Elden Ring: a comprehensive review By Luke Albigés, 11 Mar 2022 FollowtopicsElden RingBandai Namco EntertainmentOnline MultiplayerOnline Co-opReviewGame reviewAction-RPGLuke Albigés I know FromSoftware games have a reputation for being difficult, but our situation with Elden Ring was some next-level craziness. In order to get a review up in time to meet the embargo, I would have had to complete the game, write it up, and put it live, all a full 27 hours before our copy even arrived... the real Dark Souls starts here, I guess. Still, this actually served as something of a blessing in disguise, as rather than try to rush the game and thrash out an article without seeing the credits just to hit the review embargo, I've been able to take my time and see almost everything Elden Ring has to offer, including messing around with multiple builds to get a much broader view of this massive game. So, after 100+ hours, dozens of deaths, all major bosses slain, most side content ticked off, and more bellowed expletives and creative compound cusses than I care to admit (as well as all of the Elden Ring achievements bar the ones for additional endings unlocked), I'm ready to say my piece — Elden Ring starts out ridiculously strong, but as it draws on, the constant enemy and boss repetition and some poor encounter design later in the game just hold it back from being From's finest work, with the open world setting sometimes detracting from the experience as much as it benefits it as the team struggles to fill the expansive map with meaningful original content. I'll try to keep things as spoiler-free as possible as I know a lot of folks are still busy working their way through the game, but at the same time I want to cover as much as possible, so fair warning, there may be the odd allusion to things, enemies, and places you've not seen yet.dogThe first thing that struck me about Elden Ring was how surprisingly familiar it felt. I'd been intentionally avoiding as much pre-release information as possible as I firmly believe that going in blind is the best way to experience FromSoftware games. In my head, the original name, seemingly more high-fantasy backdrop (from what little I'd seen), and involvement of George R. R. Martin all seemed to point to something fairly significantly removed from the Souls games, not unlike Sekiro and Bloodborne previously. Finally picking up a controller, though, you could have told me I was playing Dark Souls 4 and I would have readily believed you. Controls, feel, stats, systems, fonts, the works... this is a Souls game in disguise, and not even a particularly good disguise as Elden Ring goes so far as to lift enemies, fight designs, and concepts wholesale from previous games — honestly, it can feel more like a greatest hits package of From's previous efforts than a brand new game a lot of the time, although I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing, just not at all what I was expecting. Still, there are certainly some systems in place that help put a little distance between Elden Ring and the Souls series.The most notable of these is clearly the new open-world setting, moving away from the traditional Souls interconnected level design in favour of a sprawling map that our poor Tarnished can explore much more freely than ever before. When you're first starting out (and indeed likely for a good while, particularly early on your journey), this feels genuinely fantastic, combining a new-found sense of freedom with From's trademark oblique design to deliver a world where the sense of exploration is palpable. There are no waypoints to chase, few map markers save for those you place yourself upon stumbling across something interesting (a system you will want to engage with, as you may struggle to find that fog gate you couldn't open or world boss you couldn't beat without it), and little more than slight hints on the map itself (once you actually find one for each area) and your eyes to guide you towards a new area or encounter. Certain Sites of Grace — Elden Ring's bonfire equivalent — do give off a gold trail that leads off in a certain direction, but true to form for FromSoft, even these can be slightly misleading. You see, rather than pointing you in the right direction for the next logical area for you to tackle, they instead lead you towards the nearest major boss, which you almost certainly will not be able to bring down if you blindly follow this one shred of guidance that Elden Ring offers. Yes, Grace trails will lead you to the right place long-term, but you'll usually need to ignore them and go off exploring in other directions in order to level up and gear up for what these beacons are rather cruelly leading you towards. It's a lesson you'll learn early, mind, with a couple of the early bosses on the seemingly 'correct' path likely to trounce all but the most seasoned Souls veterans on first arrival, but there's absolutely loads to see and do off that 'main' route, and you'd do well to make the most of these opportunities to improve your character before heading to the main objectives. Doing so is made even easier by the fact that stealth is a thing here, and sneaking up on unsuspecting foes to land a free backstab can put a decent dent in enemies you might not be able to take in a stand-up fight, even if this Assassin's Creed-esque element does feel a little strange in a Souls-like experience.fort, nightElden Ring's world design naturally does a fantastic job of facilitating this for the most part, with both environmental and monster design that will have you pushing new boundaries of