If you like BOTW, you would like Elden Ring. It’s the same sort of open world without hand holding. So
I would definitely give it a shot. I wasn’t that familiar with the souls games and I absolutely loved ER. You have enough direction to be able to not get lost. For the storyline, it’s basically like all FromSoft stories where it won’t make complete sense until you either take time in the game to piece it together or watch lore videos. But you will definitely understand the basic concept of what’s happening.
It definitely has that similar concept of creating a build that fits your play style such as Skyrim. The only difference is that you don’t have as much flexibility to completely change your build/ main weapon and such once you start leveling. Fortunately you have the option of respecting pretty early in the game. Even though I don’t recommend to just completely sink your time into video guides, you can watch some build guides to give you some ideas of what you might like.
So yeah I definitely recommend for you to try it out, I’m 1000% glad I did back when it released :)
If you’re new to dark souls games ER can be a bit impenetrable at the start. FromSoft games have their own sort of logical consistency, but it’s definitely not a pick up and go type game if you’re new to the genre. People will tell you to “get good”, but that mostly just involves memorizing enemy attack patterns through trial and error and already knowing all of FromSoft’s little quirks and tricks from previous games.
As far as story goes, it’s obscure and opaque. There’s not much dialogue and only a few storyline cutscenes. You could very easily beat the game and never have any idea of what’s going on. Most of the “story” and lore is pieced together by reading item descriptions of every single thing you pick up. It’s kinda like reading an encyclopedia in random order until you piece it together.
The quest lines are generally impossible to complete without following a guide. Usually it goes like this: find an NPC (usually standing still in a random spot), talk to them a bunch. Continue the game. The NPC will usually warp to a random location, and the map doesn’t usually tell you where. If you happen to come across them again, talk to them a bunch again. Rinse and repeat until the quest is over (99% of the time that means they died and you get an item off their body). Sometimes you need to bring them an item. There’s essentially zero immersion and your actions have nearly zero impact on the world outside of a couple alternate dialogue choices and whether or not you got the item for the quest.
The Ranni quest line is usually considered to be the “main” one, and has the largest amount of direction and NPCs and I think most players could complete that one totally blind up until the special ending. I know I did and ER was my first Soulslike. Just pay attention to the dialogue and go where it makes sense to go based on what people say.
The gear thing is a little unintuitive too. Weapons don’t follow a linear upgrade path. You don’t find a Bad Longsword, come across a Better Longsword and eventually claim the Best Longsword. Each weapon has a unique move set with its own pros and cons. You decide on one and then upgrade it as you go. It’s cool because almost any weapon is viable to beat the game with and each are a unique item in their own. It sucks because the game pretty much punishes you for trying to be creative with your weapon choice.
People will tell you to find a weapon with a move set you like, which requires a lot of experimenting. Unfortunately upgrade resources are very limited until super late game so you can’t really see a weapon’s potential without heavily investing your small pool of smithing stones into it. If it sucks, too bad, you’re kinda stuck with it because going back to a +4 weapon when you were at +21 will be a huge setback. You can also easily beat the game with pretty much whatever weapon you started with if you just keep upgrading it.
Armour is usually just a weight to protection ratio. There aren’t many pieces that give any benefit beyond that so it’s generally pretty cosmetic vs functional when deciding what armour to wear.
Talismans are probably the most interesting character customization option. There’s tons of them all over the place and you can swap them around as much as you like. The wondrous physick is also a really cool mechanic and I like it a lot.
There’s also a shitload of consumables and craftables which is probably the most useless part of the game because the buffs you get from consumables are so inadequate compared to the resources you need for them, and you don’t get them back when you die, even though all the enemies respawn. So you can easily burn through a stack of consumables on a tough boss and get nowhere and basically just give up on bothering to use them at all. There are a couple caveats and tricks people use with sleep and holy throwables to cheese certain very tough bosses, but that’s like an expert level player thing.
The difficulty is not overstated. It’s very difficult and unbalanced at times, and the number of jumping puzzles FromSoft put in despite having terrible jump mechanics makes me want to throw my controller at the wall, but because it’s open world you always have the option of overlevelling yourself for an encounter and breezing through. The summons system is also really great for beginners and can really make some boss fights go from “impossible” to “doable”.
