Recent reviews by {Mad Dawgs} - Cybergoku

So 101 Hours in and i finally finish my first (of many to come) play through's of Elden Ring.

What a game! Definitely my favourite of the Soulsborn series and Sekiro was a tough one to beat! I was so blown away by both the depth and width of this game that its taken me about this long to even grasp how huge this game is.

If you are not a fan of Dark Soul 1-3 then this will not be for you as the game is ultimately at its core a dark souls game and is a blend of those games mixed with open world game elements (Think Skyrim, Witcher 3, Assasins Creed) but it has somehow managed to do what none of them have and that is make an open world game of absolutely insane scope not be bogged down in clutter. You are free to play how you want, use what items / weapons / armour you want, but you don't have 600 of the same item of +2 damage, +6 damage, there are quests, but they are not mandatory, there are bosses but only like 15 of the 157 bosses are mandatory.

The areas you visit are stunning and extremely varied and the enemies you encounter are the same, me and the group i was playing with were constantly speechless with how much variety the enemies had, was truly a special game. This is probably the closest I've ever come to giving a game 10/10 but it does have some small problems. The PVP has taken a big hit, in previous titles you could invade anyone who had a buff on that allowed them to be online, in this the only time you can invade people is when they already have coop partners in, which takes away a huge chunk of the fun.

There are ultimately 3 main build paths you can go down and then mix between them too.
Melee (Strength or Dexterity)
Sorceries (Spells, being a wizard intelligence)
Incantations (Faith, being a paladin or shaman)

Each of these has from my perspective more depth put into them than in any game prior.

In the last 5 - 10 years very few games have came out where it is so overwhelmingly clear that it was centered with gamers at heart, too often are games riddled with microtransactions or haven't been put past beta and rushed out. (Looking at you Halo Infinite) This game is clearly a labour of love and even for all you non souls people out there who are on the fence, there are ways to make the game easier, not easy but easier.

If you are looking for a game to finish in 30 hours this aint it.
If you are looking for a game to hold your hand and tell you exactly where to go and what to do, this aint it.
If you are looking for a game to which provides a solid challenge but with enough options available to ultimately make anything possible, this is the one for you.
This game is great fun with friends, or of course Solo.

Now i will take a short breather and then dip back in to NG+ and beyond. Until then if you have any questions about the game just message me, id be happy to discuss.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

TLDR: 9/10 Best game of the last 10 years.

I know what you are thinking, the game has been out 8 hours and this guy has 8 hours played, but hear me out.

Do you like tower defence? Do you like a fun sense of humour? Do you like solo / coop games? Then this game ticks all of those boxes!
If you are looking for a AAA PVP or more than 2 player coop then unfortunately this game does have what your looking for.

I have played this on both Stadia and Steam (It was out on Stadia first) and the performance on steam is a substantial improvement. Personally have had no issues in game play and have finished my first run of campaign.

The game has tonnes of replay-ability and so many different ways to play, i love playing with different friends because you can see how different people tackle different situations.

---If you have played Orcs Must Die 1 or 2 ---
The Game is what you would expect, its just the same (more or less) as orcs 2 but with more traps, as well as a really awesome new type of map which you fight substantially more orcs but have access to siege equipment and larger traps, very very fun and a nice natural evolution of the franchise rather than a complete overhaul like unchained was. If you enjoyed 1 or 2 your sure to enjoy this!

---If you have not played the orcs must die franchise before---
Orcs must die is where you have 1 or 2(in coop) players that have to defend your rift from waves of orcs trying to assault you, there are 3 difficulty modes, easy is very easy, Warmage (medium) feels quite naturally the difficulty its meant to be and rift lord (hard) is where you would go to use what you have learned after a while of playing.
You can play as a one man (or woman) wrecking machine and have numerous weapons and trinkets and go around killing the orcs solo, you can set up intricate mazes of traps or you can mix and match and find how you prefer playing somewhere in the middle.
The franchise has a great sense of humour, if your on the fence about getting this, my recommendations would be to buy 1 or 2, they are very very cheap and this game is basically a natural evolution of them so if you enjoy them you'll enjoy this.

The game has some day 1 bugs but already the devs are throwing out hot fixes so please don't negative for no reason, the devs care about the game and the community and will get it all nice and polished just give them a minute.

I don't really do reviews so the fact I am doing one should speak to the significance of this game.

This game has elements of many games within it, to name a few would be Uncharted, Dark Souls, Sekiro, God of war even however while i was not a fan of the uncharted games nor their general play style this game has completely won me over.

I went into this game expecting some half baked unpolished game which didnt live up to the Star Wars name, i heard several reports of respawn, the company who made the game, creating the game first then just slapping star wars over it and that's that. If that is the case then they are some of the most fantastic developers i have ever experienced, this game is THE most star wars experience including the recent movies for the last 10+ years i would say.

Is it similar to Knights of the old republic? No
Is it Similar to the force unleashed? No

It is very much its own, standalone game set in a fantastic and open period of star wars history and whoever wrote the setting / script or whatever for this game was absolutely not only a huge star wars fan, but had clearly watched / read / played all the star wars content available because there are so many throwbacks, references, name drops, even just the background sets have such a star wars feel to them that its unimaginably refreshing.

The game is not without flaws, currently it doesn't seem to be optimised well, i have a GTX 970 which isn't the worst card on the market but even on the lowest settings i was experiencing extreme frame rate drops. There are areas of the game which aren't too polished so you have very strange issues like falling through the level however it is rare and dying via "falling" has a very limited inconvenience so is quite easy to go past while ignoring.

I would say the games length is around 20 hours on Jedi Master which i feel is the difficulty the dev's intended for it to be played but it is certainly not without challenges.

It is rare for me to want to play through a single player experience more than once however this game was so engaging i am looking forward to my second play through on Grand master.

I paid £60 for the deluxe edition of this game, was it worth the money?

It depends, i personally loved this game and i am absolutely fine with that price tag for a couple reasons:

1. It supports the devs who are clearly fantastically talented at what they do and i want them to make more games.

2. It supports single player only experiences, this isnt my go to genre but it really sticks it to EA if this performs better than they were expecting, which fingers crossed limits their microtransactions etc in future titles.

3. I will be getting far more hours out of this game than i have played so far, i usually judge a game on how many hours i get out of it alongside how much i enjoyed it, this is one of the only times i have ever and probably will ever make a steam review so that shows how much i enjoyed it.

If you are a huge Star Wars fan, specifically of the Clone Wars, Rebels or even just the Vader Comics this game is absolutely aimed with you in mind, if you are a more casual fan alot of the smaller details would be lost on you however the gameplay would certainly hold your attention assuming you like that style of game but it is absolutely not a hack and slash so keep that in mind.

TLDR:
Great game, might not be for everyone but is a heavy star wars nerds dream come true, we have been waiting years for this game and its been worth the wait.

Brilliant game , even better mods seriously worth the buy , even if you have trinity :)

I have played this game for a few hundred hours now, vs ai, vs friends and mixtures between the two.
I can saftly say that i have experianced the majoirty this game and several mods for it too.
This game is honestly one of the greatest time dumps i have ever had, something people give it greif for is games lasting days, games CAN last days but ive also finished games in an hour or less.
It totaly depends on size of map and the skill of players.
I would completly recomend this to everyone and if youd like a game please let me know :)

Very fun game Dawn of war meet gears of war meets civ 4 :) very good fun multiplayers good too well worth the buy !!