What We Said About Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice 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.
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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. Alternatively, you could follow the Light of Grace, guiding you toward the main path and the first major dungeon – or you could find a hidden path to a new region that’s meant for higher levels and completely bypass the first major dungeon entirely! Maybe even steal yourself a cool weapon early while you’re there. If you wanted to, you could be an explorer and spend hours upon hours in Limgrave, delving into every mini dungeon, fighting every boss, discovering every NPC, and leveling yourself up to better prepare for what’s next. And sure, that’s far from a new concept in open-world games, but the way it's handled here is truly extraordinary.
R ELDEN RING FREE
From the moment you set foot in Limgrave, the first of many interconnected regions of The Lands Between, you are completely free to go wherever you want. “Freedom” is the word that every aspect of Elden Ring’s design connects back to. Besides, any missed quests give me extra incentive to continue onto New Game+.
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R ELDEN RING FULL
That’s a bummer, and I’ve already felt regret at missing out on stories that some of my colleagues have had – but for me it was worth it, because even after 87 hours, I never once felt the open-world fatigue that usually sets in when my brain gets overloaded by a map absolutely full of unresolved sidequest markers. The trade-off, of course, is that without any markers, quest log, or journal, it becomes very easy to forget about certain plot threads and accidentally leave them unresolved by the end.
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That was actually kind of refreshing in an open world as vast as this one, and it was always exciting to see a familiar face pop up again later as I was eager to learn about what brought them to this new part of the world and how their journey had progressed. 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.