Gaming Ramble Weekly

Hello Hello! Wow it’s been a bit of a long time hasn’t it? Well in classic fashion, life just got that little bit busier recently, especially with work and other commitments. One of my closest friends got married last week and so I was involved in a lot of the last minute planning and helping there, but it was a great day and a lot of fun. Now with the Easter break past us all, it’s time to get back into routine and keep the pace up with the blog posts. I do hope you’ll join me on this journey as we enter reveal season in the coming months! But for today, there’s only one thing I want to do, and that’s talk about my time with Elden Ring.

I’m currently working through my second playthrough, which was started mainly in anticipation of June’s DLC: Shadow of the Erdtree, and a desire to explore a different build type. My first time through I started with the samurai class, stumbled upon the Moonveil Katana, before eventually changing course when I got the Rivers of Blood Katana. It was a pretty basic build, and with the DLC coming up I wanted to explore different options, to the point now where I can really see myself finishing this playthrough, keeping the save file, and starting again focusing on a different build. Elden Ring is that good, and something about the thrill of completing boss fights just never gets old.

For this run, I turned my attention to a full strength build, a play-style I have admittedly never really used in previous FromSoftware titles. My aim with this run is to also complete as many bosses as my patience can manage, and so far I believe I have beaten over 110 of the game’s 165 strong boss roster. While I haven’t yet got to the end of my run, I am very close, having just beaten Fire Giant and already completed the first half of Miquella’s Haligtree, an area I avoided in my first run of Elden Ring.

So what is it about this game that makes it so good? Well for me, very simply, it’s the sheer breadth of options that you as a player are given in creating and shaping your own build and play-style. And I don’t think it’s controversial of me to say that Elden Ring is by far the easiest FromSoftware title. Yes, there are some very very difficult legacy dungeons and boss fights, especially for newcomers to the genre, but on this run I’ve beaten over 70% of the bosses on my first go. The game gives you tools to utilise to your advantage, and really it’s up to you to decide how hard or how easy the game is.

I don’t think it’s controversial of me to say that Elden Ring is by far the easiest FromSoftware title

Aside from that, the world is quite possibly one of the most densely packed open worlds ever created, with items, boss fights, dungeons, and points of interest always within reach, and a constant flow of activity. That’s so important for the Soulslike genre, where combat and exploration play a huge role in the typical experience one would expect. FromSoftware made a huge gamble in jumping to the open world space, but in doing so, have created quite possibly one of the greatest worlds in gaming history.

While the story isn’t exactly in your face, as always with these games, it does feel as though Elden Ring took the opportunity to use the world to tell a lot of its story to hook players, something I’ve really noticed during my time with the game. In no way do I feel as though as I am lost with what’s going on, perhaps understanding more with this being a second playthrough, but certainly with my 40 hours so far, I have not once felt a level of fatigue or boredom I often stumble into with a massive open world game. Many times I have struggled to put my controller down, suffering from the deadly condition that is “I’ll beat one more boss”.

If you’ve played Elden Ring, you’ll know exactly what I mean. The game has been made in a way to keep you playing, using that adrenaline rush that you get from beating a boss to keep you playing, knowing that the next boss is probably only 5-10 minutes away. As your character grows stronger and you pick up more items, it’s also noticeable how much better as a player you are becoming, and there is also something addictive about that. This team know what they’re doing in making these games, and it’s no surprise to anyone that Elden Ring picked up so many accolades.

The content surrounding Elden Ring is also very interesting and makes for great viewing. There’s a small section of creators on YouTube who are completing no death runs, no hit runs, and my personal favourite are the randomizer runs, which have been made possible by a very good and stable PC mod. I also want to shout an Elden Ring tournament called Bingo Brawlers, which is honestly far more exciting than it really has any right to be. Players compete in Elden Ring speed challenges to complete a bingo square with set challenges (Kill 4 Remembrance Bosses for example), and watching these creators who have put in thousands of hours into the game and just make it look SO easy is fascinating. Even now, 2 years after release, Elden Ring is thriving, with a constant number of around 50,000 people playing on Steam, a staggering number for a mainly single player game.

All I’m saying is that Elden Ring is really, really good. Like really good. And in my opinion it’s well worth your time. At £49.99 this game is a real steal, especially when most AAA games retail at £69.99. There is no shame in using YouTube tutorials or online guides to help, and it is so worth your time to give, what in my opinion, is one of the greatest gaming experiences you could ever have. Personally, Elden RIng is in my Top 5 favourite games, and is a gem that I will continue to replay over the years.