Elden Ring: Launch Edition

Elden Ring is a massive iteration on what FromSoftware began with the Souls series, bringing its relentlessly challenging combat to an incredible open world that gives us the freedom to choose our own path.

From Software's latest is a masterpiece of open-world design that places exploration and player agency at the heart of the experience.

Grandiose, mysterious, but now a touch more welcoming, Elden Ring tweaks the FromSoft formula to open up its world.

An open world action RPG from FromSoftware that reaches new heights, but spends too much time in the familiar.

Elden Ring is FromSoftware’s most accessible, and difficult, game yet

Elden Ring is both a refinement and evolution of the Dark Souls formula, presenting an expansive world that's as hostile as it is inviting. Despite the occasional excess, suffering has never been as much fun as this.

Elden Ring represents a truly amazing combination of various game elements that all come together to create something fascinating, special, and unforgettable. Elden Ring isn’t just the best game this year; it’s one of the best games ever made.

This is a massive world, astonishingly rendered and seemingly limitless in its creative diversity

I can hear the murmurous, gently swelling music of Rotview Balcony, a place of crimson skies and arid landscape, playing from the other room where the game is idling as I type this sentence. “Elden Ring’s” score is a glorious counterpoint to the occasional jankiness of texture clipping and frame-rate fluctuations. And while I suspect the latter part of “Elden Ring” may exasperate my patience — I hear that a gauntlet of bosses picks up where the notoriously difficult “Dark Souls III: The Ringed City” DLC left off — right now, I can’t wait to get back to it.

Elden Ring is a fantastic game that can still deliver the unmatched thrill of defeating a tough boss after an hours-long battle. Those who worship at the church of Souls-like will find a game that’s basically everything they ever wanted.