If Godrick was able to disguise himself as a woman in order to flee from the capital with his Great Rune, he must have still mostly been human back then – not yet deformed by the fusing of countless limbs and body parts to his flesh. After his armies failed to captured Leyndell, he would have withdrawn to Limgrave and his Stormveil Castle, either refusing to engage General Radahn in battle or refusing to form an alliance with the enormous, star-conquering demi

Most of the UX-focused criticism seems to derive from Elden Ring 's approach to its punishing difficulty and lack of a traditional linear game route. After an enigmatic opening cutscene, a typically fatal battle against the Grafted Scion mini-boss, and a skippable tutorial level, players are dropped into the world of Elden Ring and encouraged to master most of the game's features through experimentation. There are no compass arrows pointing towards the game's primary objective or essential key items, and players can access large portions of the game's open world right off the bat, making it possible for them to encounter enemies far above their character's current level of strength. Theoretically, this style of gameplay would be frustrating and confusing; in practice, Elden Ring's "turn around and come back later" gameplay meshed very well with the open-world environment of The Lands Between, rewarding players who explored, experimented, and went off the beaten tr

All Soulsborne games have bosses that players feel bad about defeating. A boss may have a sad backstory, or they were once a friend, or maybe they are too cute to kill. In Dark Souls, there is the boss fight with Sif. In Bloodborne , a Souls game players should not ignore , __ the aftermath of the fight with Father Gascoigne is crushing. Two very different bosses with different lore, but players feel terrible about killing t

Elden Ring __ lacks a log to track quests also, a feature common to many RPGs, instead encouraging players to keep track of key NPCs, dungeon areas, and regions with valuable loot using a map with customizable waypoints and markers. Much the criticism levied towards Elden Ring 's narrative focuses on how the absence of features like a quest log makes it hard for players to keep track of the main story and optional NPC quest lines. From the perspective of FromSoftware developers, though, the lack of quest log, in-game journals, and minimalist cutscenes is a feature, one that reinforces the game's encouragement for players to explore, investigate, and come up with their own theories about Elden Ring' s story and l

Phantom Slash has a simple move-set. The initial attack is a lung forward that closes the distance between the player and the target. The follow-up attack is a strike downwards. But the phantom amplifies this skill. When the player uses this skill, a phantom of the character appears and attacks the player. So, when the initial lunge forward is triggered, the phantom attacks first and the character follows it. The phantom is the best part of this Ash of War in Elden Ring because not only do they use the player character’s weapon, but any buffs the player applies to their weapon are also used by the phan

Elden Ring provides players with a relatively straightforward system with listed attributes and what players want to raise each time. Players who want to harness sorcery may work on increasing their intelligence, whereas those who want to focus on using weapons for melee builds will work on strength and dexterity. In Skyrim, players have far more options, as they're able to work on leveling up certain skills for different sorts of crafting or com

From a narrative perspective, Elden Ring 's long-ago Shattering war acts as a call to arms for the player characters of the game. The demigods, through selfish warmongering and ambition, wrecked the Lands Between and forfeited their right to rule, giving the exiled people known as Tarnished a heroic reason to return to the Lands Between and claim the position of Elden Ring hardest achievements Lord for themselves. From a game design perspective, a past war justifies the creation of an RPG open world filled with stately ruins, fortified castles, and roaming bands of soldiers who attack PCs on si

Both Elden Ring and Skyrim feature a plethora of dungeons spread across the map. It's impossible when wandering to not run into one every now and then. Dragons on the other hand are a bit rarer. Skyrim has specific locations where players can fight dragons that will in time respawn. Elden Ring , on the other hand, has set locations only for each dragon, and unlike Skyrim , there are no respawns for these creatu

One of the coolest similarities between these two games is the assassination questlines. Video game fans will be far more familiar with the Dark Brotherhood from Skyrim that assigns the Dragonborn onto assassination tasks. But there's actually a group in Elden Ring very similar to this located at the Volcano Ma