The Only Thing They Fear Is Brome

It's great!
(hope you have friends)

Great game!

Rough around the edges but you're not taking this too serious anyways.

I love the main motif and I love that it's recognisable in most tracks!

You can opt out of footsteps and constant panting by selecting a certain character which is nice.
The outfits and characters look nice. (some look weirdly very similar)
Some cutscenes use a 4 by 3 aspect ratio and B&W for a nice emphasis.

The game runs fine, not amazing.
Graphic settings don't affect the visuals too much (?), but it looks just ok on low settings anyways.
(Which seem necessary to get good frames on a mid-range PC)

Parries, dodges, etc. are all great ideas but the quality of execution varies greatly.
Sometimes you can parry as the attack connects and sometimes there is seemingly no animation at all, you just have to "feel" the animation.
Other attacks have obvious audio cue's, those cue's are often reused for different attacks with different timings which easily puts you off.
Sometimes the audio is literally off sync from the animation, have fun timing those parries.
There are slow motion effects on most attacks just before the strike connects, so you have timing mix ups on literally everything.
(Slomo's have several different timings, some are slower than others, even within the same attack string)
Some enemies have visual effects on their weapons, like a flaming sword etc.
These effects indicate nothing, do not use them.
They're there to mask the animations.

Attacks have descriptions before they actually happen, giving you a hint of whats to come.
Some attacks use the same exact description as another attack.
They might even share the same start up animation, but the timing to counter is vastly different.
Funny.

Some attacks have specific counters to them. (Gradient & Jump)
They can be single attacks or at the end of an attack string.
They can bug out and skip the last attack throwing you off once again.
Timing on these also vary, your very first Gradient parry (the introduction to it) is very lenient and you can press it as the visual effect occurs.
The rest of them you have to press as the effect fades. Sometimes right after the effects fades and sometimes extremely delayed after the effect has fully faded.
Very intuitive.
Jumps are just easy and serve no challenge ever unless you literally fall asleep.

Skills have Quick Time Events which enhance the damage and/or effects of said skill.
Again a nice idea to keep turn based gameplay active but it's just not interesting.
It's always "press X when cursor reaches the golden line"
There's ample time on every single skill and it's always just one button. (X)

It's "turn based" yet some enemies just ignore turns to do stuff.

The combat relies on muscle memory to parry, dodge, etc.
But the cues to learn such muscle memory are very unreliable.
Very French.

The fights get progressively worse the farther I get into the story.
I stopped caring about loot, side quests or much of anything.
There are enemies everywhere and I really don't want to engage in combat anymore.
(what else is there to this game...)

Worst part is knowing how good it feels when combat does work.


There are many parts where you might like to manually save but you can't.
Autosave is the only way, you can sometimes manipulate the menus so the game autosaves but even that is unreliable.

One of my saves corrupted at 35h.
The game keeps your old saves and you can use those to recover, which is great.

God forbid you're not a god gamer and you die at fights.
You'll have to run back to the boss and watch the unnecessary letterbox slow-mo walk before the cutscene, every single retry. Or skip almost 30 lines of dialogue manually every time.
You'll start wishing there was a retry option for bosses.

Sometimes (quite often) the game forces you on to a single character for a boss.
There are Pictos for solo fights which you could equip for these.
(you will not be informed before the fight)
I just really don't enjoy sitting in menus doing tedious switching and swapping constantly.

Sometimes the game will force you to use a certain party composition instead of one character.
(you will not be informed before the fight)
You either try to perfect parry everything with your sub-optimal weaker party or rebuild all of your characters.
Hope you like menus.

Your stats don't matter much, just put all points in speed & damage since you get all your def/HP from Pictos' anyway.

All I want now is to finish the main quest and uninstall.
(I did.)

Not that I care too much about any of the characters either.
The introduction is nice, the meat of the story is too cryptic for too long.
Everything does get revealed quite nicely


The areas themselves aren't worth exploring.
Every zone has a nice visual theme, but that's all they really have:

The "dungeon" areas are not interesting to explore.
Manoeuvring the zones is done with 2012's leftover yellow grabby climbing platforms, yellow magic ropes and a magic grapple hook that transfers you from predetermined points A and B.
All which break the scenery and stick out ugly.
Frankly unnecessary and boring "platforming" where you either hold a direction or press a button, never both.
Go to ledge, press Square, proceed to climb/grappling hook/rappel.

You don't have to (nor have the authority to) explore the stages properly.
Invisible walls everywhere.

The game is filled with tiny insignificant bugs like:

Movement direction being random after loading screens.
Thousands of small objects on floors that you get stuck on.
Skill menus displaying nothing if you swap pages too fast.


I bought into the hype, thinking I'd finally get why people enjoy these games.
I really am happy for the devs, they deserve the praise.

Objectively it's a great game, it's some details (mostly combat) that ruin it for me.

Hard to find relevant info from the UI while in match, targeting sucks, climbing sucks (patched), not enough maps, quests are whack, parties of 3 only.

And worst of all it doesn't seem like a game that'll survive long term.

Still fun after months.

Very fun if you do have friends that like Elden Ring combat.