Head-Meat wrote on Mar 2
nd, 2022 at 5:31pm:
Anyone tried it? Supposedly good.
The basic lore seems copycat AF. But, the game might still be good.
I've put a decent amount of time into the game, and it's easily one of the most entertaining games on note. Also, virtually all PC bugs are worked out now. I crash very, very rarely on 5+ year old alienware system (game auto-saves often so you lose almost nothing on crash).
A lot is similar to DS, but the upgrades are actually significant between the two series (which hopefully Elden Ring is a series or expansion based world). A lot of fantasy lore is copypasta, including D&D if you know historical lore, so the critique is empty.
The beauty of Elden Ring (or DS) is it doesn't weigh you down with it. You want to dig into it, it's there, but reading a ton of convos like you never will in DDO or other games, totally unnecessary. You get just enough lore to lead you on. You want to read a book, go read a book.
The cookbook/resource/crafting implementation is the best I've seen, and a huge upgrade from DS (also blows away DDO's crap-fting). You can only craft what you've found a cookbook for. You can gather or farm resources (depending whether they are mobs drops or respawns), and you can craft anywhere, anytime, out of combat. Weapon crafting is similar, but a bigger and deeper extension of the DS system (goes way, way higher). Ashes of War are a great upgrade too, and eliminate the pro/con situation with permanent upgrades that one had with the old infusions system.
Summoning pools instead of random "I leave a summon sign where I want" locations makes summoning other players a breeze.
NPC summons which now are things you carry and can use where appropriate, are aggressive, smart, and fucking light years ahead of any DDO NPC ever was from jump.
The mobs are next level great implementations (number of bosses are nuts too). Nioh II is great with mobs, but Elden Ring is something else entirely. Having to learn/know each moveset, switch between patience and aggressive, until you're strong enough to single hit the low level ones makes one actually have to be good at combat (or you can just strafe, which is hella slower).
The open world is also a huge upgrade. DS always has some multi-paths through it, but this takes it to a whole different level. You can end up at areas as a low level character (< 20) where you should be in the 80 - 100 range before tackling. Most every boss is optional in terms of timing, meaning you can return to tackle them later if you want.
The mount, which is a new concept, is a ton of fun. I've beaten some bosses totally on horseback via either fighting or archery. Fighting other mounted enemies is also great.
Almost every "negative" you could find with DS it made serious improvements on. You can see how the game blurs the lines between MMO and open world RPGs with transitory grouping. By keeping each persons economy instanced to their game, you don't have Chinese blowing up the game world, but you can still group with ease. Nioh's concept is similar. This honestly is probably the future of gaming in the adventure space. Shared economies just have too many opportunities for malfeasance and fuckery.
The only thing that's really left to tackle is reactive AI based on player behavior, but given cloud based data tools coming online, that's probably 5-10 years away before it's a norm.
Elden Ring will be game of the year for 2022 and deserves it. Nioh II was great, but this is stronger than that. I am crossing my fingers they have at least a couple expansions planned for the world.
I highly recommend playing it, if for no other reason, seeing how DDO fucked up.
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Elden Ring (Read 2185 times)
