Review: Elden Ring is From Software’s most vital game since Demon’s Souls

videogameschronicle.com:

We could’ve spent months reviewing Elden Ring. Not because we needed that time to beat a particular boss, and not because it was so mentally taxing that we could only play it in short bursts, but because the game feels so incredibly massive and dense with mystery, that it feels like the public will only get a true sense of the magic of the game after it’s been out for a very long time.

Taking the Souls formula and applying it to an open world would be one thing, and frankly, if that’s all Elden Ring was, it would probably be warmly received by fans. However, for a game that has carried expectation in a way that few titles can approach, we’d hoped Elden Ring would try to be something more: to be the new gold standard for the genre and to be the largest paradigm shift for modern action-adventure games since Demon’s Souls landed over a decade ago.

And while it doesn’t quite reach those expectations, it’s still an absolutely incredible experience that fans will spend the next 6 months exploring.

When Demon’s Souls first released, the community that sprung up around that game was one that was desperate to discover every last secret. It was something entirely new, and while online communities for games like this had existed before, there was a momentum and scale to the early Souls community that contributed massively to the popularity of the series today.

If you imported a PS3 copy of Demon’s Souls from Japan, it was an adventure into the unknown. Elden Ring recaptures that sense of possibility in a way that no game in the series has since.

When you enter The Lands Between, you’ll be greeted with such a large landscape that it doesn’t feel like you’re playing a Souls game anymore. While the interconnected nature of the Souls maps