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Elden Ring is the best open world game so far in terms of exploration

SantaC

Member
Never have i spent so many hours this quickly on a game before (160 hours with a job and family lol), and yet I want to continue on playing it day and night.

The reason is because of the overworld, which isnt the usual barren sthick. I always get surprised by stuff to find. There is a fort, a cave, a schack, castle or even underground exploration around bascially every corner. Most of the time there are unique rewards. This isnt like BotW that only offers stamina or hearts as rewards.

For me Elden Ring is the best open World game so far and it will be hard to dethrone it. The game isnt perfect, but I am amazed how they managed to make this during the pandemic when other devs struggle.
 
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Buggy Loop

Member
Never have i spent so many hours this quickly on a game before (160 hours with a job and family lol), and yet I want to continue on playing it day and night.

The reason is because of the overworld, which isnt the usual barren sthick. I always get surprised by stuff to find. There is a fort, a cave, a schack, castle or even underground exploration around bascially every corner. Most of the time there are unique rewards. This isnt like BotW that only offers stamina or hearts as rewards.

For me Elden Ring is the best open World game so far and it will be hard to dethrone it. The game isnt perfect, but I am amazed how they managed to make this during the pandemic when other devs struggle.

Yup. I also have work and a family, but every night I go back to Elden ring, completely addicted. The world design, the verticality, the huge underground areas, it’s like nothing else.

I can’t think of anything toping this in open world design for years to come
 

Guilty_AI

Member
Elden-Ring-Meme-4.jpg
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
It's about on par with BotW in terms of world design and making you go "oooh, what's that, I need to check it out". But ER has a lot more stuff everywhere. In fact, I sometimes feel there's a bit TOO much. I'm a bit OCD with having to check out everything that looks like it could possibly be something and "clear" the map, so this game is gonna take me a looong time...
 
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Madflavor

Member
I finished my second play through and there were 3 legacy dungeons I never ran into during my first. It’s insane how much contact is in this game. Between this and BotW, I think it comes down to preference. I think both games seem to have the opposite problems with each other.

BotW: Ultimate freedom with exploration, samey rewards.
Elden Ring: Limited ways to explore the world, wildly different rewards for exploring.

I think saying “just hearts and stamina” may be disingenuous to BotW because there are more types of rewards than that. However it cannot be denied that the reward for exploration in Elden Ring is vastly superior to BotW. When you explore in Elden Ring you find:

1. Weapons
2. Armor
3. Spells
4. Talismans
5. Bosses
6. Mini dungeons
7. Legacy dungeons
8. Flask upgrades
9. Crafting material

That’s off the top of my head. On top of that with BotW you tend to see most of not all enemy types within the first dozen hours of the game, whereas in ER yeah it had recycled enemies, but still far more enemy types. It also doesn’t help that Dungeons and Bosses are the bread and butter of Zelda, and BotW has some of the worst in the series.

To be frank, I think the only thing BotW has Elden Ring beat out on, is it’s open world design in the number of ways you can interact and explore in it.
 
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Buggy Loop

Member
It's about on par with BotW in terms of world design and making you go "oooh, what's that, I need to check it out". But ER has a lot more stuff everywhere. In fact, I sometimes feel there's a bit TOO much. I'm a bit OCD with having to check out everything that looks like it could possibly be something and "clear" the map, so this game is gonna take me a looong time...

It’s got the same philosophy of world design as in, the world is showcasing points of interest visually and not just by icons on a map. Where I think ER wipes the floor with BOTW is the integration of complex dungeons seamlessly and the fact that it’s got legit underground areas, something I wish BOTW had kept, freaking caves.

I love BOTW, but ER just turned my hype of BOTW 2 from a 9/10 to maybe a 4/10 now. It’ll be tough to fill the void of this game once I’m done with it.
 

Wooxsvan

Member
ya. I'm completely sold. spent around 120hrs to finish my first playthrough and beat the final boss. but haven't started journey 2 because I keep finding things I missed. even quest lines
 

Yumi

Member
I love the The degree of density with unique encounters and rewards. It also has my favorite map, where the iconography can lead you to things you might expect or be surprised by. As you get further in, it reiterates concepts or designs in a positive way keeping you on your toes and improving upon things you’ve learned previously.

