Elden Ring Review
FromSoftware trades claustrophobic corridors for an entire continent, and somehow turns its most punishing game into its most welcoming.
For two decades FromSoftware perfected the art of the dense, interlocking dungeon. Elden Ring takes everything that made those games great and lets it breathe across an entire continent — and the result is the studio's finest work to date. Directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, with a mythology seeded by A Song of Ice and Fire author George R. R. Martin, it launched on February 25, 2022 across PC, PlayStation and Xbox, and it still sets the pace for the genre it helped redefine.
An open world with teeth
The Lands Between is not the checklist open world you've grown numb to. There are no towers to climb that vomit icons onto your map. Instead, the horizon itself is the quest marker: you see a glow in the distance, you ride toward it, and you find a catacomb, a dragon, or a story told entirely through ruins. Exploration is its own reward because the world is built by hand, not by template.
Your spectral steed Torrent is what makes that scale work. Galloping across Limgrave's grassy plains, cresting ridgelines and bailing out of fights that turn sour gives the world a pace no previous Souls game could manage. The six main regions each have their own mood — the rot-choked wasteland of Caelid is a genuine shock after the pastoral opening hours — and beneath them sit hidden caves, tunnels and catacombs, each with its own boss and reward. It is a map you learn the way you learn a real place.
Difficulty, reframed
Yes, it's hard. But Elden Ring is the most generous game From has made. Stuck on a boss? Go somewhere else, get stronger, summon a friend, or respec entirely. The freedom to walk away and come back transforms the series' famous wall-bashing into something closer to genuine adventure. Combat remains precise and weighty, and the boss roster is simply the best in the genre.
The systems underneath deserve as much credit as the design. Ashes of War let you bolt new weapon arts onto your favourite blade and swap them freely at any site of grace. Spirit Ashes summon allies that turn an impossible duel into a manageable skirmish. Stealth, parries and a deep catalogue of sorceries and incantations mean a pure mage, a heavy strength build and a nimble bleed build play like three different games. Checkpoints are placed with real mercy, too: stakes of Marika often put you back at the arena door rather than a long run away.
A story told in ruins
You play a Tarnished, an exile summoned back to a realm shattered after Queen Marika broke the Elden Ring and her demigod children went to war over its fragments. Martin wrote the ancient history; Miyazaki wrote the game you actually play, and in classic FromSoftware fashion he leaves most of it for you to dig out of item descriptions, crumbling architecture and the half-mad characters you meet on the road.
That approach will not convert anyone who wants cutscenes and a quest log, and the side stories can be missed entirely if you talk to the wrong person at the wrong time. But when it clicks, it is extraordinary. Piecing together what happened to a demigod from the state of the castle they ruled is more memorable than any exposition dump, and the multiple endings reward players who pay attention.
Presentation and performance
Elden Ring is not a technical showpiece, but its art direction is peerless. The golden Erdtree hangs over nearly every vista, legacy dungeons such as the castles of the early game are sprawling feats of vertical design, and the score swells at exactly the right moments in the big fights. Few games make a ruined chapel on a hill feel this loaded with meaning.
The weak spot has always been frame pacing. The PC version in particular shipped with frame-rate problems that Bandai Namco worked through with patches, and while things are far better today, it still isn't the silky experience the art deserves.
Shadow of the Erdtree and beyond
FromSoftware announced its expansion in early 2023, and Shadow of the Erdtree arrived in June 2024. Following the trail of the demigod Miquella into the Land of Shadow, it is the largest expansion the studio has made: a new interconnected region with its own legacy dungeons and a separate progression system built around Scadutree Fragments, which strengthen you only inside the expansion. It is harder than the base game, sometimes punishingly so, but its level design stands with From's best.
Rise, Tarnished, and let us walk a new path together. An upcoming expansion for #ELDENRING Shadow of the Erdtree, is currently in development. We hope you look forward to new adventures in the Lands Between.
— ELDEN RING (@ELDENRING) February 28, 2023
The game has kept travelling since. A Nintendo Switch 2 version, the Tarnished Edition, launched in August 2026, and Bandai Namco has made its new content available to buy on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC as well. If you are coming in fresh, the base game plus expansion is one of the biggest single purchases in the medium. More details are on FromSoftware's official product page.
Official resources
- Elden Ring official site (Bandai Namco Entertainment)
- FromSoftware: Elden Ring product page
- Bandai Namco Europe: Elden Ring news and updates
- Elden Ring on Steam
- Elden Ring on PlayStation
- Elden Ring on Wikipedia
The verdict
A handful of late-game bosses lean on spectacle over fairness, and the cryptic questlines still demand a wiki. But these are footnotes on a monumental achievement. If you bounced off Sekiro, Elden Ring is the most approachable doorway into FromSoftware's world — and one of the defining games of its generation.
What we loved
- A vast open world that constantly rewards curiosity
- Flexible builds that let you play your way
- Boss fights that set a new genre standard
- Enormous amount of content for the price
What held it back
- Brutal late-game difficulty spikes
- Questlines remain cryptic with no journal
- Performance can stutter on PC
