"The fallen leaves tell a story. Of how a Tarnished became Elden Lord."

Ah Elden Ring... quite possibly one of if not the best RPG's to date, and quite possibly one of the best games of all time. It's still Demon's Souls/Dark Souls at the core but with so much more oomph. The base games world along with the DLC is open, vast and full of everything. You can do and go 𝘢𝘭𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 wherever you want right off the bat even if it's not wildly recommended to do so which is something not really seen in previous Souls games, it's easily one of the best games to sink hundreds of hours into just exploring every nook and cranny but even after three, four, maybe even five playthroughs you won't have seen everything the game has to offer.

There's over 400 weapons to choose from with over half of them being buffable and alterable making builds so much more unique, anything goes, use whatever you want however you like and with over 200 spells/incantations to use as well you can mix and match just about everything while still keeping pretty much everything you use's viability high even in high NG+ runs, and, of course there is no wrong way to play Elden Ring so GO CRAZY WITH IT!

All of the unique summons are great, the NPC's and bosses are all phenomenal (well most of them), the games overall setting, lore, storytelling and quests are just peak, the voice work is S-Tier, the OST is godlike and PvP while it is a bit of a slog sometimes is still fun... it's just got everything you'd ever want.

Elden Ring is THAT game, truly one of the greatest experiences out there.

Still one of my favourite Final Fantasies ever, top 5 for me for sure.

It's got some of my most beloved characters, one of the best villains, an absolutely phenomenal OST, a REALLY good story (if you're into one filled with Time Travel, Paradoxes etc, lots of stuff like that), tons of open zone areas to explore that are surprisingly pretty big considering the platforms this originally released on and to top it off one of the best combat systems in FF history, the combat is a wildly improved version of the Paradigm system from FF13 that just feels super satisfying to play with in all aspects.
Then throwing in the 150+ monsters you can get to add to your party definitely makes the updated combat feel even greater too. You can mix and match any 3 Monsters at once with the same or different roles/jobs to spice up your builds, but that isn't the best part... the best thing about the Monsters in this game is the borderline infinite customisation they provide, you can upgrade Monsters basically any way you want with a wide range of materials and as they level they'll unlock specific skills and abilities which you can infuse into any other Monster to create the perfect being.

Now unfortunately by default the PC port for this game like FF13 is not great at all, without the correct fixes you'll be stuck ranging from 30-45FPS and that for most people won't feel good to play. However there are a mountain of guides that fix this (I've been running the game at a perfect 60FPS no problem even in the more graphically intense areas of the game) so if you're on edge about buying it because of all the tech issues don't worry, they ALL can be fixed and extremely easily. That of course doesn't take away from the fact that normally it is a bad port though, I don't know why Square keeps doing this but hey at least it's fixable and not just DOA.
I'd also recommend going for all the mods and enhancements you find in the guide presented below, like the HD mod, button prompt fix, 4gb Patch and so on, they will definitely be worth your time.
Link to the guide I used that fixed my game - https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2038838545

As a final thought I hope more people decide to give this and the rest of the games in the FF13 trilogy a try despite the bad rep they got on release, they're all so good and get so much blind hate now that it's sad. Plus of course this is a sequel to 13 anyway so playing this one before that doesn't really make too much sense and jumping in without any knowledge of the first game will leave you confused for most of the playthrough, lot's of context to specific things comes from playing the first game. BUT there is neat feature on the main menu that explains parts of each of FF13's chapters to fill you in, it's not as good as actually playing through the game but having a lore tab for the first game in case you're new to the series is really nice.

So yeah there's so much more about the game that I love that I didn't mention above mainly because spoilers (if people even care about that now) and also because it would take WAY too long to share my love for this game haha. With everything considered though this game is a solid 9/10 for me, not many Final Fantasy's make me feel the way this game does... it's just so perfect and packed full of content.