Why You Should Play Elden Ring

Why you should play Elden Ring.

Joel A. Collins

May, 8th 2022

If you haven’t played Elden Ring and are on the fence about playing it, let me persuade you to go ahead and buy it. Even though the game is several months old.

With 160 hours of play time on the game, I feel that I have a decent amount of playtime to give you an honest idea of how amazing this game is. From Final fantasy to Zelda, RPG’s often have elements that fit the genre, but they also have elements that make them stick out from the rest.

Elden ring has the best experience of them all. The gameplay is invitingly difficult, open world, and non-linear, with the exception being storyline bosses and checkpoints allowed by certain quests and story lines.

It throws you into the deep end without a floaty. This can be a huge hurdle at first, but being a gamer for nearly 30 years, it is a great reminder that role-playing games used to make you speak with every character, and only give hints to what you needed to do next.

Elden ring does this, and many may think this is annoying, but the frustrations are alleviated slightly by allowing players to place small chat messages in the world that can point out secrets across the game, provide humor, and suggest methods of how to progress.

The game rewards you for exploration, and gives you a sense of wonder that is reminiscent of games like breath of the wild. Although this game is exceedingly hard, especially when it comes to bosses, the feeling of accomplishment, and progression is real, and keeps you playing the game.

It took me 10-15 tries to kill my first goblin in the game, but once I figured out that the game punishes you for button mashing, and rewards you for proper placement, timing, and strategy, the game became an exercise in patience.

Many of the quests in this game can circumvented, and killing NPC’s can remove access to content. RPG’s have always had this element, and the fact that it doesn’t tell you the impacts of your actions, make you wonder and want to play the game again, with different choices.

Some systems in the game, like the armor can be forgiving, but other aspects like the spells and weapons you choose can be the complete opposite. That being said the difficulty you wish to play at is completely up to you. There is nothing keeping you from going into more difficult areas, levelling up, and getting better weapons before attempting bosses again. Today I watched a player beat the game at level 1, and a few days ago, somebody beat the game in under 30 minutes.

The amount of content in this game is staggering, and across the game it has sections and areas that make it feel more akin to a platformer than an RPG, treating each section of the game more like a puzzle with multiple answers and hidden chests.

I definitely suggest trying to play the game with as little guides as possible, at first, and then the next time you start a new character, use as many guides as you can to find.

If you want a game that gets out of the way, and doesn’t force you to use training wheels, this is the game for you.