Elder Ring. Everyone talking this is super good game. Now will see for myself 
THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED FANTASY ACTION RPG. Rise, Tarnished, and be guided by grace to brandish the power of the Elden Ring and become an Elden Lord in the Lands Between.
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Haven't bought a game in a minute. Elden Ring was it.
The thing I most appreciate about Fromsoft is their design language - no matter your familiarity, each game makes you learn it anew and that makes for a very unique and engaging experience. Played all of the Dark Souls titles, though I preferred Bloodbourne and Sekiro over them. There are things in ALL of them that I don't think I will ever understand, there are sensibilities in some of the challenges and the way they play that I find no enjoyment in, and some of them are the subject of contentious debates. Personally, I think ER has plenty of flaws. The Fromsoft concept is far from perfect. When this game launched, you basically couldn't criticize it openly in very many internet spaces, because everyone was only paying attention to people whining about the difficulty. Suddenly any critique of any mechanic is dismissed and mocked as being from some newbie. The culture around these games is garbage sometimes man. More and more I stick to the games. I swear, getting into conversations on the internet about ER, makes ER a worse game experience, just depending on what pocket of internet you find yourself in.
So that sucked. The game itself is an amazing experience, if not exceedingly frustrating at many points. To an extent, you go in for those challenges - overcoming them makes you feel more godlike than capping-out a level progression and using all of your god-tier weapons/skills. Thing is, I don't think they've ever perfected it. They try different ways of evoking this experience with each new title, and not all of it works. But when ER hits, it HITS and is immersive as hell, like few other open-world games out there. It just has a pretty wide spread of high and low points at times. If you understand this about it, you can have a good time. Though honestly, I don't blame anyone for just rage-quitting any of these games. They are amazing, and super-fun. Elden Ring is a fairly innovative game, particularly in an open-world sense. But never have they been fun for everyone. It's pretty much equal parts euphoria and agony. But I think when people gloss over these games, they tend to forget the net hours they spent stuck dealing with something that actually wasn't that fun for them at the time. For me, those aspects are worth getting past - playing Fromsoft games kinda gives you that mode of "Okay, guess I'm fighting with the game itself now." over the course of playing a few, but it basically makes it so the only way I can ever play any of them is if I am in the right mood. Like, if life isn't going well for me, a game like Elden Ring is going to involve me losing my patience quite often, even knowing the mechanics/weapons/skills/boss patterns. Not all of them are all that fun to begin with imo.
IDK, with such a big and truly ambitious effort, everyone will have their strong likes and dislikes. I got tired of people calling it a masterpiece, as there really is just SO MUCH to get at in the entirety of a game. The best conversations I've had about Elden Ring were with veteran players, who have learned that you CAN criticize the games and who have enough sensibility to see the nuances and draw their own conclusions about them. The greater playerbase killed me with hype to the point where I waited for weeks and weeks for my mind to purge it all out and have my own experience with it. And I saw lots of good, but not the masterpiece people were describing. I actually think it's a mess in some ways.
But it's still fun to play, and maybe even more importantly, a full one of a kind game experience with quite a lot of depth in mechanics and content. There's mystery in every aspect, this intentional obfuscation that makes learning about how the games themselves work feel more like discovering a new world. I think the mindset is brilliant, even if experimenting with that means that the game lands fully into 'fucking obtuse' territory at times. The truth is that there is pretty much always some answer to whatever is getting at you. There are times when you gotta put it down, think it over, and come back later. And then you get to think about how many other people gave up where you now succeed with ease after some insight and practice. And the reason the challenge is then smaller isn't because you got an item or leveled up. You may choose to use a specific one as part of your strategy, but at the end of the day, the reason that super-hard thing is actually easier is because you have gotten better at the game. It's a game that rewards you most for improving your overall abilities and understanding... like, within yourself. Really gives you a good chance at getting that sense of danger and competence. Yes, you have the means, but no, it won't be easy. That's why you, the player are special. You win anyway - on your own.