exploration purely to get a better look at something strange in the distance. Aside from phrases a little too spicy to repeat here, "What is that?!" was probably my most-repeated utterance in my time with Elden Ring, and while I'm reluctant to say much more than that so you can discover the crazy creatures and wonderful world design for yourself, I will say that the payoff was almost always worth it. Well, until later in the game, when I started to become desensitised to even some of the weirdest monsters after seeing them so many times, but while repetition can start to pop up quite early depending on how and where you explore, it doesn't really become a major issue until much later in the game. One of my main issues with reusing enemies so readily in a game this vast is that it obfuscates obtained information in a way that feels cheap. You might encounter, say, a giant crab in an early area that goes down without too much hassle. Cool, that thing isn't much of a threat, at least on its own. But when you reach the next region and see another, the natural logical conclusion is that perhaps they'll come in greater numbers here, be fodder enemies now that you're stronger, or have something new up their sleeves (although crabs famously don't have sleeves). That last part is actually somewhat true in Elden Ring's case, only that 'something new' turns out to be about 20 times more health and attacks that can one-shot you, and there's no way of telling whether you're picking a fight with something familiar or a 'roided-up relation until you get stuck in. Given that JRPGs have been using palette swaps to indicate stronger variants of familiar enemies for decades, Elden Ring's decision to just randomly beef up the same enemies you've fought countless times for new areas — and to do so all the way into the endgame — just feels counterintuitive and done purely to frustrate.It stands out even more against world design that is often extremely smart (not that I would expect anything less from this team, honestly), subtly leading you towards new places in which to get lost simply by using the environment. This ravaged land is an utter joy to explore, whether you're pottering around the crumbling ruins of the opening area or weaving between the abominations that dwell beneath Caelid's blood-red sky, and there's an incredible sense of variety to Elden Ring's locales. This only gets more impressive as the map continues to expand — it just keeps getting bigger and bigger, leading to even odder, older, and more dangerous places to discover. It can get pretty out-there at times, too. At one point, I thought a bridge was singing, and that honestly wouldn't have been the strangest thing in the game. Elden Ring is undoubtedly at its best when you're a stranger in a new land, taking in the sights, sizing up the new foes, and rummaging through the remains of fallen civilisations in search of new gear and abilities that could just make your journey around The Lands Between that little bit more manageable. You can even make your way underground from time to time, delving into catacombs, cave systems, dungeons, crypts, mines, and more, with these subterranean mini-dungeons typically housing useful materials, equipment, and a boss of some kind to take on to claim the grand prize of each trial. Unlike Bloodborne's procedurally generated Chalice Dungeons, these are all fully designed, although many still follow the same basic structure of kill minions, open door, do boss, get loot, then leave, which can start to grate once you've done a fair few. Some do have their own gimmicks — a magical oubliette packed with illusory walls, for instance, or a trap-lined labyrinth where enemies aren't the primary threat — but the perceived need to plonk a boss at the end of every last one of these optional dungeons leads to a degree of repetition and overfamiliarity that isn't really healthy for the long-term appeal of the game.dogElden Ring boasts over 150 bosses, which is pretty remarkable on paper. But when you actually break it down, unique encounters that aren't repeated somewhere in the game barely make it into double digits, with the rest either being reruns or revisions of other bosses, encounters with two or more returning fights happening at once, or, in a lot of cases in those optional dungeons, simply normal enemies playing at being bosses. FromSoft pretty much made a rod for its own back by making the game world perhaps too big for its own good, and while it would be completely unreasonable to expect every fight in a game this massive to be entirely original, it's somewhat underwhelming in the late-game to be confident that the guardian at the end of any given dungeon will be something you've already fought before, likely multiple times. Chucking two different bosses in together also feels like cheap, artificial difficulty, too — duo/trio bosses in the Souls games are always challenging even when they're properly crafted (Dark Souls' Ornstein and Smough being the go-to example) but still usually feel satisfying to eventually put down, whereas some of the multi-boss fights in Elden Ring just feel like several different fights slammed together without much thought. For me, even some of those rare unique encounters fall some way below the developer's usually high benchmark for boss battles, and while there are some fantastic bosses in Elden Ring, there are also a number of horribly designed encounters that don't feel like they work. The Radahn showdown, for instance, feels like it was initially designed as some kind of multiplayer raid boss, but later changed to