Nick Brown

Trust me when I say this game is not at all a 10/10 masterpiece like everyone says it is. Those people are trying to sell you a product, not tell you what's wrong with it. Endgame really, really sucks and nobody talks about it, with the spammy unfun boss fights that straight up don't feel play tested being the #1 reason. You can find posts on youtube, reddit or even gameFAQ explaining more of why the end game and bosses in general suck, it's too much to fit into this review. Most of the open world is absolutely worth seeing, but there's very little content actually worth your time in it. Copy and pasted dungeon with a copy and pasted boss over and over again with loot that's rarely useful. (This game only has like 7 or 8 bosses that don't get repeated) Some locations are actually pointless, not to mention the wide stretches of wilderness with nothing going on. It's weird, you don't really notice or care any of that the first ~50 hours but suddenly it hits you. There isn't much good to say about Elden Ring, but the good parts of it are so memorable I don't think any developer will top it for decades to come. This is also the hardest From Software game yet if you plan on using melee (which has always been the standard and most satisfying way to play dark souls for most people) though the game gives you the tools you need to make it weirdly easy and deeply unsatisfying, which you will almost certainly cave into using if you don't like how BS some mandatory encounters can be. Dare I say all the perfect scores are from ppl who didn't finish the game yet or ppl who wanted the game to be perfect so badly they went into denial about its issues. The hype was unreal. As a side note I've beaten this game 3 times so far and I NEVER want to go through the last stretch of it again. I've beat Sekiro at least 20 times, DS1 twice and dark souls 3 at least 10 times. Once with fist weapons only. I'd recommend buying a different souls game.