Did you give up on Elden Ring?

[SuperCapes]

4 hours ago, the_debaser said:

People say it is their new favourite game, even more so than BOTW so I hate it. More like Elden Boring. 

 

Made a TLDR version for those who are in a rush! 

[Wiper]

1 hour ago, Doctor Shark said:

Oh, do be quiet. 

He's right, though. I've not answered the poll because I can't without my answers being unclear. 

[BadgerFarmer]

I haven't finished it, but only because I have to keep stopping for other things. I have played about 80 hours though and have uncovered the full map.

 

I've kept going back whenever I've had the chance, and although occasionally it's started to drag a little, I always quickly get back into it once I find a new place to explore. I do wonder if it's perhaps a bit too big for its own good overall, but I love the open world. Having that space to breathe in a From title is a real game changer.

 

The only reason I won't finish it sooner or later is if the bosses get too tough near the end.

[smac]

I'm still early in the game, and could go either way. I'm considering dropping - the gameplay is punishing and frustrating, but the world is fascinating.

[HarryBizzle]

5 hours ago, the_debaser said:

It’s just a boring game and I found the open world to be a hindrance to enjoyment. You still have the same old DS move set just in a bigger area with a magic horse. And even though Zelda comparisons are ridiculed (which allows climbing, gliding, experimentation with the worlds physics etc), they are absolutely valid. 

 

Why did the creators actually think an open world was a good idea? What had it brought to the genre except size?  The cleverly crafted world of the first DS and Bloodborne, which is actually what made those games memorable, just isn’t there. 
 

It’s also a bit of a grind fest, falling back on old school RPG mechanics to progress, but without any of the charm or story of old school RPGs. Sure, with hundreds of hours put in I imagine you could beat anyone with anything, but who has time for that? 
 

The graphics and the music are shit. It will age terribly. 

Finally, there were better games recently released - MK8 extra tracks came out and Kirby at the same time. 

[Strafe]

There are a lot of bans that need to be meted out in this thread.

[Captain Kelsten]

16 minutes ago, Strafe said:

There are a lot of bans that need to be meted out in this thread.

That was the plan all along…

[Radish]

6 hours ago, HarryBizzle said:

I’m about 40 hours in, done all the areas up to Altus plateau and am just a bit bored. It feels very familiar and the summons trivialise or break a lot of the bosses - and I don’t even use the special ones people go on about like the mimic tear. Even the wolves and jellyfish still break them. 
 

I enjoy it while I’m playing it but I’m not loving it. Feels like a lot of filler content, so I’m going to go away and play something else like Tunic for a bit and come back. 

 

I'm in a very similar position (40 odd hours and at the Altus plateau) and I'm also just a little bit bored. The balance is.. non-existent, it's got the usual design structure of a Souls game but stretched over an obscene amount of content and it just can't cope with it. I'm struggling to remember the last encounter I've had that felt fair. Usually I'm way too overpowered, with the rare exception (General Radahn, which became significantly easier when I realised the entire point was to just let the NPCs kill him for me). 

 

You can't decide to go for a Faith build, or Sorc, because the odds are you'll play for dozens of hours and either never see or miss the one item drop you need from a specific mob on the entire map to give you access to 3 additional spells that will greatly help you out. There's just very little character progression to be had unless you start googling for item locations. Unless you're willing to go for dozens of hours spamming the same 2 or 3 spells, which I guess some people are. 

 

I enjoyed my time with it and I think I'll go back to it soon (maybe even tonight actually) but it definitely feels like the open world hampers the game rather than adding to it. When it's good it's really good, but those have been the more linear areas that have felt like a self contained area from the previous games. 

[DeciderVT]

I haven't given up on it but eighty hours in and there have been a few times where I've needed a break for a couple of days. I love exploring the open world but I get tired of literally everything trying to kill me, relentlessly. I slaughtered a load of mages in Caelid the other day and a bloody sheep started having a pop at me afterwards. It felt comical.

[Timmo]

4 hours ago, Ste Pickford said:

But the graphics?  They're bloody incredible.  I can't imagine any basis for criticising the look of the game.  This game has 11/10 art direction and execution.

 

I agree that From are on another level with art direction but the animation and camera certainly aren't 10/10...