a more typical encounter by chucking in a bunch of NPC summon signs (which work differently from every other version in the game), and this fight is just a mess. Part of the issue stems, I think, from the fact that Elden Ring sees the team dabbling with checkpoints for the first time, which seems as though it has emboldened them to go overboard with some fights which, uncharacteristically, just feel cheap or unfair. Before the air runs thick with cries of 'git gud,' I'd like to mention that I'm no stranger to the challenge of FromSoftware games — I beat all three Souls games and Bloodborne solo before the servers were even live, so it's fair to say that I know my way around these kinds of games quite well. Safe in the knowledge that there's this safety net to prevent players losing too much progress for a lot of fights (on top of a relatively close Site of Grace in most cases), Elden Ring's bosses are free to take liberties with their move sets, bringing in more delayed combo attacks to mess with rolls and parries, screen-filling laser arrays from casters, strong attacks that have way more tracking than they should, and so on. This can get frustrating, although it's not just bosses that can feel too powerful. Given the game's more open-ended structure than a traditional Souls experience where these encounters are balanced around the rough level range you'd be expected to be when reaching them, it's pretty common to stumble into a dungeon (particularly when backtracking to 'earlier' areas) where you'll one-shot all the regular enemies and fell the boss before it can even do anything. It's a far cry from the normal loop of learning, mastering, and finally conquering a deadly opponent, and I think this has contributed quite heavily to souring me on Elden Ring's bosses — some of those fights, even the repeated ones, would probably have been pretty good at the appropriate level, but wound up being forgettable minor inconveniences simply because I reached them 'late.'Could this be a dog?For larger bosses and ones found out in the overworld, there's a neat new option to spice things up and give Elden Ring another USP of its own in the form of mounted combat. Hopping onto spectral steed Torrent — which is delightfully quick and simple once you've set up a hotkey for it — will give you more pace with which to weave around the larger swipes of foes such as giants and dragons, as well as letting you get back in on them that much quicker afterwards for an ever-satisfying charged heavy attack where you drag your blade through the ground alongside you before unleashing a mighty counter blow. Like all good horses, Torrent can also double-jump, a feature primarily used for navigation (yes, Elden Ring features horseback platforming and somehow, it isn't awful) but also one that can be used to dodge some attacks once you know what you're dealing with. The mounted move set is rather limited, but with summoning and dismissing Torrent being so quick, there's nothing stopping you dismounting when you get in on a boss to land a few regular attacks before calling your buddy back to beat a hasty retreat before they attempt to respond in kind. I'm so used to horseless From games that it took me a while to get into the swing of remembering mounted combat was even an option, but you should quickly learn from different enemy types and their attack patterns which are a good fit to tackle on horseback (which can make some much easier) and which aren't — Torrent has its own health bar and while you can expend one flask charge to resummon it later, you're knocked prone for so long after your steed gets smashed that few enemies are likely to do you the courtesy of letting you get back up.I feel like a lot of the above perhaps comes across as overly negative, so I just want to circle back to an earlier point quickly. When you've got more bosses than there were Pokémon in the original games, they're obviously not all going to be winners, but that absolutely doesn't mean that Elden Ring doesn't have its fair share of excellent boss battles — it just means that there's that much more opportunity for the elements that have made particular Souls bosses worse over the years to rear their ugly heads again, which they do. A lot of the issues I've brought up have been seen before in FromSoftware games, as well as a few others that I haven't mentioned like the sometimes nasty interaction between camera and walls, and the trend for placing the odd large boss in a small arena as an artificial difficulty spike. While the sense of elation that comes from finally besting a beastly boss in what feels like a fair but challenging contest is absolutely intact, you also get that from eventually overcoming the ones that feel massively overtuned, too — you might have to resort to relying on summoning or cheesing them right back, but getting the kill will still hit you like a Dopamine Hammer to the back of the head.Still no dog...Speaking of weapons, Elden Ring lifts the Weapon Arts system from Dark Souls III more or less wholesale, meaning that every weapon has a special ability that can be triggered at the cost of some of your Focus gauge. The key differentiator here is that these are now tied to Ashes of War — weapons tend to naturally come with their own default abilities, but these can be changed out for others suitable for that weapon type by visiting a smith, at least on regular gear (unique equipment can't be tampered with). Interestingly, each Ash is tied to one of the elemental upgrades Souls fans will be familiar with, so an Ash that grants a blessing of some kind might