Recent reviews by •Josh :D•

Action! Ghosts! Helltak... I mean Awaria! <3

Vanripper Kiss Secured

The ultimate S.T.A.L.K.E.R. experience. Glory to Heroes!

DLC Release:
Very fun, sometimes jaw-dropping and challenging. World is expansive, every location looks distinct and forced me to sweep every corner due to interest and intrigue. I loved every second of dungeon exploration, music listening during boss fights and scenery when I stop to glance over new forest/mountain/valley. This DLC gave interesting, unique in their differences NPCs and battle companions, which I will remember years ahead.

However, these are few major gripes I have with DLC:
1. Bosses are pretty, original, but some of them are WAY too tedious to fight. And I mean not being unfairly hard or impossible to predict - no - only them having inflated health pool and too narrow window for attacks. Instead fast, risky and rewarding combat we get 6-8 attack combo slop to dodge/block for chance to fit in 1 "punishing" attack. I'm not talking about every encounter, only about select few of them, which I won't spoil.

2. There're like 3 big locations, which feel too empty to not notice. They're barren, no loot, no interesting monster encounters, just giant plateau of nothigness. They feel almost rushed in some places.

3. Loot: generic loot is not worth its placement at all. After going through giant chunk of game, upgrading weapons, defeating Mogh things I loot in dlc are are... Smithing stones? 1 to 6? Whoa. I get it, devs expect not everyone having bells for ore, but... You can easily cut half of that from DLC loot spots and you will lose nothing of value or uniqueness. Even a reskinned weapon or item would be better with same stats.

Still, I haven't noticed how fast time has passed with me playing this DLC. Despite few flaws, I loved every second of it. More Elden Ring fun for Elden Ring fan.

9/10

Game of decade!

DLC Release:
Very fun, sometimes jaw-dropping and challenging. World is expansive, every location looks distinct and forced me to sweep every corner due to interest and intrigue. I loved every second of dungeon exploration, music listening during boss fights and scenery when I stop to glance over new forest/mountain/valley. This DLC gave interesting, unique in their differences NPCs and battle companions, which I will remember years ahead.

However, these are few major gripes I have with DLC:
1. Bosses are pretty, original, but some of them are WAY too tedious to fight. And I mean not being unfairly hard or impossible to predict - no - only them having inflated health pool and too narrow window for attacks. Instead fast, risky and rewarding combat we get 6-8 attack combo slop to dodge/block for chance to fit in 1 "punishing" attack. I'm not talking about every encounter, only about select few of them, which I won't spoil.

2. There're like 3 big locations, which feel too empty to not notice. They're barren, no loot, no interesting monster encounters, just giant plateau of nothigness. They feel almost rushed in some places.

3. Loot: generic loot is not worth its placement at all. After going through giant chunk of game, upgrading weapons, defeating Mogh things I loot in dlc are are... Smithing stones? 1 to 6? Whoa. I get it, devs expect not everyone having bells for ore, but... You can easily cut half of that from DLC loot spots and you will lose nothing of value or uniqueness. Even a reskinned weapon or item would be better with same stats.

Still, I haven't noticed how fast time has passed with me playing this DLC. Despite few flaws, I loved every second of it. More Elden Ring fun for Elden Ring fan.

9/10

### OLD Review:
Elden Ring feels fresh and plays very unlike any previous installments of From's games.
Developers took everything what was good from Souls series, Sekiro and Blodborne and mixed it with new mechanics in a truly unique experience with a lot of fun stuff to exploit discover.

Unlike DS1, movement doesn't feel as sluggish and awkward (imho, feel free to disagree).
Unlike DS2, repeating encounters with previously fought bosses don't feel like some annoying hindrance.
Unlike DS3, weapon arts are viable and actually valid strategy for encounters.
Unlike Sekiro, you're not locked to a small number of playstyles and can go full blast to try out murder toys, spells or incantations.

Overall game's very forgiving (discarding few lategame optional encounter) and easier that previous soulslikes, but is a lot more enjoyable. Bleed is even more OP as before and addition of spirit ash summons trivializes big part of content, but they're always optional to use, so if you're looking for challenge you're gonna find it.

### Very old stuff addressing launch problems:
Sadly I couldn't touch PvP part at all because my PC GPU doesn't support DX12 on hardware level (boo, potato pc) and the game simply crashes on startup, yet tuffee88's d3d12ProxyEdrDx11_0 project on github helped to launch and play game in offline mode. THANK YOU @TUFFEE88.

There're other rather small issues, like few catacomb dungeons being very over the top with their design (triply looped dungeon with samey looking rooms) and traps (I'm looking at all of you, giant chariots), yet they're not really noticeable after spending almost 300h in PvE/offline only and doing multiple full runs.
First walkthrough took ~125h on quality build and trying out different weapons, fastest one with optional bosses for those sweet achievements took ~10h.

Probably the best purchase on Steam for me at time of writing this review.
9 / 10

This game is a blast!
Music and art are of high quality and stages are actually fun to think and walk through, especially last ones. I give it 666 points out of 13.
Definitely gonna follow developer and his future projects.

Thanks for a ride, vanripper!

Depressive nostalgia...

"The Labor of Love", hell, I'd give it Game of year award if it wasn't released earlier. [x2]

Game is still played like a new'n'fresh release with loads of content and challenges to beat