Elden Ring
I consider open-world RPG Elden Ring to be not only the star jewel in FromSoftware’s heavy crown, but also, probably, the last decade of gaming. It’s so easy to explore, to live and to die, in the bucolic and gruesome game. You can target the game’s litany of mangled bosses, head underground toward dungeons, or through the ground to places like the Siofra or Ainsel River underworlds. You can collect, craft, or get married. You can lose yourself in the game’s high-profile lore, partially provided by Game of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin.
And, if you’ve played every FromSoftware Soulslike multiple times like I have, you can get a little tired of seeing all the recycled assets and hearing another story about death, and rebuilding, and power, and blah, blah, blah.
Elden Ring is the perfect culmination of the past decade or so of FromSoftware’s hard work, but it is not the most special, I don’t think.
