# Elden Ring

> Elden Ring is an action rpg, soulslike and open world game developed by FromSoftware and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, first released on 25 February 2022 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One and PC. It takes about 58 hours to finish the main story and around 132 hours to complete. We scored it 9.5 out of 10.

Source: https://gamingpickz.com/games/elden-ring/
Publisher of this page: GamingPickz
Reviewed by: Ranjeeth, Editor, after undefined hours played
Last updated: 30 August 2026
Wikidata: Q64826862
Verified: no, this entry is a draft and is not indexed

## Key facts

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| First released | 25 February 2022 |
| Developer | FromSoftware |
| Publisher | Bandai Namco Entertainment |
| Genres | Action RPG, Soulslike, Open World |
| Platforms | PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One, PC |
| Players | 1 player, up to 4 in online co-op |
| ESRB rating | M for Mature 17+ |
| Main story length | 58 hours |
| Completionist length | 132 hours |
| Monetisation | premium |
| Our score | 9.5 out of 10 |

## Verdict

The open world does not dilute FromSoftware's design, it multiplies it. Still the studio's high-water mark.

## Overview

I have played about 3,000 games over twenty years, and I have watched three separate console generations decide that open worlds were the future. Most of what came out of that decision was the same map with a different skin: a grid of icons, a checklist of towers, and a world built to be cleared rather than explored. So I went into Elden Ring expecting FromSoftware to lose the thing that made its games work. The tension in a [Dark Souls](/genre/soulslike/) level comes from not being able to leave. Give a player somewhere else to go and you have handed them a pressure valve.

That is exactly what Elden Ring does, and it is the reason it works. Being able to walk away is not a concession here, it is the central mechanic. Every wall you cannot get past is a suggestion rather than a verdict. You go somewhere else, you come back stronger or you come back knowing something, and the wall falls over. The game is built on the assumption that you will do this, which is why it can afford to be harder at the top end than anything the studio has made.

> This is the most forgiving game FromSoftware has produced, and it did not lower a single ceiling to get there.

I want to be precise about that, because the word forgiving does a lot of misleading work in games writing. Malenia is not forgiving. The late [action RPG](/genre/action-rpg/) bosses are not forgiving. What is forgiving is the structure around them: you can meet any of it on your own schedule, at your own level, with a build you chose rather than a build the game assigned you at hour three. That is a different kind of generosity and it is worth more than a difficulty slider.

## Who this is actually for

If you have bounced off a Souls game before, this is the one to try. Not because it is easier moment to moment, but because the specific thing that made you quit, being stuck with no way forward, has been designed out. I have handed this game to people who gave up on [Bloodborne](/genre/soulslike/) in the first hour and watched them put sixty hours into it.

If you have never played one at all, you should know what you are signing up for. The game explains almost nothing. There is no quest log worth the name, no map marker telling you where to go, and no difficulty setting. What it gives you instead is a horse, a very large map, and the assumption that you are an adult who can find your own entertainment. Some people find that liberating and some find it exhausting, and there is no shame in the second.

If you have played every FromSoftware game since Demon's Souls, you already know whether you want this. What I can tell you is that it is the best of them, and that the ceiling on build variety is higher than it has ever been.

## Story and setting

The Lands Between is presented the way FromSoftware always presents a setting: obliquely, and mostly through objects. You are a Tarnished, the Elden Ring is shattered, and the demigods holding its shards are all ruined in their own specific ways. Nothing is explained to you directly. Almost everything is explained eventually, through item descriptions, environmental staging and a small number of characters who tell you the truth in fragments and then leave.

I have seen this described as bad storytelling and I think that is a category error. It is not a story told badly, it is a story told archaeologically. You are not following a plot, you are excavating one, and the game is confident enough to let you leave most of it buried. I finished my first run at ninety-six hours with a rough understanding of maybe sixty percent of what had happened, and that felt correct rather than frustrating.

## What the Martin collaboration actually did

George R. R. Martin's involvement was the headline at announcement and it is the most misunderstood thing about the game. He did not write the script. What he wrote is the backstory, the generation before the one you are playing in, and the effect of that is structural rather than textual.

It gives the world a legible family tree of grievances. Every demigod you fight is somebody's child, sibling or betrayer, and once you understand two or three of those relationships the rest of the map starts to make sense. That is what stops the Lands Between feeling like a set of themed zones. It feels like somewhere that had a history and then had a catastrophe, and you arrived afterwards.

