Elden Ring

[Miririn]

Had booked Friday off work to play this but my son still has mild covid and needs to be off school. So not sure when I'll get to start it now

Oh no I hope he feels better soon.

[Tolkientaters]

So excited for Elden Ring, if anyone is gonna wanna coop on PS5, my PSN is Tolkientaters.

[Rhaegyr]

How will spoilers work in this thread?

I love sharing tips and strategies but ideally don't want to see "Oh my god, don't go south, you'll run into 'X' - if you do make sure you equip item 'X' which you can find at 'X''.

Everyone red line for spoilers is different though.

[ThirdDrawing]

I'm looking forward to it, but probably going to wait for the eventual GOTY edition that all the other games got.

[Alex79]

Do I stay up to play an hour at midnight tonight, or just contain myself and play a decent session on Saturday when I can next get stuck in to it...

Real choices.

[Marlew]

I'm in work at six tomorrow so seriously considering going to bed at 8 and getting up at 2 to have a few hours before I leave. I would defo do it if I weren't too hyped up to sleep. On the other hand, I don't want to be fucked tomorrow evening when I might get another chance, though that's not yet certain.

It's quite the dilemma.

[Cornelius_Smiff]

Is it 11pm Yet?



Honestly so damn excited for this. The wave of almost universally positive reviews has me very excited! This could be the next great game of our generation.

[Alex79]

Just played about 4 hours of this.

Yeah, it's good!

Got to the first major story boss and died about 10 times so called it a night...

[Alex79]

So.....what's everyone thinking? Early impressions are that it's Dark Souls, but more. Reports that this may convert non-fans seem a little outrageous to me, it's literally Dark Souls in a bigger world. Few QOL improvements with controls (a dedicated jump button is nice) and a nice counter attack move after blocking makes combat arguably easier (but don't try it on bosses!)

Performance on Series S is slightly underwhelming. I went for frame rate over graphics, because firstly 60fps is far preferable and secondly I genuinely couldn't tell any difference looks-wise when selecting the graphics option. The game struggles at times and dips to a much lower frame rate, notably stepping out in to the open world, but no real complaints so far.

Combat is fluid, familiar and satisfying. Atmosphere is there in spades, and the audio is spot on, too. Graphically it's adequate; the Souls games have never been showcases and this is no exception. It looks good, but it doesn't look great. Voice acting is good, and very Soulslike. There are a few concessions to newcomers I guess which might be considered spoilers, but can point you in the general direction you ought to be heading.

The horse seems fun, although not sure how much I'll use it as with BOTW you really want to be on the ground exploring.

Overall though, my first 4 hours were brilliant fun, and looking forward to getting back in!

[seansthomas]

Yeah much the same for me. Bit baffled by a couple of the reviews that have said 'even if you hate BB/DS, you'll love ER'.

It's pretty much the same opening...?

Enjoying it so far. Still feeling my way. Not drawn me in like Bloodborne did just yet...

[Marlew]

I've played three hours, hit the first story boss after about half an hour, got my shit pushed in so I buggered off in a different direction and found loads of mad stuff elsewhere. I've got a couple of quite unusual weapons but not got the stats for them yet but tempted. I went for Astrologer and quite enjoying legging round on horseback firing spells at big buggers.

Also found quite a few underground dungeons and had the shit scared out of me many many times already. The enemy designs are amazing, really more fantastical and weird than I expected. There's plenty of familiar stuff here but it feels much less dark fantasy and more, I dunno, I'm not so familiar with these subgenres but it reminds me more of a Dungeons and Dragons kind of thing.

The topography is the game changer here and whatever sets it apart from any other open world I can recall. It kind of creates puzzles with the traversal. I've already got to some areas of which felt like I was sequencer broke in a way or did some platforming where I shouldn't, but I'm also pretty sure that's the intention. Also, even though the points of grace are plentiful, I've had several long stretches into the unknown where the tension has cranked up before finding another checkpoint.

I really did not expect it to be this good. I thought it'd be flat areas and boring horse riding between dungeons but there's so much hidden stuff here and little unique areas. I'm absolutely loving it.

[Alex79]

Have you explored the cave with the wolves in near the small pond with poison creatures near the start? I've been in there but didn't enter what I assume was a boss chamber, backed out worried I'd gone 'the wrong way'.

