Introduction:

Imagine gazing out over a breathtaking beach vista while seated next to a friend. There are birds in the sky, and the sky is clear. Your skin becomes warmed by the sun, and sometimes a gentle wind blows through. “Look, someone left some litter on the beach,” your friend murmurs to you over the soft sound of the waves. I am that friend in this situation. That statement is the same as what I’m going to do. Welcome to my Elden Ring article!

Elden Ring is abundantly rich in entertainment, beauty, and quality.

It features some of the greatest boss fights found in any game, FromSoft or not, despite its amazing variety of bosses and enemies. From the beginning to the end, players discover truly unique ways to attack and defend themselves, even with the game’s astounding array of weapons, weapon techniques, shields, and magical abilities. Even though its geography is enormous, it features several distinct places, such Elphael and the Volcano Manor, which rank among the greatest level designs FromSoftware has ever produced, along with older works like the Boletarian Palace and the Painted World of Ariamis. I don’t really need to tell you that, though.You are already aware of all of that if you have come across any reviews or other media regarding Elden Ring since its release.

I set out to create an article about the game with the goal of offering something useful and approaching it from a unique perspective compared to the thousand others that already exist. I’m simply adding my praise to the pile, which is very pointless. Therefore, I will focus on Elden Ring’s vanishingly few mechanical faults rather than its overwhelming amount of mechanical (and other) strengths. I played the game three times with quite different builds before writing this article, accumulated well over a hundred hours of playing, completed all of the game’s achievements on Steam, and (as far as I know)defeat each and every boss that appears throughout the game, both unique and recurring.

The discussion in the following sections will cover a wide range of topics, including systems taken from other open-world games that FromSoft did a poor job of implementing, problems from previous FromSoft games that should have been fixed long ago, and elements from previous FromSoft games that performed better there than here. You should only read on if you are okay with spoilers or have already played Elden Ring because this article’s nature necessitates giving away a significant amount of the game’s content.

The Spectral Steed of Elden Ring:

Since the spectral steed’s implementation is a perfect metaphor for the game as a whole, Torrent, the mount that may be employed to speed up overworld traversal, is a terrific place to start for this post. Overall, Torrent is a fantastic invention that offers a seamless experience, although it has a few small flaws that will probably irritate users.

The first thing that most players will find annoying about Torrent is the extremely strange way that the steed’s double jump and fall damage connect. By now, everyone who plays video games is aware of the specifics of a double jump, from its obvious violation of the laws of physics to the extra flexibility it gives characters when they are exploring a gameworld.A horse that can jump over a cliff, perform a magical mid-air hop to cancel out all of the downward motion, and then land on the earth with the full power of the entire fall is the embodiment of this compromise.

When a player sees it for the first time, they are likely to assume it is just a problem because it is so obviously incorrect, absurd, and out of line with intuition about how either a fall works in real life or a double jump works in a game. FromSoft had access to a number of significantly better options in this case:The player could have been able to cancel fall damage in this way, even if it meant they could rush past areas in an unexpected direction; they could have simply removed the double jump, which doesn’t seem to be necessary for any part of the game; or they could have made it so that the fall damage hits the player as soon as the double jump is triggered, which would at least make some sort of physical sense.

Some background on mount mechanisms is necessary to understand the various annoyances of torrent. It is possible to use a horse or comparable mount in a game in two main methods. In order to be used, the animal must be located at one or more fixed locations in the gameworld; it must have its own pool of stats separate from the player-character’s; it must be a realistic simulation of the creature in question, which means that mounted movement may be faster in a straight line but slower when turning; and it may not always behave exactly as instructed (at least until fully tamed). The horses in Breath of the Wild serve as a moderate illustration of that.

The alternative is to use the horse or mount as an extension of the player-character, which means that all movements are quicker or more varied when the player-character is mounted, that the animal always reacts predictably to the player’s controls, that the animal can be called up instantly and from any location, and/or that the horse has no stats of its own other than the player-character’s. Almost any mount in Maplestory would be an example of this second kind.

