Instead of getting lost in Elden Ring, I’m just plain lost

digitaltrends.com:

After spending a few hours with FromSoftware’s latest, I can say that Elden Ring is not for me. A combination of its intense difficulty, lack of direction, and clunky menus mean it has not immersed me in the same way as games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or even Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

“Immersion” is a buzzword often associated with open-world games, as developers try their hardest to enthrall players in the dense universes they create. FromSoftware’s Souls titles always try to engross players through macabre fantasy worlds and intense difficulty curves that demand players dedicate themselves to the game to get the most out of it.

Mixing that formula with a Breath of the Wild-like world is working for many people, but for me, a few elements in my first hours of playing Elden Ring made it quite challenging to care about seeing this experience through. 

Elden Ring has a dark, dreary opening that’s not afraid to dump a bunch of lore and game-specific terms on the player before pitting them against an enemy they are destined to lose to. FromSoftware intricately crafted this opening, but playing it in the days after launch meant that these opening areas were graced with lots of bloodstains of people jumping off ledges and helpful messages like “try fingers, but hole.”

Any intrigue this opening had was immediately dispelled for me when I saw several messages saying some sort of variation of that same lewd comment with tons of positive appraisal. Yes, it’s pretty funny, but I had trouble taking George R.R. Martin’s world and dense lore seriously as I was bombarded with player-driven trolling right at the start of the game. 

Messages and bloodstains, admittedly, are optional features that players really