MMoexp: The best way I can describe the experience of playing a Souls game
Elden Ring manages to pull off the amazing ability to make you feel Elden Ring Runes small and yet able to create shifts in the tectonics of the world around you.
If you are one of Tarnished members, a group that consists of "chosen" "undead" who return to the mythical world known by the name of Lands Between long after an unidentified exile, Elden Ring puts you in the role of both visitor and vaccine. The shattered phenomenon that is known as"the Elden Ring resulted in the death of demi-gods as well as the end of the great kingdoms creating a massive mess for players to clean up by a variety of methods upon your arrival. As with the more desolated setting of the earlier Souls games The Lands Between is a shadow of what it was before, and the miserable few that still have to sort through the rubble pick through the rubble based on an urge to move instead of a concerted effort to reconnect the pieces. It's not easy for the human race to endure in Elden Ring so much as it plods along with its eyes fixed on the ground, unable face the end of the world.
The best way I can describe the experience of playing a Souls game such as Elden Ring is to compare it to the cost of renting or purchasing a used role-playing game in the days of cartridges. In the past, before the game's progress was saved on memory cards, consoles or even on cloud storage, playing a previously owned game was a chance to be in contact with the history of someone else's. This usually resulted in a few tedious minutes of wiping the cartridge's internal memory, sometimes it provided you with the perfect opportunity to experience the ending of the game before taking your first steps. After paying a ridiculous amount to get a boxed copy of Super Mario RPG as a child playing through a saved game and observing how characters reacted to the final boss' defeat was like going to a museum in an alternate dimension. In reality, the Mushroom Kingdom had moved on and I was merely an uninvolved tourist in the digital body of somebody they once knew.
This goes beyond story or setting to gameplay as well. Where a fresh save file in many games can bombard you with tutorial pop-up after tutorial, to slowly ease you to its challenges, Elden Ring's lived-in world generally treats you as if you've been there before. Sure, there's a easily skipped tutorial that teaches the essentials, but for most of the time, it's down for you to master Elden Ring's unique language of visuals.
Gold flecks that float in the air sparkles suggest the presence semi-hidden checkpoints. Statues depicting old men in hunches signal the entrance to catacomb-like underground dungeons. The magically animated rock piles suggest an alternative dimension prison cell that has a mini-boss near. Elden Ring does this so effortlessly and at tiny scale that you'll be able to recognize the telegraphed body language of even the least dangerous enemies and formulating counters without knowing exactly when you learned that information.
Others have written about Elden Ring as slapstick, an Arthurian story meets Looney Tunes situation that births increasingly hilarious moments despite the game's serious trappings. Much like taking your mind off for some time to relax while laughing over Johnny Knoxville getting kicked in the nuts cheap Elden Ring Items, giving yourself the freedom to develop the correct mindset is the initial step in truly embracing what Elden Ring offers.