The most awarded game of all time, Elden Ring, is the peak of modern gaming. 

Since its release, Elden Ring has cemented itself as one of the best games of modern times, with it quickly becoming the most-awarded game in history with 331 Game Of The Year awards.

Elden Ring is a third-person RPG where players explore a vast region known as “The Lands Between,” fighting bosses and leveling up. Elden Ring was directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki with the world built by fantasy writer George R. R. Martin. Each player’s playthrough is entirely different, and the ending can also be different based on each player’s actions. However, one thing remains the same in each playthrough; the player becomes the Elden Lord. 

Elden Ring was developed by a Japanese video game development company known as “FromSoftware.” The company was founded by Naotoshi Zin, and it was initially a business software developer company. FromSoftware noticed the recent profitability of game development and released its first game, King’s Field, in 1994. King’s Field successfully shifted FromSoftware’s focus onto game development, with them going on to achieve breakout success in the 2010s with the release of the first Dark Souls title. 

Elden Ring falls into the category of Soulslike games, which is a sub-genre of RPGs known for their high levels of difficulty, focus on a dark fantasy setting, combat system that focuses on memorizing enemy movements and attack patterns, and encouraging player death to learn mechanics/environmental navigation.

The Soulslike genre was born from FromSoftware’s Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls series; in addition, the themes and mechanics in these games have directly inspired many other games, such as Lords of the Fallen and Lies of P. Elden Ring is no exception to these themes, as it has been hailed as one of the hardest Soulslike games of all time, having players spend hours or even days on one boss alone. 

Elden Ring was initially announced at E3 in 2019 and was expected to be released in early to late 2020. However, to the surprise of many fans, there was no trailer for Elden Ring at the 2019 Game Awards. Then, during 2020, there was only silence except for some tweets confirming the game was still being developed. By this time, it had been over a year and a half since the game’s initial announcement, causing the fan base to make jokes about the thought of Elden Ring even releasing. This continued into 2021 until fans finally received a trailer for Elden Ring at the June 2021 Summer Game Fest. However, fans would still have to wait eight months before the game was finally released on February 25th, 2022.

By the end of March 2022, Elden Ring had sold over 13 Million Copies, almost doubling that a year later, in March 2023, when 20 million copies were sold. It is now Bandai Namco’s fastest-selling game of all time.

The fact Elden Ring is still selling and is retaining its relevance with high player counts in 2024, more than two years after launch and with no additional content, shows the game’s value and longevity. But what is it that makes Elden Ring so good? 

One factor that has contributed to the success and overall enjoyability of Elden Ring is the near-infinite amount of player builds that a person can make. Elden Ring allows players to have an incredible amount of variety and uniqueness when creating each build, without the build needing to be in the “meta,” which is like a default combination that everyone seems to agree is the best.

In many RPGs, builds are centered around “classes;” however, Elden Ring lacks the standard class system and favors an attribute based system where players gain stat points upon leveling up that they can then invest in different attributes. These attribute stats can affect the effectiveness of the player’s weapons and their own attacks, so it is important for the player to invest in stats that favor their weapon’s effectiveness.

In addition to the variety of attribute combinations, players can also take advantage of talismans, spells, buffs, and consumables, which could make up to thousands of unique builds.

Nevertheless, some builds can be more powerful than others, as there are meta builds that are quickly found and abused by players. An example of this would be the “bleed build meta,” which saw players using weapons that inflicted the “bleed” status effect, which takes out huge chunks of the enemy’s health and leaves them slowly losing more health over time. The overpowered part comes in when players just dodged their opponent until they died from the “bleed” effect. However, FromSoftware is usually quick to nerf these builds in favor of a more balanced experience.

Another factor contributing to Elden Ring’s success is the game’s difficulty. Some games can become too easy or boring as the player gets stronger or gets used to the mechanics. However, Elden Ring and many games in the “Soulslike” genre are exceptions to this, as they are extremely hard for the average player.

This difficulty forces players to adapt to the game’s challenges and learn how to beat each boss, which sometimes takes many tries. However, once the player overcomes this extreme difficulty, their eventual success will feel very rewarding. 

In Elden Ring, the player is introduced to this extreme difficulty very early in the game, in the form of the “Tree Sentinel” that stands in the player’s path as soon as they exit the tutorial area, or the “Night Cavalry” and dead birds in the Limgrave region of the game. These bosses are optional as they are avoidable and can be done later when the player has leveled up more, but these encounters help set the tone for the rest of the game and the challenges that await the player.

The excitement that Elden Ring initially generated has still not wavered, and now, with the announcement of Elden Ring’s first DLC “Shadow of the Erdtree,” players will gain new Elden Ring content for the first time since its release.

First revealed on February 28th, 2023, the DLC will see the addition of 10 new bosses, a new land to explore, and 40 hours of new content. Beyond that, Elden Ring has gotten a handful of quality-of-life updates since its launch, including a PVP mode that allows players to test their skills against other players.

Elden Ring is proof that major mainstream games can launch with few technical issues while also having meaningful designs that capture the player’s attention. Even two years after launch, Elden Ring is still praised by the community, setting a new precedent for how an open-world game should perform.

All in all, Elden Ring is easily one of the best games to release in the last couple of decades, and it deserves a perfect score of 10/10.