## The characters worth caring about

Ranni gets most of the attention and deserves it, mostly because her questline is the one piece of the game that behaves like a conventional narrative: you meet people, you do things for them, consequences follow. But the writing I remember is smaller. Blaidd, and what happens to him. Millicent, and the way her questline quietly asks you a question about mercy that the game never answers. Boc, who wants one thing, and whose entire arc is about whether you will give it to him.

None of those are told to you. All of them are missable. That is the trade Elden Ring makes, and whether it is a good one depends entirely on whether you are the kind of player who talks to everybody twice.

## Gameplay

Combat keeps the stamina-based fundamentals the studio has used since Demon's Souls, and if you have played any of them your hands already know what to do. Roll, punish, watch the stamina bar, learn the tell. What has changed is everything around that loop.

## Ashes of War, and why they matter more than they look

This is the single most important system in the game and it is easy to miss. An Ash of War lets you rewrite a weapon's special attack and, crucially, its damage scaling. That second part is what changes the game.

In every previous FromSoftware game, choosing a weapon at hour five was a commitment. If you invested forty levels into strength and then found a katana you loved, you were forty levels into the wrong stat. That fear shaped how people played: they looked up a build before starting, they stuck to it, and they experienced one version of a game that had many.

Ashes of War remove that fear entirely. You can take almost any weapon and make it scale off whatever you have levelled. I finished my first run having changed my primary weapon four times, twice because I found something more interesting and twice because I wanted to see what a different moveset felt like against a boss that was giving me trouble. That is not something I have ever done in a Souls game.

> The practical effect is that you get to play the build you find, rather than the build you researched.

## Spirit Ashes are not cheating

Spirit Ashes summon an AI ally for the duration of a fight, and they are the largest difficulty lever in the game. They are also the subject of a tedious argument about whether using them is legitimate.

It is. They are a designed system with a resource cost, a dedicated stat to invest in, and upgrade materials scattered deliberately around the map. FromSoftware did not add them by accident. The Mimic Tear, which copies your own build, trivialises several fights, and if trivialising several fights is what gets you through to the parts of this game that are extraordinary, use it. I have never met anyone who enjoyed a game more for having suffered correctly.

## Torrent changes the shape of encounters

The spectral horse turns traversal from an overhead into a pleasure, which matters on a map this size. But the thing I did not expect is how much it changes combat. Field bosses become chases. Dragons become something you fight while moving. Double-jumping up a cliff to escape a fight you are losing is a legitimate tactic, and knowing you can do that changes how willing you are to start fights you might not win.

## The legacy dungeons are the best level design in the studio's history

Stormveil Castle is the argument for this game. It is a fully interconnected castle with a front gate you can assault and a side path you can sneak through, shortcuts that unlock in both directions, and a vertical structure you gradually come to hold in your head. It is [Dark Souls](/genre/soulslike/)' Undead Burg logic at four times the scale, and it lands.

Leyndell is better. Raya Lucaria is better than most of Dark Souls 3. There are six of these, and any one of them would be the best area in a lesser game.

## The bit everyone complains about, and they are right

Between the legacy dungeons sit the catacombs, the mines and the hero graves. There are dozens of them, they reuse the same handful of layouts, and by the fortieth hour you can identify which template you are in from the first corridor.

I understand the design logic. They are pacing furniture: something to find so the space between the good things is not empty, and a reliable source of upgrade materials. But the honest version is that FromSoftware built six extraordinary dungeons and a large amount of filler, and the filler is what you spend a lot of your time in. It does not ruin the game. It is the clearest thing standing between it and a ten.

## What works

- Open world design that rewards curiosity constantly
- The best legacy dungeons FromSoftware has built
- Build flexibility through Ashes of War
- Spirit Ashes make it genuinely accessible
- Enormous amount of content at the price

## What does not

- Heavily reused minor dungeons
- PC stutter issues persisted long after launch
- Late game boss design leans on delayed attack timings
- Almost no guidance for players new to the genre

## Release dates by platform

| Platform | Release date | Notes |
| --- | --- | --- |
| PlayStation 5 | 25 February 2022 |  |
| PlayStation 4 | 25 February 2022 |  |
| Xbox Series X and Series S | 25 February 2022 |  |
| Xbox One | 25 February 2022 |  |
| PC | 25 February 2022 | Steam |

