Elden Ring Made Souls More Approachable

It would be easy to go on and on about the many things that makes Elden Ring one of the best reviewed modern games of all time. Ashes of War and Spirit Summons give more build options than ever, the verticality and distinct lack of waypoints or a quest log gives the open world a refreshing feeling, and the sheer amount of content in the game is absolutely staggering (I am currently 36 hours in, I’ve just finished exploring the second area of the game and am just approaching the legacy dungeon of the area).

Instead, I would like to focus on the changes that Elden Ring has made that makes the game more approachable to newcomers and less annoying for everyone exploring The Lands Between.

Stakes of Marika

A frustrating aspect of previous FromSoftware games was the runback to a boss. Some people enjoy having to spend a minute or two running back to the boss arena, claiming that a forced break helped them reset their mentality when going up against a difficult opponent. Many others were simply annoyed at having to wait so long in between attempts, as it made it harder to remember boss patterns and improve. Newer games were kinder with their placement of bonfires (or that game’s equivalent), but the problem was still there.

Thankfully, Elden Ring has added Stakes of Marika, which give players the choice to choose between respawning at the Stake of Marika or at the Site of Lost Grace they last rested at. These handy little checkpoints can be found near almost every boss and enemy camp, allowing players to get right back into the action. So far, I have only encountered one or two situations where I felt like I had significant distance to travel, which is a significant improvement over previous games.

Torrent

Move over tortoises dogs, Torrent is a Tarnished’s best friend in Elden Ring. Your summonable horse makes the experience so much smoother in a couple of ways.

1: Claiming Lost Runes

The addition of Torrent, as well as the open world format of the game, makes retrieving your lost runes easier than it has ever been. When you die exploring the open world, it is usually very simple to run straight back to where you died and collect your lost runes since you can go directly to teh spot instead of navigating a level, outrunning/avoiding enemies along the way. In previous games, claiming your lost currency usually involved either sprinting back through the level to where you died, which meant attracting the attention of multiple enemies along the way that have a good chance of following you and killing you immediately anyway, or taking it slow and killing enemies as you went, which of course always means your a few mistakes away from death. Elden Ring’s open world means that these methods are mostly a thing of the past, which incentivize’s exploration since you know that retrieving your runes probably won’t be difficult. In fact, I’ve only lost my runes in Elden Ring a handful of times, and almost all have been in the linear areas.

2: Swamps… why is it always swamps…

Miyazaki is back on his bullshit in Elden Ring, and I’ve already encountered numerous poison swamps in addition to some sort of red poison swamp. I’m not sure what the status effect did exactly, as I didn’t care to stick around long enough for the status bar to build up and find out. However, I’ve also found that poison swamps in this game are… sorta ok? Swamps in the open world can be easily navigated by hopping on Torrent, who doesn’t seem to be affected by the status conditions they inflict. This allows you to zip around and collect items while avoiding enemies, all with relative ease. I have encountered a couple of swamps I was forced to wade through to fight some enemies, but these were in small enemy camps with a Stake of Marika close by anyway.

Also, the swamps I’ve found so far don’t slow you down! I personally found the slow movement and rolling to be distinctly more annoying than the poison in past games, as it made avoiding or fighting enemies that much more difficult. Between shallower swamps and Torrent, hopefully I won’t have these problems in Elden Ring

3: Faster Movement

I’ve touched on it in the previous two sections, but I want to make this point really clear. Torrent’s speed allows you to avoid enemies very easily. This makes navigating the open world relatively stress-free. It also means that you can quickly pick up items scattered around the world. If you really want to, you can even make your way to an area that is way above your current level and quickly collect some OP gear. Collecting powerful gear early on is not a new concept for souls games by any means, but doing so in past games usually required some knowledge of the area in order to pull it off.

Open World Design

Previous FromSoftware games were very linear in design, in the sense that you often had to beat a boss to progress in the game and you rarely had more than a couple of options of where to go next. Because of the open world nature of this game, if you get stuck on a boss you can simply go somewhere else for a while. Fight other bosses, collect items, gain a few levels, and come back again better prepared for the challenge. This gives players a lot more flexibility and breathing room when it comes to progression, and is yet another way Elden Ring alleviates frustration.

Wrap up

Overall, Elden Ring is less stressful to play than previous games. I normally can’t play too many souls levels in one sitting, simply because the hostility of the environment begins to wear me down, but I have yet to get that feeling from Elden Ring.

The exciting thing for me though is that these changes are getting people interested in Elden Ring who have never played a FromSoftware game before. I’ve always believed that anyone can play these games, and I’m overjoyed at the possibility that some of my friends might finally be getting into some of my favorite games of all time. Hopefully FromSoftware continues to make their games more approachable so that more people might finally give them a chance, and overcome the stigma around having to “git gud” in order to enjoy them.