell at smaller projects that are original. If elden ring ended at the erdtree it would have been a terrific high, although I'm unsure how much replayability is there because of how much loot there is and how spread out it is.
In terms of game play Elden Ring has a lot of nicer stuff, though I'm always going to like DS1 because the gameplay is visually technical which seems "clunky" but is nicer to me personally because I can understand that I'm actually executing what I'm trying to do correctly.
As far as the game play balance goes, it's a wash, plenty of DS series games had pointless annoyances.
In terms of lore / world building / writing / meaning Elden Ring is 3rd behind DS3 / DS1. I'd arguably put it even lower like below DS2 / Sekiro because the DLC was nonsense and a lot of fan service and made me lose faith in the cohesiveness of the work.
I have a lot of regret putting the time I did into Elden Ring.
Masterpiece? I'm playing through it right now and honestly, I would rather take the other two souls game I played (DS3 and 2) over Elden Ring any day of the week. If you haven't played it, I recommend you don't buy into the fanboy hype about it being "one of the best games of all time". I made that mistake, and whilst it sounded like a sound take at the beginning of the game with the novelty of the open world, QoL changes and a horse, once all of that newfound charm wears off and you enter the end game where people legit have to respec just to beat one fucking boss because the game is ridiculously unbalanced and the boss design is objectively trash, you quickly begin to realize that giving this game GOTY inspite of its quite blatant flaws was a major fucking mistake.
Agreed, Elden Ring is a bit too big for its own good. Considering how popular open world games are, I suppose that's why it's so well so well regarded. DS2 is definitely better imo.
I had some of the most fun I've had in a fromsoft game up until finishing leyndel. Although I did think the game was spread a bit thin at times I'm not sure moments like siofra well would work if you expected to consistently find cool reveals like that.
Almost everything after that was a tedious slog. It's a crying shame since places like haligtree brace have some stellar level design ruined by cut and paste spam of annoying enemies and completely bonkers damage scaling.
I bounced hard off the dlc although I don't know what I was expecting.
DS, DES, and sekiro are all wonderful in their own way. I think they excell at smaller projects that are original. If elden ring ended at the erdtree it would have been a terrific high, although I'm unsure how much replayability is there because of how much loot there is and how spread out it is.
I haven't gotten very far in it and I've been exposed
In terms of game play Elden Ring has a lot of nicer stuff, though I'm always going to like DS1 because the gameplay is visually technical which seems "clunky" but is nicer to me personally because I can understand that I'm actually executing what I'm trying to do correctly.
As far as the game play balance goes, it's a wash, plenty of DS series games had pointless annoyances.
In terms of lore / world building / writing / meaning Elden Ring is 3rd behind DS3 / DS1. I'd arguably put it even lower like below DS2 / Sekiro because the DLC was nonsense and a lot of fan service and made me lose faith in the cohesiveness of the work.
I have a lot of regret putting the time I did into Elden Ring.