After years of waiting, the release of Martin has been impressed with Elden Ring, fans have had to patiently wait until its February 25 release.
Elden Ring will take players to the new realm of the Lands Between, where they must take on the role of the Tarnished and become an Elden Lord. Some lucky players were able to playtest the game last year thanks to the immensely popular network test, which saw codes distributed for a weekend of play. Reception to the playtest was positive, though the build did lead to datamining and a host of spoilers being leaked online. While many fans weren't selected to take part in the network test, it did drive excitement for the release, as even in its pre-launch state, many were impressed with the combat, world design, and the fantasy-fuelled story and lore of Elden Ring.
Those still undecided on whether or not to purchase Elden Ring may be swayed by the overwhelmingly positive reception to the game, seen in reviews from critics, and its score of 98 on Metacritic (PS5), with 94 on Xbox Series X, and 94 on PC (at the time of writing). These scores mean the game has bested reviews for all the Dark Souls games, as well as Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. The next FromSoftware game is already looking like a top contender for Game of the Year 2022 after receiving near-perfect scores from multiple different outlets and reviewers.
Christopher Teuton - 5/5 - Screen Rant
"Everything about Elden Ring feels like a celebration of what FromSoftware has accomplished since the original release of Demon's Souls, up to and including Déraciné and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. The open world genre is perfect for the developer's penchant for hiding NPCs, quests, and items in obscure and hard-to-reach locations, and the Lands Between have been crafted in such a way that it's nearly impossible to get too lost or overwhelmed at any given moment. Elden Ring is exactly what fans want it to be, and it very likely will become many people's favorite FromSoftware title yet."
Pam K. Ferdinand - 5/5 - Game Rant
"When judged on its own merits, Elden Ring is a phenomenal game that will disappoint very few. It has most of the components that fans of the genre seek: a wondrous aesthetic, a feeling of mystery that invites exploration, skillfully designed and intimidating adversaries, and rich gameplay with a lot of replayability thanks to the various classes and builds. In the end, Elden Ring is more than just an open-world Dark Souls. It is strong in its own right, with tweaks to the classic Souls blueprint that create a refreshing new experience that still feels familiar."
Jordan Middler - 5/5 - VGC
"While minor technical issues and some dated graphics occasionally crop up, the art direction and world of Elden Ring is an absolute spectacle. It’s a very hard game, but one that affords you the chance to turn around, go off an adventure and come back later. And while it isn’t the revolution that Demon’s Souls was, it’s the closest FromSoftware have some to recapturing that magic once again."
Michael McWhertor - Not Rated - Polygon
"Elden Ring is the natural next step for FromSoftware, which last delivered a huge fantasy world like this in Dark Souls 3. That game featured a sprawling, interconnected world, a vast armory, and an incredible amount to learn, wield, and discover. Elden Ring is that game amplified — it plucks the best from Bloodborne, with its compact, puzzle-like mini-dungeons, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, which offered new levels of mobility and faster action."
Jade King - 5/5 - TheGamer
"FromSoftware doesn’t rewrite the medium’s rulebook, but does tear its own tenets asunder while reconstructing them into a cohesive whole that outclasses all that came before it. The Lands Between invites you to explore it with an unparalleled level of freedom, offering up a plate of seemingly impenetrable challenges and intimately constructed stories that are always a delight to indulge in. This is, without doubt, one of the best games in recent memory."
As perhaps expected, one of the major features praised in multiple reviews is Elden Ring's impressive open world, which offers a new change of pace when compared to other FromSoftware games. By opening up the realm, players will have more freedom of play than ever before, which provides new challenges but also new ease of access, something which is immensely important given the discourse frequently seen around the difficulty levels of games like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.
Based on the 2021 network test and FromSoftware's past history with game development, it's maybe no surprise to see Elden Ring reviewing highly. As with many games, it's not the critics' reviews that will make or break a game, but the reviews of players, with fans' hands-on thoughts expected to spill out across social media in the coming days. It could be argued that the game was always poised for critical and commercial success, but players are likely to still be impressed with the overwhelmingly positive reviews for Elden Ring - and its position as perhaps the best FromSoft game of all time.
