Elden Ring is Glorious

“And Is Full of Way More Bosses Than I Expected”

Hey, you want to know what I’ve actually been doing this weekend instead of writing this blog post? Working. And what I’ve been doing besides working? Shitting and sleeping. And besides that? Spending time with Cheyenne, Nick, and my two other friends in Minnesota. And besides that? Playing Elden Ring.

Hah, there it is! That’s the catch this week!

Elden Ring is an incredible video game. It is huge, it is exciting, it is interesting, it is beautiful, and it is fun. I’ve only had a chance to play it once since it came out on February 24th at 5pm my time (sorry, everyone who had to wait until the 25th), but the time I’ve spent with it has been wonderful. How do I know the exact date and time of its release, you might ask? Because I’ve been, along with every other FromSoft fan out there, anticipating this game since the summer of 2019, and counting the days til its release. Yeah. They announced this game way back when I was still in the backwoods of New Mexico. I know that’s standard game development time, but it does feel like we’ve been waiting a long time. I’m super glad that it was worth it.

And oh boy, was it! The one time that I’ve had to spend with the game since it came out? I sat down and did nothing but play this game for seven hours straight. I had to tear myself away at the end. I didn’t get bored or fed up the entire time. I didn’t want to quit, but I had to go to bed because I had work the next day and my eyes were starting to bleed. Seven hours. That’s basically a full workday that I devoted just to playing this game, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of what it has to offer. And you know what? I didn’t feel bad about it at all. For once in my life, I didn’t feel like I had wasted the day or hadn’t done enough work or that I should have been doing something else with my time. If you know me, you know what a rarity something like that is. This game is so good it temporarily cured my self-loathing.

I jest, of course. I will never truly be free of the shackles to progress that I have forged for myself. But for a little bit, this game became one of the few things that help me ignore them almost entirely. If you’re wondering, no, this isn’t going to become some sort of a dependence thing. This post is not some sort of IRL Chekhov’s gun to my slow descent into gaming madness. It’s just really, really, good, and for one day I let myself play with my new toy instead of doing the dozen better things I could do with my time.

But I said it once and I’ll say it again, oh boy, what a way to spend time it is! For those of you who have lives, Elden Ring is the newest game in a long line of ball-busting, ass-kicking, chart-topping action roleplaying games from the inimatable From Software and Hidetaka Miyazaki, a Japanese developer who delights in building poison swamps and causing pain. In the game, you play as an undying husk clawing your way up from your early grave, fighting tooth and nail to get beat the shit out of everything that moves to get enough power until, eventually, you can kill god. Throughout your adventure, you’ll ride horses (actually, one horse), smash in the skulls of a bunch of dudes, punch a dragon in the face, rip the arms off of a man made of arms, and die. You’ll die a lot.

Elden Ring isn’t something that came out of nowhere, however; From Software has one of the strongest gaming pedigrees outside of Nintendo, producing quality games that never fail to disappoint. Elden Ring is the newest in a long line of unforgiving action roleplaying games, stretching all the way back from Sekiro to Bloodborne to Dark Souls to Demons Souls. I have written about several of these games in the past. And now, finally, it is time to write about Elden Ring. Sort of.

See, here’s the thing. I could give you a review right now, just based on the seven-ish hours I’ve played, but that would be premature, I believe. If I’m gonna write something about this masterpiece of a game, it had better include every dog darn thing in the game. And to do that? It’s probably gonna take me close to fifty hours to finish everything. Probably more, because I’m slow and take my sweet-ass time exploring. And you know what? That’s ok. I may only get an hour or two a week to play the game, or I may get sidetracked by some other game, but that’s ok. Because I want to savor this experience. I’ve been waiting a long fucking time, and I’m not gonna rush myself. Because this game has surprises around every corner.

Let me give you an example. Minor spoilers! Don’t read further if you want to be surprised! I was running around, slicing at dogs off the back of my horse because I have somehow wound up playing as a red-haired, green-skinned holy knight abomination who scowls mightily with his overgrown forehead and sunken cheek bones. All shall crumble before the might of his dumb-ass longsword and well-placed jumping attacks. But, anyway, I was smacking and smashing around and I came across a weird hole in the ground in the Dragon-Burnt Ruins. Alright, yeah, I’ve seen these before, they lead to a cave full of treasure. I could already picture it now, some sort of powerful magic staff to let me cast cool, shiny spells instead of using an oversized can-opener to castrate the Scottish. But alas, my greed was my downfall. Misunderstanding the warnings outside the cave, I opened the chest at the end and…

Poof! In a puff of smoke, I’m sucked into the chest and teleported somewhere else. Trapped in a teleport spell! It said. Alright, fine, I’ll just probably be dropped in a cave nearby full of tougher enemies and fight my way out, no big deal. Wrong. It was a big deal. This damn chest, not a half-mile from the start of the game, teleported me deep into these crazy mines halfway across the fucking game. And suddenly, I was stuck. Trapped like a dinosaur in a tar pit, sinking slowly into despair, I found myself unable to teleport out of or even escape the caves I was in. The enemies were not soldiers, as they had been in the ruins, but instead were enslaved men, turned into stone from working in the mines, and horrible human-centipede hybrids that shoot a dozen needles out of their back to attack. And they were all way, way stronger than I was. Uh oh.

So I fought my way out. I snuck around, backstabbed some enemies for easy kills, used some of those well-placed jump attacks to defeat the centipede men, and after about two dozen deaths, I made my way out of the cave. Stepping into the light of day, I found myself in the bottom of a poison swamp that instakills you if you step in it for two seconds. Son of a bitch, Miyazaki. This game does not hold punches.

I could have teleported out of there at that point, but I decided to take my horse and run around a bit before going back to where I was more appropriately leveled. And in my brief running around, I came across a ruined city, monstrous dogs that looked like T-Rex, a whole-ass dragon, at least two other caves, a quest line I wasn’t supposed to find until twenty hours into the game, and more of the centipede men. Just wandering around. Chillin, walking their angry dogs. It was fucking weird. I was shook by the end of that harrowing ordeal. My green-skinned ass tumbled his way back to the start, where I could ram my head against a wall in peace and beat up regular dudes instead of rock-men and dragons made of mushrooms. I’ll take my dragons made of skin, thank you.

But, yeah. That’s my introduction to Elden Ring. And if you read that and thought, “wow, that sounds like a game I’d enjoy,” then you might have slight masochistic tendencies, but hey! More power to you! If you’re reading this and already knew about Elden Ring, though, you’ve probably already made up your mind about whether or not you’re gonna get it. But if you haven’t, just know that it’s just as good as every other FromSoft game, and much, much better than most of them. Play Elden Ring. It is, as I said, glorious.

In fact, I’m gonna go play it some more right now, in the few hours I have left before I got to New Orleans for a bachelor party. For the second time. At least I’ll be there for Mardi Gras this time!