The latter group includes, for the most part, Elden Ring’s spectral steed: it can appear anywhere in the overworld when a button is pressed; it never ignores commands; it can stop at any time; it is faster in all directions; it introduces the first true double jump in the franchise, which can be used to turn instantly regardless of momentum; it shares the player-character’s stamina pool; and it costs a crimson flask to bring it back to life after being banished in battle.

However, this classification has two exceptions, which are the reasons behind the two last subjects to be discussed here.

Torrent’s own health pool is the first of these exceptions. In addition to creating a situation where getting damage during mounted combat feels erratic and difficult to track, this causes a number of issues. It feels arbitrary whether the steed tanks some of the incoming damage or not, which makes it inconsistent. The fact that Torrent’s health is shown by a little bar next to its head that only shows up when it is struck and after it is healed makes tracking it challenging. Furthermore, the steed’s own health makes it possible to be knocked off it in two ways: either because it has lost all of its HP, which is arguably worse than either of those complaints, orbecause the player-character was staggered after taking enough posture damage in a brief amount of time. Even though there are a few subtle warning methods, it can be challenging to tell the difference between them during fight, and occasionally the first and second occur at the same time.Therefore, it is often uncertain if the horse can be immediately re-summoned after being knocked down. No issue if it can be called forth; it shows up and battle goes on without a hitch. A menu message asking if the player wishes to use a crimson flask to re-summon it will display on the screen if it is unable to, and the default response will be “no.” It can be a little annoying when that menu prompt appears, for example, when trying to avoid a dragon’s attacks.Resuming the steed after a forced dismount always costs a crimson flask, now without a text prompt. My ideal solution would be for the steed to be invincible (it is spectral, after all) and to give a flat boost to character posture while mounted, while maintaining the system where being posture-broken causes the player-character to fall off it.

Torrent’s handling of reversing directions is the second of the galling exceptions to its classification as a player upgrade as opposed to a horse sim. It’s a very small grievance that turns into a persistent irritation close to cliffs. When on the ground, the steed essentially has two distinct animations for turning in the opposite direction from its current one. Torrent just moves in position to reverse direction in one of the animations. In the other, Torrent stumbles forward and pushes off the ground in the opposite direction.Stepping up to a precipice while mounted (either to look down or to pick up anything) becomes extra nerve-racking every time because that second choice can occasionally happen when the steed is motionless. The player can either gamble on turning and praying the horse doesn’t go off the cliff, or they can jump forward off the cliff in an unintuitive way so they can utilize the double-jump to rapidly reverse direction in mid-air.Since the steed cannot be told to step backwards and the rest of its control scheme is non-simulation and active-design, the “step-forward-to-push-off” version of those turning animations should only have been accessible when the horse was traveling faster than a specific speed. Additionally, it should always turn in place when it is stationary.

The Crafting System of Elden Ring:

This should be a brief portion because I don’t have anything to say about it. The main idea is that, like in most open-world games, crafting is terrible here.

I understand that in such a large game, it is convenient for developers to include a system like crafting in order to fill space with interactive materials, add an extra class of drops for neutral fauna and minor enemies, and offer a way of interacting with the world other than combat.However, I at least anticipated that more adaptable and user-friendly crafting systems will be included in open-world games going forward after enjoying Breath of the Wild’s superb cooking system. Regretfully, Elden Ring’s system is neither superior to nor even close to that. Rather, it is a strict, dull list of consumables that are essentially interchangeable and can be made by assembling the specified amounts of ingredients.

Even though I discovered or bought every crafting recipe I could find over my first hundred hours of playthrough, I only ever had the need to make a few poison treatments. That left a long list of items that appeared to be slower or worse than any of the main, non-craftable methods of striking adversaries and boosting a character. If I had played the game as an archer, I would have felt differently, but as it is, I wouldn’t really notice if the entire system was taken out of the game. The only genuine benefit I can think of is that the consistent flow of crafting materials can be sold to supplement the limited supply of runes from the majority of early-game foes.

