I mean.... come on Ubisoft, nobody in the world would have a team which designs levels that can go toe to toe with Dark Souls or Hollow Knight and choose to do nothing with it
The gameplay loop is tailored for a focused game like Dark Souls 3 not for a sprawling open world like Elden Ring but there are other factors that just rub salt on the wound.
I'm not going to sugar coat this, the Open World in Elden Ring is bloated as hell, the side dungeons are copy-pasted and feel good only for the initial few hours and then they are no better than Ubisoft outposts. They also drag down the entire experience because a game like Elden Ring lives and dies by its mystery factor, the moment I realise I'm somehow going to fight either an ulcerated tree spirit or an erdtree burial watch dog or a magma wyrm, I feel exhausted even before setting foot in the dungeon.
The world is too big for what it offers. A lot of re used bosses, A LOT. The game (base+dlc) is at least 170+ hours and if you count the unique ones (that appear only once), then there won't be more than 20(including optional bosses). To put that into perspective Sekiro, a game that's 10% shorter than Elden Ring has 11 unique encounters. That's straight up terrible.
The game presents an expansive open space but it's not even a world, they all just feel soulless, like the NPCs don't even interact with each other, there's nothing going on in the world, they all just stand there, wait for me and perform their assigned action when triggered.
Finally, inconsistent difficulty curve. I know they can't do much about it as it's an inherent design flaw of a challenging open world game, but I gotta mention it.
Today I've realised that the franchise has been rebooted totally 6 times, if you take the fact that it has never been a commercial juggernaut except for only one iteration, it becomes even more impressive. This franchise just refuses to die lol.
You're about to give a lecture about game design and you can use one of these titles to demonstrate.
Which one are you choosing and why?
A Fallen Templar Knight going through the European spiritual underworld learning what the church has done to their kind.
I can't tell how uncannily well it fits the game, the deaths all of a sudden become part of the spiritual journey. The undead aspect is a chef's kiss for my story.
One is the game naturally pushing the player to explore more.
And the other is a signal to the independent quality of the bosses.
Tired of experiencing racism online? Well there's a lot worse happening out there. Misogyny, Pedophilia, Harrasment, Oppression against the minorities everything is happening in the name of 'DANK' and video games and the discourse around them is the primary battleground. I'm not here to lecture you on what to like and what to not but if you don't like gay people in your game don't play the damn game and let people decide for themselves, if you don't like IGN reviews, unsubscribe or block them and don't yell why IGN is woke, because (I don't know how many of you will believe this but) all this bullshit surrounding relating India with poop and bad smell took root when they thought it's cool to make fun of LGBTQ, Women or whatever the target minority. Making fun of someone due to their appearance, gender, sexual orientation, nationality or whatever is inherently bad, it's not cool, not edgy, it's straight up cruel. The Gamergate scandal is one of the best examples of it, Steve Bannon one of Epstein's friends legit tested his political strategies that how people, particularly hateful young men consume content that may not be true but induces anger and rage and turn that rage into political benefits. Epstein himself is involved in such acts like influencing 4chan to introduce the /pol/ tag which is a corner stone of the gamergate and culture war bullshit. So don't give yourself into the madness and vote with your wallets or your time not with rage.
Long live video games.
Left wing political party maari pesa sonna it company executives maari pesitu irukanunga
I'm not saying the sexualization of women in warrior within isn't wrong but it's a product of its time and it did not make it its central focus, unlike certain games whose central marketing strength is just jiggling ass