Dark Souls by far. Elden Ring was great but so much of the game was a slog to go through.
So much content just added to pad the world so they could call it an open world. Mindless copy-paste of the same enemies, same dungeons, same assets and same bosses. Would have greatly preferred a smaller but more unique world, more shortcuts and more interconnections.
I did enjoy the map of the Elden Ring DLC though. I don’t think I have ever seen such a vertical map in a game before. Just looking down every time and thinking “can I go there?” felt great.
Just looking down every time and thinking “can I go there?” felt great.
Start going down a random well in Leyndell, follow down into Subterranean Shunning Grounds, past the hidden wall in the Cathedral of the Forsaken, past the hidden wall in the Frenzied Flame Proscription, down into Deeproot Depths and the Nameless Eternal City, ride the stone coffin to Ansel River Main and finally get a glimpse the Lake of Rot which restarts the cycle 👌
ER by a mile
How come if you’d like to elaborate?
not OP, but as somebody who’s done all of the soulsborne games by FROM it just feels more polished, complete - like everything was building towards Elden Ring. does it play a bit differently and perhaps a little easier in aspects? Sure, and I love that. You are given so much freedom. There’s so much to see and do. I feel like the world does a solid job of guiding you where you need to go. Coming from the segregated realms of the first Demons Souls game, I love the huge, open world. It’s gorgeous, the level design is incredible, thoughtful, deceiving. Like GTA V or RDR2 they just did a hell of a job of creating a sprawling contiguous sandbox for fun, lots of potential.
Elden Ring was very good. You still get the interconnected bits in some areas, and some parts of the world connect in unexpected ways.
The main thing I didn’t like about elden ring is how most of the stuff is kind of pointless. Like there’s a catacomb but the only thing you get from it is some useless ashes and low level upgrade material. It made replays feel weird, because I’d skip most of it.
I’m not sure how to fix that. Maybe have the little side dungeons affect world state somehow (eg: drain poison from the swamp, get rid of invaders, whatever). Or switch over to sekiro style leveling where you only power up by doing certain things. But both of those might make the side stuff too much of a chore.
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