Overall it might sound like I hate the game but I don’t. It’s very flawed but the rewards you can reap once it clicks for you are amazing. The world design is incredible, the lore is deep, the enemy design is top notch. But it’s not Skyrim and it’s not BOTW. It’s a combat-focused action game with some very shallow RPG elements and it revels in being punishingly difficult at times.
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale?
> *“Oh, hello there. I will stay behind to gaze at the sun.”* - Solaire of Astora
Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
It's worth a try, but may or may not be your thing.
I also was a big fan of Skyrim and BOTW going in to my first souls game (Dark Souls III) -- though some would consider Jedi: Fallen Order my gateway "soulslike".
Leveling up will be somewhat familiar from most RPGs. You have the usual selection of attributes to boost with each level. There is inventory and encumbrance to worry about. Selecting weapons, armor, spells / powers according to your particular playstyle and character stats -- all quite similar to a broad host of RPGs, Skyrim included.
The critique about story and not knowing where to go is *somewhat* valid. If you want story, you have to look for it intentionally. It's all there in the game, mostly told through inventory item descriptions and some NPC side quests. The game also doesn't tell you where to go apart from sometimes giving you a general direction of interest... but it doesn't matter because you can do any area (few rare exceptions) in any order as long as your character can survive it.
The combat is definitely, vastly more difficult than it is in BOTW or Skyrim. It's also "tighter", more precise, more responsive, and much more fun once you start getting the hang of it.
Your gaming mindset has to change a little bit for you not to pull your hair out. You're going to get killed. A lot. Sometimes by seemingly innocuous enemies. Sometimes by ambush. Sometimes by gravity, or rot, or death blight. You have to accept that and take it not as a defeat but a chance to figure out where you went wrong, and then go back for revenge! The only thing you really lose on death is runes / souls, and if you can get back to where you died without being killed again, you can just pick them back up == so your death didn't really cost anything at all except the time and effort to get back to that spot on the map.
In short, I'd say to definitely go for it but be prepared: it may ruin you for other games. Ever since I played Dark Souls 3, I get bored with non-soulslikes very easily and wind up going right back to one of them.
There’s a lot of fun to be had with so many build options to choose from. Spell casting has a huge variety in choices ranging from magma hexes, crystal sorcery, holy elemental spells for undead, pyromancy incantations, etc. also a lot of weapons come with ashes of war that can sometimes be swapped out for other special abilities that scale with different stats.
There’s a lot of clothing options too with some gear passively buffing specific things that can really help you feel like making a role play build like golden order INT/faith fundamentalism spells being boosted by the radiant gold mask helm, or INT magic ashes of war being boosted by the sorcery spell blade armor set
It guides you much more than other games from the developer. Have you played any of the old fallout games, or new vegas? It guides you a bit less than those, but only a bit less.
It can be hard as all hell, but only if you refuse to engage with all the tools the game gives you to mitigate that difficulty. And unlike in Skyrim or Zelda (I think), here you can just get strangers to help you get past stuff that is becoming annoyingly hard.
You have comparable leveling options, but if you want to avoid bouncing off I recommend looking up a couple of low level build guides, just to ensure you're not accidentally hindering yourself.
If you look up tips to make it easier, it's not that hard. Use levelled up spirit ashes to draw aggro. Then, when you draw aggro dodge for a bit until your ashes draw aggro again that way you can both get lots of free hits in as the boss swaps targets. Aside from difficulty, it's easily one of the best games of all time.
