Summary
Welcome to “The Lands Between”! Elden Ring is an open world fantasy action RPG game where there is no holding back on the difficulty. You create your own character, male or female and then choose your class you want to play. There are a few choices and all with its advantages and disadvantages.
The game is developed by FromSoftware. Also known for they other games like Armored Core and Souls series, including Bloodborne and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. They got a good history in this genre. And this time they collaborated with fantasy novelist George R. R. Martin who wrote the novels A Song of Ice and Fire, which were adapted into Game of Thrones.

Rating 9,6
Graphics: 10
Audio: 10
Story: 10
Content: 10
Controls: 9
Gameplay: 9

Graphics
This game delivers on graphics. The world in general looks amazing! There is much to see. The day and night cycle makes any environment that you go through even more dangerous during night time. The good thing during night time is that you can see materials luminating during this time. Environmental wise there are also spots in the world where there are fireflies. It just makes for a breathtaking view of the world. Rain, mist and even lightning strikes are there to change your environment.

Not only topside is the view great but also in the dungeons you encounter. Let it be like a small catacomb or a massive underworld dungeon with deep chasms where you don’t see the bottom anymore.
The models of the enemies are done really well. You can see the details of the armor and weapons being used. Even putting on a lantern on your belt looks awesome, because who doesn’t want to run around like a night watch?

Audio
The theme song you hear in the main menu, it blew me away. Didn’t want to start the game until I got tired of listening to it …. Still listening to it and had to force myself to start a game. Just in case, here is a link to it if you want to listen to it:
Main Menu Theme Youtube
The audio just works well. You can hear the little beetles with their glowing orbs and hunt them down if you do. Nothing bad so far on my end.

Story
There is a story in the world and there are side quests as well. But you have to look for them, explore. In this world there are spots that are called “grace” and they act like teleport and/or save points. Once interacted with them they will give you a guide where to go to. The main story sends you into a general direction and you, as a player, have to look for a solution to either enter an area to continue this quest or go around it and move on in the world without doing that part of a quest. Either way, you can skip parts if you wish.
The world is big and there are a lot of interesting areas to discover. From hidden dungeons, churches, world bosses, challenges, enemy camps, islands, merchants, quest givers and more. It is rewarding to explore; you will always find something.

Content
The content you have access to is mostly crafting. It is a great way to add more support items you’re your inventory to go to war in this world. And in order to get access to all the crafting you will need to have a crafting kit. The cookbooks will learn you all kinds of recipes like darts, food, pots, antidotes and more. Not all cookbooks can be found at a merchant, so if you want to get them all, you have to explore.

Co-op mode is nice but you can not loot static placed items as a client in the open world. It is not like Borderlands co-op where the party goes through the story together, only the host will progress through any content done in that session. Here it is more like a mmo, where you or your friends help each other out in a dungeon or with a boss. Only the host of the session will complete that run. So once you do it, your co-op partner didn’t complete it. The clients that join only have half their health potions and can’t summon any ashes. Ashes are companions you can summon. For some a game breaker but it does balance everything out.

Controls
I played with a Playstation 5 controller on Steam and have not tried out the keyboard and mouse and therefor I cannot comment on that porting. But playing with a controller just feels so natural for me, coming from the Final Fantasy games.
Looking at the options for the game and going through it I must say that I like that you can remap the buttons in this game. Let it be keyboard and mouse (Yes you people complaining about the keys!) and even on the controller. You don’t see that on every port unfortunately. Keeps me from running DS4Windows. A big plus for that.

Gameplay
This game is all I hoped for and there are so many things I wish to cover, and will, but steam is limited on what I can write. The game runs smooth most of the times. Sometimes my frames drop like a brick on my computer but it is not game breaking for me. The game controller I use and the combat just goes great. I die a lot, you will as well. It is a so rewarding after frustrating for so long until you kill that one boss after failing many times.

The A.I. could have been better. I am not talking about the combat but the response in the world. You can have an army in front of you and you hit 1 with a throwing dagger, the others keep on moving and the one you hit pulls out his weapons and comes for you. The other A.I. is like … “why he being hit and drawing weapons … oh well … let’s keep on moving…”

I enjoy this game a lot and hope you do as well. This game isn’t for everyone, it won’t get easier. You will die. Git Gud