Recent reviews by slaycvnt

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

no

EAC quite literally does nothing but make the game less accessible to disabled players
migrate to chillout vr tbh

The default multiplayer just won't work, but Northstar is amazing. I'm always able to find an active server with netcode that seems to work better than even official Apex datacenters, and the modding community is constantly creating new content, like Gungame, Infected modes and pilotable gunships. Hard recommend (with some tinkering).

I've owned this game for a little over 96 hours. I've got 20 hours logged at the moment. That should tell you what you need to know, but we also live in a world where idle games exist. Breakdown below.

Elden Ring is to Souls what Breath of the Wild was to 3D Zelda. An intermarriage of characteristically-FROMsoft combat and dungeon design, extremely solid art direction inspired by Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and BERSERK with an extremely immersive open world (In the 20 hours I've spent ingame, I literally have never tackled any of the main bosses as I was just exploring.) You can decide to basically pick a direction, and eventually, you'll find SOMETHING interesting. My ADHD-riddled brain has been positively tingling with all the interesting content I've ended up needing to take detours to check out.

It's also much more approachable than other soulsborne games; while it is still extremely punishing, the room for build variety can really allow you to focus on your strengths and build a viable character. Suck at parrying? Get a decent shield with high poise so you can try the new guard counters instead. Yes, you'll need to learn block timings, but it's a great deal more forgiving than parrying and yet still allows for skilled play to be rewarded.
Find the main quest too difficult? Take a detour to any of the various side locations and you'll gain a better feel for the game as well as useful loot and enough runes/souls to get some decent upgrades.
Stakes of Marika are basically situational checkpoints that are placed before challenging encounters, and they're an absolute godsend due to how they reduce the amount of times you need to do the "soulsborne walk of shame" from the last bonfire to the boss after getting nuked on your first attempt.
Summoning Pools allow for an easier way to find co-op partners, and that's a great help as well when it comes to the mini-dungeons, and NPC summons allow for overworld encounters to be approached in multiple ways as well.
DEX and FTH builds are more viable than ever due to an expanded range of weapons, most of which can be modded to scale with a certain stat, and an array of unique offensive miracles to complement the other types of magic available in the game.
Item usage is also incentivized more due to the new crafting system allowing you to pick up ingredients to prepare for the various situations you'll land yourself in, rather than items being bound strictly to discovery and shopping, which would make them harder to use if you're a hoarder like me.
All of these things said, the game is also extremely challenging and forces you to learn its systems if you want to enjoy the title, like all other FROMsoft games.

This is by and large the prettiest game I've played in the last few years, and that's primarily due to its seriously well done art direction rather than a surplus of expensive next-gen rendering tricks. While the text has a very somber tone, the world design is vivid. Elden Ring does not shy away from using a rich color palette to convey its world. And of course, it's a game rife with environmental storytelling, from mob and prop placements to a strong sense of consistent architectural design. As mentioned earlier, this game does borrow a lot of its tone and art-style from the great late Kentaro Miura's work on BERSERK. While being choc-full of details and eye-candy, the game does an excellent job of conveying a stark, somber world without resorting to overusing sepia tones or the dreaded ♥♥♥♥-brown of 2008 gaming. The art is also extremely thematically consistent with the narrative, and it feels like whoever was in charge of directing the gfx work definitely had their finger on the pulse of things when it came to keeping things in line with the mood that the world builds on.

As usual, FROM's monster designs pull from a lot of different archetypes and aesthetics, and offer an absolutely fascinating roster of baddies to fight, an experience that's elevated way more by the fact that this game has the most amount of songs in the soulsborne franchise, including several tracks that change dynamically based on your interactions with the world.


The already weighty and satisfying visuals of the combat are rendered all the more engaging by the excellent foley work done as well.

As for the current performance issues, I won't deny that they exist; that said, my 3060TI is handling things just fine, with just the occasional microstutter when rendering new effects for the first time due to it being a DX12 title. In the meantime, expanding your shader cache through nVidia control panel seems to alleviate things a great deal.
They have NOT significantly affected my play experience, but that's my personal experience and your mileage may vary due to your tolerance. That said, I do feel like these concerns are *slightly* overblown by some in the community, as the game by and large runs very smoothly for me at around 40-55FPS at 1440p with a mix of max settings and high quality grass, with an easily-attainable flat 60 if I decided to switch things to all high or medium instead. You'll be just fine if you've got a 1080p monitor and an average graphics card, and it can definitely be scaled down further to lighter builds, though I wouldn't try it with something like a 6-year old laptop 960M.

As I don't remember there being a ton of reports of the stuttering during the network tests, I believe that it's something fixable, and FROM has issued a statement mentioning that they will be working on it. Honestly, just try the game out, see how it works for yourself, and refund it if you're unhappy.

time for ring

Outside of playing on my own device, I've had about 500 hours on a shared headset playing this game, and it's been a satisfying experience through and through. If you've got VR and like kinetically satisfying things, want a game with an extremely active and communicative dev, a super-active mod community, and an incredibly satisfying roguelite wave defense mode, this is it. Incredibly impressive work for a VR game, period, let alone an alpha.

What is there to say about this game that hasn't been said? A mandatory game for anyone fond of modding.

GOTY 2020 BABEY!!!!!!!

shidt they're all best girl