Ring of roses

Oscar Taylor-Kent details how Elden Ring will blow you away… before we all fall down

- By Oscar Taylor-Kent

Like the Elden Ring itself, the souls like genre has been shattered – by the very studio that created it. Yet, in taking those shards – pieces of Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro – and forging Elden Ring, FromSoftware has managed to create something that feels entirely new yet familiar.

This isn’t ‘Dark Souls but open world’. Wide-open spaces are used in a way that changes how you undertake your journey, and a wealth of combat, gear, and customisation options makes experimenting with the way you play just as freeing as the ability to choose which physical direction you take.

Going hands-on with the game ourselves, we easily spend upwards of ten hours in the opening area alone, constantly enticed by new things to find. We’ve got approximately half of the first area to play around with, and six regions are promised in the full game the idea of effectively 2 times the number of things to see, do, and find is almost overwhelming.

But what’s here is not just the sort of fluff you find in some open worlds (for example, as beautiful as some of the expansive English countryside is in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, there are only so many actual points of discovery within it). In Elden Ring, there’s a teasing secret over the crest of every hill.

SECRET KEEPERS