Elden Ring is very good at the moment. Lots of work put into the game by the developers that's well deserving to be appreciated.
If you are not playing Elden Ring, you are missing out.
After playing From Soft's Dark/Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring, I can't really enjoy any other games. They just raised the bar on the depth what the game can entail in terms of combat, lore, visual aesthetics, and variations of play style that's offered to players that any other games are just subpar. I cannot enjoy any 1st person shooter games any more.
Out of all the games I've mentioned, my fav game would be Dark Souls 3, not Elden Ring. Reason why I take DS3 over DS1 is that the combat feels so much smoother than DS1, which is really dated. DS3 has much neededly polished character movements/controls that was too stiff in DS1.
Also, the visuals and aesthetics are improved by a large margin with high weapon and spell varieties brought over from DS2. So, overall DS3 is the most replayable for me. So, I would say it's my fav game at the moment.
Although I find that Elden Ring has really polished the feel of the character movements, the boss designed are really imbalanced and magic is too OP. This makes melee tedious at times, and with spirit summons, beating bosses doesn't feel very rewarding. Also, with subsequent playthoughs, the open world becomes a chore to go through.
I tried a magic playthough and at some point magic became too OP that I got bored since there is no challenge. Also, it feels like the game just falls off after Limsgrave area.
From Soft's games shine best with the dungeon designs, and this is the reason why I like DS3 better. It's pure dungeon goodness form From Soft.
But, the lore of Elden Ring is very interesting. And also the character movements/controls are most polished to date. But, with bringing open world, comes negatives that results from it. For one, what locations are summonable seems arbitrary.
From Soft's games are a rare quality in today's mundane AAA games landscape. Playing rare quality games opens up your eyes on how mundane other games are.
If they did a remake of DS1 with today's graphics like Elden Ring and polished movements/controls, It would likely be my fav over DS3. DS1 has excellent world/level designs.
Also, sound quality of From Soft are just excellent. I really like the sounds of DS3, it's really well mastered.
These games loses a bit of luster once you can predict enemy positions. I wait for a day when they make games that's much more replayable if they can make enemy placement unpredictable in subsequent playthoughs (but, also very likely be punishing. lol.). I wonder if there is a way to cook up fresh dungeons and enemy placements to keep things fresh every time? Or if they can put out new dungeons for purchase every so often.
