I’m about 80 hours into Elden Ring, and I don’t get the hype. I’ve persevered, but there are so many things wrong with this game.
The camera is absolutely terrible, and the targeting system is seriously flawed, which doesn’t help the camera issues (And why can I target some dragons’ legs but not others’? Makes zero sense.).
The storytelling is practically non-existent. I’ve steadily been losing all motivation to press on to the next boss, because the story, if there is one as such, is just so vaguely and poorly told that I just don’t care about any of the meaningless characters, bosses, or “plot”.
The UI isn’t particularly sophisticated and has odd flaws (pressing the usual “back” button while in some windows for some reason opens a random help menu. Why not just have it as the “back” button everywhere?), and the lack of any sort of ability to track “quests” is poor, in my view. We could at least have had the ability to type notes on the map.
I get frequent crashes and stutters, which I don’t get in other games and which in this kind of game are game breaking. Also, did you lose internet connection while in the middle of a boss fight? Game sends you straight back to the main menu. Progress lost. I mean, what a load of crap.
The only thing this game has going for it, as far as I can tell, is its world design, which is, admittedly, stunning. Other than that, I have found this a deeply unrewarding experience. The game falls short in too many ways, and there’s no way this is a game of the year contender, and if it is, that reflects very badly on the state of gaming IMHO.
If EA or Ubisoft put out a game with all the flaws I’ve listed above, they’d be slated for it. Yet FromSoft seem to get a pass. Why? Perhaps because their hardcore fanbase just chant their battle cry of “git gud” and other profound observations. The game is hard but not extraordinarily hard. I’m not even that good at it, and I’ve beaten all the bosses so far with relative ease after a handful of tries. It’s just not very good or refined, and certainly not rewarding, in my experience.
Why are people touting this as the best thing to come out in years?