Chris Read

Firstly I'd like to preface this review by saying that I am a massive fan of fromsofts games from demon souls onwards. Ive put 1000s of hours into them all and have achieved platinums in them all and completed many challenge runs. I will be the first to admit that none of them are anywhere close to perfect but the experiences are tight, responsive, unique, challenging, thought provoking and ultimately are super fun. I'd also like to say I didn't play the game to play darks souls 4, bloodborne 2 or sekiro 2. I absolutely loved the pace changes of bloodborne and sekiro from the mainline games and these 2 are among my favourite games of all time including shadow of the colossus, terraria and many others. But elden ring has been a major roller coaster of enjoyment for me so I thought I'd write down my major frustrations with the game here. 1. Bosses that aren't even reskins you will end up fighting at least 4 times. 2. The same bosses you've fought 4 times but with a duplicate in the same fight with no regard to how that effects the fight. 3. The same enemy around the corner trap repeated ad nauseum to the point where I'm dissapointed by corners and items in corridors. 4. The most ganky areas you will ever find in a fromsoft game. Prepare to be running into groups of 5+ all the time unless you want to draw aggro slowly, turning a 50+ hour game into a second life. 5. Status effects that are repetitive. Rot is a powered up posion. Madness is a powered up bleed. 6. Endless pointless loot. Good lord I hope you like completing entire dungeons with some of the major rewards being plants that allow you to craft the number 50 of something youve crafted already. 7. Pointless crafting system that kills flow. I would appreciate it if there was genuine unique items that made some fun gameplay alterations but its all just cure this and buff that. 8. The size of this game is beyond excessive. Huge empty areas of nothing apart from reskinned enemies with no rewards. 9. The feeling that I need to play with a walkthrough to save myself the weeks of time I'm loosing of my life experiencing literally nothing new. 10. Insanely bloated health bars on bosses and normal enemies. 11. Broken fights and enemy hit boxes due to a lack of polish. Probably a result of the size of the game and the copy and paste attitude to encounters. 12. I was told by an NPC that an epic boss encounter was "sick". Never had such a violent pull away from immersion without it being an intentional 4th wall break. 13. Inconsistent stance breaking/staggers. Swinging a colossal sword will stagger giant enemies but has literally no effect on a good variety of small to medium enemies/bosses 14. The constant AOE attacks. 15. Neverending combos on enemies that can attack in groups. 16. Thousands of dogs. I can keep going but I'm not sinking anymore time into this review. If you like souls stuff there is a good chance you'll enjoy it, but if anything on this list puts you off, the game has more than enough time to eat away at your enjoyment of the experience. Ultimately for me its a hollow experience, I really struggled to finish the game and I have absolutely no desire to start another playthrough. I would not recommend this game.