I love booting it up and having three or four things pop into my mind about what I should do next, without the game telling me. You really craft your own experience this way, and forgetting or missing things is part of that experience.

I’ve always loved From Software’s games since Dark Souls, but I wasn’t expecting them to make my favorite open world game. It’s not for everyone, but I personally love the amount of responsibility they put on the player to explore their world.
 

NinjaBoiX

Member
Funny, I’ve just been talking to some pals about this.

I love the level design, like when you’re actually in a dungeon. But honestly, I think the actual world is kind of dull. It feels sparse and kind of shrugged onto the screen, lots of copy and pasted elements and stuff.

The meat of the game are these fantastically designed dungeons, but a lot of the fluff tying it together feels like it’s there just because they wanted to have an open world game. It’s like you can almost see the dev’s toolbar plonking identikit trees and whatever about the place to fill out the empty space between the levels.

It’s certainly not awful, but I don’t get why so many people seem to think it’s the next level in world design or whatever. I’ve seen far better in the likes of BotW, RDR2, GTA5, TW3, etc.

Edit: btw, the amount of content is fantastic, and I agree about the rewards for exploration being amazing too. But the actual world, I don’t really dig it. I find it often dull, repetitive, ugly and oppressive. I don’t really enjoy navigating it, I just run with Torrent to where I need to be and be done with it.
 
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We must be playing different games, every time I find some cool alcove or shack or hidden area the reward is always some useless consumable, or other generic item that doesn't feel at all rewarding.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
It’s got the same philosophy of world design as in, the world is showcasing points of interest visually and not just by icons on a map. Where I think ER wipes the floor with BOTW is the integration of complex dungeons seamlessly and the fact that it’s got legit underground areas, something I wish BOTW had kept, freaking caves.

I love BOTW, but ER just turned my hype of BOTW 2 from a 9/10 to maybe a 4/10 now. It’ll be tough to fill the void of this game once I’m done with it.

For sure. BotW laid the groundwork, but ER has taken the same general world design philosophy MUCH further. BotW had hints of that with Hyrule Castle, but ER obviously blows it out of the water in that respect.

Hopefully the reason that BotW2 is taking longer than most thought it would (given that we originally heard it was gonna use the same world map) is that they're integrating a lot more proper dungeons and stuff this time around.
 
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draliko

Member
The first part of the game is simply magical, it gets lost a bit aftger a fair big city let's say, but in the end it's sill really nice
 
We must be playing different games, every time I find some cool alcove or shack or hidden area the reward is always some useless consumable, or other generic item that doesn't feel at all rewarding.

What about xp gain and leveling up? You level up organically if you explore without grinding.

So satisfying to wipe floor with bosses that were giving you trouble.
 

Majukun

Member
I disagree, in terms of pure joy of exploring and immersing yourself in the world, i think BOTW still edges over, mainly thanks to the chemistry system, a less awkward set of mobility options, and the fact that hyrule, as barren as it may been, still offers a wider arrange of interaction with NPCs...in elden ring you can either talk with people or kill people, and that's it.
And i get it that the sense of loneliness, obscureness and an hostile environment is part of from software dna..but i would have liked for the world to feel more "lived"

it's still great though...idf only i didn't have to fight with stutters to actually enjoy the game...
 

Majukun

Member
Never have i spent so many hours this quickly on a game before (160 hours with a job and family lol), and yet I want to continue on playing it day and night.

The reason is because of the overworld, which isnt the usual barren sthick. I always get surprised by stuff to find. There is a fort, a cave, a schack, castle or even underground exploration around bascially every corner. Most of the time there are unique rewards. This isnt like BotW that only offers stamina or hearts as rewards.

For me Elden Ring is the best open World game so far and it will be hard to dethrone it. The game isnt perfect, but I am amazed how they managed to make this during the pandemic when other devs struggle.
funny thing, botw is often criticised for offering lot of the same stuff as rewards and the degradation system(although i would argue that craftying materials are just as important and rewarding as an exploration prize)..but that allowed nintendo to avoid one of elden ring most criticized aspects...that there so many diverse small prizes that to actually found something that helps with your build or isn't just not as good as something else you already got, is a little miracle.
 
