Lucius Easen

TLDR: Elden Ring is Malibu Stacy with new hat. Elden Ring recently released to near universal acclaim with metacritic scores of 95% for the PC version and 96% for the console versions. Masterpiece, game of the year, and other such praise have been lavished on it from critics and fans alike. I generally disregard game critics but even I bought into the hype and dropped full price on this game shortly after it's release. I was sorely disappointed and quit playing after about 16 hours. For perspective, I've completed Demon's Souls, DS1-3 and Bloodborne, so I'm well familiar with the developer's previous works and their notorious difficulty. Art is subjective and I can see why Elden Ring might be the greatest game ever made to some people despite it's shortcomings even if I don't feel that way about it. However, I expect game journalists to at least attempt to objectively appraise a game's strengths and weakness to help consumers make an informed decision and all the hyperbolic praise does everyone a disservice. Technical and performance issues aside, which is the main reason the game has been reviewed bombed on metacritic (I don't support or participate in this practice) with an average User Rating of 6.7 for the PC version, my main complaint with the game is the total lack of originality. Elden Ring is supposed to be an original IP but what we got were the same dated Dark Souls gameplay mechanics we've had for the past decade with the addition of a jump button and mounted combat. Assets are heavily reused from previous games and within the game. George RR Martin was apparently involved in the lore but the overall narrative style and plot are the same as Dark Souls. If you replaced Elden Ring with First Flame, Sites of Grace with bonfire, and Tarnished with chosen undead/ashen one you'd have a hard time distinguishing this from another entry in the Dark Souls saga. Nothing wrong with having a Dark Souls 4 but let's acknowledge that this is just more of the same, which is fantastic for the people who wanted that, but a huge disappointment for people like me who wanted something new. The open world is the main change to the an otherwise formulaic Souls game and for many, exploration of the world will provide hours of engaging content. With the lack of a coherent narrative and few NPCs, I personally found the open world tedious and felt it detracted from the carefully interwoven level design of previous Souls games but this is purely personal preference and I completely understand why many love the change. There are many critically acclaimed games that I personally didn't enjoy but I've never felt compelled to speak up until now. Despite my complaints, Elden Ring seems like a great game from what I've seen so far, even if it doesn't appeal to me, and I have tremendous respect for Fromsoftware as a developer. However, I think it's been placed on a pedestal and being judged with a completely different set of standards from other games. Take Dragon's Dogma for example, a similar game released 10 years ago to little fanfare and mediocre critical reviews (with legitimate criticisms), even though it was a much more original, innovative and ambitious IP, particularly at its time of release. I guess I still naively want to believe in equality of opportunity and expect things to be judged fairly according to the same standards, even when I should know better, especially when it comes to game journalists.