Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Elden Ring was billed as a gorgeous and vast open-world RPG in numerous previews. After 20+ hours in the game, I have yet to see it. First, Elden Ring isn't an RPG. There are no character classes, only "backgrounds" that affect your starting stats and starting equipment. There are no experience points. You can buy levels with the in-game currency, but only at specific locations. Most importantly, there is no role-playing. I have met four people who speak in 20+ hours, one of whom is the "welcome to this world" guy and of the remaining three, two asked me a single yes/no question before vanishing for good. What kind of person is your character? With no other sentient beings to play off of, Elden Ring never lets you answer the question. Combat is god awful. Controls are sluggish and often unresponsive. And whether it's a bug or a feature, the fact that you can't hit opponents who are on the ground (watch your weapon pass right through them!) is absurd. Even after gaining 18 levels, you still have no hope of finishing off any of the "dungeon" areas you'll find right where the game begins, and the surface world is only moderately less lethal. The visuals on the PS4 are good, but they're not great. Colors look faded and washed out; nothing is vibrant. It may look stellar on next-gen but not on PS4. That said, the level of detail is impressive even on the PS4. Unfortunately, the theme for character design seems to be "ugly as sin" so that level of detail really makes your character unpleasant to look at. The game seems designed to frustrate. Dying (which will happen to you all the time) causes you to lose all of your money (remember, money is what you use to buy levels). You can go and retrieve your loot after dying if it's in a safe area, but if you die a second time, the loot (i.e. your XP) is gone for good. You're provided with three healing potions (you'll need them) which you can generously refill at special sites, but doing so causes all monsters to respawn, so you don't want to do that. Buying levels also causes all monsters to respawn so you won't be in a rush to do that, either. There is no way to pause the game (if your controller runs out of juice, the game just keeps on plugging away until you get your other one) and no way to manually save. The open world may indeed be vast but in Elden Ring, that's a con, not a pro. Because there is nobody to talk to, no lore to discover, seemingly no story to follow, the game setting is just one big empty space. Trying to "traverse the mists" to a new area usually just dumps you into a cave with no escape and a boss you can't hope to kill (goodbye XP/money). Exploration is only rewarding if you find something interesting; in Elden Ring, you just find more scenery and maybe some berries or mushrooms. The way to play the game seems to be attacking everything you see, trying to die in a safe-ish place, reclaiming your loot, buying a level, and then repeating the same encounters ad infinitum until you grind yourself thirty or forty levels, or however many it takes to get past the first stage of the game. I happened across a battle between soldiers and goblins. I tried attacking only the goblins and the soldiers killed me. I tried attacking only the soldiers and the goblins killed me. There are some passive animals in Elden Ring (hello, adorable foxes!) but it seems that the game wants/expects you to kill everything. In the entire time I've played the game, I honestly can't think of a single time I felt intrigued, excited, or satisfied. Elden Ring is markedly inferior to actual role-playing games like Skyrim or Dragon Age. Frankly, I'd even take an old-school dungeon crawler like Might and Magic over this. Whatever Elden Ring is (Murder Hobo Simulator?), there's clearly an audience for it. For those people who see "challenge" where others see mind-numbing, frustrating, repetitive, joyless drek, more power to you and enjoy the game. If repeating the same combat encounters over and over again seems more interesting to you than a world full of people and how your character interacts with them, then you may enjoy Elden Ring. And of course, there's always the possibility that if I invest more than 20+ hours into playing, Elden Ring will suddenly begin to fulfill its promise. Maybe if I just grit my teeth through an additional 20 hours, I'll find a settlement of some kind with people in it, and a story to follow. Maybe if I repeat the same combat encounters a few dozen times more, my character will be able to walk through the beginning of the open world without being cut down by a mob of goblins or soldiers. But I'm not optimistic.