The Parameters of Input Buffering in the Combat of Elden Ring:

The most intricate Souls-style combat implementation that FromSoft has created to date is used to carry out the battle in Elden Ring. Although I personally think that Sekiro-style combat is better suited for the fast-paced battles that FromSoft has increasingly preferred over the years, I am also aware that the system in Sekiro is contentious because it is much less adaptable and forgiving than Souls combat, so their decision to go back is understandable. Additionally, despite their relative simplicity, the assault movements of the original Souls games hold up rather well because of their amazing weight and realism—the increasingly quick, progressively weightless fighting of Bloodborne, Dark Souls III,and Elden Ring does work well with those games’ increasingly quick and light boss and adversary designs.

With a few significant exceptions, Elden Ring does, in fact, use the exact same fighting system as Dark Souls III when the player-character is moving. Powerstancing returns from Dark Souls II as a buff to dual-wielding melee weapons; (1) the Dark Souls III-style combat arts, now known as ashes of war, are no longer tied to specific weapons, making individual offensive and defensive options more versatile and customizable; (2) a small amount of Sekiro DNA is spliced in through guard counters and guard breaks, minor stealth elements, and the Flask of Wondrous Physick (basically an improved version of the per-death buff limits introduced by Sekiro).

Note that not all of things is completely positive. Because they cause significant harm to posture and health, guard counters in particular feel shoddy and are often used as a pointless (almost automatic) substitute for parrying. Additionally, even though stealth is present, the absence of anything like Sekiro’s deathblow system means that using stealth to target an enemy is frequently a bad idea because it only starts a combat encounter that now involves the intended enemy as well as anyone nearby who was disregarded for stealth.

However, those two criticisms pale in comparison to the primary points of this section, which are that most buffered inputs cannot yet be replaced and that the window for buffering inputs is still too large. This needs to be explained. To begin with, what exactly is input buffering? The process by which a game queues up a series of inputs given during an animation to occur after the animation concludes is known as input buffering.Therefore, the game will retain the second input and instantly follow the first heavy assault with a second if you press the heavy attack button while already carrying out a heavy strike (even if no buttons are pushed after the first attack complete). Likewise, if you cast a large spell while concurrently pressing the roll button, a roll will be performed when the cast is finished. This mechanism is theoretically sound at this abstract level. In addition to avoiding the need for frame-perfect button presses for chaining tactics, it enables players to tactically plan their moves and combat.

However, it has significant issues that should be well-known to fans of From’s games by now: it remembers inputs far too early in animations, and it is typically hard to jump the queue. In other words, even before they start, the buffered inputs cannot be swapped out for different future actions. Pressing the roll button will not result in a dodge following the initial attack; the second attack will still occur if you are in that heavy attack and have queued up another, only to discover before the first hit ends that the attacker is going to strike you.The player-character gets the same amount of time as the player to decide what would be the best course of action. However, the player’s stupid in-game avatar will still be slapped across the face and rigorously adhere to the original queued input.

An issue that existed (and was already a subject of criticism) in Demon’s Souls back in 2009 and has persisted in every major FromSoftware release since then is the inability to reroute the excessive input buffering after obtaining fresh information. Although it was a flaw in Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, it wasn’t typically a major issue there because of how much more slowly combat encounters moved in those games.However, it’s a major concern that this problem still exists in fast-paced games like Sekiro and Elden Ring. In these kinds of games, the ability to respond quickly often makes the difference between survival and death. For example, the serpent-hunter’s multi-swing, five-second weapon art can unintentionally queue up two activations in Elden Ring’s rendition of the Storm Ruler fight, depriving the player-character of control long enough for the monster to charge up and launch a one-hit-kill attack.

All of this makes input buffering feel more like a challenge that the player must overcome than a tool or even a convenience that should be available to them. Some have even argued that its current approach is commendable because it penalizes spamming buttons for future actions. Technically speaking, this is accurate, but it also penalizes quietly pressing buttons when done beforehand. It may seem counterintuitive, but the wisest course of action is to avoid planning.

