Elden Ring - Early Impressions and Impending Videos

I wasn't planning on making any videos on Elden Ring right away. It usually takes a long time to explore mechanics, world design, etc, so I assumed the Network Tests wouldn't give me enough time to come up with something that I'd even want to talk about.

Nonetheless I spent most of my time during the network tests testing weird side mechanics, jumping right into some really unnecessary specifics that I worried might be overlooked (rightfully so, why would anyone trying to do early reviews and general impressions look at this crap?).

You can read about most of my findings here.

I wound up finding some stuff that I thought was pretty interesting and is I think is worth talking about in a youtube video or two. Though because I didn't prepare and don't have a capture card (all my Demon's Souls footage comes from the in-system capture feature, which was disabled for the network test), these are going to be much simpler & quicker videos than my typical ones. Targeting something more like a "video podcast" with random b-roll footage behind, rather than a proper and fully-edited video.

I think there's some interesting stuff that's worth sharing with some commentary, but also because of the nature of these they'll thankfully be easy to pump out quickly without derailing my main focus project.

All that being said, I haven't really discussed my general thoughts on Elden Ring, and a general review/ impression isn't something I have planned for youtube at all, so I might as well talk about it here.

Spoilers, albeit-vague imo, below:

ELDEN RING IMPRESSIONS

I've put about 12 hours into Elden Ring, getting to participate in 4/5 of the scheduled Network Tests. But a lot of it was trying to test oddly specific things so my overall time experiencing the game is probably more comparable to someone who played the game normally for ~6 hours.

I have to say I'm very excited for it now. I always try to temper expectations and avoid the hype machine, but from what I've seen so far, Dark-Souls-but-open-world just kinda... works?

The best areas of the Soulsborne games tend to have a tightly-crafted design. Lots of hidden nooks, verticality, paths that split and loop back on each other in interesting ways.  You can't really expect to find that kind of design in an open world, and to be perfectly fair, that is missing from the overworld of Elden Ring.

'What if Dark Souls was one big Darkroot Garden?' sounds like something that would be far, far worse than Dark Souls, but the good news is that they're designing these kind of open spaces in a way that just feels much better. The open spaces aren't too-annoyingly-vast, and exploration is often rewarded with finding weird creatures, NPCs, and entrances to caves or small ruins.

One example: I wandered off the main path and into a graveyard that had jellyfish in it, and I found a spell that let me summon said jellyfish to attack other enemies. This shit is cool.

And though I don't know how the whole game will be laid out, it appears that these chunks of open world will typically be bottlenecked by what they're calling Legacy Dungeons. Basically you're going to arrive at a Sen's Fortress or Undead Parish or Duke's Archives and get an area of more familiar design.

The combat itself feels fantastic. I'm still getting used to the horseback combat, but the on-the-ground combat feels like a culmination of previous Souls games in a way that doesn't feel regressive. I felt like I was playing some hybrid of Dark Souls 1 and 3 in terms of movement and feel. It feels familiar, tight and responsive, but also doesn't lean too far into the "we have to keep speeding the gameplay up" territory at all.

It's neither as "clunky" as Dark Souls 1 for those who prefer the later Souls games, nor is it "too fast" for those who prefer the feel of Dark Souls 1 over DS3 and Bloodborne. It's very much in the middle of the road, but in a way that feels inspired and not like they were having to make concessions.

I ran into a couple bosses who were stupidly easy and I kind of loved that. Like one literally felt like a random enemy mob got its own room and healthbar for no apparent reason. This, to me, added some unpredictability to the game and I liked how not every encounter was some try-hard proof of skill. But of course, there were also some very tough bosses so it's not like the challenge won't be there.

The addition of a crafting system doesn't feel cumbersome to me. That might change in the final game, who knows if being a completionist will require some absurd farming, but the crafting system was really straightforward. Like you just pick up plants and animal parts in the environment and you can turn them into firebombs, prism stones, etc, with a simple menu that isn't a hassle or time-consuming to interact with.

Even though I enjoyed Sekiro, it didn't scratch that Dark Souls itch that Elden Ring does. I'd say that it's even a much more of a direct successor to a  "Souls" game than Bloodborne is, despite the huge change in world design. If you like Dark Souls you'll want to play this game. If you like open world games but are kinda meh on Dark Souls, you'll probably want to play this game anyways. From what I've seen so far, FromSoftware figured out a way to have their cake and eat it too with this one.

Not that I ever cared about game awards or validation from a larger community, but I think it's worth mentioning that this is shaping up to be a clear GOTY contender if the rest of the game holds up. Like, my general impression is that if Sekiro could win GOTY, there's zero chance that this isn't at least nominated. And honestly it'll probably deserve it more too.