‘Elden Ring’ Is Amazing, But FromSoftware Is Still Making The Same Mistakes
Look. I'm having a great time in Elden Ring. You probably are, too! But we all know that while developers FromSoftware has leveraged its legacy and its library of assets, mechanics and systems to create a one-of-a-kind behemoth, there are some parts of that history we wish would get a little bit of polish.
Elden Ring does bring various quality-of-life improvements to the Soulsborne formula. There's a multiplayer tab to help you find all the items essential for all of the various inscrutable rituals necessary to play with others. You can jump without having to twist your hand into a crab claw to push the relevant buttons. There's a horse! Cow? Thing?
Yet for all these tweaks, most welcome as they are, Elden Ring stills creaks and groans with all the collective baggage of a series that never grew out of its teething problems. To be frank: Elden Ring's UI is still kind of a mess.
One thing that remains in Elden Ring is the Soulsborne standard of being able to cheese a boss or two. Watch how to deal with the Fire Giant without breaking a sweat in the video below…
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Oh sure, for players who can decipher these obscure numbers and letters they're perfectly adequate to support the game. But for newbies, the learning curve is steep. Even with a "help" function, perfectly useful options like the ability to sort the inventory screen are hidden away for... well, for no discernible reason at all. There's a whole list of controls at the bottom of the menu screen, but somehow FromSoft forgot to add that clicking the left stick lets you sort the item order. Like, how did that happen? No, seriously, I cannot fathom how they implemented this extremely useful function and then forgot to add it to the control list.
Speaking of the inventory, we're over a decade into the Soulsborne games and yet FromSoftware somehow do not allow much overlap between the "equipment" screen and the "inventory" screen. While I don't envy any RPG designer trying to reconcile the necessary functions of giving players access to their tools while not overwhelming them with a massive list of items, FromSoft haven't really improved on this at all since the days of Demon's Souls. Why do I have to leave the item browsing screen in the equipment tab to then go into the item browsing screen in the inventory to drop or use items? Surely, even if we're keeping these two things as separate tabs, there can be an overlap in options to save me the time wasting?
On the subject of bugbears unchanged since these games began, why does right click, the button which locks onto enemies, also reset the camera? There is no situation in which I am trying to target an enemy while moving and would love the camera to turn away from wherever I've pointed it. Why does this option even exist? I've been playing these games for over a decade and I have literally, not once, ever used this function as intended. At least let me turn it off!
Not all of Elden Ring's problems are old ones, as there are all-new baffling ones, too. Like, why when I'm trying to re-summon my mount, Torrent, after losing them in battle, will the game ask me if I'd like to use a healing flask to do so? If I'm summoning them, I'm probably in a hurry! What really pours salt in this particular wound is that by default the prompt hovers over the "No" option. So, you not only have to push another button, but you have to awkwardly use the d-pad (while running away from whatever big monster already punted you off Torrent) to select “Yes” before the game will return your steed. It's madness. An issue so needless you have to kind of believe they deliberately decided this was a good obstacle to have. I know FromSoftware can seem like sadists, but I'd rather stumble through ten Sen's Fortresses stacked atop each other than find an issue like this waiting for me in their next title.
Look, there's just so many small, nagging things in Elden Ring. Why is there no easy way to quit out the telescope view? Ahem. People might have larger, more foundational problems with the experience. Like, why do phantoms have to be sent home after defeating a boss in the open world, even though you can summon them back in right after? But I bring up the small things because they are problems that mostly have pretty straightforward solutions that nonetheless have simply never been implemented. There's plenty in Elden Ring (and in FromSoftware's other titles) that is frictional by design, but these many small failures don't feel like an interesting challenge to the player.
For all the strides Elden Ring has made to accommodate new players with a (slightly) more approachable world and design, these little issues drag it down just that little bit. Doubly so for veterans who have been putting up with these problems for years. Surely now, FromSoftware can overhaul its creaky menus and controls more than a little bit? Isn't it time to rethink them in line with the changes that have altered the experience elsewhere?
Elden Ring is a marvel in numerous ways precisely because FromSoftware smartly re-use so much of what's come before. However, not all that recycling is fruitful and it's long past due that these issues finally got a little attention. If you can figure out how to beat Bloodborne's loading times while giving players a world that feels bigger than the Dark Souls trilogy combined, then surely you can let me turn off that bloody camera reset by now.
Topics: Elden Ring, Opinion, Fromsoftware