Elden Ring

 Release: 2022

Developer: From Software

Publisher: Bandai Namco

Gameplay Stats: 234 hours, 42/42 achievements

A whole dang year later?! Yep.

I started playing with my sister and brother-in-law, we put in over 100 hours together. And then they released a seamless coop mod so we started again adding a friend into the mix. I was very skeptical that starting the game again would be faster, even if we didn't have to play the game 3 times anymore, but it was! The character I ended up finishing the game with had about 70 hours of play time. The free fan-made mod that's in beta crashed WAY less than playing multiplayer on the game's servers, presumably due to disabling the anti-cheat software.

Aesthetics: This game looks and sounds better than Dark Souls ever has before! But I guess that makes sense, it's the progress of time. What really caught me off guard was how full the game world felt, at least at the start. The environment was designed in a way where points of interest often catch your eye. All of the world building via armor sets and locations fit in a very cohesive way, always been a strength of From Software games. I really liked how anything connected with the Erdtree had a strange glow to it, it really added to the mystery at the center of the game. The music, like always, was minimal but really served to enhance the feel of mystery/loneliness in the game. I think the monsters sounded good, the bosses in particular.

Plot: Who the hell knows. The basics were pretty apparent, but I think this game is more about the journey/gameplay than the story. I didn't really have any particular feelings about this aspect of the game except that all of the dang names are too similar. As someone who struggles a bit with names, I would've appreciated if it was easier to differentiate between all of them. I get that George R R Martin helped with the game, so it's cute if all the demi-gods start with G, R, or M, but it's also annoying.

Gameplay: It is a souls game by the Souls creators! At this point people probably know what they're getting into. The big shakeup here is that they added a jump button, so you can do some plunging attacks wherever you happen to be. These ad hoc plunges don't do the full animation that many in the past did but they do a ton of poise damage. I think that the absolute SIZE of this game plays to the genre's strengths. There are so many viable weapons for any particular build that I didn't ever feel hemmed in. I also liked that they added NPC markers on the map to help you keep track of quests. Made it much easier to find many NPCs so you could keep up with the quest lines.

Overall, this game is just a great, giant Souls game! For better and for worse. I really enjoyed it, but the size is really daunting (especially if you are doing everything like I tend to do) so I don't know about replayability at this point. That being said, this is the best in the Souls series in my opinion so if I want to revisit some authentic Souls goodness, this is probably where I'll go. Who knows if I will ever finish this game again or finish NG+ though.