imbue a weapon with the Sacred status for superior smiting, while a massive ground pound special move is likely to confer the Heavy property, increasing Strength scaling for big damage numbers on a beefy build. Later, you're able to use Whetstones you find to detach these elements and affix Ashes and elements independently, which is fantastic for freedom of build customisation, even if those elemental Whetstones aren't exactly easy to come by. Fortunately, upgrade materials are nowhere near as rare, and thorough exploration will lead you to Bell Bearings that unlock Smithing Stones for sale in the hub area, Roundtable Hold. Regular weapons can go to +25 and special ones to +10, with materials required to get to the penultimate stage available from the hub vendor should you be able to track down the associated Bell Bearings. Maxing out a weapon, though, requires an Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone, which appear to be both rare and finite. I found just four on my pretty exhaustive initial playthrough, although that was still enough to take a set of my favourites to full power.Armour, on the other hand, can't be upgraded at all, and while that's certainly a relief from a resources perspective, it does hold back the tankiest sets from making you feel like a walking fortress as you would wearing a maxed Havel set in Dark Souls. Running a pure Strength build for raw damage, I invested pretty heavily in Endurance in order to equip said chunky sets while still keeping the regular roll. As before, you get a slower 'fat roll' when over 70% equip load, which is no good, although some cunning Tarnished have already started using mobility Ashes on weapons to work around this and allow them to rock as heavy a loadout as they like. Crafty. Anyway, even in what I'm pretty sure are some of Elden Ring's most protective armour sets, I was quite surprised to see just how much damage I was taking from boss attacks. Having had to push Endurance all the way into the mid-40s just to use this gear effectively and still getting chunked for over half my health (which I had also poured a lot of stat points into) felt pretty rough — I'll be intrigued to see how different it feels taking on those same endgame enemies with a lighter, more fragile build, as it feels like even less protective sets would end up getting two-tapped by those big attacks, making the only real difference that the latter would require a little more healing. On that note, Elden Ring adds a third flask into the mix, with maximum charges able to be freely split between the returning health- and Focus-restoring tonics and the new one allowing you to brew custom potions. It's a simple mix-and-match system combining two special elements found at key sites around the world, and there are some handy (and situationally handy) options in there, including health regeneration, damage reduction, and... um, exploding. Yes, you can mix potions that make you explode. Elden Ring is wild.dogLikely as another helping hand to deal with a lot of the more intense fights, FromSoftware has expanded the concept of summoning assistance. When calling on other players to help out, the system remains the same as in the Souls games — players can place their signs down near a challenging boss, which others can then activate to pull them into their world for some jolly cooperation. If you'd rather stay solo (or are playing offline), though, there's a new option in the form of Spirit Ashes, summoned companions that come in all shapes and sizes. Most of these cost FP (mana, basically) so some stronger ones might be prohibitively expensive if you've not been investing in the Mind stat to boost this bar, although Elden Ring's best summon costs health instead. There are some useful allies to be found on the way to those crazy endgame summons, though, from a spirit jellyfish that can tank hits and poison enemies to a band of skeletons you can keep reviving themselves if not finished off properly, and you can even call on powerful named characters so long as you have the FP to bring them out (and can find their Ashes). Most fights in the Souls games are clearly highly tuned to work properly solo and still hold up in co-op, but there are battles in Elden Ring that feel like they expect you to use summoned support, which might come as a bit of a culture shock to those who usually like to go down the lone wolf route. The weird thing about this is that actual multiplayer elements in Elden Ring seem somewhat toned down compared to previous From games, if perhaps not entirely by design. The same manner of level-sensitive matchmaking is in place as in the Souls games, meaning you won't run into other players too much higher or lower than your level. The more controlled design of the Souls games, however, naturally bottlenecks many players of similar level ranges in each area which can make invasions and co-op summons plentiful, whereas Elden Ring's more open structure means that you're naturally less likely to come across other folks around your level as they scatter across the map in all directions. I've seen just one actual invader in my 100+ hours with the game (fortunately, they were apparently allergic to greataxes), but summon signs were a little more common, especially around some of the early bosses that people were struggling to beat. If you want a more honourable duel, you can now drop a special sign that lets opponents accept your challenge rather than simply dropping in on them uninvited, and this will be the best way to enjoy competitive 1v1 fights with others — there are reusable items