To get it out of the way: your mileage will vary when it comes to performance. It's not a quality of your rig issue: some people with modern high end rigs can run it fine, some cannot, and some with below min laptops can run it fine, others cannot.

If it does run, it runs fairly well: there are occassional stutters, but at least for me personally, they're never longer than a second or two, and they're relatively infrequent.

So keep in mind: while those talking about the poor performance are not wrong insofar as it is happening to them, that experience is not universal amongst all players. I'm not saying "I'm still enjoying the game, and am just tolerating invisible enemies, constant stuttering, and twenty FPS", I'm saying that those things aren't happening to me at all. Likewise for many others. It might happen to you, it might not, but unfortunately, you can't really know if it will until you try the game.

Of course, if you'd rather not take that chance, you can always wait for patches. Unlike Cyberpunk, which underneath its many bugs was an underdeveloped idea of a game, Elden Ring is a gem of a game.

I still haven't left the initial zone ten hours into the game, and I'm having a blast. One moment I'm riding past a lake, I find a tiled circle up a hill and can go in and fight a boss. Boss kicks my ass, but there's a special checkpoint just nearby which means I'm able to respawn and get back into the fight in under a minute.

Beat the boss and get his cool sword, decide to go check out other end of the lake. Calls in a buddy (summon system is probably the fastest it's ever been, within a second after he drops sign, and I've used the sign-revealing consumable, his appears), and we run off to go look. Did I mention that sprinting out of combat no longer consumes stamina?

We run under a crumbling bridge and skellingtons fall down in front and behind us. We each pick a side and fight them off. He gets a scimitar, because summons can get enemy drops now! We had to heal a bit, but now, once you kill an enemy pack, you get all your flasks back, so we're good.

After dropkicking an NPC invader, we notice a cave. He desummons so I can get him in the cave. We walk in and it's gloomy and hard to see. I accidentally hit a tripwire connected to bells. Suddenly, thieves are all around us with daggers. We fight them off, though there are some close calls.

Reach the end of the cave, there's a chest but no boss. Warily open the chest, just cloth armor. Suddenly, that ABSOLUTE BASTARD PATCHES drops in from above. We fight him for a bit, but he pleads for his life, so I stop. He gives me a gesture, and says he'll sell me some stuff later. I run out and rest at the grace, pass time (day/night cycle now exists).

Come back in. Patches is selling some gear, but I notice a new chest on the back wall. I go and open it: maybe it's a reward for clearing the cave?

*You have been ensnared by a teleporter trap*

As Patches laughes at me, I am whisked away to a loading screen. Few seconds later, I'm in a forest, just outside of the zone I actually have a map to. More importantly, there's a GIANT ♥♥♥♥ OFF MONSTER BEAR (as in, size of a bus or two) clawing at a tree twenty feet away.

Pulls up map to fast travel to safety. "You are still under the trap. You cannot fast travel again until you rest at a grace."

Turn to the right: giant bear.

Left: Giant bear.

Summons horse, and rides like a bat out of hell, whimpering as I aggro a bear and I hear it crashing through the trees behind me (large enemies can knock down environmental stuff like trees!).

Genuinely, this game has just been so enjoyable, and I've barely even scratched it. It's both a refinement of past soulsborne games, and a game of its own.

If you haven't played previous FromSoft titles, and are just coming here based on the reviews, it will probably take you a bit to get into the rhythm of it. Don't let anyone else fool you: no one comes into the series a master. You will die, you will lose runes, you will curse the foes you face.

But when it clicks, when you break through that enemy that has been smacking you down, there is no greater sense of validation in gaming.

Again, all of this is with the caveat that you may not be able to run the game. I do recommend the game, but with the caveat that you may end up as one of the unfortunate souls whose given hardware configuration doesn't let the game run (though it does seem that it works for more than it doesn't).

Oh, how I love this game. The ways in which it messes with perception, where the solution to a problem may be right and front of you and you can't see it, all of it I love.

And sure, you can call it a 'puzzle' game, you technically are solving puzzles. But that fails to encapsulate the way in which the game provides hints in the way of life lessons, or in the way that many puzzles operate on their own rulesets that you have to figure out.

Truly, this game Defies Description (And deserves more than an 81!)