antonioramos5275: It didn't ruin gaming, it showed us how to see if a gaming developer cares about their audience, it shows us the attention to detail they put towards our growth. Fromsoft is the king

Chewywrinkles: Elden ring, Baldurs Gate 3, Clair Obscur, and Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty set the bar so high

SpyroL33t: Me and my friend circle has something called ''Pre-Elden ring and Post-Elden ring'' saying for a reason.

VanGoth36: One thing I have to ask regarding the dopamine high after defeating bosses: I keep hearing about this phenomenon, yet whenever I struggle with a boss for a really long while and finally defeat them after a day or two of trying, I never actually feel... happy about it? The closest word I can use to describe my feeling in that moment is relief, the kind of relief you feel when a strong pain finally goes away. Is that normal?

brycebeach9605: Elden Ring “ruined” gaming for me for a lot of reasons, but my biggest issue is how it normalized the absence of clear storytelling and meaningful quest structure.

To understand even a basic version of the narrative, you often have to watch YouTubers dissect item descriptions and piece together fragments of lore. The world has interesting ideas, but the story is delivered so vaguely that it rarely feels satisfying on its own. Most side quests follow no logical progression: talk to someone who says something cryptic, leave, come back, exhaust their dialogue again, then somehow know they have moved to a location the game never mentioned. Your options are either to look up a guide or wander aimlessly and hope you stumble into the next step. Sometimes you do not even realize a questline has ended because the game refuses to make anything clear.

It also normalized quantity over quality in Souls games. The open world is beautiful, but it is frequently empty, repetitive, and filled with areas that tell no meaningful story or reward you with anything uniquely useful. The difficulty scaling often feels less like thoughtful challenge and more like, “Here is the same enemy again, except now there are more of them and the room is smaller.”

I put over 1,000 hours into Elden Ring, beat nearly everything multiple times, and somehow came away resenting it because it often feels like the game does not respect the player’s time. I love difficult games. Bloodborne and Sekiro are both brutally challenging, but their hardest fights usually leave you with a real sense of accomplishment. Elden Ring often undercuts that feeling because, after finally defeating an infuriating boss, part of you knows the game will probably recycle it later.

And that is without even getting into how much it gutted the incentive for PvP compared with previous Souls games.

Ultimately, I do not think Elden Ring truly excels at any one thing. It feels more like an amalgamation of popular gaming trends shoehorned into a Souls game. With all that said, it is still better than 90% of the games coming out today. What frustrates me is hearing it constantly placed in the “greatest game of all time” conversation when it has so many flaws, and when earlier games from the same developers often provide a tighter, more rewarding experience.

TLDR: Elden Ring expands the Souls formula impressively, but its scale magnifies FromSoftware’s weakest habits: cryptic quest design, repeated content, inconsistent rewards, and difficulty that sometimes prioritizes frustration over carefully designed challenge.

Great video, by the way.

mopheads21: elden ring is such a deep vast experience that i dont have the energy to do it again for a while thats my issue with it .... where as dark souls 3 its more linier and i can quickly blast through it making improvements to my game each time... so my go to souls game is DS3

evgenyomegin: It didn't.

pixelgun4789: Nah, it did not defeat Lies of P for me yet.

luisbarrera5740: Fromsoft peaked with Bloodborne/ Sekiro. Everything else has been fodder. Elden Ring is boring.

arnaldob.g.9934: For me was DS1 and DS3, ER just raised the bar higher

GD-nu4iz: Good video, there is nothing else like ER and i can't go back to check list type open world games again. I burned out on Crimson Desert in less than 20hrs because all I was doing to was checking off boxes

andreyulyashin6139: Man idk most of these comments "' ruined gaming" seem to me like people haven't played any good games in their lives. Neither Elden Ring or Baldur's Gate 3 brought anything new not only to their genres, but even turned out to be subpar in some areas compared to the previous installments. When you look beyond the very first impression of "massive open world" you'll immediately find a very compromised quality of most things that they've tried to fill this world with. A parade of tiresome boss reuses, humongous useless empty spaces, the same dungeons over and over, overblown map to hide the real size of the world, very inconsistent rewards for exploration, etc. I think everyone gets this first impression of Elden Ring, but since I'm more interested in impressions after continuous interaction - I can only state that Elden hasn't lived up to the hype of it's open world even by half. Pretty much any other FromSoft game before it had a much more consistently enjoyable and replayable experience.

Moghura: One very important point I see few people talking about is how interactive elements are intuitive without needing yellow paint, scout flies or any visually polluting elements. The map is visually very clean.

Seffera: The feeling that miyazakis games gives the players is unmatched and definitely felt qhen playing other games. You begin to compare them and go game through game with unquenchable thirst due to playing a masterpiece of a game.

MrSnowman1678: Yeah Elden Ring is one of a few games that honestly changes your life. It’s that, RDR2 and the Witcher 3.

daydusk: Elden ring is my second favorite open world game just barely behind RDR2. But ER bosses and their old combat system is so outdated and annoying. Every button click feels slow and unresponsive.

Ventilatroll: Personaly i love Elden Ring , but being my first souls game ever played i sure Rage Quit 4 times before starting to enjoy it.

matthewgardea6059: Completely agree honestly my favorite games I’ve ever played

executer_0: wtf we are in the same loop

alqx2210: Just stopping by to say that modern gaming ruined itself.

ER was a reminder of what was lost.

henk672: If elden ring is you favourite game then you never played any good soul games. Elden ring sucks

duckyduckington9736: im scared of how good duskbloods is gonna be since it was in development during elden rings development (both in the early kinda stages) and it scares me how good its gonna be considering its release is 4 years after elden ring, meaning they had a ton of extra dev time (which is no joke for a game that from makes)

Blemfiddich: I wouldn’t quite say it’s ’if you can see it, you can go there’. The very next shot you put in after saying that, of Elfariel, shows towers that you can definitely see, but can definitely NOT go there.

TheLazySpoiledKitty: Despite its perfections ER is far too long of a game for me to "casually" pickup again (I have beaten it & put 150hours into it) unlike my beloved DS1/2/3 which had its world somewhat smaller and connected which resulted in a shorted but fun playthrough as well with its usual DS feeling of crushing bosses & epic items.

I do see your point though. Any game I pickup I end up directly comparing the combat system to DS/ER, and if its not something similar I end up dropping the game. Like Skyrim for example... its an amazing game but the combat feels so bad to me that I cannot get into the game.

hawkbirdtree3660: I would've gotten away with it, too. If it wasn't for those pesky Tarnished and their darn Horse.

niranjannairreghuvaran5772: keep doin en mate!

FmrHVWChamp: Elden Ring is to action adventure RPGs what Rust In Peace is to Thrash Metal.

So good that everything else is underwhelming.

Jul 19 2026

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