Elden Ring 

Jon Secaida

Class of 2026

Elden Ring was the first actual masterpiece I had played that lived up to my expectations. The game offered many enjoyable things such as an actual good story mode, strong bosses, a struggle to beat, creativity, and much more. This game shows that persistence is all you need to beat this game along with a big mind to create new tactics to test out, so you can beat the objective in front of you. But there were also some flaws in the game that made it more difficult than necessary.

Intro of The Game

This is not a noob-friendly  game as it starts with character creation. You start with a class selector, with eight different class options. Each class has a bunch of numbers and symbols, but there's no explanation of what any of those symbols mean or what abilities that class has. Then you pick a starting “boon”, from about fifteen options. What does this do? Is it important? Also no explanation. The combat tutorial is invisible to the human eye because they stick it off the side where you can easily just walk right past it, and even when you go through it it barely explains how any of the systems work. After the tutorial, same situation. As you gain power, you pick stats to level up and pick weapons and equipment. When you do this, Elden Ring’s developers give you a stats screen full of tiny barely legible numbers. Fortunately, I remembered that YouTube existed with many walkthroughs of the game. It helped me pick a class, pointed out the tutorial that I wandered past, explained how blocking works, and pointed out more stuff when it was clear. I didn’t understand some system and Youtube gave me pointers on how to pick stats to level up. Having something to guide me further into the game was pretty essential if I wanted to beat the game. Without the videos on the internet, I would have been stuck on the same thing for hours.

Pain and Agony

As I progressed throughout this game, the one thing that I enjoyed was the boss fights. The boss fights kept me hooked on the game although they were melting my health in seconds. This was to the point that it led me to use different strategies and builds. With the many other bosses that I looked forward to, I kept realizing that I would have to fight them for over an hour or so just to beat them, it was annoying, but yet still fun to look forward to because of the drops and experience they gave. To receive those drops I would have to fully get rid of the mountainous amount of health the bosses have while they do a crazy amount of damage with their wide-ranged attacks, that I would have to avoid at the same time while trying to deplete their health. This is where the pain and agony came in. 

The moment I’ve finally been able to get their health low, they would unleash an unblockable attack that I would fail to evade and melt my health. This would lead to the cause of many attempts with minutes turning into hours of being concentrated on the goal of beating the boss to progress further into the story. For the first 2 hours on the 100th or so boss I’ve had the mindset of just fighting them head-on, since it had usually worked in other games, but this wasn’t like any other game. Soon after I realized that fighting the bosses head-on wouldn’t work anymore and proved to be futile, I had to come up with a new strategy which led to me learning to adapt to the boss's movements and memorize their patterns in attacks. These adaptations made it far easier for me to beat bosses faster, since I knew their every move, but I would still have to suffer in learning their attack pattern which required dying multiple times and many attempts that cost many minutes/hours of my day.

Multidimensional Endings

There are about 6 total endings in this game: Age of Stars, Age of Duskborn, Age of Order, Age of Fracture, Lord of Frenzied Flame, and Blessing of Despair, which you would need to beat the game a total of 3 times to see. This can be a massive time investment but was worth it. If you do check out this game and want to experience the endings for yourself I’ll list how to obtain them.

To obtain the Age of Stars ending you would first need to complete Rannis quest fully. After you’ve done that, you would then need to beat the final boss, Elden Beast. Upon defeating the boss, you would be granted access to a unique blue summoning sign. Use the sign to summon Ranni instead of touching the item that leads to the Elden Lord ending. Upon using the sign and summoning Ranni, you will be given the Age of Stars ending.

The Age of Duskborn ending obtainment is fairly easy since all you have to do is touch Fractured Marika after defeating the final boss. After touching Fractured Marika, you would then need to choose “Use Mending Rune of the Death-Prince”, you would then be granted the Age of Duskborn ending.

Age of Order is the same as getting the Age of Duskborn ending. Touch Fractured Marika, but this time instead of choosing to use the mending rune of the death prince, you would need to use the “Mending Rune of Perfect Order”, upon using it you will be granted the Age of Order ending.

The Age of Fracture ending is a standard ending as this is the ending that Melina has been leading you throughout the game. You can obtain this ending by pressing the extra option for how to repair the Elden Ring by beating all of the main bosses and following the story.. This an extra option pops up for you depending on who you’ve helped throughout the game. You would then need to touch Fractured Marika and choose the “Mend the Elden Ring” option. Upon doing that, you will be given the Age of Fracture ending.To get the Lord of the Frenzied Flame ending is fairly easy. You would first have to obtain the Burning Scar first, then touch Fractured Marika after defeating the final boss.

The Blessing of Despair ending is the worst ending (according to Google). It requires you to meet and complete the Dung Eaters quest to get the Mending Rune of the Fell Curses. After you’ve done that and beaten the final boss, you would then need to touch Fractured Marika and choose the “Use Mending Rune of the Fell Curses” option. You would then be given the Blessing of Despair ending.

End Game

After I had completed the main story and got the endings, I set multiple goals for myself, such as getting all of the weapons, armor, and achievements I might have missed. I’ve also had some time to try out different builds like intelligence builds, faith builds, arcane builds, strength builds, and dexterity builds. Doing these things was pretty time-consuming but it was worth it.

Was it Worth Buying?

In my opinion, yes, it was worth buying due to the interest I have in adventure/RPG-type games. The bosses were hard and not easy to fight unlike in the other games I have played. The weapons, armor, and other things weren’t easy or hard to obtain. The quests gave me more stuff to do which kept me busy. I believe my money was well spent and honestly think the game is worth more than it is due to the amazing graphics and amount of content they offer us.