Anyways-- I hope I told the flaws with the game nicely. Or at least the ones I perceived. ;)

AND the utter lack of replay value. One of the absolute best aspects of the souls series imo is that you can sit down if you're bored and beat the entirety of dark souls or ds3 in an afternoon. just a good 4-8 hours. Elden ring on the other hand? You have to do so much monotonous out of the way crap. You have to hunt for titanite, you have to get all the maps to actually know where you're going, and it's a complete STRUGGLE to only do the main dungeons without falling behind on levels and resources. It suffers from all the bad of an open world game while offering half the good.

I understand that elden ring is not trying to be dark souls. but you cannot deny that it's iterative, and the iteration it presents is... bad!!!! super duper too different while at the same time playing it way too safe. I didn't even address the level design and boring dungeons and samey bosses and meh movesets and frustrating online mechanics and complete lack of fight clubs (iirc?)

I have given bloodborne and ds3 probably a good 10 playthroughs each. I really, really, REALLY want to like them. I admittedly only gave elden ring 3, and the 3rd one remains unfinished, but i'm not just trying to be a contrarian. I love Miyazakis work and his stories even when the gameplay attached is just not for me. I'm sure there are others out there that agree with this take?

I spent a long time deeply and thought provokingly articulating my thoughts on this franchise and why I feel the way that I do and the whole comment got somehow wiped from existence. Here's my sparknotes.

elden ring is too fast. ds3, bloodborne, and elden ring stand opposite a franchise that I really really really enjoyed as a kid. Elden ring fails to at all address the issues that ds3 and bloodbornes power fantasy gameplay introduced to the franchise. balance is generally a nightmare with being over/under leveled and things killing you in only a few hits. I don't like the gameplay of memorizing long convoluted attack patterns as opposed to the slow and tactical nature of the original games. Sekisoulsbornering games just aint what they used to be, let me tell ya.

It is sarcastic!

Can't tell if that's sarcastic haha!

Good review, tells the flaws with the game nicely