Less Depressed, More Mess

i have recently moved to one of the cities (look at a population density map of australia, almost everyone lives in one of the major cities) and i think i’ve seen maybe five bugs in the last month.

so yea some people here do have to deal with The Wildlife, but a lot of australians are more worried about darren, like she said.

After 115 hours of playtime, here is a loose and spoiler filled rant on elden ring because I have many opinions and I can't be bothered to write an editorial because I am not doug walker.

The open world is beautiful.

There's no fucking enemy variety, everywhere you go there are the same 3 cunts you've been fighting since the fucking minute you booted up the game. Every area has a Knight enemy, a lesser Knight enemy, peasant and Noble cannon fodder enemies that are palette swapped according to area. These are the most common enemies in the game and their only difference is that the Knights in the altus plateau have lightning powers. There are 3 zombie type enemies that show up in massive hordes everywhere, every area has the same fucking bat, the same troll, the same dog all with different colour schemes or area appropriate status effects. For some reason the mutant dogs and crows from caelid show up on the mountaintops of the giants, as well as the demi humans, skeletons, bats and golems from limgrave (and they don't even have the decency to swap colours! They just have bigger health bars!) Everywhere you go, if there's any kind of body of water, there is a giant crab, again appropriately colour swapped and given area specific status effects, yet the main problem with this constant repetition is that the way in which you fight never has to change. It would be fine if a crab showed up again later, as long as it had a different moveset to make fighting it dynamic.

More on enemy repetition! The constant repetition also cheapens every previous instance of an enemy. When you first go to the underground river, there are ghostly buff horned men, and when you first encounter them you go "damn, cool new unique enemy. Nice" then 20 hours later when you're fighting them in liurnia you realise they weren't a unique enemy, and that you're a fucking clown for thinking so. The land octopi you can find scattered in limgrave fucking show up everywhere, you cannot escape them. The crabs hunt you down wherever you go, as if you're playing the game as queen Elizabeth. The ulcerated tree spirits (which are a reskin of the pus of man from dark souls 3) you find under stormveil appear everywhere, the magma wyrms, the 5 or 6 dragons that are all the same exact fight but they breathe a different fire, the fucking tree sentinels (a reskin of the asylum demon from dark souls 1 and 3), all these enemies are everywhere, and it cheapens their earlier appearances but also exploring. Whats the point of seeing what's beyond the horizon when it's probably just another fucking CRAB

Dogs and rats continue being the worst fucking enemies to fight good lord please fix them

The weird hysterical women at the windmill village appear to be flayed, which is not only in all likelihood a reference to the godskin apostle you fight at the top of the village (iirc they skin people and wear their flesh or something) but also I think a reference to the fairy tale where an old woman gets a woodcutter to flay her to grant her youth or something

Rykard is the worst boss fight in the history of video games. Not only is he a worthless gimmick fight like yhorm or ancient wyvern, but he has a constant ring of lava around him making getting close impossible and he constantly walks towards you and traps you between his lava and a wall if you're more focused on killing him than running around and prolonging the garbage fight, his voice (i think the voice actor did a really good job btw i just fucking hate this boss) is fucking clown tier (yeah it fits for a deranged snake monster person, but again I hate this boss) and his attacks are absolute garbage, FUCK this boss

The last third of the game is either fucking impossible due to the bosses having infinite combo phases and barely any punish windows or laughably easy if you use the mimic tear and spam your weapon skill

The last boss is a fucking joke, the elden beast is the second worst fight in the game and like, wow, what an epic final boss. A giant cosmic worm with no setup and a moveset 90% of which is borrowed from the fucking 15 dozen ulcerated tree spirits you've been fighting all fucking game. The game should have ended with fighting radagon, who is actually somewhat of a presence in the story and thus has more weight as a final boss, serving a similar role as gwyn, especially if you find out earlier that he and marika are 2 sides of the same coin.

Exploration rewards are incredibly hit or miss, most being spells or weapons that require faith because the game really wants you to play a magic focused build despite somewhat preaching that you can have whatever build you want

The legacy dungeons are amazing and I love them but they're so so so so so small especially compared to the size of the world around them and it makes me want to die that the best parts of the game are so small and feeble. The haligtree is my favourite area in the game and has impressive verticality but I would sacrifice my first born if it was just a little bigger. Just 10 more minutes in the haligtree and i could die a happy man

The underground rivers are fucking amazing, and are the best content next to the legacy dungeons. Nokstella, nights eternal rest/nokron and the deeproot depths are some of my favourite sections of the world and they're amazing to journey through. But only once.

There's fuck all replayability. I spent 90 hours on my first playthrough as I wanted to explore everything and get every ounce of content. I have only spent 25 ish hours on my second playthrough because it turns out half the shit I did in my first was utterly worthless and not worth replaying. All I've done in my second playthrough is finish quests I missed the first time and get to the haligtree and the underground to relive the best moments the game has to offer.

The age of stars ending is the best as it frees the world from the grubby little piss stained hands of the outer gods and their meddling, allowing those in the lands between to be truly free as they are no longer shackled by gods or masters.

Personally I wanted more berserk references, and I'm a bit disappointed that the guts sword is not the dragonslayer but looks more like a beefier version of his sword in the later chapters of the golden age/eclipse arc

Jesus christ someone at from software needs to slap miyazakis hands away from his keyboard anytime he tries adding in a poison swamp area.

Caelid sucks and doesn't even have a true legacy dungeon

Again, the aesthetic and world is amazing and beautiful and I sometimes wish I could live there

Thank you if you read all of that, sorry for the spoilers and the loose ranting and the overuse of swearing, I'm just really shit at writing structured, video essay type shit, as seen by my garbage witcher post. Elden ring is a pretty good game weighed down by the same shit every modern open world game is, and whilst I did enjoy my time with the game, the more I played it the more apparent these issues became until I reached a point where I had to write this dumbass rant.