Minjun S. reviewed Elden Ring

I've been playing these since Demon's Souls on a Japanese account in 2009, so take this with whatever bias you think it deserves.

The open world was the thing I was most worried about and it turned out to be the point. What made the older games work was the sense that the world was indifferent to you and you were trespassing. Scaling that up should have diluted it. Instead it made it worse, in the good way — you crest a hill and there is a dragon sitting in a field and nothing about the game acknowledges this. No cutscene. No marker. It's just there and it has been there the whole time.

Where it loses something is the legacy dungeons. Stormveil is as good as anything in the series. By Farum Azula I was noticing the seams.

Still the best thing they've made. I didn't expect to say that.