Still haven't quite clicked with what the ashes of war or whatever are though. Thought I had, but I 'installed'(?) one on a sword last night and it didn't seem to make any difference.

[Cornelius_Smiff]

Honestly in love with this game.

Combat is fantastic, always something to find and explore.

Horse combat is probably the best I've seen in any game ever. It's so damn satisfying and intuitive once you get the basics down, it actually feels how you'd imagine horse combat to feel e.g. timing your front swing to take out one enemy and the back to take out a second. Dunno if you guys have seen the convoy that sort of circles the main road. I managed to take the entire thing out from the horse by slowly picking off the sentries and stragglers. I even took out the big bastards pulling it. Something so satisfying about clearing an area.

Tried the first boss as in the big guy on the horseback and died about 40 times, I think i have the fight down now and just need to execute the second phase properly.

[Marlew]

Have you explored the cave with the wolves in near the small pond with poison creatures near the start? I've been in there but didn't enter what I assume was a boss chamber, backed out worried I'd gone 'the wrong way'.

I think so, there are quite a few tiny underground areas like that I've visited and it's always worth the trouble.

I put another maybe 90 mins in after my previous post and basically I've seen some remarkable shit, all before the first boss. This game seems like sequence break central. No way was I supposed to be in those areas yet but I did a load of suicide runs just scooping up items and runes trying to dodge and outrun some stuff that made it very difficult to escape. There's enormous area and enemy variety here. It's sad but I'll never see every inch of this game like I did with Demon's, DS and DS2. It's just colossal.

Cornelius, totally agree about the horse combat. It seemed off at first but it was me. Your description is spot on with the feel.

I have to sleep so I'm not too tired to enjoy it tomorrow.

[Tolkientaters]

Only a few hours in so far, but I think this'll probably end up being my all time favorite game, it's just so creative and rewarding, I haven't even seen the first main boss yet, but I've already been surprised and blown away several times.

[Alex79]

What did people choose as a starting item? I went for the Golden Seed, seemed an obvious toss up between that and the medallion which increases HP, but the seed seemed more valuable to me.

[Marlew]

What did people choose as a starting item? I went for the Golden Seed, seemed an obvious toss up between that and the medallion which increases HP, but the seed seemed more valuable to me.

Same here. The game seems a little more generous than the Souls games with the flask power ups or maybe I got lucky. Think I've got 8 to allocate at this point after about six hours play.

Just taken down the first proper story boss with a beefy spell I found in a strange new area. My NPC summon died at around the same point as usual, a third boss health left but I went full FP flasks and took him out from range like a total coward.

Really enjoying the NPC dialogue and voice work, as always, and just love the sense of exploration. It doesn't have the physical/elemental systems of BotW so it doesn't feel like a playground for spontaneous emergence, but I think it's an equally brilliant open world in terms of inspiring curiosity and bravery. I also love that it has plenty of old-fashioned castles and dungeons and dark caverns to explore. It really is a Best Of FROM but somehow way better than that.

I really didn't expect it to be this good.

[Alex79]

The one thing I'm not keen on so far is how the way you swap to two handing a weapon is no longer simply just pressing triangle or Y. The added press of Y plus left or right shoulder button means that in the heat of the battle, switching between one and two handing a sword is just slightly less natural and slightly more time consuming.

[Marlew]

The one thing I'm not keen on so far is how the way you swap to two handing a weapon is no longer simply just pressing triangle or Y. The added press of Y plus left or right shoulder button means that in the heat of the battle, switching between one and two handing a sword is just slightly less natural and slightly more time consuming.

I can see that's a frustrating change for muscle memory (same as Triangle rather than X to open doors, etc) but thanks for the tip, I didn't know how to 2-hand!

[Marlew]

So difficult to post anything about this game without spoiling the many, many, many surprises and amazing locations and enemies and fights.

There's no way I will spoil anything at all but what I mean is there's so much fantastic stuff to talk about.

I'm basically a glass cannon astrologer build, found someone to sell me higher level spells and I'm loving romping round on the horse casting soul arrows and launching rocks. It's a bit frustrating dying easily but well worth it for the one-shots.

My only reservation at this point is that it's just so big and dense. I've lost count of the loose threads at this point.