Let’s not deny it. There is a legion of gamers who would love to try one of these souls-like From FromSoftware, at least to know what it feels like when before reaching the first final boss you have to die around 200 times. But they don’t do it precisely because of that enormous difficulty and because, deep down, they don’t have the patience to put up with so much humiliation in a row. And now it comes Elden Ring.
More difficult or just different?
It is certain that when the Japanese considered designing this game, at some point in the conversation the issue of difficulty must have come up. Do we lower it slightly or do we keep it as in the case of other games? In the end, it seems that they have opted for an intermediate point: we are not going to replicate the formula of the old Dark Souls to hammer, nor are we going to raise it a little morelest some of the faithful be frightened by the new challenges.
Based on the opinions published by those who have already tried it, both in its beta phase a few months ago and more recently for analysis, everything indicates that FromSoftware has designed a new gaming experience which differs significantly from what was seen in previous titles but, yes, without giving up the very essence of the company. A kind of “this sounds like me but it’s not exactly the same as what was seen in this or that previous FromSoftware game”.
There are more routes and a more affordable open world where the player chooses how complicated they want to make things. To reward that effort, Elden Ring keeps harder secrets, that is, the difficulty is less concentrated and in many cases it is optional to enter certain instances more darksoulianas. That way. FromSoftware has managed to spread the level of complications more throughout the game map, so it is possible to breathe between combats against enemies and even escape from certain impossible situations.
That translates to the combats are not so hard, but they are difficult, since that rockiness has been camouflaged under a new system of more fluid confrontations, with new combinations of attack and defense that, for example, became evident in each of the five classes present in the beta. This means that we will have more alternatives to fight enemies, even magical allies at certain times and, therefore, a feeling of greater possibility of defeating them with less effort, although in the background that heart of the old continues to beat. Dark Souls.
Now, even if the new tools that are put into our hands are better and more varied, we will always have that perception that Elden Ring it has a higher difficulty than any other game that you have experienced in recent times, precisely because the Japanese have not wanted to lower the bar and turn their experience with this title into a simple walk in the countryside. So if you are going to immerse yourself in this experience in the next few days, remember to pay close attention to the instructions that the game will give you on combinations of buttons, attacks, defense resources and other catalog of controls that can allow you to survive a few more minutes. .
If practically all the elements seen in the beta phase of Elden Ring remain, will show that FromSoftware learns with each new game which launches to the market (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, sekiroetc.) and is able to measure each new idea that it incorporates so that it helps the whole, wrapping it with a nice wrapping paper that could distract us from the essential: the difficulty exists, it has not gone away, but the Japanese have found the way to make it seem more bearable.