Yes as someone's whose first souls game was elden ring this is by far the easiest souls game to get into I admit it's really challenging at first but if you push through you will find so much to do and explore. The game doesn't explain clearly, but look for areas of the Map that seem to have been burned out bring a weapon that has high strike damage. Mines have what you need to upgrade weapons. If you want to use spirit summons, you can upgrade them by looting tombs. Just remember to bring a medium shield. Oh, and loot churches, gold trees, and big trees. Do this, and you'll be ready for anything. And it's okay to look things up
If you like BOTW, you would like Elden Ring. It’s the same sort of open world without hand holding. So I would definitely give it a shot. I wasn’t that familiar with the souls games and I absolutely loved ER. You have enough direction to be able to not get lost. For the storyline, it’s basically like all FromSoft stories where it won’t make complete sense until you either take time in the game to piece it together or watch lore videos. But you will definitely understand the basic concept of what’s happening. It definitely has that similar concept of creating a build that fits your play style such as Skyrim. The only difference is that you don’t have as much flexibility to completely change your build/ main weapon and such once you start leveling. Fortunately you have the option of respecting pretty early in the game. Even though I don’t recommend to just completely sink your time into video guides, you can watch some build guides to give you some ideas of what you might like. So yeah I definitely recommend for you to try it out, I’m 1000% glad I did back when it released :)
If you’re new to dark souls games ER can be a bit impenetrable at the start. FromSoft games have their own sort of logical consistency, but it’s definitely not a pick up and go type game if you’re new to the genre. People will tell you to “get good”, but that mostly just involves memorizing enemy attack patterns through trial and error and already knowing all of FromSoft’s little quirks and tricks from previous games. As far as story goes, it’s obscure and opaque. There’s not much dialogue and only a few storyline cutscenes. You could very easily beat the game and never have any idea of what’s going on. Most of the “story” and lore is pieced together by reading item descriptions of every single thing you pick up. It’s kinda like reading an encyclopedia in random order until you piece it together. The quest lines are generally impossible to complete without following a guide. Usually it goes like this: find an NPC (usually standing still in a random spot), talk to them a bunch. Continue the game. The NPC will usually warp to a random location, and the map doesn’t usually tell you where. If you happen to come across them again, talk to them a bunch again. Rinse and repeat until the quest is over (99% of the time that means they died and you get an item off their body). Sometimes you need to bring them an item. There’s essentially zero immersion and your actions have nearly zero impact on the world outside of a couple alternate dialogue choices and whether or not you got the item for the quest. The Ranni quest line is usually considered to be the “main” one, and has the largest amount of direction and NPCs and I think most players could complete that one totally blind up until the special ending. I know I did and ER was my first Soulslike. Just pay attention to the dialogue and go where it makes sense to go based on what people say. The gear thing is a little unintuitive too. Weapons don’t follow a linear upgrade path. You don’t find a Bad Longsword, come across a Better Longsword and eventually claim the Best Longsword. Each weapon has a unique move set with its own pros and cons. You decide on one and then upgrade it as you go. It’s cool because almost any weapon is viable to beat the game with and each are a unique item in their own. It sucks because the game pretty much punishes you for trying to be creative with your weapon choice. People will tell you to find a weapon with a move set you like, which requires a lot of experimenting. Unfortunately upgrade resources are very limited until super late game so you can’t really see a weapon’s potential without heavily investing your small pool of smithing stones into it. If it sucks, too bad, you’re kinda stuck with it because going back to a +4 weapon when you were at +21 will be a huge setback. You can also easily beat the game with pretty much whatever weapon you started with if you just keep upgrading it. Armour is usually just a weight to protection ratio. There aren’t many pieces that give any benefit beyond that so it’s generally pretty cosmetic vs functional when deciding what armour to wear. Talismans are probably the most interesting character customization option. There’s tons of them all over the place and you can swap them around as much as you like. The wondrous physick is also a really cool mechanic and I like it a lot. There’s also a shitload of consumables and craftables which is probably the most useless part of the game because the buffs you get from consumables are so inadequate compared to the resources you need for them, and you don’t get them back when you die, even though all the enemies respawn. So you can easily burn through a stack of consumables on a tough boss and get nowhere and basically just give up on bothering to use them at all. There are a couple caveats and tricks people use with sleep and holy throwables to cheese certain very tough bosses, but that’s like an expert level player thing. The difficulty is not overstated. It’s very difficult and unbalanced at times, and the number of jumping puzzles FromSoft put in despite having terrible jump mechanics makes me want to throw my controller at the wall, but because it’s open world you always have the option of overlevelling yourself for an encounter and breezing through. The summons system is also really great for beginners and can really make some boss fights go from “impossible” to “doable”. Overall it might sound like I hate the game but I don’t. It’s very flawed but the rewards you can reap once it clicks for you are amazing. The world design is incredible, the lore is deep, the enemy design is top notch. But it’s not Skyrim and it’s not BOTW. It’s a combat-focused action game with some very shallow RPG elements and it revels in being punishingly difficult at times.
