Elden Ring is FromSoftware’s first attempt at making an open world game, and they absolutely knocked it out of the park. I haven’t been this engrossed in exploring vast, open landscapes since Breath of the Wild. And personally? I believe Elden Ring does it even better.
Right from the very start, there are so many different paths a player can take that you’d be hard pressed to find someone who made the same discoveries as you, even just in the first region. I’ve put in 23 hours so far, and I’ve only just cleared the first Legacy Dungeon — a massive, labyrinthine level acting as a grand finale for each region which rivals the best zones found in their previous titles — and poked my head into the second major area.
Exploring the open world of Elden Ring
I’m playing alongside two other people, sharing discoveries with each other through Discord. I even started watching a playthrough of the game.
Let me just say, I thought I thoroughly explored Limgrave, the first open world area you stumble out into. However, it’s clear there’s still a lot that I missed. While Hyrule hosts vast landscapes packed with juicy secrets to uncover, the Lands Between presents a hostile terrain lush with deep ravines, craggy cliffs and ever-evolving dungeons tucked into every nook and cranny. No matter which direction you pick when you set out, you’re bound to find something interesting.
The map system is glorious. Every time you enter an area that you haven’t been to yet, the map shows nothing but a grey outline of the region and any main roads cutting through it. On the page is a small tower that might catch your interest. If you managed to make your way over there, you find an item that elucidates the region on the map. It presents a gorgeous stylized map that displays devoid of markers aside from Sites of Lost Grace and points of interest you’ve visited before.
Sites of Grace sometimes show a golden thread jutting out that points you in the direction of the critical path through the game. It even rarely leads you to interesting side areas that you won’t want to miss out on. For the most part, though, there is virtually no direction in this game, and that is absolutely exhilarating. It truly is an evolution and reimagining of an open world formula that has grown stale after several iterations of the map marker system that Ubisoft popularized over the years.
Let’s talk about the loot
I started out as the Wretch class. Stuck at level one, naked as can be, with nothing but a trusty club to my name. I did this because I wanted to force myself to use whatever I could get my grubby little hands on. So I scoured the map in search of armor and weapons to prepare myself for the Legacy Dungeon I knew was ahead of me. I found greatswords, flails, curved swords, axes, warhammers, daggers, twinblades. I found Ashes of War to change out my weapon skills with blood magic, wind, sorceries, holy spells, lightning, fire, gravity magic, any kind of special physical attack you can imagine. I found wolves, jellyfish, imps and mobs of undead that I can summon to aid me in battle.
Every item I find along the way feels useful, unique, exciting and drives further exploration and experimentation. I found a staff about 15 hours in and started leveling up my intelligence to wield sorcery, which is by far the most extravagant iteration of the system that FromSoftware has ever put out, rivaling the likes of Dragon’s Dogma in spectacle.
Fighting my way through the Lands Between
I wanted to use everything I found but ultimately settled on upgrading a twinblade and delved even deeper into the Lands Between. Along the way I stumbled across several exceedingly dangerous regions where it was clear I wasn’t ready to tackle them; yet that didn’t stop me from poking my head in to see how far I could go before getting killed. I’ve lost my runes (the currency of Elden Ring and the points needed to level up) time and time again. Yet that didn’t discourage me. There was always something else for me to do, more places to explore. Whenever I got stuck somewhere, I just marked my map and decided to tackle it later.
The enemy and boss variety is staggering. And while the sheer number of them results in some enemies and bosses being reused, there is always another twist in their iteration. Fighting them never got stale. It goes without saying that the combat in this game is masterclass. It perfects what Demon’s Souls pioneered 13 years ago. There are now jump attacks, shield counters and arguably the best horseback combat found in any open world action game. The new stagger system rewards you handsomely for utilization of your full moveset. Spamming your quickest attacks whenever an enemy revealed an exploitable opening is no longer the winning strategy here. I had my doubts going into it but I found myself using every move in my toolset before long. Starting as a Wretch, I needed every advantage I could get.
A note about Elden Ring on PC
It’s true. As of version 1.02, PC in particular suffers from issues with stuttering. It’s not likened to a drop in frames. Certain places in the game just jitter and stutter. You definitely feel it as you’re controlling your character.
It wasn’t an issue throughout most of my time with Elden Ring. If it did happen it was only a momentary inconvenience and cleared up a second later. There’s only one small portion of the map where I’ve run into particularly bad and constant stuttering.
Now, I have a beefy PC. We’re talking an Intel i7 11700k, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, an Nvidia RTX 3080 and an M.2 NVMe SSD. I run the game at max settings at 4k resolution and I maintain a steady 60fps in all areas of the game. There’s no reason this stuttering should be affecting me at all, yet still it persists. It really doesn’t hinder my enjoyment of the game, though.
If anything bothers me, it’s when the game freezes up for a couple minutes. This happened maybe half a dozen times so far. Twice it caused me to disconnect from the online server which kicked me all the way back to the main menu. I haven’t heard other reviewers talk about this, so this may be an isolated issue. I experience this issue with most FromSoftware games I run on this PC, and one of my friends told me he experiences it too. Though restarting my PC regularly tends to alleviate the problem.
They did release version 1.02.1 on PC recently and based on the patch notes it looks like it may have fixed some of these issues. I only played for about an hour on this patch but I didn’t encounter any issues during that time. I’m positive FromSoftware will continue to iron out the wrinkles as time goes on.
With all that said …
My first impressions of Elden Ring
I wholeheartedly recommend Elden Ring to any fan of action RPGs or open world games. The souls series has grown infamous for its emphasis on difficulty, but I’d argue it’s not really about that. It’s about perseverance in the face of adversity. I’m not particularly good at video games, I get frustrated easily, but the sheer satisfaction that comes from beating a boss I’ve been stuck on is unparalleled. Elden Ring truly masters this philosophy because there is not a single boss that I’ve encountered so far that actually impedes my progress. If anything is overpowering me, I can leave, upgrade my weapons and spirits, change out my toolset, fight other bosses and level up, growing exponentially in power before finally coming back and stomping them into the dirt.
If you’ve been wanting to get into the souls series but always held back because of its brutal reputation, Elden Ring is the perfect place to start. It gives you everything you need to succeed if only you take the time to look for it. At this rate, it will go down as my favorite game from FromSoftware, and it fully deserves all of the 10/10 reviews and nigh unanimous critical acclaim it has received so far.
So do you think you’re going to give it a shot? If so, why not check out some of my beginners tips while you’re here. They cover everything you need to know about building your character and how to play online with your friends. I hope to see you in the Lands Between!
