Elden Ring Review: FromSoftware Gits Gud

By his own admission, Miyazaki Hidetaka never intended for FromSoftware’s approach to gameplay—one centered around consequential, punitive deaths, labyrinthine map design, and cruel, hard-hitting enemies—to become normalized, but that’s precisely what’s happened in the years since Demons’ Souls, with countless games turning difficulty into a crutch propping up a lack of better ideas. Miyazaki, then, helped to birth a monster and, now, Elden Ring represents a self-reckoning with how best to deal with it.

But Miyazaki and his crew at FromSoftware are having a very different conversation with us than, say, Rockstar Games had with their deeply bitter and cynical Grand Theft Auto V. There’s empathy in this game’s dialogue, a castigation of cruelty, a renewed discourse on the fairness side of the tough-but-fair equation. Elden Ring is very much a response to how gaming and gamers have changed since the original Demon’s Souls. FromSoftware built literal and figurative cathedrals to the art of dying in their previous games, yet this one feels like the first time their congregation has been invited to respond to it in their own way.

The hallmarks of a traditional Souls game are all here, though operating under different names, with Runes replacing Souls, Crimson Tears replacing Estus Flasks, and Sites of Grace replacing bonfires. There are also plenty of familiar faces and items lurking around; the Souls games’ premier dirtbag, Patches, is basically the FromSoftware lucky mascot at this point. Even with Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin providing some signature (though not unwelcome) color to the lore, the plot here is practically inseparable from that of one we’ve encountered before in the world of a Souls game—until, suddenly, it isn’t.

An ancient aristocracy beholden to eldritch gods abruptly forsakes their duty as the caretakers of a realm known as the Lands Between ruled by Queen Marika the Eternal, shattering the titular Elden Ring while warring for power, and allowing the world and its people to fall into eternal chaos. In their neglect, one adventurer could overthrow the ruling class, reforge the Ring to become Elden Lord, one with the power to remake the world as they see fit.

It all begins on conventional terrain, with a boss fight you’re supposed to lose to in order to strip away your fear of death, which subsequently leads to a short tutorial. But stepping through the big doors to get your first proper look at the Lands Between is a very different experience. In this moment, you’re not so much confronted with the task at hand as you are with the terrifying enormity of possibility. Elden Ring’s Sites of Grace have been designed with a nifty new mechanic where they emit a light trail leading you to your next major checkpoint, and at the outset, they point to the first major dungeon: Stormveil Castle. And following that trail to the letter walks you straight into a fight with the game’s first major boss, Margit the Fell Omen, whom you are woefully and pointedly unequipped to tackle.

In most games, failure is punitive. You either have the skill to beat a boss, or you don’t. In a Souls game in particular, you’re always meant to feel underequipped and underpowered. But in Elden Ring, failure against Margit is there to teach you one thing: that there is a main path, and getting there will never be a straight one. There’s adventure, there’s advancement, there’s aid, and there’s power waiting for you in every direction leading away from Margit. Where you get the power to slay him and what form it takes doesn’t matter, but you’re meant to go find it elsewhere. “Getting gud” is such a tiny sliver of what progress in Elden Ring looks like, and it’s less about FromSoftware placing bosses and obstacles in front of the player as it is about rewarding our willingness to be intrepid, creative, and truly courageous.

And reward the game does. It’s easy to marvel at the undeniable vastness of Elden Ring’s world—an overworld the size of a small country, with not one, not two, but three full-fledged underground realms as big as multiple Souls levels in their own right. There’s no wasted space in Elden Ring. Even serene, enemy-less areas are telling the game’s story, offering the opportunity for players to look upon and ponder the ruined works of eons and despair.

At its most minimalist, Elden Ring will find you riding through green fields, able to see marching soldiers, broken stone towers, lurching caravans of enslaved monsters, and imposing fortresses for miles all around. And at its most maximalist, it will bring you to places like Caelid, a gory hellscape overtaken by disease, massive carrion animals, trigger-happy and bloodthirsty soldiers, and architecture of dying flesh layered over broken villages. Nokron, for this writer’s money the most beautiful area in the entirety of the game, is an underground Roman-inspired nation-state blessed with perpetual illusory starlight.

All these areas are absolutely stuffed with enemies, secrets, branching paths, vast plateaus, shortcuts, treasures, and, yes, of course, a plethora of swift, terrible ways to die. But while it’s still a difficult game, Elden Ring is the first Souls game that one might charitably call “kind.” The traditional tropes and enemy concepts of a Souls game are by and large accounted for—though with an added dollop of Bloodborne’s terrifying approach to biological horror thrown in for good measure—but the player is aided by a wide swath of new tools.

Because Souls games have eschewed even rudimentary game-design niceties for so long, the littlest features here feel like acts of mercy. Certainly, Elden Ring’s jump button feels like a boon from the gods, to say nothing of dazzling enhancements like Spirit Ashes, which allow you to summon ghostly assistance in those areas where you’d typically be subject to a Souls game’s often iffy multiplayer mechanics. A horse in every modern Zelda game is just means of travel, but Elden Ring treats your spectral steed, Torrent, as a resource every bit as valuable as flasks, especially in the scattered major fights where the enemy is also on horseback.

Using all the powers at your disposal leads to more secrets, hidden boss fights teetering on the edges of enormous cliffsides, nests of enemies in unexpected places, and unique ways to escape a problem. The linear, Metroid-esque dungeon structures that Souls games are typically made for are all optional bonus levels here, and Elden Ring allows you to tackle them with a freedom that’s rarely been seen in a game of this sort. Fifteen hours in, by the time I had returned to Margit the Fell Omen, I had seen enough stories to support an entire game all its own. In reality, breaching Stormveil was just the first step of an unforeseen odyssey.

Elden Ring is FromSoftware taming the monster they created, not by filing down its teeth and claws, but by giving players the weapons and armor to endure it. It’s the first of their games to not feel like a brick wall but a doorway, with allies in every direction all reaching out to help you tread carefully to the other side. The result is a paradigm shift, a seemingly once-in-a-generation recalibration of old ideas and taking them to the next level. Many have tried to imitate the Souls games on a mechanical level, and Elden Ring makes a hell of an argument that those pale imitations never stood a chance. Turns out that it never mattered if the player “got gud,” because what truly mattered was FromSoftware deciding to, finally, be better.

This game was reviewed using a retail copy purchased by the reviewer.