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This is the final in a six-part series exploring the game Elden Ring and its design. You can read the prior entry on the game’s end-game bosses and balance here.

I began this whole series in an effort to discuss my thoughts and feelings towards Elden Ring in greater honest detail than I had previously this year. Going by word count, I’ve at least succeeded in discussing the game in far greater detail. To what end, however? Based on that initial essay, it was to try and help illustrate why some are so pleased with this game despite exercising some of the same open-world tropes or crimes as other developers.

While I think I somewhat achieved that goal, I’ve ultimately come to the conclusion that Elden Ring is forgiven because most people playing a game such as this are simply looking to lose themselves in something fun for a few hours at a time. There is a very small population of players, critics, and analysts taking a microscope to any given game in order to figure out how it all works or could be made better. Perhaps these analytical sorts are motivated by pure academic or intellectual interest and curiosity, or perhaps they’re just trying to understand why they came away underwhelmed when so many others are claiming the title to be a modern masterpiece. There will also always be the loud voices of those that simply dislike the game because “it sucks”, or “it’s too hard”, or “it doesn’t explain anything”, though I doubt many of them even understand why they like or dislike what they do. Similarly, many of the fans on social media and Reddit that will endlessly defend it likely don’t know what it is they love about Elden Ring so much. They’ll have inklings and they’ll quote those that seem to hit the nail on the head, but in the end it all comes down to gut feelings.

When I was first playing Elden Ring, my own gut was whispering “masterpiece” to my ears. Everything just felt right, the hands of the clock seemed to speed on by I was so engaged, and every moment spent not playing the game was spent thinking about it. Uncharted corners of the map were beckoning for my attention and incomplete dungeons were turning to new objectives now that I’d powered up some. It was a game that drew me in on every level, from the moment-to-moment of playing to the idle time spent waiting for work to end so I could log some more hours.

Yet familiarity breeds contempt, and the more time I spend playing or thinking about Elden Ring the more I cannot help but feel as if it’s no masterpiece at all.

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This article is the fifth in a series exploring the game Elden Ring and its design. You can read the prior entry on the game’s many dungeons and bosses here.

Starting this piece I realized I may need to give myself a break before working on any further Piece-by-Piece follow-up series, writing them in full or mostly full before posting them onto the website. It’s not because keeping up with the weekly pace has been surprisingly difficult – though a sudden medical disruption threw me completely off track. I’ve otherwise been surprisingly more capable of keeping this up than any prior attempts at regular columns and series on this website! No, it’s more that my initial outline has not gone precisely where I first had anticipated it. I should have known this would happen, as it’s the same issue I frequently ran into when writing scripts for my video essays.

I emphatically agreed with Joseph Anderson when I watched his feature-length video essay on Elden Ring and declared the “final stretch” to be unreasonable. He had effectively illustrated how multiple later-game bosses were designed not for the combat stylings of Dark Souls, but Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. I had also found other videos with similar titles and emphasis on the imperfection of the game. I had seen others express identical feelings regarding late stage bosses, and then would witness the mockery of these opinions in meme format on the game’s subreddit.

I would have kept on insisting that the game’s latter third or fourth is horrifically balanced, but at the same time I’ve admitted within this series that my Dex-build was an awful one. Just by swapping out to a strength build I’ve found much more success in damage scaling and poise-breaking with little adjustment to my overall playstyle and strategy. My knowledge has certainly deepened, turning a pair of once troublesome burial watchdogs into a piece of cake by disrupting one with crystal darts and turning them against one another. It’s an example of using a subtle and surprising game mechanic to make my second run through the game even “easier”, though I’m still primarily relying on basic melee attacks and spirit ashes in order to take out my foes.

Then, the Friday before this post is scheduled to go up, YouTuber NeverKnowsBest posted his Elden Ring analysis. Needless to say, it got me thinking, and it got me thinking a lot.

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