## Performance modes

| Platform | Mode | Resolution | Frame rate |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| PlayStation 5 | Quality | Dynamic 4K | 30 fps |
| PlayStation 5 | Performance | Dynamic, up to 4K | Targets 60 fps |
| Xbox Series X and Series S | Quality | Dynamic 4K | 30 fps |
| Xbox Series X and Series S | Performance | Dynamic, up to 4K | Targets 60 fps |

## PC system requirements

| Component | Minimum | Recommended |
| --- | --- | --- |
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10/11 64-bit |
| Processor | Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 3 3300X | Intel Core i7-8700K or AMD Ryzen 5 3600X |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GTX 1060 3GB or AMD RX 580 4GB | NVIDIA GTX 1070 8GB or AMD RX Vega 56 8GB |
| Memory | 12 GB | 16 GB |
| Storage | 60 GB | 60 GB SSD |

## Where to buy

| Store | Platform | MSRP | Current | Type |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| PlayStation Store | PlayStation 5 | $59.99 | not checked | official store |
| PlayStation Store | PlayStation 4 | $59.99 | not checked | official store |
| Xbox Store | Xbox Series X and Series S | $59.99 | not checked | official store |
| Xbox Store | Xbox One | $59.99 | not checked | official store |
| Steam | PC | $59.99 | not checked | official store |
| Green Man Gaming | PC | $59.99 | not checked | key reseller |
| Fanatical | PC | $59.99 | not checked | key reseller |
| Humble Store | PC | $59.99 | not checked | key reseller |
| GOG | PC | $59.99 | not checked | affiliate |
| Amazon | PlayStation 5 | $59.99 | not checked | affiliate |

## Community sentiment

The community consensus treats the open world and build freedom as an unambiguous success, while dungeon reuse and late-game boss timing generate genuine, long-running disagreement rather than settled opinion.

Recurring praise:

- Discovery is the thing people describe most: cresting a hill and finding something unannounced
- Value for money is raised constantly, usually in terms of hours per dollar against contemporaries
- Ashes of War are credited with removing the fear of committing to a build early
- Stormveil Castle and Leyndell are repeatedly named as the best level design in the studio history

Recurring complaints:

- PC traversal stutter dominated discussion for the first year and still surfaces on some configurations
- Reused catacombs, mines and hero graves are the most common structural complaint
- Late-game boss design, specifically long delayed attack timings, is a persistent point of disagreement
- Questlines are considered effectively undiscoverable without a wiki, which many players resent having to use

## How it was made

Announced at E3 2019 with a cinematic trailer and then almost complete silence for two years, a gap long enough that it became a running joke in the community.

The first real gameplay arrived in June 2021, eight months before release. The worldbuilding collaboration with George R. R. Martin was disclosed at announcement and was a major part of the early press.

Engine: Proprietary FromSoftware engine

Team size: Roughly 250 at FromSoftware

## Official videos

- ELDEN RING – E3 ANNOUNCEMENT TRAILER | XBOX ONE, PS4, & PC (reveal, Bandai Namco Entertainment America): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lls6Gdua_XY
- ELDEN RING – Rise, Tarnished | Official Launch Trailer (launch, Bandai Namco Entertainment America): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhD0_MM4fnU

## Frequently asked questions

### Do I need to have played Dark Souls first?

No. Elden Ring shares design language with Dark Souls but tells a completely separate story with no shared characters or continuity.

### Is Elden Ring too hard for a beginner?

It is demanding, but it is the most accommodating game FromSoftware has made. You can leave any fight, level up elsewhere and return, and Spirit Ash summons meaningfully lower the difficulty of most encounters.

### Can you play Elden Ring in co-op the whole way through?

Partly. Co-op partners are dismissed when a boss dies or when the host dies, and summoned players cannot roam the open world freely with you without mods. It is designed around session-based help, not a shared campaign.

### How do I access Shadow of the Erdtree?

You must defeat Starscourge Radahn and Mohg, Lord of Blood, then interact with a specific cocoon in Mohg's arena. The expansion is not accessible from the start.

## Sources

- Bandai Namco official site: https://en.bandainamcoent.eu/elden-ring/elden-ring

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Content by GamingPickz. Cite as: GamingPickz, "Elden Ring", https://gamingpickz.com/games/elden-ring/