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I rarely enjoy open world games because I always find that the quality of the level design is tragically neglected in favor of quantity. Often resulting in bland, repeated locations. Elden Ring really exposes just how complacent the level design for most open world games has always been.

If you haven't played Fromsoftware games before, understand that they are the unparalleled masters of level design. When they first announced they were making a new I.P. that was open world, I got very excited. I knew we would finally get to see what an open world game would look like with tender love and care put into every area. And when Elden Ring finally released, my foolishly high expectations were met.

If you want to read a detailed review about Elden Ring's gameplay or From's level design, then read any of my Dark Souls reviews. This game is similar enough that my review would read the same. Simply put, the gameplay is just as great. The attribute system and absurd number of weapons with unique attack animations makes this more of the incredible gameplay we had in Dark Souls.

But what I want to focus on in this review is the level design. Elden Ring's level-design is such a landmark in the annals of gaming history that we're going to be comparing it to the other all-time level design greats. I'm talking Halo 2, or The Legend Of Zelda A Link To The Past, or Baldur's Gate 2, or Mass Effect, or the very first Dark Souls. All of those titles, regardless of their other qualities, are games where each level takes place in a living and breathing location. These locations have meticulously fleshed out artistic themes and atmosphere that makes them wonderfully immersive. Elden Ring is the first next-gen open world game I have played with such a remarkable quality. I say next-gen because there are previous "open-world" games with those qualities. Two of the titles I previously mentioned: The Legend of Zelda A Link To The Past and Baldur's Gate 2 were both ground-breaking open world games in their own right. But the open world video game has evolved far beyond those titles. Unlike those titles, a next-gen open world game is, for all-intents and purposes: one area. One area (with many more areas inside that area) that the player can walk from one end to the other or from bottom to top without seeing a loading screen. This style of open world game was not possible with the technology in the days of Baldur's Gate, but it is now. And the challenges that come with this style is filling all of that space with level. Having a level that transitions the scenery and the visual theme between the levels around it. That is an art form that was always overlooked... until now. Elden Ring is a sight to behold. Even with the incredible gameplay, I found myself spending most of the first 25 hours just exploring the world and stopping to gawk at one jaw-dropping vista after another. And you never know when there is going to be another one. Because you're not supposed to know just how big the world is. You're supposed to find the maps of the world yourself. And as you do your UI map gets bigger... and bigger... and bigger... and bigger...

and then...

a little bigger.

I won't say it is the best video game that has an open world, but I will say it is the best open world video game.
10/10 God bless you Hidetaka Miyazaki

False advertising. All of the store page screenshots are from the last 3 games, because this does not include the remastered version of the first three games. They were remastered in the 90s and Valve was apparently unable to license them or something. They are free on AGD's website, so you can get them there for free or pay for the outdated version here.

It's been ten years and it still has the best level-design AND combat mechanics of all time. It has also set a gameplay formula standard that countless studios try... and usually fail to copy.

Anyone who complains about the difficulty in this game tried to play it like a mindless hack-and-slash. This is NOT an Elder Scrolls game. You don't run up to every boss and mash the attack button until they fall over. The gameplay is more similar to any old side-scrolling platformer. You need to study the enemy's attack pattern and spend a few minutes learning how to dodge/block it properly. Then start mixing in any of the eleven types of attack moves to start damaging it. It's honestly not that hard, it's just not a casual button masher.

This is the first installment of essentially the only "perfect" gameplay I've ever played. You have absolute control over your character's movements, how you dodge, and how you swing your weapon. You can do a lunging, slashing, thrusting, sweeping, countering, reposte, backstabbing or heavy attack. And that's just with the starting longsword. Every weapon has a unique moveset meaning that a replay of the game will be an entirely new playstyle if you use a new weapon.

Having such control over your character comes with only one legitimate downside which is the complicated controls that are needed to do so. Honestly though, it really doesn't take very long to get used to them, unless you don't try to get used to them and just button mash your way to death instead.

The incredible dynamics involving the weapon controls alone doesn't include everything else that makes this gameplay perfect:
1. Countless enemy types and epicly cinematic boss fights that each pose a completely different challenge from the others.
2. An open-ended RPG system that involves completely customized attributes, making for essentially an infinite number of classes
3. Hundreds of weapons and spells from three different schools of magic to choose from.
4. Richly satisfying gameplay progression that rewards skill. Every time you die, it is because of something YOU did wrong, making it easy to improve. Say goodbye to the games with sticky, clunky controls where the only thing that gets you killed is bad luck.

