Elden Ring with ChevRage, Beakman and Robomoo 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3imUns3jal4Elden Ring with ChevRage 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkYTdfVzkJIElden Ring with ChevRage 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0EluLTp0o4Elden Ring with ChevRage 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LwLVqNbthsI'm really liking it. But then again I've always liked these exploration-heavy games. The much larger, more outdoor-focused world is very enjoyable to be in, and the scenery is stunning. It's at the point where I keep getting distracted by cool-looking stuff in the distance and forgetting to do the main quest, lol.
I also like the lack of handholding. Some of the not-bonfires emit some particles that point you into a particular direction, but they're easy to ignore. And the map is quite pretty. The style resembles the DND 5E map style, which I liked. It's detailed enough to show you the lay of the land, while at the same time not showing you every point of interest, so you have to actually look at the world around you to find places of note.
Another thing I like about the map screen is that it doesn't show you the entire world's size straight away. The borders expand as you travel out of them, meaning the world could be far larger than it initially appears.
Yeah they've definitely gone back to the soulsborne kind of action for this one, but so far it seems like it's better than it has been in previous Souls entries. The action is kind of lame, but the level of customisation allowed to you as far as equipment goes seems very good. They've combined a bunch of cool gimmicks that have been in previous games as well as adding some more. Each weapon has a somewhat unique special move that costs FP, a kind of magic I suppose, like in
DS3. And you can find magical smithing items around the world that change those special moves. Power-stancing from
DS2 is back in, it's a kind of dual-wielding that allows you to use both equipped weapons in a unique moveset. You can now jump, so there's a heavy jump attack of sorts. And there's a lot more I'm just finding out about as I play.
And now that there's a horse, you can attack on horseback too. It's very easy to control and works surprisingly well with the lock-on system. It does trivialise some of the combat with the foot soldiers, but you can easily get knocked off your horse if you aren't careful. Some of the really huge enemies of the game seem to be designed with fighting them on the horse in mind.
There's now also some stealth in the game, but it's just to the extent of adding bushes. You can crouch in them when sneaking up to enemies for a backstab. Their AI is usually fairly brain-dead though, not even registering their colleagues' dead bodies.
While the huge world enhances the exploration, it really highlights the crappy enemy AI behaviour. While waiting for you they either stand in their designated spots, or patrol back and forth on fixed paths. It really hasn't changed much at all since
Demon's Souls. It definitely feels less like a living breathing world such as GTA, and more like a very large dungeon with really really large open environments.
As for the multiplayer, well, we tried it for a bit. You can see me and Robo joining Beakman's game in the first video, around about 1 hour and 20 minutes into it. We had some troubles with connection errors and I had to go soon after, but we had enough time to try our hand at fighting a large enemy and also attacking an enemy outpost.
It was fun playing it with the guys, but there's no way to play through the whole game seamlessly, at least with how I understand it. When you're in somebody else's world you still earn experience with each kill, and can even pick up loot that the enemies drop. But you can't talk to NPCs, so you can't purchase anything at the shops. And nobody can ride a horse so some enemies, like the dragons, might be impossible to defeat. And since summoned players get thrown out of the host's world after beating a significant boss, they might need to beat that boss in their own world before they can help challenge the next one. Robo and Beak played quite a lot longer with each other after I left, so they probably know more than I do about how the co-op works in this game.
Anyway, despite a lot of this antiquated design, I'm still enjoying the game. I don't think it'll be a masterpiece or anything though.