Elden Ring Review 2 (still not final)
I feel like I did injustice to the open world of ER. In my first review here I looked at the open world as something bothering and boring. Sure, the map is quite empty if you consider there are a couple of camps where you get only a friggin mushroom once you've managed, but in a different way it isn't. There's so much to explore, even if it's not giving you BIS gear or something that's improving your game, you still get runes to level up which makes other content easier.
As for how far I'm currently: I'm about halfway through. That's mainly due to me noticing that strength builds suck in Elden Ring, so I started a new game. Though I basically ended up with a strength build again But this time with a colossal weapon instead of only a giant one and there are lots of benefits to it.
Anyway, after I started a second time I realized how much of a pro the open world is. You can basically just go wherever you need to in order to get stronger. You can run to where a good weapon is pretty early on, then head down into mines to empower it, then go to cealid to kill a boss dragon with extra exp gain for easy 100k runes, which makes playing the game a lot more comfortable in the first stages.
So the first time you play, you enjoy finding everything. The second time you play, you can easily get a headstart. The open world is good for both and definitely fits very well into this genre!
One reason why I didn't like the Open world to begin with was because there was something missing. The incredible map layouts Dark Souls is famous for (like small ledges you need to cross, and hidden paths everywhere). But these exist, too! The first time I hit stormveil castle I hated it. And that's why I love it so much. There are so many paths I didn't find on my first run, even a deep drop into the abyss where you can kill some monstrosity for a nice goodie. I just love these legacy dungeons. That's what I came for. And the open world supports it really well.
Anyway. The general consent of the community seems to be that strength builds are underpowered, but I'll see. I finished Ranni's questline for now and so far I haven't had any big troubles with bosses.
And thanks to the update that fixed the bug where the game didn't use the Graphics card, I don't have any troubles with laggs or the kind anymore. So these seem to be mostly fixxed.
So far I would definitely recommend playing this game. Just make sure to never step foot into deeproot depths.