It’s the day before Elden Ring release as I write this. I had a mini-meltdown while watching/reading a few of the reviews on PC because there are issues. Ian had to remind me that they probably had all their settings on Ultra and I could dial it down and be fine.
The Metacritic score for the game when I last checked was 98%. 98%! That’s unheard of! I’ve spent most of the morning and afternoon reading and watching reviews, and they have been unrelentingly high. The lowest one I’ve read is from PC Gamer at 90%, though, weirdly, it reads like e negative review. They wanted it to be more bizarre and less Dark Souls than it turned out to be. They mentioned that Sekiro was different–which it was, but it still had the Dark Souls DNA.
Most of the reviews have been gushing. I have the game locked and loaded, ready to play when it’s officially released in a little over 24 hours. I’ve been gorging myself on the reviews, hoping that I won’t run into too many spoilers. And, so far, I haven’t, thankfully. That’s partly because the reviewers have been very careful about not giving too many spoilers (and nearly no story spoilers), but it’s also because I have put myself on a strict information diet. I did watch videos from the Closed Network Test (and the time before that when a select few journalists were allowed to play for as long as they wanted) because I couldn’t stay strong, but I’m keeping it as spoiler-free as possible.
The biggest issue so far is that the PC port sucks. Even for people with 3070 graphics card. There is stuttering. There are frames dropping. There is freezing. There is popping in with the assets. There is a memory leak? I don’t know what that is. I am really hoping that first-day patch fixes most of the issues and I am SUPER glad I upgraded my PC before the game dropped.
I will say, I think FromSoft did the PC players dirty by dropping the specs a week before the game officially releases. And then the port having these issues? That’s not cool at all. As I said before, FromSoft doesn’t care about its PC players and that is pretty clear with this port.
That said, I cannot wait to play this game. I am going to gorge on it and I know that I won’t see even a fraction of it in the next few days. I tweeted:
Do NOT message me this weekend. You WILL be left on read. ?
— Minna Hong (@asiangrrlMN) February 23, 2022
and I stand by it. All I’m going to do is play this game, probably ignoring everything but my basic body needs. I’m going to run to Cubs before the game drops so I can stock up on sustenance. I need food and drinks, man! If I’m going to mainline this game, I need to keep my energy up.
It’s been so long. The first trailer teasing the game dropped in June of 2019; I’ve included it above. Then, the pandemic happened along with radio silence. Usually, FromSoft announces a game and then it comes out a year or two later. This time, there was nothing about the game for so long. Then, suddenly, there were whispers in the summer of 2021 that a new trailer was going to drop at Geoff Keighley’s summer fest thing. Then he sent out a teaser tweet that seemed to confirm it.
I watched in anticipation with my heart in my mouth. I had the outsidexbox stream rolling and laughed along with them at the ridiculousness of Hideo Kojima’s trailer for the director’s cut of Death Stranding. I watched, hoping against hope that we would get Elden Ring news. As each thing occurred, I lost a little hope. No, we weren’t going to get any Elden Ring and I might as well turn off the show. I wasn’t going to do that, of course, because even the littlest amount of hope is better than none.
The show dragged on and on, and we reached the end with no mention of Elden Ring. My heart sank all the way to the bottoms of my feet and I was prepared to turn off the stream, unsatisfied. Then, Geoff said there was one more thing and my ears perked up. Of course, Elden Ring was the kind of game to be presented last. It’s a showstopper, for sure. Everyone lost their minds when Geoff, after a lot of teasing, finally announced the Elden Ring trailer.
I have to say, it’s been interesting listening to guys (journalists) who’ve never played Souls games (or played one of them or part of one or some) talk about not loving the game. And the reasons why are things that are endemic to FromSoft games. The esoteric nature of the tutorials (and everything else), the not being told what to do, and not being sure if they were under-leveled for an area or just needed to ‘git gud’. And I understand all that, but on the other hand, it’s FromSoft. It’s the same thing when people talk about an easy mode. Yeah, want it or not, but it’s FromSoft–they aren’t going to put one in. And, for the record, I still don’t think an easy mode is the best way to deal with the accessibility issue.
Here’s the thing. And I’ve said it before. Not every game is for everyone. For accessibility shit like FOV slider, aim-assist, flashing kanji to say an unblockable attack is about to happen–all good and fine. Remappable keys and buttons? Yes. I am all for any of these kind of accommodations. But when it comes to an easy mode, nah. I draw the line there. Let FromSoft make the bosses/enemies as difficult as they want. Yes to summons/spirits, checkpoints, and all those other things FromSoft added for Elden Ring. but leave the actual enemies/bosses alone.
Here’s the thing. FromSoft is FromSoft. The things that frustrate newcomers about the games are what keep the fans coming back time and time again. And I know that FromSoft is trying to expand their fanbase (as any dev would do) and it’s a delicate balancing act between keeping the fans happy and bringing in the new people.
It’s funny that Miyazaki said t hat he thought this would be the most finished game of the pantheon. And I have read/watched more than one review that said the same thing–that this would be the most welcoming FromSoft game for newbies, I mean. But there have been a few journalists that have most emphatically said they don’t think it’s true. It’s too wide open, too free-flowing, too esoteric, too FromSoft. And I get it. I have always said that FronSoft games are not for everyone. They don’t need to be.
I get frustrated when I hear people say they want FromSoft to…well, not be FromSoft. “I hate that you lose your Runes when you die.” Yeah, that’s the way it’s always been. Someone said it feels different in the open world because it limits exploration. I see that, but at the same time, something I heard a little while back hit me (finally, after time): There will always be more Souls. His point was not to worry too much about the Souls because they’re infinite.
And, yes, I get it. It’s disheartening to lose your Souls, especially in the beginning when you’ve worked so hard to get them. In my Dark Souls III game on my laptop, I’m on NG+4, carrying around a half mil Souls with regularity because it takes more than that to level up. By the way, starting a new game on my desktop to check out how smooth it is, I always forget how difficult the game is in the beginning without all my fancy gear and my Hidden Body/Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring combo.
What was I saying? Oh, yeah. Souls. There are always more Souls. I can’t always buy it, but it’s freeing when I can wrap my brain around that mindset.
So, yeah. In the open world, you have even more freedom because you can fast travel from anywhere to a Site of Grace. So, yeah, you can farm pretty easily if you need Souls (Runes). More to the point, though, is that there are some things you’re never going to change about FromSoft so you need to adapt to them rather than the other way around.
It’s now 10:30 p.m. the night before release date, a day that I thought would never come. Before I was in the hospital, I had all these plans for how I was going to play Elden Ring. Once I regained consciousness in the hospital, all of that melted away. The only thing I cared about was that I got to play another FromSoft game–and I was going to savor every minute.
I’m going to schedule this to go up at the same time the game drops–and then buckle up because it’s going to be a wild ride.