Last but not least, the transcendant level-design enhances the gameplay with a deeply complex world that rewards exploration perfectly. You can find very powerful weapons and spells hidden away inside entire levels that only the most dedicated explorers will find.

It's one giant world puzzle full of rewarding secrets and "gorgeous views" just waiting for you to immerse yourself.

Shakespeare: Dialogue
Dickens: Character
Tolkien: Setting
BioWare: Atmosphere

That’s right, In the long history of Western cultural artistic expression, BioWare are the all-time masters of creating atmosphere. Despite the competing release of five hall-of-fame caliber titles in 2010, Mass Effect 2 swept them all, setting a new awards record. The scope of sound effects and visually dense level-design created an atmosphere in Mass Effect that was award-winning ten years ago, and is still unmatched by any recent AAA attempts to create a science fiction world. In BioWare’s two-decade tenure of auto-producing award-winning titles, their flagship achievement in ambiance was the unequivocally immersive space adventure: Mass Effect. Out of roughly 100 adventure game titles I have played, it is indisputably the most immersive. When you achieve a uniquely gripping atmospheric level-design like they did with this game—the kind that transcends any level of graphical technology, then a remaster is still the most next-gen science fiction you can get today.

No matter how large the world of Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 is, it can never be patched enough to capture the epic scope, realism and humbly gripping personality of Mass Effect’s city hubs like Omega, Ilium or The Citadel. This linear, mission-based game lacks an open world and is waiting for those seeking for quality over quantity. I would say the immersive level-design is what carries, and while it is the strongest point of the series, it has no need to carry. The many facets of a masterpiece in interactive literature are what make Mass Effect my favorite sci-fi of any medium.

The gameplay pulls you into a realistic tactical experience, controlling a squad leader in 3rd person cover-based firefights. The mechanics involve a reasonably complex array of science fiction candy tech and biotic abilities. The way you maneuver your squad through a shootout, issue commands to set up devastation combo primers and … with a vast array of ammunition types and abilities makes for easily the most enjoyable shooter gameplay I’ve ever experienced. This claim is enhanced by the fluid gunplay. The arsenal of weapons to choose from not only makes for a dynamic RPG progression, but also endlessly brilliant new sound effects and muzzle flash animations to make your inner 9-year-old boy grin in pure delight. The controls for movement/aiming got a bit clunky in the first game of the trilogy, and while they have been improved, it’s reasonable not to expect that they could have achieved the orgasmically smooth feel of Mass Effect 2’s controls. However, the thrilling and jarring kick of firing every weapon has been implemented throughout the trilogy, enhancing the experience.

The writing is likely the strongest point according to most people. I would call it BioWare’s second best achievement in storytelling behind the Baldur’s Gate series. This game has the level of complex plot and character development that would be foolish to expect out of a Hollywood movie these days. The many, strong female characters of the Mass Effect universe are deeply layered with moral and psychological weaknesses that make them HUMAN (and in some cases, alien} and COMPELLING! [Take notes Disney]

The rigorous and intricate story structure features endless artistic themes and symbols, and as a shining achievement in interactive literature, this game pushed the limits of what storytelling can be. You will get characters killed. Characters you love. And you may just have to watch the galaxy pay for your costly decisions in the cinematically stunning cut-scenes that follow. BioWare’s mastery of creating atmosphere bleeds into the writing. As the plot intensifies, you will slowly grow more and more convinced that the galaxy has no chance. Your body is ready, I will shut up and let them take your money now.

Not the game humanity deserved, but the game we needed! God bless you Iron Gate Studio!

Valheim is like Skyrim and Runescape only there are way more environments and the boss fights are actually interesting! HA… seriously though, remember the good old days? When every graphics engine was low-budget, and the AAA games were the ones with developers possessing a raw talent for artistic level design that not only compensated for the graphics but added a uniquely immersive enjoyment to the game. Then you got a quality adventure, with an addicting progression of levels. Each with unique environments, enemies, dungeons and thrilling boss fights that reward you with satisfying additions to the gameplay mechanics that slowly build off each other. Take that classic, age of Nintendo formula, and mix it with Minecraft… only on a next-gen engine with high poly models and positively E X Q U I S I T E lighting effects and skyboxes, and you get VALHEIM!

There are some simple reasons that this indie-game from a studio of five rookie developers has taken over the industry in mere weeks. The early game feels like classic jolly cooperation on Dark Souls. Get your friends on your server with you while you explore for new biomes, loot dungeons and crypts and dark forests while you hunt a myriad of fantastical creatures. Then drop off your haul back home and it turns into Minecraft only with visuals that appeal to gamers past the age of nine. The building blocks: angled walls, thatched roofs, pillars, arches and so much more are many to choose from. The efficiency and the aesthetic of your buildings is only limited by your own skill, and the skill of your clan mates.

