Recent reviews by Balrog

so many of the design decisions in this game truly baffle me. it feels like every aspect of it is constantly fighting itself until they settle their differences and gang up on you in your attempt to extract anything fun. it sucks because the concept of an elden ring roguelike is one of the coolest things ive ever heard and i was really excited to see it

1. Not a roguelike
whether it was marketed explicitly as this or not, its clear in the way it was presented, how every content creator talked about it, and the various systems it pulls from other games that this was the intention. but this game has none of the aspects that make the genre fun.

there is no build creation: you have almost no playstyle defining decisions to make (just keep stacking anything that ups your main damage type, which most of what you pick up will not be) and there is almost no unique and fun abilities to acquire during a run. certainly not anything that you could call synergies. the things that you do pick up will be mostly boring stat sticks that give you +6% damage to skeleton elbows when theyre wet or something, and the few unique effects are very underwhelming. the lack of on hit, on death, on status proc etc effects is bizarre. overall, you just pick a character and play them virtually identically in every run.

the meta-progression is also extremely boring. most of the relics are similar stat bonuses that are barely felt, with a few being more meaningful (mostly just very simple things that a dozen mods have done for the base game like healing allies with your flask). but ultimately its still basic elden ring combat with no changes demonstrating progression over time. just picking up whatever weapons you get like its a randomizer run.

there is also NO WAY TO RESTART A RUN, EVEN IF EVERY PLAYER AGREES. you cant even kill yourself or afk, you will just keep respawning. you have to wait until the circle shrinks all the way down for the night and the boss or the circle wipes your party. if you close the game or quit the session before that, IT THREATENS YOU WITH A LEAVER PENALTY (LOL?). the fact that this is even real makes it so clear nobody in development, or at least nobody with enough importance or courage to say something, has played the staples of the genre and understood the appeal. rerolling until you find something promising is such a common way to play these games that the binding of isaac has an item called the R key. runs can go bad early and recognizably, and nobody wants to be locked into 40 minutes of something you know is virtually impossible. this is made much worse given the next point which is that

2. The majority of gameplay feels like a total slog
there is the obvious point that there is only a single map, which feels mechanically and tonally incomplete. like, limgrave is perfectly designed as an introductory area. the fact that the whole game takes place in that setting makes it feel like were still in a network test. going through the same map, with generally the same layout and only about 4 different structures aside from the central castle and the shifting map events (i will have a whole section on this later) becomes totally brainmelting after a few runs. and the actual things you are doing in them is wiping trash mobs to farm runes, and occasionally fighting field bosses that take forever and give minimal unexciting, but still necessary rewards if you have nothing else to get, which is often

the most important things are levels and healing flask upgrades, which you farm in the exact way every single run like a checklist. there is no way to seek consistent and substantive upgrades besides a legendary drop from certain field bosses, which will likely not even be useful for your build given the amount of variance. imagine if you had to spin a wheel for a random end of dungeon reward in elden ring and that was the only thing you could get to +10. there is one way to get a guaranteed legendary of your choice, but ill get to that later. you are mostly just rolling for more stat sticks, spewing useless consumables everywhere, and hoping the bigger rewards are even relevant for anyones build. its like poe if none of the drops were good and builds never went anywhere

as for the enemies themselves, like i said, most of the combat is just cleaving through trash. each structure (camps, forts, etc.) is the exact same every time, and just has a couple of elite mobs with inflated health pools to kill to get the main reward. the field bosses are alright but generally either far too tanky to take on early or not worth the time later on when youre deciding between the most important stops. these sorts of forced decisions plague the design of the game and lead into the next point that

3. The time constraints only exist to be frustrating
having to choose what to get to because of the closing storm doesnt ever lead to interesting decisions (in no small part because theres very little interesting things to choose between). running around takes an agonizing amount of time when you know youre losing out on everything in the future, and makes you often just settle for boring encounters to at least get levels. fighting an absurdly tanky field boss and having the storm come in before you can finish essentially means the run is over on the spot, as the opportunity cost for everything you do is massive, and future bosses will take even longer since youre weaker.

the fact that the storm comes in two shrinking circles rather than just continually closing in means a path you had lined up can just be made invalid. and planning said path feels haphazard as you have to run while you look at the map and figure out how to route (there is no minimap to have a convenient reference and paths to get to places are unclear, often requiring time wasting circling around). the storm circle being random can also lead to absurd scenarios such as only half of a mine being in the circle (no way to visually tell from the map). this happened to my group. with the mines being one of the more time consuming locations as well, and the submerged half being the part with the reward, this was one of many possible timewasters that pretty much kill the run on the spot. another awesome one is when boss ai can decide to lock you down until its over, such as a magma wyrm spamming its dash 8 times in a row and be unhittable for a minute straight. this time limited fortnite system becomes even worse in its anti-synergy with the rest of the mechanics when you unlock another feature being

4. The far too centralizing map events
just a disclaimer, my group only unlocked the lava area (before they quit trying to enjoy the game, lol), so maybe the future ones are better designed (i doubt it). that being said, the one we did experience was so large and time consuming that you had to dedicate basically an entire night cycle to complete it (multiple runs thrown as we realized how long it took, with the circle closing in as we got to the end and the entire time being a waste) while also running past multiple groups of trash mobs and dead end paths in massive empty areas. it took so long it felt like we were actively being discouraged to even try it, made worse by how confusing what the end goal even was. you lose many levels for doing this, but the end reward is so disproportionately strong (instantly bring any weapon for each player to the max level) that it becomes the only consistent way to force power and choice out of a run. the end goal of that power unfortunately is also plagued with issues, so the next point is that

5. The bosses are not designed well
this isnt to say they arent visually impressive. i also think their individual attacks are designed pretty well, but in whatever fromsoft thinks "designed for multiplayer" means, they missed the mark. another disclaimer, my group only reached the

REVIEW CONTINUED IN COMMENTS. I DIDNT REALIZE THERE WAS A CHARACTER LIMIT. LOL.