My Problems With Elden Ring

 

Elden Ring is my first Souls game. I don’t like Elden Ring. If you like Elden Ring, that’s okay. I want to preface this by saying that I think Elden Ring is a good game that I can recommend to most people, but it isn’t for me. The point of this article isn’t to hate on Elden Ring, but to analyze what my criticisms of Elden Ring, from both a storytelling and game design perspective, reveal about my preferences for video games as a creative medium.

I’ve only played through the first few hours of Elden Ring, where I progressed through Limgrave, eventually beating Margit the Fell Omen and almost reaching Godrick the Grafted through Stormveil Castle. Admittedly, the first few hours of a game as massive as Elden Ring isn’t always a comprehensive overview of what the game has to offer. Even so, everyone I’ve talked to who has completed Elden Ring has agreed that my criticism holds throughout the game’s entire run time. Keep in mind that you can agree with my criticisms and still enjoy the game, but if you happen to disagree with them, that’s also fine and I would like to listen to your arguments.

Combat

The first issue I have with Elden Ring is the enemy design. Overall, Elden Ring’s combat is exceptional. The player is equipped with a plethora of unique builds to complement an immersive dance of evasions and openings. FromSoftware has spent years refining Souls combat and the fruits of their labor are on full display here. Notwithstanding, many of Elden Ring’s enemies have much to be desired. The breadth of Elden Ring’s world entails a proportionate enemy diversity, but this inundates the world with unmemorable fodder enemies.

For example, the beginning of Stormveil castle’s side path contains a few large birds with blades strapped to their feet, called Warhawks. In addition to feeling misplaced storywise–which is arguably acceptable in an already Lovecraftian setting–the Warhawks force the player to adjust to an attack pattern inconsistent with those of Stormveil castle’s other enemies. The problem isn’t that the Warhawks are difficult enemies, but that they are only one of many unique, tricky enemies newly thrown at the player throughout the side path. It’s unfair when the player constantly dies and fights the same enemies repeatedly just to reach another seemingly random enemy with a completely foreign attack pattern. Elden Ring’s boss fights are less frequent than these ordeals of erratically designed fodder enemies and are placed directly next to grace sites, which makes new attack patterns and difficulty spikes feel more welcome and rewarding. Furthermore, some of Elden Ring’s enemies ambush the player, such as in Stormveil Castle, where the player is surprise attacked after walking through the doorway to a dark room. These unexpected setbacks undo a player’s hard work and force them to stay on their toes, although Elden Ring’s combat is more fun when the player knows what to expect from the enemies.

Looting and Progression

I generally oppose looting systems and quantitative stat progression in games, but they are mostly welcome in Elden Ring because of the fun of build experimentation. That said, the staggering list of obscure items the game has to offer and its further convoluted crafting system are not. Elden Ring’s scale warrants a sizeable catalog of items, but the items frankly make no sense without the guidance of the internet. Found a random compartment with a pickled pheasant foot? That sure feels rewarding when I have no clue what a pickled pheasant foot does! And why does it make sense for a pickled pheasant foot to exist as a secret in Stormveil Castle when it has no pheasants? To a casual player, almost every item has obscure uses, feels out of place, and is thus unrewarding to collect. I would have preferred if FromSoftware simplified the crafting system, reduced the loot pool, and gave each item a more meaningful context to the casual player.

Story

I despise unnecessarily ambiguous storytelling. Players should be able to piece together most of a game’s main story by attentively beating the game. All ambiguity in a game’s narrative should serve to create suspense and intrigue, while gradually elucidating the underlying lore. Elden Ring’s lore, albeit passionately and intricately crafted by some of the most brilliant minds of fiction, obfuscates its narrative with vague text. Everyone I asked agreed that Elden Ring’s lore fails to tread the tenuous line of show don’t tell and is virtually impossible to comprehend without consulting lore videos. This approach to storytelling diminishes player investment in cutscenes, NPC dialogue, and collective worldbuilding. I didn’t even know how to progress the game without asking a friend of mine.

Takeaway

Elden Ring’s flaws shed light on several gripes I have with video games: inconsistent enemy quality, unfair interactions, convoluted progression, and unnecessarily ambiguous storytelling. However, its remarkable art direction, boss design, dense open world, and thrilling combat are a model for future games to follow.