Elden Ring is vast, intimidating, and worth the wait

When writing about a cult phenomenon, you have to ask yourself: Are you writing for everybody? Or for the cult?

It’s a question that dogs any attempt to objectively review Elden Ring, the latest game from Dark Souls creators From Software. For the last decade-plus, the Souls games (of which Elden Ring serves as the latest spiritual successor) have operated as a battleground in the ever-raging debate about difficulty in modern gaming, a seemingly irreconcilable split between those who deem these titles hard for their own perverse sake, and those who find fulfillment, maybe even beauty, in their devotion to carefully presented adversity.

Elden Ring takes strides to offer an olive branch to both camps. On the one hand, From has softened a few of its most notable cruelties with this latest spin on the Gothic action-RPG, introducing new mechanics that (optionally) take some of the sting out of the series’ legendarily complex and brutal boss fights. At the same time, the studio has doubled down on the feelings of being lost, helpless, and bewildered in an inherently hostile world—catnip to some players, and to others, a poison as repellant as any that infests the massive, tainted swamps that cover so much of the game’s setting, The Lands Between.

At the core of it all is the shift that marks Elden Ring as different from Dark Souls, Demon’s Souls, Bloodborne, or the rest of the From canon. We’re not talking here about the much-touted narrative contributions from author George R.R. Martin, whose influence on the game’s plot feels roughly as impactful as its influence on the text of this review. (Which is to say: Negligible.) Rather, it’s the addition of a massive overworld for players to explore and get lost in.

Instead of confining itself to previous games’ long series of haunted castles, evil mines, and demonic mansions—still present in abundance, mind you—Elden Ring allows players to run and ride across the damned countryside in a variant of the open-world gameplay pioneered by franchises like Grand Theft Auto and Assassin’s Creed. (There’s even a big map for you to ponder over, a first for a franchise that normally delights in leaving players to their own cartographic woes.)

It’s an awkward fit, at first, for a series that has made so much of its name on the creation of specific and deliberate haunted spaces. Players who’ve had each twist and turn of Dark Souls’ Undead Burg burnt into their memories, precious inches of ground reclaimed bit by bit from the zombie hordes, may recoil from long stretches of incident-free (if still resolutely beautiful) landscape. At its worst, Elden Ring’s open world design can lead to the feeling that a more traditional Souls game has been stretched out across a vast landscape, with nondescript smaller caves and dungeons dotted across the landscape as little more than filler.

The merits of the open world filter in more slowly. They’re there in the occasional jaw-dropping moment when you crest a hill and see the sheer scale of the blighted landscape laid out before you. They’re there in the pure freedom they allow the player to explore at their own pace and in their own direction. (Boss too hard? You’ve now got a near-infinite number of other directions to push at to try to find the power to defeat them.) And they’re there especially in the way they sharpen one of the key Souls tones: The sense of being alone in a dying world, something that’s never felt sharper than when so much of that decaying splendor has been brought to sickly and withered life.

The most obvious precedent (besides From’s own work) is Nintendo’s bestselling The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, which shares with Elden Ring an inherent dare: If you can see something out there on the horizon, you can probably get there and look at it (and maybe get killed by it) up close. Both games share an interest in exploration that’s paradoxically absent in the open-world genre as a whole, glutted as it is with games whose maps are crammed with “come look at this!” icons like so many highway billboards.

Again, it’s not perfect: Elden Ring’s is a less-directed experience, one that can, especially in the early going, feel meandering, more than thrilling or empowering. (The use of “Sites Of Grace” to direct you to your next objective is helpful, but you can still spend an hour conquering a minor dungeon only to walk away with nothing more than a spell you’ll never use, and a chunk of the game’s typically obtuse lore hidden away in the item description.) And the ability to avoid almost any enemy encountered in the larger world (racing past it on your faithful steed, Torrent) can rob the game of the careful encounter design that’s been a hallmark of so many of From’s greatest works.

When the open world gets too open, though, you can always venture into one of the larger dungeons that dot the countryside of The Lands Between, and which serve as more traditional “levels” for players to trek through. Here, Elden Ring plays far more like a traditional Souls game, albeit one with an increased focus on verticality and stealth. (Imported, presumably, from 2019's Sekiro, the odd child out in this unofficial “series.”) The focus shifts in these spaces to those things that have always been the divisive hallmarks of From’s design ethos: Ambushes, traps, and a thoughtful approach to combat that renders even the simplest of enemies a potential killer.

Cultists will feel right at home—these levels, which are sprawling, complex, and gorgeous, are as good as anything the company’s ever done. The larger question is whether newcomers, lured in by the freedom of the open world, will be willing to bend to accommodate a challenge like the first “official” boss, Margit The Fell Omen, a deliberate roadblock of a guardian armed with attack patterns so unrelenting and aggressive that even series veterans will sweat to master them.

The lesson, presumably, is to remind players how much power they can gather by backing out and returning to the open road, rather than rushing down the straight line toward their objectives. But the Souls games have always been most comfortable doing their teaching through torture, killing players over and over to beat a lesson into their heads. When it works, a sort of pleasant Stockholm Syndrome sets in, as the player internalizes the quirks of the game’s combat—the various movesets and character builds, the deeply intimidating wall of stats that greets you on the character screen, and the nuances of the game’s new stance-breaking posture system and mounted combat. When it fails (after, say, the 20th time Margit has smacked your head in with his big magic hammer), the results are as disastrous as they are dispiriting.

Again: From has made at least a few concessions here to ease the pain. After being absent from Sekiro, the studio has once again implemented online multiplayer, allowing you to invite friends (or random good Samaritans) to help take down a boss. They’ve also implemented a “spirit summoning” mechanic that allows you to do something similar with A.I. companions who can be strengthened throughout the game, alleviating even the need for an internet connection to get some life-preserving help. They’ve even added in mid-map checkpoints, typically placed near especially difficult encounters, that allow you to rush back to the fight and try again without having to endure long runs back to a boss’ door.

Will it be enough? Hard to say. Because ultimately, the key factor in whether Elden Ring connects for you isn’t going to be its combat. (There are lot of Souls games and Souls-likes that can fill that purpose these days, if that’s what you’re after.) No, Elden Ring will get under your skin depending on how well the inherent promise of the game, one that From has been pursuing for years now, lands for you: Here is a vast world, full of mystery, danger, beauty, and humor. (Humor! Eagles with knives strapped to their feet are just the start of some of the wonderfully goofy monster designs on display.) It will not give up its secrets easily. It will frustrate and daunt you when it can.

It is a beautiful place to get lost in.