I finished Elden Ring yesterday, which came as quite a surprise to me. I’ve tried several other souls games but always quit in frustration shortly after or before the first boss. But this time, after seeing everyone else talking about it I decided to give it a try, and it clicked. I surprisingly had a great time playing it and was still enjoying it after ~65 hours.

Gameplay

My usual issue with the Souls games is that I get stressed out from dying and losing my runes. But this time I largely avoided it. You could generally tell when a boss was coming, and when it was spend your “golden runes” to level up and leave yourself with near zero to lose when you fought the boss. Probably this was a thing in the other games too but I just didn’t understand it. I also notably cared less about dying the longer I played— in the start I would cautiously sneak through everywhere, reading messages and checking for enemies. By the time I got to the last dungeon I would just run past everything and rush to the next grace point. Continue reading Thoughts on Elden Ring →