[Captain Kelsten]

Shit camera? It’s not bad, it’s a design decision, m8 etc etc 

[Thor]

According to steam I put 67.2 hours into the game, I fucking loved a lot of it, but I tired of it. Just like in DS3, I just ... stopped. It won't make my GOTY list, but I can absolutely understand this mopping up all the GOTY awards. 

[df0]

I lack one Trophy for Platinum. I either kill the final boss in NG++ or continue my NG run on a different character.

 

Prior - I can’t do it on my mage. Tried rerolling several times (tank, bleed, etc) and I fail over and over.

Latter - after Renalla my interest and motivation plummets. I tried a handful of times and am completely done with it by the time I reach Plateau. Knowing I need to visit certain places, upgrade weapons etc kills my vibe.

 

Personally, linear > open world.

[Junker]

I love it and I can imagine it being my favourite game ever. 
 I think the things stopping me playing more, or ever finishing it are that I lose concentration too easy and wander off and then next time I play I’ve lost the thread of what I was doing.

 I think the opaque item descriptions and vague clues from NPCs are great but make it hard to remember what thingummy does what, and who wants me to go where and why.

 

[Jolly]

I'm eighty hours in, have just got past the capital and I'm enjoying as much now as I was at the very beginning. This is basically unheard of for me. I have such a short attention span that I get bored of everything at ~twenty hours. The game is a fucking miracle. 

[Majora]

I'm about 90-100 hours in and on the outskirts of the capital and with a lot of Caelid still left to discover. I still like it but I'm only putting in a few hours a week now whereas initially I was putting in double that during a day.

 

I've decided it's another open world game that's too big for it's own good. It's befallen the fate of feeling a bit rote the longer it goes on which feels unfair to say about such a brilliant game but my last session on this in Caelid did feel rote. Here's another set of ruins with enemies to clear out and stairs leading down to a basement housing a boss. Here's another boss you've fought about ten times before but this time there's two of them in a tiny room. Your reward for clearing this boss is yet another item you're never ever going to use. Here's another small fort with more knights you've killed a hundred times already. 

 

There's so much enemy and item variety compared to pretty much any other open world game I can think of but it still just isn't close to enough for the size of the world they've created. For all its brilliance it's still fallen into the trap of creating a world too big to populate with meaningful new content and encounters throughout.

 

Still a 10/10, I just wish I could recapture the incredible feeling I had for the first 60 hours or so.

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

I used a mod on pc that doubled damage output and defense. The game still took me 70 odd hours and I died loads still too. Fucking loved it. Tasted so many salty from soft fanboy tears as the credits rolled. 

[KartoffelKopf]

I’m using every cheesy easy mode strategy I can get my hands on for the tougher bosses. The real pull of the game for me is the exploration. It’s an adventure and the boss battles work best, for me anyway, when they are of a moderate difficulty at the end of a few hours exploring. Any more than 3 or 4 attempts and I start to get frustrated. That’s not a good feeling to have when indulging your favourite hobby. 
 

I’m toying with the idea of having an extended break but more because of the sheer intense mood of dread that permeates my life when I’m playing it. It’s still easily going to be my Goty. 
 

The only issue is that the games waiting for me are Cyberpunk, Returnal and Tsushima. None of them are a quick distraction. 

[Strafe]

1 hour ago, Opinionated Ham Scarecrow said:

I used a mod on pc that doubled damage output and defense. The game still took me 70 odd hours and I died loads still too. Fucking loved it. Tasted so many salty from soft fanboy tears as the credits rolled. 

 

[sbrandon111]

I stopped just after the first boss (mini boss? the wolf guy in the cave). For no other reason than i started playing Horizon Zero Dawn. I'll go back to Elden Ring at some point though i think.

[shynra]

Playing enjoying, if I got stuck I just explored another direction before... Now 50 hours in I've explored everwhere I can and its ultra tough in all directions. Ive given it weeks of playtime and think I must be 50% though but stuck/need to grind exp or grind getting gud. So just decided it's best I play the many other games I've been putting off then continuing. May come back, did enjoy! 

 

Solo, not playing co-op or using guides. 

[ChewMagma]

Finished today, 90 something hours, level 145, platinum achieved. That last boss is a right bastard though, took me a good 4 hours this afternoon alone.

[DeciderVT]

2 hours ago, shynra said:

Solo, not playing co-op or using guides. 

