There is a particular kind of gaming moment that most players only experience a handful of times in their lives: the moment a game redefines what you thought was possible. Elden Ring is one of those moments. It is FromSoftware’s most ambitious project, the product of a collaboration with George R.R. Martin that seems, on paper, like an odd pairing. In practice, it produced one of the finest games ever made.
This is not hyperbole written in the heat of launch excitement. This review comes after 80 hours across the full game, a full NG+ run, and enough distance to assess it clearly. Elden Ring is exceptional. Here is why.
The Open World Changes Everything
Every FromSoftware game before Elden Ring was built around corridors: dense, intricate, brilliantly designed corridors, but corridors nonetheless. The Lands Between is something structurally different. It is a genuine open world, and the question FromSoftware had to answer was whether their design philosophy could survive the transition.
It not only survived: it thrived.
The Lands Between is not a map padded with icons. There are no towers to climb to reveal objectives. There is no checklist of activities distributed across the terrain to justify the scale. Instead, every corner of the world hides something that required intention to place there: a dungeon accessible only if you spot a hidden path, a boss that appears from a fog you thought was decorative, a weapon that completely reframes your build if you find it early.
The density of discovery is the defining feature of Elden Ring’s open world. You are never more than ten minutes from something that makes you stop and pay attention. After 30 hours you will still be discovering areas that change your mental map of the world. That is an extraordinary achievement.
Combat Is the Best FromSoftware Have Ever Made
The Sekiro influence is impossible to miss, and welcome. Combat in Elden Ring is tighter, more reactive, and more satisfying than Dark Souls ever was. The addition of jumping opens up entirely new approach vectors: jumping attacks deal enormous posture damage, jumping over sweeps avoids damage that would break your guard, and the verticality it introduces to encounters fundamentally changes how fights feel.
The posture system, carried over from Sekiro, rewards sustained pressure. Aggressive play against the right enemies breaks them open for a critical strike. Passive play gets you killed. The combat teaches you to be bold, which makes every fight feel like a genuine contest rather than a cautious dance.
The boss design deserves particular attention. Elden Ring has more memorable boss encounters than any other game in the genre. Margit the Fell Omen is a masterclass in teaching the player how difficult the game is going to be. Radahn is an event. Malenia is among the most discussed boss encounters in recent gaming history, and for good reason: she is brutally difficult and precisely designed. Every major boss in this game feels like it was built to be remembered.
Build Variety Rewards Experimentation
The RPG systems underneath the combat are the deepest in the series. Intelligence builds, Faith builds, Arcane builds, pure Strength, Dexterity with bleed, Sorcerer with Moonveil: each creates a fundamentally different experience. The game does not funnel you towards a playstyle. It rewards whoever builds something and commits to it.
The Ashes of War system deserves mention. This is the mechanism by which you assign skills to weapons, and it opens up an enormous design space. Melee weapons can be given the ability to cast projectiles. Shields can gain offensive skills. The combinations are deep enough to carry multiple playthroughs without repetition.
The Lore and World-Building
George R.R. Martin’s contribution to the world is most visible in the architecture of the lore rather than the moment-to-moment narrative. The story of Elden Ring is told, as is the FromSoftware tradition, through item descriptions, environmental clues, and the spaces between explicit dialogue. What sets it apart from previous entries is the quality of that underlying mythology.
The Golden Order, the Erdtree, the demigods and their Great Runes: the lore has an internal coherence that rewards obsessive reading without requiring it. You can finish the game without understanding a significant portion of what happened. That is fine. The game works as pure action. But if you want to go deeper, there is extraordinary depth waiting.
Worth Knowing
Elden Ring runs poorly on PC at launch. This is an honest caveat that belongs in any review: the PC port had significant performance issues at release, with stuttering affecting even high-end hardware. FromSoftware patched this over several updates, and as of the current version (and the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion released in 2024), performance is vastly improved.
If you are playing now, rather than at launch, you will have a much smoother experience. If you have the choice of platform, the PS5 version remains technically more stable.
The game also has a steep early difficulty curve that will turn off some players. This is worth being honest about. The first 10-15 hours are harder than what follows in some respects, because you have fewer tools and less understanding of the systems. Push through the Stormveil Castle section and you will find the game opens up considerably.
Shadow of the Erdtree (2024 DLC)
The expansion released in June 2024 and represents some of the finest content FromSoftware have ever produced. New weapon types, new boss encounters, a new area with its own internal logic: Shadow of the Erdtree is the reason to return if you finished the base game. It is also correctly tuned to be extremely challenging: approach it with a fully developed late-game character rather than attempting it at an underpowered level.
Verdict
Elden Ring is a masterpiece. That word is overused in games coverage, but it applies here without qualification. It is the kind of game that makes you reassess what you thought open-world design was capable of, and it does so without abandoning the precise, demanding combat that defines FromSoftware’s work.
If you have ever bounced off a Souls game before, Elden Ring is the most accessible entry point the studio has produced. The open world means you are never truly stuck: if one boss is destroying you, the game gives you other directions to develop before returning. The difficulty remains, but the structure is more forgiving than Dark Souls ever was.
If you have loved every FromSoftware game, this is the peak. Play it.
Score: 10/10 - Essential
Reviewed on PC and PS5. Over 80 hours played across both platforms, including Shadow of the Erdtree DLC.
