Hashtag Controversial Radical Flaming Hottake of the year incoming, but Elden Ring? Great game! That said, I’m also massively into story-based games, so let’s see how Elden Ring stacks up so far (been playing for around a week)… But first:
More Highlights: I rode through a pasture and spent 5 minutes looking for an NPC calling out to me before giving up on the assumption that he’s invisible!
Rodericka’s an odd lass, but hope her training pays off.
The best thing about not knowing how to upgrade things for a long time is by the time I figured it out, I was just sitting on a dump-truck of smithing stones and didn’t feel guilty about boosting my katana like the filthy weeb I am!
Being greeted with Caelid after trundling about a labyrinthine cave gave me an existential crisis, I liked it a lot.
I beat Margit The Wonky Stick Waggler yesterday, a nocturnal knight with a flail, a creepy-crawly knight with more in common with Usain Bolt than The Mountain and a smattering of other mini bosses.
My Experience With The Story: The game starts off with an opening storybook-style cutscene explaining the key inciting incidents as to why the world is how it is. I’m no lore expert, so apologies if I misinterpret anything, but the opening, as I understood it:
Long ago, the people of the Golden Order lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when some plonker broke the Elden Ring. Lacking the necessary receipt for a refund, the next best thing was redistributing the broken pieces to other major lords and powerful folk of the lands. The broken pieces corrupted those who took them on and you’re a bright-eyed bushy-tailed bloke or bloke-ette trying to become the new Elden Lord by defeating the current Elden Ring shard owners because that turned out so well for them… Swear I’m only being drippingly smug for comedy’s sake, I was actually very intrigued, despite possibly not following on everything.
Side note, the opening cutscene mentioned a political assassination of sorts called ‘the night of the black knives’. That made my ears perk because I’ve heard of a similarly-named real world historical event, the night of the long knives, a series of assassinations of political opponents to Hitler.
While I have enough intrigue in the story to not be apathetic, I’m personally not a huge fan of the detective-style “piece things together by vague clues and item descriptions” storytelling approach… Except in Hollow Knight, for reasons unknown even to me (my review’s here)!
With that said, the intrigue that does come up does make me very enthusiastic to find out more! At the Roundtable Stronghold, some relatively innocuous rich bloke seems to have a good relationship with his servant (according to him) and asks you to find her. Few hours later and I find out Castle Morne is experiencing it’s own slave revolt from a blind noblewoman begging me to save her daddy- I mean father.
The other NPCs aren’t much to write home about so far (of the one’s I’ve encountered at least), besides Rodericka and Phia. Rodericka’s story (so far) is a nice dash of wholesomeness amongst hours of getting smashed by 10-foot Dilf’s stick! Same for Phia, sometimes all a brother needs is a hug and that can help more than you know.
Overall thoughts: Not thrilling, but nice, with a chance for something greater. I’ve heard that George RR Martin did the worldbuilding and Miyazaki the storytelling, but I think they should’ve done things the other way around in my humble opinion.
Product Poems:
Nioh, not to be confused with Neo or knee- Oh! You hit me!
Mortal Kombat 11 with Revenge of Scorpion. Win-win.
Tsushima samurai-ninja-boy. Bathe, fox pets and Haiku.
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