Elden Ring review: Even the haters will be impressed

digitaltrends.com:

If you have strong feelings about FromSoftware’s games either way, you probably already know what you’ll think of Elden Ring. If you’re a Dark Souls veteran, there’s a fair chance that this takes the throne as your favorite game of all time. For haters who find Souls games tedious and punishing, the praise will sound like a cruel joke. Both sides will have a point.

There’s a good reason that Souls games are so polarizing, and Elden Ring brings the divide into focus. On one hand, it’s an astonishing achievement. The action RPG is frequently mesmerizing, offering the hands down best open-world experience since, you guessed it, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But to give the detractors their due, it’s also a game that demands perfection from players while refusing to clean up the series’ sloppiest quirks.

Don’t let that last part scare you off, though. Despite its lack of finesse, Elden Ring is an all-enveloping adventure filled with incredible landscapes, fantastic enemy design, and deep RPG customization. Even the haters will find something to love here.

Elden Ring is going to make a lot of people happy. It takes the ethos of Dark Souls and puts it into a more expansive package without throwing out FromSoftware’s signature ideas. It’s a dark, high-fantasy action-RPG tightly packed with challenging boss fights — a whole lot of them.

Naturally, combat is the heart of Elden Ring. Like any Souls game, battles are all about evading an enemy’s ferocious attack patterns and waiting for the precise moment to strike. What stands out this time is just how many options players have when it comes to creating a combat build. At the start of my journey, I was carefully prodding enemies at a distance with a lance and casting