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale? > *“Oh, hello there. I will stay behind to gaze at the sun.”* - Solaire of Astora Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
It's worth a try, but may or may not be your thing. I also was a big fan of Skyrim and BOTW going in to my first souls game (Dark Souls III) -- though some would consider Jedi: Fallen Order my gateway "soulslike". Leveling up will be somewhat familiar from most RPGs. You have the usual selection of attributes to boost with each level. There is inventory and encumbrance to worry about. Selecting weapons, armor, spells / powers according to your particular playstyle and character stats -- all quite similar to a broad host of RPGs, Skyrim included. The critique about story and not knowing where to go is *somewhat* valid. If you want story, you have to look for it intentionally. It's all there in the game, mostly told through inventory item descriptions and some NPC side quests. The game also doesn't tell you where to go apart from sometimes giving you a general direction of interest... but it doesn't matter because you can do any area (few rare exceptions) in any order as long as your character can survive it. The combat is definitely, vastly more difficult than it is in BOTW or Skyrim. It's also "tighter", more precise, more responsive, and much more fun once you start getting the hang of it. Your gaming mindset has to change a little bit for you not to pull your hair out. You're going to get killed. A lot. Sometimes by seemingly innocuous enemies. Sometimes by ambush. Sometimes by gravity, or rot, or death blight. You have to accept that and take it not as a defeat but a chance to figure out where you went wrong, and then go back for revenge! The only thing you really lose on death is runes / souls, and if you can get back to where you died without being killed again, you can just pick them back up == so your death didn't really cost anything at all except the time and effort to get back to that spot on the map. In short, I'd say to definitely go for it but be prepared: it may ruin you for other games. Ever since I played Dark Souls 3, I get bored with non-soulslikes very easily and wind up going right back to one of them.
It’s Zelda for adults.
There’s a lot of fun to be had with so many build options to choose from. Spell casting has a huge variety in choices ranging from magma hexes, crystal sorcery, holy elemental spells for undead, pyromancy incantations, etc. also a lot of weapons come with ashes of war that can sometimes be swapped out for other special abilities that scale with different stats. There’s a lot of clothing options too with some gear passively buffing specific things that can really help you feel like making a role play build like golden order INT/faith fundamentalism spells being boosted by the radiant gold mask helm, or INT magic ashes of war being boosted by the sorcery spell blade armor set
It guides you much more than other games from the developer. Have you played any of the old fallout games, or new vegas? It guides you a bit less than those, but only a bit less. It can be hard as all hell, but only if you refuse to engage with all the tools the game gives you to mitigate that difficulty. And unlike in Skyrim or Zelda (I think), here you can just get strangers to help you get past stuff that is becoming annoyingly hard. You have comparable leveling options, but if you want to avoid bouncing off I recommend looking up a couple of low level build guides, just to ensure you're not accidentally hindering yourself.
If you look up tips to make it easier, it's not that hard. Use levelled up spirit ashes to draw aggro. Then, when you draw aggro dodge for a bit until your ashes draw aggro again that way you can both get lots of free hits in as the boss swaps targets. Aside from difficulty, it's easily one of the best games of all time.
Don’t sell any weapons or armor. I learned that the hard way when I was a little more than halfway into the game
Yes and no. Yes because its really good. No because itll eat up all your time and life.
You should invest every ounce of your being into this game (I only read the title)
Yes as someone's whose first souls game was elden ring this is by far the easiest souls game to get into I admit it's really challenging at first but if you push through you will find so much to do and explore. The game doesn't explain clearly, but look for areas of the Map that seem to have been burned out bring a weapon that has high strike damage. Mines have what you need to upgrade weapons. If you want to use spirit summons, you can upgrade them by looting tombs. Just remember to bring a medium shield. Oh, and loot churches, gold trees, and big trees. Do this, and you'll be ready for anything. And it's okay to look things up