Recent reviews by Tree

Masterpiece

Elden Ring is a culmination of the mechanics presented in the souls games, bloodborne, and sekiro, all wrapped up in a depressing high-fantasy open world.

• The main bosses are well designed, intense, and challenging. Finding brief moments to breathe or windows to punish within the bosses' flurry of blows are all the more rewarding, and victory is as exhilarating as ever.
  
  
• The art design continuously inspires moments of awe, disgust, and morbid fascination. The player will witness abominations with grafted limbs, tree roots pierced through dozens of nourishing corpses, and monstrosities with infected wounds, yet in the same minute, will find a beautiful overview of vast, twisted landscapes of golden trees, spiraling castles beneath blood red skys, misted swamps nestled between mountains, and vibrant underground ruins beneath glowing stones.
  
  
• Progression blocks are non-existent, as paths are innumerable. If a player cannot beat a boss, they can excuse themselves to explore dungeons and ruins scattered across the world, where they will discover upgrades, gain experience, and continuously grow stronger until they are up for the challenge. The entire map can be explored from the beginning.
  
  
• Magic is more beautiful and satisfying than ever. The variety of spells at a players disposal has grown greatly. Miracles and Sorcery have received the biggest visual buff in this iteration by far and hit as hard as they look.
  
  
• Swordplay has been made more diverse and interesting. Players can discover ashes of war, special weapon skills, throughout the world. These not only affect the weapon scaling, but allow the player to customize weapons to their playstyle. Hold your dagger to the sky and buff yourself and your friends. Quickdraw greatswords like katanas. Call down bolts of lightning with your warhammer. Experiment to your hearts content.

• Points of Grace, the checkpoints of Elden Ring, offer a fast travel system immediately with no cost or consequence.
  
  
• Stakes of Marika exist just next to nearly all challenging areas and bosses. When the player dies, they may choose to teleport to nearby Stakes instead of Points of Grace, allowing them to avoid wasting time repetitively traversing the same long path and re-challenge the boss or encounter immediately.
  
  
• The player receives their horse in an hour or less. The horse can be summoned anywhere in the open world from an item on the players belt, can double jump, and can be ridden in combat.
  
  
• There is no stamina loss outside of combat. Infinite sprinting and jumping while traveling from point to point.
  
  
• Crafting can be done on the go, anywhere, anytime, as long as players are out of combat. This includes arrows, bombs, consumable buffs, and elemental weapon buffs. No special stations needed.
  
  
• Basic materials are abundant, plentiful, and respawn on rest. Yes, the player may hunt an entire herd of goats, rest, and re-hunt the same herd of goats 30 seconds later.
  
  
• Tears, the health and mana potions of Elden Ring, refresh on enemy pack kills. Players who wish to keep their momentum can seek out enemies to replenish their health instead of returning to a Point of Grace to rest.

• Certain enemies were directly ported from Dark Souls 3. The infamously annoying Thralls from Dark souls 3 have been reskinned as stout imp gargoyles that populate various catacombs and caves throughout Limgrave with zero changes to their move-sets. The giant crabs also reappear from the previous title with zero changes to their move-set. It would have been cool to see the developers renovate these enemies a little to make them distinguishable from previous iterations.
  
  
• Similarly, some dungeon bosses reappear as the boss through various dungeons with no changes to their move-sets. Rather, the arena itself will change, adding mobs or hazards. While the overall variety of bosses is still plentiful, giving these reappearances different attack patterns or elemental affinities would have improved an already great experience.
  
  
• I would have liked if the horse controls were tighter. The horse cannot turn a sharp angle without first moving forward, meaning the player cannot turn the horse around on a narrow platform without walking off the edge. Certain jump puzzles are also an unnecessary headache for this reason.
  
  
• The developers laid it on a little thick with the difficult encounters right from the beginning. While I personally love throwing myself at a difficult boss until I can overcome it, players unfamiliar with the souls genre that encounter the Tree Sentinel or Dragon just a stones throw away from the tutorial are in for a jarring experience. In addition, Margit is by far the hardest first-real-boss From Software has introduced to the genre. While avoidable or delayable, new players may find these instant skill checks demoralizing. With this being said, I find it difficult recommending Elden Ring to new players as an introduction to the souls genre.
  
  
• While I have not experienced performance issues to the same caliber as other reviewers, they aren't non-existent. When in confined areas, the frame rate is completely stable. When in the open world, however, the frames will often dip into the 40's or 30's. This will hopefully be improved with further patches, but it would have done the game justice if optimization was up to a better quality before release. Keep in mind your personal experience with game performance may greatly vary from reviews based on your hardware.
  
  
• Players cannot ride horses while in coop. They are also confined to whichever area they have been summoned to, and coop is dissolved once a boss has been beaten. While this is not new to the souls genre, it's a little strange when implemented in the open world, as field bosses are often not too far apart from one another.

All in all, I cannot stop playing this game.

I gave the Pope money so that he would like me enough to give me money.

10/10 Best Investment Banking Simulator on the market

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you died you died

VICTORY ACHIEVED

That is why people play Dark Souls.