You can focus on building your own lavish longhouses and castles, or you can build the mere basics for crafting and advancing your character’s progression before you explore the farthest shores of the ocean in your longship for even more late game levels crawling with even more challenging and rewarding enemies. Each style appeals to different gamers, but If you are like me, you cannot get enough of the game because it does both aspects so well. The fact that the adventuring content is there makes it so much more addicting than a sandbox game because there is a means-to-an-end with whatever do. There is no need to create the fun content yourself, as is the case with most survival/creativity games. If you get bored of working on your castle, The Great Mead Hall, or Helm’s Deep itself, then you can take a refreshing break by exploring a haunted swamp, or hunting trolls or giant lox, or farming a boss fight or two. And the best part is… any of the fun activities you choose from will reward you handsomely with materials for advancing the well-being of your home.

When attempting to build a tall tower, I was finally reminded that this game was developed by mere mortals, and I found the mechanics for structural integrity to be very unrealistic. But once you learn the physics within the realm of Valheim (which is really easy to do) then the REAL fun begins.

Pros
-smooth controls and responsive combat moves.
-Beautiful visuals on a survival game engine that is transcendently optimized, with environments that are 100% terraformable.
-OUTRAGEOUS high quality level design; on early access release it has seven biomes (that I have found so far) each with completely different enemies, boss fights and resources to gather.
-easy and consistently rewarding progression system of exploring, hunting, gathering resources, levelling skills, and building new crafting stations.
-a reasonably simple and easy crafting system that remains realistic and historically immersive.
-just like real life, this game is probably overhyped for you if you have no friends to enjoy it with.

Cons
-a team of 5 (+1) developers literally cannot put out more content fast enough for this masterpiece. Not that there is a rush, it has vastly more content–most of which I have not even played yet–than survival games that have already been in early-access for almost a decade… (I am looking at you Space/Medieval Engineers!)

Easily the best survival game I have played to date. And the potential for more quality content is staggering.

Burgundians (French for “God’s chosen people”)

Siege, monk, naval, archer, cavalry, gunpowder and defensive civilization

• Start in Feudal Age (On Deathmatch: Start in Second Industrial Age)
• Villagers require no population space
• May garrison villagers in all buildings; buildings gain movement speed from garrisoned villagers
• Start with Charlemagne (100 Range/LOS monk with no conversion cooldown) instead of scout; upon death, Charlemagne will respawn at starting town center with double hit points (bonus stacks)
• may only spawn male villagers

Unique Units:
B-2 Stealth Bomber (siege), Jedi Starfighter (war ship), Clint Eastwood (mounted hand cannoneer)

Unique Techs:
• Too Much Champagne: 25% chance to spawn a villager when killing a female villager (or Gbeto)
• Russian EMP (Microsoft will drone drop you an EMP along with the listed addresses of your opponents)

Team bonus: -400 years Relic, Wonder victories

Traditionally, the 20-30 or so survival games I have tried over the years constitute the most disappointing genre in the gaming industry... not anymore!

This is BY FAR the best survival game I have ever played, and it is in ALPHA!
This is BY FAR the best city builder/management game I have ever played, and it is in ALPHA!

It is a stellar genre mix, though it is mainly an RPG with a medieval art style, setting and atmosphere inspired by Kingdom Come Deliverance, one of the best RPGs of 2018. It's more than worth noting that this game, from a studio of just seventeen people, managed to improve on many gameplay features from Kingdom Come. The controls and movement are much smoother and more responsive; the graphics are significantly better (and absolutely gorgeous!) and more importantly, way more optimized. I am getting consistent 60 frames running it in 4K resolution on ultra settings.

These are the only good comparisons to make to Kingdom Come, however. It doesn't have near the story or quest content, but it's not meant to. The core gameplay is focused on survival and developing your own city into a medieval dynasty!

The survival aspect is, in my opinion, revolutionary, because it is a very simple, relaxing yet realistic progression of developing better tools and living conditions. woodcutting, fishing, hunting, mining, trading, trapping, building and farming are all very streamlined, intuitive and easy to learn. Not only is the style of all of these survival aspects very realistic and immersive, adding to the brilliantly portrayed medieval feel, but they also don't feel TOO realistic. What do I mean like that? Well it's not overly detailed to the point where it feels egregiously detailed, like a tedious chore. It's still video-gamey, yet it doesn't take away from the satisfaction you get whenever you finish a building, or finish the harvest!

