To set up the stage - this is my first Soulsborne game, I invested over 220 hours in half a year span from which binge-played the first playthrough in 180 hours and played the game solely in the offline mode.
With this said, the reuse of models and animations from older From Software games, naturally, did not bother me, though I concur with the other annoyance on the Internet - clumsy combat, clumsy menus, convoluted story with unsatisfactory ending (more about this later), technical issues, especially on launch. And this is not all - the age-old difficulty-balance issue is not magically solved in Elden Ring, you can get overpowered if you want to. Most of the weapons and spells are useless once you get your hands on some of the stronger ones. Some secondary bosses are recycled...
I can go on...nevertheless... Elden Ring is a masterpiece.
An overly atmospheric, breathtakingly beautiful world to explore, where every aspect marvelously comes together.
An open world done right.
I have to start with world design. The open world is huge in Elden Ring. While nowadays that's a derogatory term, that's not true in this case. Elden Ring, with its enormous size, still manages to feel dense and hand crafted. The world is beautiful, from lavish forests, to volcanic mountains, bloody swamps to dungeons and catacombs and more, it stays breathtakingly beautiful. The designers managed to do an exceptional job in serving this beauty, be it climbing a hill and running into a forest shaken by a wind, or doing a small curve on a narrow mountain path revealing a dazzling city resting on a mountain slope. And all of this is implemented with a convincing dynamic day and night cycle.
Screenshots and trailers can't do justice to Elden Ring's beauty, even more so words. This needs to be experienced first-hand, also because you need to spend more time in the game to appreciate it. Whenever you have a high ground, the Lands Between open up in their full glory. Distant mountains, vast forests, cities, fortresses, all of that crowned with the Elden Tree in the middle, together form a fascinating, dangerous, living world. Whatever you see in the distance, can be visited, sometimes with some (significant) effort. And all of this is without any space-continuum shenanigans, an enormously big fortress that offers tens of hours of gameplay inside, with secrets in abundance, looks proportionally big from the outside. I don't want to go much into detail here, not to give up any of the joy of the exploration, but exploring is overly satisfying. And touching again on how hand crafted the game feels, it has a very practical use as well. Playing after a long pause it's very easy to remember every pathway and location, since they are that distinguishable.
Quest design worthy of the open world.
Elden Ring takes a fresh approach on quests: no checklists, no clear instructions, only some faint direction pointers. Upon your journey you encounter characters who might ask for help or even just share some vague hints during discussion. You might encounter the same character under some other circumstances depending on your prior interactions. This might drive completionists crazy, but also feels very natural. Quests are not boxes on the checklist to tick, but occasional interactions with NPCs who are on their own journeys and you never fully know what they are up to and what significance might they have in your own story. And talking about the story... You can blaze through the game relatively quickly and miss the lion's share of the lore and locations. The game has some cutscenes and they are of a very high quality, involving some amazing boss designs, but even for the main story, most of the information is scattered in casual discussions with NPCs and item descriptions(!), I should admit here, even after platinuming the game, I spent some hours on youtube to grasp the lore and storyline reasonably well, since I haven't put enough effort in analyzing all the hints and putting the pieces together.
Gameplay with its merits.
The game starts steeply, where fighting a single regular enemy is a challenge, not to mention some mini-bosses that casually roam the Lands Between as a testament to your weakness. Every new location, every new enemy sends the hurt rushing... But slowly, with character progression, you gain confidence as the game becomes more approachable. Yet, even with a fair number of ways of cheesing, Elden Ring, with its single difficulty mode, is still an adequately challenging game, so won't please the seekers of 'interactive storytelling'. I started with the 'Wretch' class and was aiming to progress in melee-combat, but quickly realized that being a sorcerer and relying on range-attacks (almost always) is easier. Nevertheless, I still had a few boss-fights with some hours invested to learn the patterns.
In the end.
It's dangerous to carelessly recommend the game, as a matter of fact Elden Ring did not please even some seasoned From Software fans, but the best advice here would be, to every gamer out there, just give it a try. You might hate the game, but that'll happen quickly. Or you'll fall in love with it, in which case, you'll be in for one of the most memorable journeys in your gaming life.