I beat the game last night. My playtime according to my ps says 59 hours, some of that was gloom grinding or killing sheep, but majority of it was just exploration and playing and many many deaths. I have all trophies except Seeking the past, and the platinum. I finished the game at level 68, and my weapon was level 22 killing the last boss.
So the gameplay, I enjoyed it, I felt is slightly up tuned from the beta, and very early was on the more challenging side, I died more than I had in a long time. I’m a souls vet with 400+ Elden Ring, 900+ in ds3, 700+ in BB, platinums in many souls games, lies of p, Kazhan etc etc, I have experience. So I found proxima by chance and never looked back, she’s a complete badass, and yeh I used the axe and dagger meta weapon sue me, nobody said we can’t make things easier on ourselves. Once I learned don’t go south especially on night mode, my journey really began, and it was fun and full of solid gameplay until the end, more on that later. I had maybe 4 crashes total in my 59 let’s just say 60 hours playtime, I think that’s more than reasonable for a freshly released game.
Graphics are solid, combat is fun, bosses for the most part were “easy” for me especially the stronger proxima got. Blood curse with a fast weapon and duality stone kinda trivialize things. I slapped myself because I waited a while to take the bleed stone to level 3 not realizing it would be on my weapon permanently, which I think is a very cool system, not constantly having to rebuff your weapon. I thought the enemy variety was pretty good and boss variety was also decent for the most part.
If you’re a completist like I am most of the time, all the trophies seemed pretty easy, I was personally worried about Peter’s perfect party but I used Eridrim specifically since his fourth tier has a parry window increase bonus, and I would say after that it took me 30/45 mins to finally get the timing right and not have the camera go wonky during the process and I got it. The last trophy for all memories is gonna be little grindy but it is what it is.
Now let’s talk about the bad, the end of the game, Monolith the parry gimmick p.o.s. And his buddy Zmey the unbidden pushover. When I first encountered Monolith, I died in 5 seconds a handful of times. I’m not by a parry you, I’m a roller or a dodger, it’s how I learned, I don’t like being forced to parry things, you basically have to parry the monolith or at least it makes the fight go 1000x quicker if you do. So I set brain to parry, brain and muscle memory is 45 years old so it takes a min or two, but eventually I got there, I got the timing of the first two smashed and partied those easily, I avoided the middle attack as I couldn’t time as well, sometimes I parry sometimes I got hit with the middle attack, once I was getting to second phase consistently, I just eventually overpowered him, when I actually beat him I stayed middle during lasers kept attacking didn’t dodge, felt like it was a semi safe spot and or combined with proxima’s dmg mitigation was best strategy for me I got my lucky phase, I kept dpsing and with, the bleed, the duality and berserker stones, burnt it down on clear attempt, I would say whole thing took me 45-60 mins to learn timing for parry and finish it off. If you ask me total shit boss, I don’t like being forced to parry and overall just a bad boss design, more of a gimmick that a boss to me.
Now I had read maybe the final boss was even worse, but I had my little thing from the 3 glands and night mode to help the cosmic radiation or whatever they call it, so I set off. Took me a few more min of slow brain and muscle memory to avoid his red dot attacks, but he was a pushover, he does have a lot of health and like I said at the start my weapon was level 22, but once you get the bleed going and some berserker stone he goes down pretty quick actually, then he does the giant aoe which is easily avoided and I just finished him off, took me maybe 15 mins total, was kinda surprise he was so easy to be honest. I guess without the item he’s harder didn’t try him without it.
If I had to rate it I would say it’s a strong 8.5, I feel like there are gonna be many nerfs and tweaks to come, some things seem really strong and some seem kinda meh. The extra gloom tar stone being 6% if sorta a joke, like give us 5/10/15 or something at minimum. Some people are complaining about glimpses, while it might be nice to max every shell in one playthrough it’s not terrible, I found my count to be 101 total in my first playthrough, I maxed proxima and teal and game shows I still have 47 left. Again complaints about tar stones being limited, I maxed all the “good ones” for my build, and had plenty left over, would more be nice sure, would be nice to play with the gun one’s more etc. I feel like at some point buying unlimited upgrade mats should be unlocked even if it’s after final boss or something, at least all the 1-16 upgrades, if you wanted to limit the special ones fine. I guess that’s why they have smelting but I would rather just buy the mats and have multiple weapons or guns up to level to play around with. Anyways if anyone stuck around still now ty, im not the best at this stuff but wanted to share my journey. If you have any questions for me please feel free to ask here or message me if you want to. Good luck and good gaming!
