After half a decade of not playing single-player games, Elden Ring rekindled the love for them.
Its development took around five years but in reality, it is the outcome of fromsoftware mastering their formula through the experience they gained since 2009 with different titles and combining the industry's favorite genre open-world.
It's addictive and the replayability is insane which justifies the price but like everything it's not perfect, it has its own flaws which I am ready to ignore as the game is good enough for me.

The world of Elden ring feels alive and yet dead which creates the mysterious and dark aura which compels you to explore.
The exploration initially for the first few hours feels thrilling as you are left in awe with gorgeous landscapes and epic architecture, dungeons that feel scary and unknown but rewarding at the end. Every few hours you find a new item to equip or use which gives a sense of progression in exploration. There is no hand holding no direction marker or list to check mark, you feel free and that brings a sense of immersion. The population inhabiting the area changes as you progress on your trusty steed with unique and original designs but after some time the exploration becomes stale but not completely for example dungeons become repetitive, as you already know how it will go in the end etc

Bosses in soulsborne games are harder than your average RPGs, not an unknown fact but in Elden ring some bosses from a design and lore perspective are great but when it comes to difficulty level, some bosses are just artificially difficult with no interesting layer to them, for example, fire giant, which I get is one of the end game bosses but still making his health bar so absurdly high combining with the high frequency of changing his location during battle is not interesting, it is not fun chasing him down on steed and when you reach there, he is ready to one shot you. Every boss is ready to pull a long combo on you even if you miss a single roll dodge timing which is cool to see and requires a bit of practice but in reality lacks balancing. Some fights feel heavy RNG based which makes the experience less enjoyable but again game also provides you with unbalanced tools which you can use to one shot bosses before they even start their aggressive input reading, in the end, there are enough great bosses to defeat which are beautifully crafted and even bad ones when defeated gives satisfaction.

skill required ahead, just get gud or ask some sun bros to help you, 9/10 game

easily in my top ten

ik incomplete review