Grissallia<p>July 2, 2023 - Day 183 - NewPlay Review<br>Total NewPlays: 202</p><p>Game: Elden Ring</p><p>Platform: Steam<br>Release Date: Feb 25, 2022<br>Library Date: Jul 2, 2023<br>Unplayed: 0d<br>Playtime: 33m</p><p>Here we are, at the half-way mark. There are 182 days ahead, and 182 days behind. For today, I decided on something special</p><p>Turns out, in return for my upgrading my son's computer last night, he bought me the game of my choice today... which was Elden Ring. Again.</p><p>Technically, this is not an "unplayed" game. My kids bought me Elden Ring for my birthday last year, and I attempted to play it, got intensely frustrated with it, and quit out after 80 minutes and got a refund.</p><p>I simply didn't understand that death is part of a soulslike.</p><p>However, in the process of playing through this project, I grasped the play style of a soulslike, which brings me back to Elden Ring.</p><p>In case you've been living under all of the rocks, Elden Ring is a third-person open-world soulslike action-RPG.</p><p>It's dark, and brooding, almost devoid of colour. As with other soulslikes, there are points within the game that you can return to either when resurrecting, or to (effectively) save your progress.</p><p>However, do that, and it resurrects all the mobs you just killed, doesn't it? (Yes. It does.)</p><p>There's a constant trade-off between returning to these points to restore your energy, and effective save your inventory, and upgrade, or to keep moving forward, in the hope of finding what Elden Ring calls a "Site of Grace".</p><p>Starting over from the beginning on a fresh save, I learned something that I missed first time around... when I quit out after 80 minutes in March 2022, I hadn't even completed the tutorial. The final tutorial boss frustrated me so badly, I gave up.</p><p>Probably should have gone in with a character base far less squishy too.</p><p>This time, as a Vagabond, I died twice, and I enjoyed myself.</p><p>It's still not "I MUST PLAY THIS UNTIL I AM FINISHED!", but it's definitely "I'm going to willingly spend some time in this game."</p><p>Thus, at the halfway point of <a href="https://aus.social/tags/Project365ONG" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Project365ONG</span></a>, I'm happy to say, having given it another shot, Elden Ring is:</p><p>4: Good</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/EldenRing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>EldenRing</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/Soulslike" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Soulslike</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/OpenWorld" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>OpenWorld</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/ThirdPerson" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ThirdPerson</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/ARPG" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ARPG</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/MastodonGaming" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MastodonGaming</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/Gaming" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Gaming</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/Project365ONG" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Project365ONG</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/Project365" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Project365</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/NewPlay" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>NewPlay</span></a></p>