Abundant Repetition in Elden Ring:

The difficulty developers face in creating enough material to naturally and satisfactorily fill a large open gameworld is the largest and oldest issue facing the open-world genre. And compared to most of its genre brethren, Elden Ring gets far closer to solving this issue. It’s amazing how many different bosses, foes, spells, NPCs, and (to a lesser extent) places there are. It’s obvious that this game’s material was the result of an absolutely ridiculous amount of work. However, FromSoft is nothing if not ambitious, and even with the game’s amazing diversity, they seem to have made a universe that is too large for it.

Bosses, minibosses, and enemies (including many of the main plot bosses) appear frequently throughout the map in different incarnations, frequently at the conclusion of several related mines, caverns, or catacombs. Bosses appear in pairs rather than alone, with ordinary foes, with remixed moves, with a name change, or with no change at all. With FromSoftware’s latest game featuring three or more occurrences of the most of the game’s bosses, it’s difficult to believe the complaints people once made about facing three different Asylum Demons in the first Dark Souls.As for common adversaries, it seems that wolves and crabs are indigenous to every climate and terrain in the Lands Between. Finding massive endgame places like the Haligtree and Elphael and then realizing that they don’t have any new monster types is also subtly disheartening.

Additionally, certain enemy designs from the Souls universe appear in Elden Ring with many of their original motions still in place, which is another example of repetition. Furthermore, this goes beyond perhaps acceptable overlaps like decaying dogs, rats, crabs, slugs, skeletons, slimes, and slugs—all of which do come back. Instead, Elden Ring also features genuinely original Souls game inhabitants, such basilisks, big wolf bosses with enormous swords in their mouths, and variations of Dark Souls’ snake men and Dark Souls III’s thralls.They got away with Patches because he was created before the Souls games, and I don’t mind the thralls and snake men because they were sufficiently differentiated. Other than that, though, this was a somewhat uninspiring sight. Being among the most recognizable objects in the Souls universe, Sif and the basilisks contribute to the universe’s identity. At some point, recreating one’s own earlier inventions ceases to be considered “homage” or spiritual succession. Simply said, it lessens the prior work’s distinctiveness.

Furthermore, the opponents are just one example of the mechanical repetitions from earlier games. Once more, we use our experience resources as money; we lose resources when we die and have to go get them back; and we advance through a network of checkpoints that resembles an archstone, albeit one that is more shoddy than before. Additionally, as previously mentioned, nearly all of the fighting elements are carried over from Dark Souls III. Furthermore, I’m not the only one who thought that the firm that created the dazzlingly unique online Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls system will keep impressing with novel kinds of competition and co-op over time.Since then, they have instead created more traditional and easily disregarded versions of the same online system, duplicating their strategy for direct multiplayer as well as for messages and bloodstains.

Putting that aside, though, the fact remains that Elden Ring would feature more opponents and bosses than any other game they have ever made, even if there were no repetitions from previous games or from its own encounter list. Elden Ring felt big and vibrant without the need for so many repetitions. And when it makes sense in the world—like with the night’s cavalry, the different dragons, and the majority of the regular enemies—I say this as someone who usually doesn’t mind a little repetition. Currently, most players will need well over twice as much time to complete a first playing of Elden Ring as they would any other game from FromSoft. Open-world or not, the game simply didn’t need to have over 100 hours of content in a single playthrough, when employing such a huge amount of recycling was one of the crucial strategies to get the number that high.

For the next few years, some gamers will essentially just play Elden Ring, putting one playthrough after another. The length and repetition of the game hardly bother those who enjoy it that much. For the benefit of those who will only play the game once a year, if at all (to experience the game as a work of art before moving on to experience other works), the idea of reducing the game’s size to better match the amount of unique content it contains is essentially a suggestion.

Furthermore, it doesn’t matter that speedrunners, for example, can complete it far more quickly. Once more, this point is not for players who are already familiar with the game; rather, it is for players who are new to it, especially those who are experiencing the game for the first time (as I did) without using any outside instructions. Tighter execution would increase the likelihood that these gamers will view all or most of its content while still feeling amazed and in awe of the new things at every turn.

