Elden Ring Preview (PlayStation 5)

by Jim Smale · Published November 22, 2021 · Updated June 7, 2024

Read our Elden Ring Preview where we go hands-on with this new From Software game, Rise, Tarnished, and be guided by grace to brandish the power of the Elden Ring and become an Elden Lord in the Lands Between.

Elden Ring Preview Pros:

Truly Gorgeous graphics.
Download size.
Action-adventure gameplay.
Beginning tutorial section for the controls then tooltips pop up as you play.
You can jump!
Mobs – kill a mob of enemies and earn flask refills for health.
Two flasks – one for health and one for mana.
At a site of grace (bonfire), you can choose how the flasks are divvied up.
Golden Scarab acts like a lizard in previous games and it will scurry away but if you kill it you get rewards.
Scavenge materials from enemies and the land.
Open world with minimal loading times.
Stunning vistas.
Uses traditional combat features like a lock-on, learning patterns, and block and slash enemies or take ranged combat with magic.
Summon a horse to go faster, attack from and jump with.
The World is a living one and you can just sit back and watch.
Huge creatures.
Grace will show you a path to the next objective but it is purely optional.
Not everyone is hostile.
Big boss encounters.
Co-op is available and you drop a summoning stone and can choose who to summon.
Invasions are back and this is where you jump into another player’s game and hunt them down.
Runes act like souls and are earned from finding them, from enemies, etc, and used to level up.

Elden Ring Preview Cons:

It is very overwhelming.
You don’t like pretty games.
Didn’t get that much story or how it’s dispensed.
It is still crazy difficult.

Elden Ring:

Official website.

Developer: From Software

Publisher: Bandai Namco

Store Links –

PlayStation

Summary

Let’s not fuck about it, Elden Ring not only looks fucking incredible but it elevates the Soulsborne games to new heights. They have taken the dank dark worlds and turned them into a full living breathing open world. Add in horses and jumping and you have yourself one hell of an adventure. Granted I only played a few hours, I wanted to just have a taste and not full upon the starters and even with only a couple of hours under my belt, it felt incredible to experience. Yes boss fights are still a massive undertaking and enemies can just eat you alive if you get sloppy, but the exploration of the crafting the Co-op and the fact that if shit hits the fan you can just bug out. I lost so much time exploring the vast space available to me, I found dungeons, gathering spots and so much more. Even in such an early stage Elden Ring could be the defining game in this generation of consoles already and that is just crazy talk but it has a lot of credentials to back that up. Roll on with the release, fuck it release it now early access, and let me die over and over again!