Now the biggest fear of survival games I have is in the early stages of my development when I still fear getting bored of it. And I always get bored of survival games quite fast because there is never a means to an end. It feels like an overwhelming sandbox where you are meant to create the interesting content for yourself. I've never found this to be an entertaining game style, but Medieval Dynasty found a simply ground-breaking way around that issue, with one simple, hyphenated word: genre-mixing.

Only the first few hours feel purely like a survival RPG. You learn the mechanics for surviving the first season: spring. By the end of Summer you're likely have your first house built. You will probably learn some great tricks for efficiently gathering resources in the fall, which you will need in preparation for surviving your first Winter. At this point, you will still be hooked; still awe-struck by the great graphics, the dynamic level-design due to the changing seasons, the outrageously smooth controls and gameplay, etc. Before you are anywhere close to wondering what the point of all this work is, you will begin discovering the hidden genre within Medieval Dynasty.

Before you make it through a year, you will likely be visiting villages to trade and earn valuable early-game equipment and resources by doing quests for the villagers. Eventually, their opinions of you will be high enough that you can ask them to join your village. If you're like me, the first time you see this dialogue option you will say "wait, I have a village?" Not yet, but once people start joining it, you will!

This is when it becomes a unique experience as the best city builder and management game you can imagine. You will need to build houses for the villagers you add, and build hunting cabins, fishing huts, barns, smithies etc. for them to work in, and it just keeps growing more and more complicated and satisfying from there. At this point, I have chickens, pigs, a smithy, two lumber mills, and about 20 villagers. Many of them are starting to have children, so the mothers are occupied instead of helping out the village with their normal day-jobs. I'm working on building my first tavern and some more houses so I can get more villagers working my three huge cultivation fields. I also almost have the technology to build my first mine!

Now the reason it's the best city builder I've ever played is simple, it's a first-person game. So the satisfaction of developing your community; the aesthetic pleasure of how you lay out your roads and buildings; the style and material of your houses; and the location of your village are all vastly more rewarding because of how scenic and beautiful the game is. I built my house at the top of a mountain, and it is overlooking my village which is in the foothills of the mountain along the shores of a lake in the woods. I have one screenshot with more eye-candy to it than most management-simulation games.

I've advertised the content well enough already, but the best part is, this game is still in Alpha/early-access. It already has enough rewarding and engaging content for me to have played it longer than any other survival or building game, and there's no telling what kind of content is yet to come...

Love when a good game that I paid for gets bought by a degenerate company and becomes free to play AKA Trash

I can't get past the boss fight where I have to change my Epic Games password and get a reset code from them that is actually valid. GG Epic Games you win.

I better skip the nit-picking because I really want this game to be popular again despite the developers trying to piss off their fan base. Besides, as a straight, white, Christian male of Swedish decent, I'm not allowed to be offended that they didn't give my Swedes their true ethnic name: Sverige, but they did for the Sioux and the Iroquois. I'm just going to play the game now and be glad they didn't rename the Iroquois to the Washington Age of Empires 3 Civ.

It's still... mostly Age of Empires III. I've been excited for this remake for years ever since it became impossible to find a decent ranked game on the original, and while the woke changes bother me, it's still a great game so I'm gonna give it a thumbs up in the hopes that this one can bring back the multiplayer community from the original.

As an experienced Age of Empires 2 player I have a very objective comparison to offer. While AoE2 does have more focus on base building and vastly better community games, Age of Empires 3 is SIGNIFICANTLY better for multiplayer. The dynamics just don't even compare. Every civilization in Age of Empires 2 is almost exactly the same, while each of the unique civilizations in Age of Empires 3 are entirely different. Starting build orders for competitive play are different for every civilization, and each one is a unique play style. As an experienced purveyor of strategy games I say with certainty that this is the best multiplayer strategy game I have played.

If you're looking for a more casual experience, this one still easily sweeps most other RTS, including the other two in the series. The aesthetic role-playing of exploring for treasures, building a colony and customizing a home city is a very unique experience that no other RTS has to offer. On top of that, consider the staggering number of environments you get to choose from in the map list. This game features well over a hundred representations of real locales across the world, with unique jungle skins for both Asia and South America, and two completely different tundra wastelands in Siberia, and Colorado. The list goes on and on.

A fun game in a lot of ways. But ruinned by the fact that the developers force you to play hardcore mode, which means if you die on a 150 day mission "which is several hours" then you have to start the whole thing over again.

I've never understood why people enjoy hardcore modes in videogames, but personally I prefer for my time not to end up being a complete waste. To make it worse, the game really likes to freeze and crash, so lately I've been doing the first 30 minutes of a mission over and over. Not ideal.