I’ve been watching videos of Elden Ring (FromSoft, natch) because why the hell not? I’m currently rewatching Eurogamer’s co-op during the Closed Network Test. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve played the game, and I’ve been thinking about why it’s not calling me back the way Dark Souls III does (which is still my favorite game of all time by a hair).
Before the game came out, I was concerned about a few things. One, the caves and catacombs, which seemed like the Chalice Dungeons of Bloodborne. Which, by the way, were my least-favorite part of that game. I tried them out fairly late in the game, which meant that I didn’t have much trouble with the first few of them. They don’t scale with your level; they are as hard as they are ever going to be. So, the first depth of dungeons are fairly easy. The second depth are that much harder, etc. Each Chalice Dungeon had three or four levels and a boss at the end of the level. There were set Chalice Dungeons and you could also randomly create them. The set ones were the same every time you went into it.
By the third or fourth dungeon, I was bored out of my skull. They all look the same and I got hopelessly lost more often than not. Plus, I felt there were way too many mobs, too many traps, and they just weren’t any fun. I gave up and never went back.
Until the plat. There is a unique boss at the end of one whole set of dungeons. You have to defeat this boss as part of the plat. I had just watched RKG do the Chalice Dungeons and followed Krupa’s Ted Talk guide. Then, as I was quite far into it, I realized that I didn’t need to do all the Chalice Dungeons–just the one chunk of them that had the unique boss I needed to beat. So I abandoned the other Chalice Dungeons because I just couldn’t be stuffed to do them. I still haven’t. I hate them. I honestly do.
Back to Elden Ring. I was concerned that the caves and catacombs would be like the Chalice Dungeons (CDs). They were for the most part, but not as annoying because they were spread out across the lands and because they weren’t as long or as elaborate as the CDs.
I did get bored of them after a time, though. I appreciated that they had different tricks to some of them, but they were pretty samesy for the most part. Tons of incredibly hard imps that did massive damage, including bleed damage. I hated these imps so much. They were way OP for being a simple enemy. Then, there were mobs of low-level enemies that chased you around. There are a few bigger enemies that you have to chonkbonk or avoid. There is some kind of status effect like poison or scarlet rot.
When I reached the late game, I was not excited to see a new catacomb or cave. I emitted a sigh of exasperation rather than a squeal of glee. I went in, of course, but more out of a sense of obligation than because I wanted to. Then it was more ‘how quickly can I get through this?’ than ‘oh, cool! A new cave’. I remember one catacomb very late in the game that had a boss from an earlier catacomb as a common enemy. If you managed to kill him, then there was a turret that breathed out frostbite that could insta-kill my character with a tiny health bar. When I managed to deal with that, there were three or four imps waiting behind to bleed me out. Oh, right. I did not tell you that they do bleed for some unknown reason. I did this little bit so many times, getting increasingly frustrated as I went. This was very late game, and I did not appreciate being one-shot at that point. I mean, I never appreciated it, but especially when I should have been hefty enough to endure one hit.
Plus, it deflated me to fight to make it to that area just to be killed so casually. The rest of this catacomb is a pain in the ass as well, and I was very close to saying fuck it. Why didn’t I? I’m so goddamn stubborn. I wasn’t going to let the catacomb get the best of me. It didn’t matter, though. It really didn’t.
I would not say they should have excised them completely, but cutting the amount in half would not have bothered me a whit. Get rid of all the ones with the spiked chariots–who the hell thought that was a good idea? Keep one or two of each different puzzle type (light bringing the statues alive, elemental traps needing to be hit, etc.), and then trash the rest.
The bosses were cool enough the first time you ran into them, but when you got duplicate iterations in subsequent caves, it was irritating as fuck. And, I hate to say it, but it felt like filler. Which was not needed. There is so much to do in the game, cutting the caves in half would not have even been noticed.
The other thing I worried about was the open world aspect in general. One of the best things about a FromSoft game is the tightly-controlled crafted experience. The (what are now called legacy) dungeons are so intricate and well-done, and they connect to each other in a way that is mind-blowing. When you find a shortcut that brings you back to the beginning of the level, well, there is no feeling like it.
That is somewhat lost in Elden Ring. One of the things that was touted was how if you were bashing your head against a boss, you could just nope out and go somewhere else. Which, yes, this is true. But, what I found was that doing it too much (jumping from place to place, I mean) made the experience too diluted. Since I knew I could go anywhere, there wasn’t that pressure to push on and beat the thing.
That meant when I actually did get around to beating the thing, it wasn’t always as impressive as it had been in the past. Many times, I was over-leveled when I went back, which took some of the fun out of the battle. I’m usually over-leveled in general, but in the beginning of this game you can REALLY over-level yourself.
The legacy dungeons are as claustrophobic and pressure-filled as always. Raya Lucaria Academy is hellish (though short-ish) and Stormveil Castle is up there with the best of them. But by the nature of the game, they are their own thing and not connected with each other. Even in Dark Souls III in which you can fast travel at any point, there was a thematic tie-in between the legacy dungeons. We will not talk about Dark Souls II because, well, we just won’t.
I love Elden Ring. It absorbed me for months and there were so many delightful discoveries. Hell, who knows? There might be more I’ve missed–and I’ve platted the game. During a video I watched, I thought, “Huh. I’m not sure I did that!” and it’s not for the first time. Granted, that could be my brain damage talking (I have memory gaps now after my medical crisis. No biggie, really), but it could also be that I just haven’t done everything in the game. If that’s the case, then there is still more for me to look forward to. The game that keeps on giving.