Recent reviews by masterDisaster

Jokes aside, this game is the spiritual successor of the Dark Souls trilogy, it takes the basic mechanics of the previous FromSoftware works (as I said, mainly Dark Souls but also a bit of Bloodborne and Sekiro), it mixes, refines and enriches them with new tools and quality of life changes (like spirit ashes, no stamina consumption out of battle, crafting tools, the mount Torrent etc.) to integrate them in a new fantasy world with an incredible aesthetic: it’s beautiful, magnificent and huge, every place you see on the horizon can be reached and visited; all of this reinforce the core experience that ER wants to offer: exploration and discovery.
The only downside of such vast map is the long time it takes you to explore everything; of course you don’t need to look around every corner of the world to finish the game, but sometimes it can be exhausting or boring (especially if you play non-stop).
In particular, catacombs, hero’s graves, caves etc. are optional areas that contain unique items (talismans, spirit ashes, upgrade materials etc.) but too often their structures are similar to each other (with few exceptions), they have recurring enemies and don’t offer any challenge so they are uninteresting.
On the other hand, there are “legacy dungeons”, palaces, castles, cities, much more fun intricate place to explore that house the major bosses, mandatory for story progression.
About the story of Elden Ring, as in many of the previous games made by FromSoftware, you play as a character revived and thrown in a decaying land (the Lands between), whose goal is restore order with the pieces of the Elden Ring, a powerful and mysterious artifact, broken and shattered by someone or something, now in the hands of demigods engaged in a war for supremacy.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2863354855
The plot is simple but full of secrets and lore about the history of the Lands between and its inhabitants.
It’s up to the player the decision of hunt for clues, speak to NPCs or analyze the environment to understand what happened, collect and connect all the informations to see the full picture of the events.
Or you can just ignore everything, enjoy the fights, kill all the foes on your way, may they be soldiers, dragons, monsters, gods, without care about them.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2894854139
The combat system is fun and more fluid than the one in Dark Souls 3, dual wielding is back from Dark Souls 2 and is less complex; weapons now have combos (so you can’t spam light attacks forever in pvp), and then there’s my favorite new element, the ashes of war: items which enables you to replace the special attack (called weapon skill) of common weapons with new ones and also modify their “elemental” damage (called affinity) like fire, frost, poison, magic etc.; thanks to these items and the great variety of different weapons, spells, incantations, you can experiment with a lot of different builds; your offensive powers always depend on the classical stats strength, dexterity, faith, intelligence, arcane, that can be upgraded by levelling up your character, you can also redistribute the stats as you like (respec), at any time, thanks the power of an NPC.
Speaking of NPC, the only critical issue I found during my gameplay are convoluted quests of certain characters; these questlines are so long or they need such specific triggers to advance that they can be easily forgotten, some others are straightforward instead; it’s a shame because new players, who never played any Dark Souls game before, may find too difficult follow and complete these quests, which lead these players to lose precious items and the help offered by NPCs, as allies to summon against bosses.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2894852524
Anyway if you play online you can cooperate with other players and summon them instead of NPCs.
And then, another negative aspect arises with coop and pvp: the summon and invasion mechanics are almost identical to the Dark Souls 3 ones, but they don’t blend well with the open world structure of Elden Ring.
The maps are too big and dispersive, to avoid game breaking bugs you can’t use your mount during multiplayer sessions so you lose a lot of time running around for noting, because, for example, the game put some barriers between different areas and you have to re-summons your friend/ally multiple times, or invaders want to hide and waste your time; however multiplayer it’ s not so broken after all, sometimes there are lag and disconnection errors but those happen in every game.
I haven’t encountered any major technical issue, just some disconnection from hosts and few crashes, I’ m playing with an old pc but the game runs fine.
In conclusion, is ER a masterpiece?
Not exactly
Is ER a terrible game?
No way!
ER is a great videogame and I surely recommend it! I suggest to avoid spoilers, guides and walkthrough
before playing for the first time and keep extra bosses and secrets for the NG .
There is only one last thing left to say:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2894854444
DLC please?
SHADOW OF THE ERDTREE
If you like the base game the expansion it's a must have, more place to explore, more weapons, more bosses, in few words more ELDEN RING!

This game is like an interactive cartoon episode, you can choose from five playable Autobots, throw yourself into the action, face the Decepticons, stop their evil plans and rescue the Earth.
The campaign in story mode seems relatively short, but it' s really fun, thanks an enjoiable combat system, a good variety of enemies and great boss battles you' ll kept busy in more and more hard fighting (plus there' s a challenge mode with all the villains of the campaign).
You can also find a large number of upgradable melee and ranged weapons at your disposal, for every kind of combat, and helpful items to customize your bots.
The game appears perfect for hard-core gamers who want play all missions several times, in the company of the most popular cybertronians, till achieve the best score or just evoke the glories of the first Transformers series.
I recommend TRANSFORMERS: Devastation to all fans of Transformers (especially G1 fans) but also to players who like hack'n slash/action brawler/cartoon style video games.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=607821319
Personal rating: 8.0/10