![]() There was never a point in Elden Ring when I was at a complete loss of what to do, and every time I explored those other regions and followed those alternate paths I would find new gear and items, level up my stats, or learn new spells or skills that would eventually give me the extra edge I needed to power through a boss that had given me problems. But even though I hit dead ends on those paths, there was always somewhere else I could go – a region I hadn’t thoroughly explored, an NPC quest that I had set aside for later, a Light of Grace indicator that I had not yet followed. I hit multiple points, even all the way up until the moment when I reached the very last boss, where I’d unlocked paths to several bosses and simply could not make headway on any of them. Elden Ring is hard – which is to be expected from a FromSoft game – but its difficulty surprised me, even as a veteran of the Soulslike genre. ![]() The most important element of Elden Ring’s philosophy, though, is the freedom to just walk away and do something else when you hit a wall. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that Elden Ring ended up as one of the most unforgettable gaming experiences I’ve ever had. FromSoftware takes the ball that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild got rolling and runs with it, creating a fascinating and dense open world about freedom and exploration above all else, while also somehow managing to seamlessly weave a full-on Dark Souls game into the middle of it. But more than anything else I was in near-constant awe – from the many absolutely jaw-dropping vistas, the sheer scope of an absolutely enormous world, the frequently harrowing enemies, and the way in which Elden Ring nearly always rewarded my curiosity with either an interesting encounter, a valuable reward, or something even greater. In the 87 hours that it took me to beat Elden Ring, I was put through an absolute wringer of emotion: Anger as I was beaten down by its toughest challenges, exhilaration when I finally overcame them, and a fair amount of sorrow for the mountains of exp I lost along the way to some of the toughest boss encounters FromSoftware has ever conceived.
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