It seems strange that I would say this outside of a literary conversation, but it was the realization that hit me during my seventh battle with a flailing boss of tree spirits: the work seemed to have needed an editor.

Restrictive Enemy Leashes in Elden Ring:

Since it’s simple to explain, this part is also brief. Although Elden Ring has a large open landscape and mounted combat features, it also strictly controls which opponents can enter specific areas. As in previous games, enemies are still chained to specific locations or routes, so it’s often possible for an enemy to simply give up, go back to neutral, and start to walk away. In more extreme cases, bosses and minibosses may disappear and reappear at their spawn point.In addition to the fact that a rapid return to neutrality tends to make a combat much less challenging, nothing truly destroys the momentum and atmosphere of a major battle like an opponent suddenly respawning close by.

Since performance may suffer if an enemy is dragged into an area that the developers did not plan for it to be (raising the number of entities or assets in a certain area over some crucial backend limit), this problem is most likely technological in nature. But given the situation, that is a rather weak explanation. Since its inception, Elden Ring has been developed exclusively as an open-world game. For such a game, it should and should have been a top priority to design more elegantly around this issue, but it wasn’t. Globally restricting asset density to accommodate wider enemy roaming would’ve been the best solution. But even a more blunt approach would’ve been fine; for instance, if other enemies, items, NPCs, and even bits of the environment had to be temporarily despawned or culled in surrounding areas in order to prevent active sentinels and dragons from often fading in and out of fights, then that absolutely should’ve been done.

Because ranged attackers are always attempting to put distance between themselves and their opponents, they are most likely to experience the worst of this issue. Because so many enemies and minibosses lose interest in pursuing them after a startlingly short period of time, the already strong spellcasters of the Lands Between—who are buffed in comparison to their counterparts in previous games in terms of spellcasting speed, spellcasting damage, variety of available tactics, and availability of spirit ashes to tank for them—find themselves in an even stronger position than they were before.

Interactions between Spirit Ashes and Enemies in Elden Ring:

In summary, spirit ashes are objects that, in specific battle scenarios (usually boss fights), enable the player to summon one or more instances of a specific miniboss or normal enemy type as allies. Since the majority of the game’s non-boss combatants can be obtained for use in battle, it functions something like a Pokémon monster gathering system.

You might be tempted to believe that the complaint in this part is something different from what it is. The idea that spirit ashes were incorporated into the game is by no means the focus of this section. Anyone who is outright against people using them is only expressing a prejudice that they have carried over from playing FromSoft’s previous games. And this exact false equivalency is probably what happens to anyone who complains that some of the bosses at the conclusion of the game are too difficult. Here, spirit ashes aren’t just a simple substitute for NPC summons, as Elden Ringputs them under a lot more mechanical strain than summoning has ever experienced before because of the variety of ashes that are available, the FP cost involved in calling them, and the corresponding 10-tiered upgrade system.

Anything with such a comprehensive upgrade system in a FromSoft game, in my opinion, is a feature that players are supposed to utilize, at least on their first playthrough. The ability to farm consumable healing items, upgrade armor, and light bonfires are examples of similar scenarios found in some of their earlier games. When such items were accessible, they were typically balanced into the games that featured them.

The problem is that the idea that Elden Ring is balanced around the incorporation of spirit ashes turns out to be just partially accurate. In this sense, the attitude appears accurate, as there are plenty of frequent enemy crowds and multi-boss battles, just like in Dark Souls II. However, almost all bosses and single opponents appear to be unsuited to the spirits’ presence, with the exception of Radahn and a few battles at the end of the game. The significant mechanical stress I have described thus far in this part is a little deceptive since an old problem arises and overwhelms them.

The old problem is that boss and enemy aggro still seems to function much like it did in Demon’s Souls: the opponent will naively concentrate the majority of their attacks on the creature that most recently attacked them. This, along with the long sequence of strikes that many boss attacks entail, creates a situation where the player-character can freely inflict damage on lone bosses for nearly the whole duration of a fight—just by alternating between waiting for a spirit to attack the boss and then dealing damage as soon as the spirit has attacked.