available at an early vendor that let players either call for or serve as backup when someone is invaded, so a lot of invasion attempts will end up with the interloper outnumbered. It's a little disappointing that there's no covenant equivalents here, as those were some of the most interesting online interactions of the Souls games, although no covenants does of course mean no achievements for maxing them out, so it's not all bad news.Liar aheadElden Ring having slightly less of an online focus than other FromSoftware games did, however, mean I could get away with playing in offline mode, which I needed to do occasionally to get a break from the tryhard message spam all over the world. It's all the same tired memes, with countless tedious spins on 'Try finger, but hole' joined by equally lame new 'fort, night' comments as far as the eye can see. Between these and the myriad 'Secret passage ahead' notes in front of every damn regular wall (or simply a lone 'Liar ahead' where the misleading message to which it refers has been nuked by downvotes), I pretty much stopped reading them altogether by the end. There are, of course, plenty of genuinely helpful, creative, and witty messages out there, but they're just drowned out by those endless repeats of the same few crappy memes — I don't know about you, but I don't feel like I need a Twitter simulator in my high-fantasy RPGs. They're everywhere, too, with the addition of a dedicated jump button allowing players to scale just about everything in order to mess up the view by scrawling 'I did it!' on top of those magnificent mountains and stunning statues.Oh yeah, you can jump now. Properly. Despite having a penchant for including fiddly platforming sections, From has previously been reluctant to assign jumping to its own button — a gaming staple dating back to the formative years of the medium where many games would only have a jump button. This does come at a price, with two-handing your weapons now changed to being a two-button input (which can make it a little fiddly to switch styles in a heated battle) but it's worth it, opening up more options both for traversal and combat. The leaping two-handed greataxe slam has been my go-to opener, closing distance well and hitting fast and extremely hard while also staggering and even stunning enemies to open up opportunities for even more oversized-axe-based punishment. Naturally, having a jump button makes any kind of platforming that much more manageable as well, making those times when you can't rely on a double-jumping horse to get around feel much better than in From's previous games. It'll be interesting to see what kinds of skips and glitches will be introduced by this inclusion — both on foot and on horseback, I managed to Bethesda Jump my way up a few cliff faces that I probably wasn't meant to — but it's certainly a change for the better, even if collision can still be a little wonky from time to time.dogIf you want something that feels more traditionally Souls-like, you'll get your fix in Elden Ring's 'legacy dungeons.' There are a dozen of these, some required and others optional, but they all play out more like a classic Souls game area... Demon's Souls more specifically, where each of the main 'levels' is a standalone location reached from a hub, rather than the interconnected world that it evolved into when the Souls went Dark. Gone are the rolling hills and churning rivers of the overworld, replaced with cramped castle corridors, well-hidden secrets, shortcuts to move between areas more easily, bosses blocking your way, treasure to find, and all that good stuff. Tangent time: on the subject of treasure, Elden Ring is a master of disappointment, and I lost track of the number of times I risked life and limb chasing a shiny thing only for it to turn out to be a mushroom or a lump of flesh. It's incredibly rare that the trinkets just casually strewn around the world or laying around in dungeons will be anything of value, but the rarity system (different coloured glows on items) doesn't feel consistent, so you've no choice but to fill your pockets with mushrooms and pebbles if you want to avoid missing out on the occasional score with a piece of gear or useful consumable. Your bag will likely end up loaded with crafting materials, too — it's an open-world game, so is required by law to include a crafting mechanic, not that I used it all that much, but it will certainly be a boon for ranged characters to be able to make their own ammo.Anyway, back to the legacy dungeons. I really like how these serve as a complete change of tone and pace, as the grand adventure and free exploration gives way to more linear progression with a clear objective: get to the end of this awful place, kill the thing, and get the hell out. Several are typical castles and keeps (but even then go way deeper than you may expect... literally, in one case) but others get more creative and it's funny how they all feel kind of like they've been pulled from From's back catalogue. Those classic castles evoke Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, a couple have a more eldritch or fantastical vibe more akin to Bloodborne, and one or two even have a bit of a Sekiro feel to them. These themes and tones are backed up with some expectedly excellent music, particularly in the boss fights, and this just backs up that shift in gears between open world and dungeons — field music is ambient and dynamic (at least until a world boss drops in to say hello), dungeons like to strip things back further to allow for atmospheric exploration, while boss battles crank