Sometimes you just need to start over. Let go of the pressure to keep pace with your peers, step away from expectations of a wider community, or abandon game saves when they start to become a burden. Time spent doesn't necessarily mean time wasted if you're acting with the best of intentions. That's how I'm treating Elden Ring as I dive back into the fray for the first time in two years – The Lands Between haunted by echoes of an adventure I had barely even begun.
It seems as if the entire video game industry is talking about Shadow of the Erdtree right now. The Elden Ring expansion has successfully dampened the noise which emanated out of the summer showcases, and provided a moment of safe harbor for those in search of respite from the release schedule – at least before the steady wave of new games of 2024 that landed throughout the spring transforms into a tidal wave this autumn. There's little chance I get around to Shadow of the Erdtree soon, but I was looking for space to reconnect with my backlog and realized that now is undoubtedly the time to do it – so I'm back on Elden Ring, against my better judgment, and having a surprisingly good time with it.
Adventure renewed
So much has been said about the challenge Elden Ring presents – and too of the variety present in its class builds, combat encounters, and enemy variance. But what's struck me as I've wandered from Limgrave to the Mountaintop of the Giants this past week is its biodiversity. From the acridity of Caelid to the opulence of Leyndell; the vastness of Mt Gelmir and the depth of Liurnia; if I regret anything about bouncing off of Elden Ring so quickly, it's that I've spent two years without the starry horizon of Nokron the Eternal City fighting for command of my imagination.
I suspect that Elden Ring will quietly influence the next decade of video game creations, particularly with respect to concepts of wider scales of difficulty and greater mechanical flexibility. I hope that a more varied approach to topography isn't overlooked in this initiative. In the race towards realism, open worlds have become more seamlessly naturalistic – cohesive and cautious – and I'd happily see this sacrificed for more outlandish environmental outlays. It's a sense of discovery that has kept me locked in this time around – willed me to push past the boundaries of Stormveil Castle, the site where I abandoned my first character with a Talisman Pouch and 12,000 Runes in their pocket back in 2022.
It wasn't the difficulty that initially pushed me away from Elden Ring, but rather the lack of any discernible hook. Grasping hold of any narrative threads was a greater challenge than felling Margit, the Fell Omen. My map had an abundance of waypoints but no set objectives. The Tarnished a blank slate that can be carved into any image, albeit with precious little assistance given towards resource investment or class definition. Where many have found this freedom captivating, I found it both overwhelming and underwhelming; I was spending as much time seeking guidance online as I was interacting with the damn thing, a game played with one hand on the controller and the other scrolling a second screen.
Elden Ring has a lot of depth hidden away, and developer FromSoftware provides precious few tools to explore it with ease. I think that's one of the reasons the experience has fostered such a engaged, thriving community – players eager to share lessons learned and help others dive into the miniature to min-max their builds or find the coolest weapons, builds, items, and locations scattered across The Lands Between. It's amazing to see people come together like this in an otherwise fractious social media environment, but admit that I struggled to engage with Elden Ring on its own terms when I felt like I was always just one click away from unearthing some new detail that could prove to be transformative.
Go your own way
It was Patch 1.03 (arriving in the weeks after launch) which pushed me over the edge, making the build I had begun working toward off the back of community interest largely inert in an instant. At this stage I was faced with the option of grinding through to unlocking Elden Ring respec functionality or starting over entirely, and I chose to play literally anything else. Coming back to Elden Ring all these years later, fueled by every single person in my orbit extolling the virtues of Shadow of the Erdtree, I've done so with the intention of disengaging with anything outside of the boundaries of the game itself. And I'm having a wonderful time.
40 hours in and I'm still using the first straight sword I looted. I only just swapped out my shield. Knocking enemy health bars down with guard counters and gradual swipes. Is there better equipment to be found? Probably, but I don't want to start tumbling down the rabbit hole of tier lists – besides, I've invested too many consumable resources into making these weapons viable now to take the risk on something new in an environment that provides no safety net for experimentation. Elden Ring doesn't do a particularly good job of explaining how Weapon Arts work, so I'm largely going without armament abilities. I didn't realize that I could two-hand weapons in Elden Ring until I came up against the Mimic Tear boss encounter… you don't want to know how long it took me to figure how to do this from the menus alone. I'm pouring all of my runes into Endurance, Strength, and Vitality; I'm Dexterity curious but, honestly, I can't remember from previous Souls games what this stat is used for and at this point I'm too afraid to ask.
I've only hit one brick wall, a battle against the Crucible Knight and Misbegotten Warrior at Redmane Castle. I decided to take my adventure elsewhere (hours of endless wandering to try and find something to do, which is probably the closest I've come to quitting the game again) only to eventually return and find the sub-boss encounter gone. Replaced by some sort of festival of combat. I'm sure I accidentally triggered something to make this happen but I'll never know what it is. I may have been inclined to use the summon functionality to make quick work of Starscourge Radahn but I couldn't remember how to activate it, instead finding myself drawn into other player's worlds time and time again.
All of that is fine by me. Stumbling through Elden Ring with little more than sword and board has been a cathartic experience, particularly once I removed myself from the pressures of min-maxing every aspect. There's many ways to play this sort of game, and I know a great many of you find that community aspect – working with others online to help slice out some of the friction the game naturally generates – to be the way to play. But what I'm here to tell you is that if you're the sort of player who finds that notion to be overwhelming, there's still a great deal of fun to be had with Elden Ring if you take it on your own terms. Elden Ring has clearly had this incredible ability to generate a rather disproportionate gravity well, but thanks to that sense of discovery that's driving me through, I'm far too busy to achieve escape velocity from its orbit this time around.
What will I play after I'm done with Elden Ring? I'll probably start turning my attention to some of the excellent-looking upcoming PS5 games and upcoming Xbox Series X games.