 

This feels like an important detail. I don't have Xbox Live Gold, so multiplayer is locked for me and I solo everything. When I see play on YouTube there are messages everywhere and my friends have been able to help each other out when they're stuck, so they're on NG+ now.

 

When I'm up against a wall I have to grind and level up and push my way through with perseverance, no helping with lower level bosses, etc. I had a similar experience on Demon's Souls, where the same friend powered ahead with help and finished the game really quickly.

[Xipe Totec]

My first From/Miyazaki game, gave it about 18 hours but found it a bleak, punishing experience. Probably more about me than the game - I just wasn't in the right headspace for something that oppressive, harrowing and grim. Didn't help that the combat hadn't exactly clicked & my usual fight strategy of button mashing/running away tended to end with YOU DIED. A frequently genuinely amazing-looking game, capable of provoking similarly amazing-looking nightmares to wake up screaming from.

 

I put it down with the intention of going back again at some point in the unlikely event I cheered up a bit, but right now (60-odd hours into Ass Creed Valhalla, which at least has pretty blue skies & green fields as a backdrop to its decapitations), I dunno.

[jonamok]

Seeing this thread title on the forum just makes me sad. I know, I shouldn’t have bumped it, but yeah, feel genuinely bad every time I read it. 🙁

[thesnwmn]

5 hours ago, jonamok said:

Seeing this thread title on the forum just makes me sad. I know, I shouldn’t have bumped it, but yeah, feel genuinely bad every time I read it. 🙁

 

It feels appreciate right? The forum darling of the month always takes a little dip in praise after the initial frothing during which anything negative gets you some very strange looks.

 

Almost exclusively positive takes with only a few hints at dissent often changes subtly over time and gets to the low point where those not quite so comfortable with the game feel able to finally express the flaws.

 

And then we go back to agreeing it's generally great.

 

But...

[thesnwmn]

This thread is really interesting reading for someone who has no interest in this or any game like it.

 

I mean the number one issue seems straight up like the game is just far far too big for most people.

 

As adults with things to do a game over 20 hours seems like a huge ask. Hearing that people have put 50-100 hours into it an given up, just stopped or feel like they've bounced off of it. This seems  unfair to both the game and the players. The game is apparently huge, it offers so much astonishing content and yet a large number of its players won't see a good amount of what the developers have crafted (or spent time making). The players are busy, they've learned and enjoyed the challenge, they've enjoyed exploring the world but many will never see how it the ends.

 

It's interesting to think if in the end the games attempt at scale may be what undermine's it's legacy. Maybe not too. Maybe those who don't finish it will still, in time, consider it the crowning achievement that was effused about by all mere weeks ago.

 

 

Personally I want the story element of a game to be less than 10 yours. Bigger doesn't mean better value to me... It simply means it cost fuck tonnes to make and is likely more repetitive than it needs to be.

 

I'd rather a game was as short as it could possibly be. Only large enough to use any idea/structure no more than handful of times. Once a second level, , dungeon, power up, quest, or NPC exists that is basically a tweaked version of something that came before I'm done.

 

A very different game but that's what Mario often does so right. In at least some games, each level or world feels like a single thought or concept. The start of each is a fresh leap into the minds of its creators.

 

 

Caveat, having not played ER I'm not really commenting on it's quality but I guess just reflecting on where scale is a good thing for many games.

[ChewMagma]

If you wanted to power through the "story" element of this game, you could easily do so in 15-20 hours, probably less, if you were prepared to follow a guide.

 

Like Skyrim though, the point is the journey. I imagine you could put 30, 40, 50 whatever hours into it or even less and feel like you had a really good time.

 

It is absolutely a typical length for an open world exploration game like BOTW, Skyrim, AC Odyssey etc.

[jonamok]

Yep, put exactly the same number of hours into BoTW and ER to rinse them on first playthrough: 150. Never, ever bored.

 

Put 60 hours into both Horizon: ZD and Ghost of Tsushima to rinse them. Never, ever bored.

Maybe 30 into all I need to see of Skyrim.

 

No other game comes close. I’m bored after 10-20 hours in pretty much everything else.

 

Moral: if the content remains fresh and utterly compelling, the length is irrelevant.

[Lovelyman]

I've really fallen off gaming (exceptions get me hooked again - hollow knight, slay the spire, into the breach etc). 

 

This is all I've done every evening since it came out. It's amazing.