This game is probably the best game I've played in the past decade, and I think it has set the standard for games to follow in the future. If you are a fan of Dark Souls, exploring open worlds packed of meaningful things to do, a challenge, beautiful artstyle, and combat, then you'll love this game.

I probably spent around 25-30hours just in the first area exploring all the hidden caves and dungeons scattered around before I actually found and killed my first boss. This approach is also very good for people new to Souls games, as they can explore and level up more if they are stuck on a story boss, and then just come back later more powerful.

In terms of difficulty, I've played and completed all bosses in Sekiro, Dark Souls 1, 2 and 3, and also played but not completed Bloodborne. I'd rate them like this, hardest being first: Sekiro, Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, Elden Ring, Dark Souls 2, and Dark Souls 1. There are certainly some challenging bosses in this game, like Malenia, but the others aren't so hard once you are geared and leveled, also you have the added benefit of plenty of summons which make the fights a cake walk, because of this, I'd definitely recommend Elden Ring to a new player of Souls games.

The game is full of things to do, I think my first playthrough took 75-80hours to complete, and I had actually still missed whole areas and bosses at this point, so still a lot to do.

The good:

• The graphics are very good in my opinion, not sure why people hate on them
  
• Artstyle, artstyle always beats graphics anyway in my opinion but this game has both that are very pleasing to the eye
  
• Combat, imagine combining aspects from all FromSoftware games and putting the finished product into a game, that's Elden Ring. I think it has the best combat out of all the FromSoftware games, possibly rivaled by Sekiro, but it has more variety than Sekiro, whereas Sekiro is pure skill based.
  
• Unique boss encounters
  
• Unique NPCs and sidequests, I met an NPC out in the world whilst exploring, she had a very long questline which I completed and actually ended up giving me a secret different ending to the normal one.
  
• Open world. Open world isn't a new thing by any means, but usually open world games are full of busywork that's boring, like collecting things. Elden Ring has an open world that is fully fleshed out with things to do.
  
• Powerstancing. This is basically dual-wielding weapons. In Elden Ring, if you have two weapons of the same class, for example two katana's or two great-swords, then you unlock a two-handed moveset for those weapons, including jump attacks, roll attacks, backstep attacks and also unique abilities.
  
• The story and lore is much better than previous Souls games, it feels more fleshed out, and easier to follow. Most likely thanks to George RR Martin helping with the narrative.

The bad:

• PC performance issues, I am running a 5950x, 32gb RAM and a 3080 Ti, and even I get stutters, freezes and massive FPS drops, and although it has improved with some tweaks and fixes, it is still an issue and can make the game unplayable in some circumstances, especially in boss fights where every second and frame counts.
  
• No utrawide. This one probably annoys me the most because the game actually is capable of running native ultrawide, but the game imposes black bars over your gameplay to enforce a 16:9 ratio. Luckily the community were able to come out with a fix, but without the fix I don't think I could have played the game. Very poor PC support from FromSoftware.
  
• 60FPS cap. Again, poor PC support, however the FPS cap can be removed by using the ultrawide fix/mod I mentioned above.
  
• EAC (Easy anti-cheat). This one links to the two previous points, because it prevents any modding of the game files, essentially making it hard or impossible to implement some fixes/mods to the game. If you mod the game, then go online, you will get banned. So for example, me enabling a quality of life feature so that I can play the game in my native resolution and aspect ratio, would reward me with a ban, even though I'm not hacking or cheating.
  
• Double boss fights. If there was ever a feature I hoped not to see from Dark Souls 2 implemented into further games, it's the amount of bosses you have to fight in duo, making an artificial difficulty.

Score ?/10:
10/10

Graphics
Play with your eyes closed ☐
Awful ☐
Bad ☐
Decent ☐
Good ☐
Beautiful ☑
Better than real life ☐

Game-play
Rather watch paint dry ☐
Bad ☐
Decent ☐
Good ☐
Very good ☑

Audio
Ear-rape ☐
Awful ☐
Bad ☐
Decent ☐
Good ☐
Very good ☑
Ear-porn ☐

Audience
Kids ☐
Teens ☐
Adults ☑
Everyone ☐

PC Requirements
Potato ☐
Budget PC ☐
Mid-end PC ☑
High-end PC ☐
Super-computer ☐

Difficulty
Insult to my intelligence ☐
Easy ☐
20% Brain usage ☐
50% Brain usage ☐
Hard to master ☐
Hard ☐
Dark Souls ☑

Grind
No Grind ☑
Cosmetics|Collectables ☐
Isn't needed to progress ☐
Average ☐
Too much ☐
It's a job ☐

Story
No story ☐
20% story 80% gameplay ☐
Average ☐
Good ☐
Very good ☑
Flawless ☐

Game time
Blink to roll credits ☐
Short ☐
Average ☐
Long ☐
Unlimited ☑

Price
Free ☐
Cheap ☐
Worth it ☑
Only on sale ☐
Expensive ☐
Deep pockets ☐

Bugs
None ☐
Minor bugs ☐
Annoying ☑
50% bugs 50% game ☐
Game breaking ☐

Ultra-wide support
Yes, natively ☐
Yes, with mods ☑
No ☐