up the intensity with swelling choral number that make everything feel that much more epic. Most legacy dungeons are required to beat the game (all of them if you're going for the completion) so this variety within variety is welcome indeed, even if one of the optional ones does introduce a new enemy type that is as hideous to fight as it is to look at. You have to hand it to From for somehow creating something worse than Dark Souls' Basilisks. Oh, they're back too, by the way. Of course they are.If only I had a dog...With all of these nods to and elements from the Souls games (what is From's unhealthy obsession with poison swamps?), one thing should be pretty clear by this point: if you're not a fan of other FromSoftware games, you're almost certainly going to bounce off Elden Ring pretty damn hard. It's a Souls game, just one dressed up in open-world finery and rebranded to beckon more hapless adventurers to their deaths. Their many, many deaths. The Souls games have featured so many Mimics that the series itself has actually become a Mimic, luring in newcomers with the tempting promise of open-ended adventure in a world created by the mind behind Game of Thrones, then sucker-punching them by filling that world with thousands of things that want them dead, and that can easily arrange such a thing. There's an argument to be made for Elden Ring's freedom making it a good starting point for Souls newcomers — there's much more potential for just leaving troublesome bosses for later, checking out the rest of the map, and coming back when you're stronger to brute-force your way through — but if you've tried and failed to get into FromSoftware games in the past, it's extremely unlikely that Elden Ring will prove any different. It's just as oblique, it's just as hard (arbitrarily even more so at times, perhaps), and there's even more of it to get through. As for the achievements, they're certainly a lot more lenient than previous From games have been, but there's still some that are missable on a single playthrough, including a trio for seeing each of the endings. Folks have been save-scumming to do all three in one run, but you don't really need to do that — I'm absolutely steamrollering through Journey 2 (New Game+ in all but name) and expect to have that polished off pretty soon, then I plan to start fresh and try out another build for the last one. That will be quicker purely thanks to game knowledge, although I am going to miss my pair of massive axes. The very concept of achievements is an awkward fit for games like this, even more so with Elden Ring's world being so absolutely massive, meaning those legendary items you need to round up for the related achievements could be anywhere. I did find a good few of these naturally just with thorough exploration, although some are so obtuse that I don't expect many people to unlock these without the help of a guide. It doesn't help that several are missable after certain story events, so refusing to look anything up until I was done with my first full run locked me out of one item until I hit NG+ to grab it. The majority of the list is for boss kills, though, and while I'm pretty sure none are missable, there are a few optional ones that are pretty well hidden (and pretty freaking tough), including a couple tied to From's typically vague side quests... good luck getting those done on your own. Behold, Elden Ring!SummaryElden Ring is undeniably fantastic, but it feels slightly too big for its own good. It looks great considering it's From's first real stab at a world this huge, although performance can be a little sketchy even when using the 'favour frame rate' option... never 360 Blighttown bad, sure, but that's hardly the highest of bars. Combat is just as weighty and satisfying as in the Souls games, although with so many bosses crammed into the game (most multiple times each), it just means that there are that many more fights that aren't up to snuff than you would see in a more limited typical Souls lineup. The sense of wonder and magic as you make your way around this mysterious and grimly beautiful world is truly extraordinary and while that does taper off somewhat by the time you reach the endgame and have seen more or less everything the game has to offer — several times over, in a lot of cases — but that doesn't detract too much from what will have otherwise been a truly remarkable adventure. Souls haters shouldn't fall for the rebrand as they'll just get burned again — Elden Ring is very much 'just' From doing what From does best, this time performing its greatest hits on the biggest stage to date. And what a wonderful thing that is to witness.9 / 10* Luke has spent well over 100 hours seeing the majority of what Elden Ring has to offer, picking up 39 of 42 achievements in the process. A review copy was provided by Bandai Namco, and played on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.More ELDEN RING stories: Best Xbox open world games Seven achievements ruined by a point of no return Elden Ring adds ray tracing on Xbox Series X with new update Elden Ring players have died almost nine billion times Xbox Game Pass carries Wo Long to Souls-crushing first week Review Written by Luke AlbigésLuke runs the TA news team, contributing where he can primarily with reviews and other long-form features — crafts he has honed across two decades of print and online gaming media experience, having worked with the likes of gamesTM, Eurogamer, Play, Retro Gamer, Edge, and many more. He loves all things Monster Hunter, enjoys a good D&D session, and has played way too much Destiny.