I don't love Elden Ring

Life is good (in other games)

Elden Ring's a gorgeous looking game. But the doom and gloom of its world isn't tolerable to me. About 40 hours into it, I had to tap out. I just wasn't interested anymore. I happened upon some kind of yuge magic lake with little weirdo aliens that uh, flip around all wacky or something, idr. And the lake was just sooo vast, and I knew there was nothing out there except more enemies. I just couldn't make myself care.

The sparseness of non-hostile life in Elden Ring's world makes me realize that a large part of why I was able to enjoy Dark Souls so much was that it was *smaller*. Tighter. There wasn't a lot of time to contemplate just how empty the world really was--and the world, relative to Elden Ring, actually *wasn't* so empty. There was a friendly NPC around almost every corner. A moment to enjoy some humanity before stepping back out into a hostile, dead world. And then when you stepped a bit further, you found a shortcut right back to Humanity (sometimes literally).

I recently picked up Dragon Quest XI and Granblue Fantasy ReLink, and in both of them, there's little kids playing around town. Isn't that nice? Just *something else* besides horrible monsters trying to kill you. TOWNS are such an important part of a good rpg. Even if Elden Ring has everything a traditional rpg town has to offer, it spreads its friendly NPCs out too much.

This isn't to say that Elden Ring is devoid of all comfort. It has the Roundtable Hold, right? But even compared to Dark Souls's Fire Link Shrine, it's just *not right*. For starters, unless I'm remembering incorrectly, it's not actually even part of the world, you have to warp to it. That makes it feel too *separate* to begin with. (On the other hand, maybe there's something to that that I *do* like. Being truly-separate from such a miserable world miiight be better.) Once you're there, it's a nice-looking place, there's other characters to talk to, more will come to it over time, but it still somehow feels sterile.

Compare it to a stable in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, where characters will be walking around, sitting, reading, sleeping, passing through--they still have limited animations, but they're there, they're *doing* things. Am I crazy or does everyone in the Roundtable Hold kinda just stand or sit around? Maybe I'm crazy.

I'm sure I'm crazy, but that doesn't stop Elden Ring from being too gloomy and dead. You know what you do in Tears of the Kingdom? You fight gloom.

Elden Ring's a niiiiiice looking game. But real-life is already hostile enough, I kinda want my games to be comfier.

I might REALLY be crazy, but I might even consider Dark Souls 2 to be better than Elden Ring. Is that pushing it? Idk man, Majula's reallyyyy comfy.

Yeah, that's how I rate games. Especially games in the same series with mechanics that haven't really changed over the years. If Dark Souls 2 can make me comfy, and you can't, what good are you?

And I might be totally-wrong, but in Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, and Elden Ring, you visit your waifu to level you up. (I am wrong, I just remembered in DS1 you don't, but she's still at the Firelink Shrine.) In Elden Ring, you meet your waifu like, once, and never see her again. I know that's not true, but you definitely *don't* see her every time you level up. And that's really just another example of how devoid of humanity the game feels. There's some merchants sitting around, but come on. Who cares about them? And they all literally look the same, don't they? Am I not remembering that correctly?

Maybe I wasn't fair to Elden Ring. Maybe another dozen hours and it would have Gitten Good. It's just craaaazy that Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom-- both games that I *still* feel are TOOOOOOO EMPTYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY are absolutely teeming with life in comparison. But idk, who cares? I won't rate Elden Ring since I didn't finish it. But if I did finish it, it'd probably get a 7/10. Beautiful environments, uhhhh, the dungeons that I played felt pretty fun. The bosses are kinda retarded gravity-defying ballerinas, but who even cares? No one cares. Good game. Not enough happiness.