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In my past life as a games writer, I dreamed of something like Elden Ring coming along. This isn’t simply because I wanted to review good games, but because it’s one of the strangest games I’ve ever played, and one that took several hours to click for me.
For those of you who aren’t gamers, Elden Ring is an open world game by From Software, a Japanese studio best known for making tight and difficulty action role-playing games. Their hallmark difficulty mostly comes down to how literal the world around you is — if you fire a projectile that travels a path and it hits the wall, it won’t go through it, if you roll when something is hitting you, it will miss, but not if your roll ends before the projectile passes through you, and so on — and by extension how “unforgiving” it is.
This was something that frustrated many people about previous From Software titles (Demon Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, etc.) — while other games carefully guide and baby you with concepts of fairness, the “Souls” games are extremely fair, but not remotely forgiving. While other games may say that “fair” means that a boss doesn’t suddenly surprise you with a lurching attack at just the wrong time, “fair” in a Souls game comes down to learning — you are the limiter, and if you understand and prepare for the system you will likely survive. And if you can exploit it, that’s totally fine too — the game has no mercy on you, and you should show it none in return.
