Top 3 reasons why Elden Ring is the game that won me over.
June 2, 2025, 10:17 a.m.
Elden Ring has been a masterfully crafted game; it’s practically art from this century. There are many enjoyable aspects of the game, such as the exploration, optimizing my character build, the combat, and the board-game-like mechanics that are a wonder to experience. Personally, I enjoy mixing and matching equipment and magic to deal more damage or at least to see the beautiful effects my crappy build does to enemies. The combat is fun and exhilarating, and the feeling of triumph after defeating a difficult boss is incredibly rewarding. Here are my top three reasons why Elden Ring won me over like horchata on a summer day.
Elden Ring can be quite aesthetic. It’s colorful, dark, bright, beautiful, and also the stuff of nightmares and everything in between. When you first start the game, it has a somewhat dated looking tutorial dungeon, but it works quite well. After completing the tutorial, you are greeted by a magnificent golden tree; it’s an experience, you’re in. The different biomes are artistically designed, with magnificent color choices that are very pleasing to the eye. The character design is impressive; every boss is intriguing, ranging from grotesque to artful. I find myself wanting a deeper backstory for each boss. For instance, there’s one that has grafted himself with the body parts of every challenger he has faced and assumes their abilities. How did he reach that point? (I believe they explain it, but I’m loosely following the story.)
I found that Elden Ring could be challenging enough to hinder my progress in the game. There were long stretches where I was stuck due to difficult boss battles. While I could skip these battles, my intention was to finish the story, complete the game, and then move on to something else. If you enjoy a challenge, the difficulty of this game is well met. This was my first FromSoftware game, and it felt refreshing, though it could occasionally be frustrating. The difficulty is not necessarily a bad thing; I feel they executed it beautifully. However, there were long stretches where I could not progress when I really wanted to.
The mechanics of Elden Ring are fun. The core mechanics feel like a board game, but with your hero piece, you have stats and timing to consider. The combat can become like a dance, as you are constantly avoiding attacks, inflicting damage, restoring health, and summoning allies. It’s a performance from the player in order to progress the story. While it can be difficult, there are also many ways to "cheese" the game, such as sneaking around enemies in obvious ways or inflicting damage from a safe distance when in real life you’d “get rekt!” . It was a fun experience, and the humorous aspects of cheesing didn’t detract from the game.
The sum of its parts makes this piece of software something I would describe as 21st-century art. Additionally, the artistic liberties taken by not following a standard approach to previous video games was a nice touch, making everything more intriguing. For those reasons and more I approve of this software.