Storyline
Elden Ring is an open-world adventure souls-like game based on this mythical world where creatures exist. In this game, you are initially seen by the NPCs (non-playable characters), monsters, and demigods as a seemingly meaningless character. They are all struggling over power and control over the lands between. The Lands Between is the setting we are placed in for Elden’s ring. This vast world is ruled by Queen Marika the Eternal and is separated into 5 vast landpieces ruled by demigods. Your goal in this game is to explore, defeat, and/or befriend those that you meet to fight these demigods and collect their great runes to bring about a new order.

Souls-like Game
What is a Souls-like game? A souls-like game is a subgenre for an action roleplaying game. Its distinct feature is the game is considered souls-like due to its high level of difficulty and the creator’s emphasis on creating an environmentally story-based game which typically is in a dark fantasy-style setting.

About the Game
The game itself is beautiful—a vast environment to explore, with views in areas you would have never imagined. The graphics if run on a decent monitor look clean and crisp and bring life to the game that looks naturally scary and gloomy. Combat is one of its most difficult aspects and could pose a challenge for those who are not used to souls-like games. But combat might be one of many challenges here. Due to its vast open world, one could get overwhelmed and decide to stick to the main quest directions making the game only more difficult for them. Also due to such a vast open world, it can create problems where newer players start to reach more difficult areas earlier on than they should and then lose lots of the runes they had saved up to level up.

My First Experience
When first starting up the Elden ring, your first encounter is a character selection screen. You get to choose a class such as samurai, prisoner, or even the well-known wretched class. Each class has its starting level and starting stats. Being a pro gamer and all of course chose the wretched class, the only class where you start with nothing but a wooden club. The only upside to this class is you start at level one and all your states are at a base of 10. I later started to regret this option as you are completely going into the game empty-handed with nothing but a club.

You are put into a world full of monsters and creatures that are aggressive towards you for whatever reason they might have, and starting as someone who especially has no experience in souls-like games only makes things more difficult. You get thrown into an immediate fight with this spider-like boss monster. At first, you may think this is the tutorial and it’s an easy fight. It isn’t, I got utterly destroyed not being able to land a single hit of damage and having already died at the beginning of the game.
It turns out though that this is a part of the process, you then get summoned into this cave where there are two paths, a lower path leading to a tutorial area, and another path that skips all of this and continues straight to the main game. I, of course, being a pro gamer skipped the tutorial as well (Also later regretting this decision). But once fully completed with this area or not, the game gives you full control over how you can access the free range in the world. You are finally set into the beginning of the game, The beautiful scenery where you see in front of you is what seems to be an endless climb to the top, and a giant glowing yellow tree, known as the Erdtree. From here on the game only gets harder and more complicated, but the views and story development become even more beautiful. This immersive yet challenging experience is one of those few things that make this such a great game. Though this type of gameplay might not be for everyone, it is a game worth trying and attempting.

How it’s Going
Throughout my gameplay experience, I am about halfway through regarding map discoveries and exploration. Though if it comes to defeating the main bosses and story line I could say I’m slightly less than a fourth way there. Elden Ring is a very large game, and a lot of what you must do is explore, level up, and gain items and weapons that can assist you in the main story. I have recently reached a section where I get attacked by these giant robotic metal-looking creatures that have spinning axe blades. At first, I assumed it was going to be easy as recently before that I was two to three shooting other monsters and even easily beat a previous magical wolf boss. Well, I thought wrong. I got completely obliterated by these creatures no matter how many times I rolled, parried, and countered I did such little damage. I even tried calling upon spirits to help fight with me though I felt as if they were considered cheating even if they were a part of the game. I still got destroyed. Currently, I run a medium-weight build with lots of physical damage and I use this large Axe as my weapon. I felt as though I had a decently strong build and high enough stats, but I was instantly shut down by this encounter. My first thought was am I able to avoid them for now? Well yes, but it only got harder so I had to continue the grind by defeating weaker enemies, collecting runes, and leveling up. I even started going around exploring the map for other areas where I could unlock new skills, features, and possibly weapons that could help against these stronger enemies. Only to get body slammed over and over again losing my runes left and right.

Pro’s
Elden Ring is an entertaining, and hands-on game.
It comes with beautiful graphics and character design.
The difficulty brings a nice challenge to those who love hardcore gaming.
The story is intricate and well-written.
Comes with a compass and well set-up map and numbered markers (I didn’t realize this before).
Fast travel features to previous graces you have visited.
Fully open world.

Cons
I have no sense of direction.
The ability to go anywhere you want whenever you want makes it easy to wander into territory you are very under-leveled for.
The game has trapped chests around the world which can teleport you to very difficult areas and lead to a loss of runes. (I have lost a total of over 20,000 runes due to this).
You get punished for killing NPC’s (As in you may lose future game storyline or even Items due to this).
The game can become confusing at times and you end up having to use Google or YouTube to find solutions or information on things.

Conclusion
Elden Ring is indeed a game made for those who love to run, dodge, roll, and fight creatures that are one hundred times stronger than you. It is a great game for hardcore gamers to experience and take in the challenge. Though the game has no difficulty selection and puts you into a world where everything wants to kill you, eventually you can adapt to the environment and learn to use this to your advantage and learn from this. The game itself is a great open-world immersive experience. It is a great game for those who are looking for a difficult time-consuming game. (I have spent way too much time on this game, I need sleep..) The game does have its flaws but overall it’s a very well-made game. It’s graphically beautiful, and the story is so well written. I believe that Elden Ring is worth the suffering and pain of dying over and over and over just to overcome one stupid boss. The rewards always stack up and match one’s work making the progression in the game a lot more interesting.