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It is great but I now have the struggle that I tested playing the ps4 version on my ps5 and now I don't want to play that 60 hour ps5 save file I have originally. :messenger_weary:
 
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Elden ring is certainly better in that you find more then just nuts in the open world.
Then again I think BoW is super overrated.
 
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Its up there in this one specific element, yeah.

A lot of it is copy pasted rocks at a 45 degree angle and dark souls dungeons spread out. But they did a great job for the most part and clearly took notes from Breath of the Wild. You can see objects of interest in the immediate area in front of you, in the mid range and at the extreme long range and you can explore organically without Witcher vision and detective neon.

Youre not given a lot of interesting tools for traversing the world but the world itself is laid out super well.

I'd rank BotW still 1st. It does all that but added sailing cloth and climbing. But the open world philosophy is nearly the same for both games since one took so much inspiration from the other.
 

NinjaBoiX

Member
The game has a lot of meat on the bones, but there's still quite a bit of empty space. Barren? No. As revolutionarily deep as folks are saying. . .eh.
This is exactly where I’m at.

The world is absolutely fine, there’s nothing wrong with it. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have really given it a great deal of thought one way or the other.

But with all the praise being piled on it’s open world I’m sat here thinking “am I missing something here?”
It’s a technical marvel, at the moment it’s king of gaming.
See stuff like this.

You honestly think this game is a technical marvel? It’s fantastic in many respects, but it sure a shit ain’t a technical marvel. Most would agree that it’s actually really quite lacking in that regard…
 
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Bragr

Banned
It does entice the player more than perhaps any open-world game has ever done. But, it is a pure combat simulator, when I think about all the different avenues of play and exploration of something like Red Dead 2, I'm not sure I can call it the best open-world yet. Needs more time to sink in.

Also, a lot of the dungeons and mines feel the same only with different enemies. Towards the end game, I did feel like I started to recognize things more and more.

I think the bosses and dungeons are the "worst" part of the game because frankly, it feels too much like Dark Souls and repeats a lot of the stuff that FromSoftware has done for over a decade. Where the game becomes godlike though, lies in that open-world and the exploration and the sheer multitude of enemies and items that keep it interesting. And the art of these places feels miles beyond any other studio, it's a tour-de-force just to look around and take in the areas.
 

Bragr

Banned
Some people even think Elden Ring has a good combat system. Kool aid comes in all flavors with Souls games.
I think the combat is good, but no one can deny that it's a bit safe. I think any veteran FromSoftware fan feels the heavy familiarity. After Dark Souls 3 it was clear they needed to change things up, which they did with Sekiro, but Elden Ring plays like an old hat, for better or worse.

Luckily it's not outdated, but they gotta freshen this up if they are gonna make another game that plays like Dark Souls.
 

Doom85

Member
For those moments when one gif just isn't enough

What can I say? I’m still playing it and feeling all

Excited Knockout GIF by SHOWTIME Sports
Happy Lets Go GIF by MLB


Happy Lets Go GIF by Major League Soccer
Excited Gravity Falls GIF by Disney Channel


I mean, I’m at the capital now and it’s blowing my mind how many areas to explore there are. I’m legit worried I’m going to finish this game having tried to scour every inch and STILL have missed at least a few interesting points. But that’s kind of exciting as well in a weird way.
 
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What can I say? I’m still playing it and feeling all

Excited Knockout GIF by SHOWTIME Sports
Happy Lets Go GIF by MLB


Happy Lets Go GIF by Major League Soccer
Excited Gravity Falls GIF by Disney Channel


I mean, I’m at the capital now and it’s blowing my mind how many areas to explore there are. I’m legit worried I’m going to finish this game having tried to scour every inch and STILL have missed at least a few interesting points. But that’s kind of exciting as well in a weird way.
I just got to the capital also. Gotta beat the awful tree sentinel that has a lightning attack that auto tracks you anywhere and one hit kills you. Then I'll get to another cool part.

The open world design is definitely amazing.
 

MagnesD3

Member
Elden Ring makes actual act of exploring and find something rewarding which in my opinion it tied to its difficulty. You are exploring not because you want to finish check list but find something to gives you advantage over next boss fight.
Every encounter is meaningful because of the risk of death so catacombs being different in enemy placement actually matters.
 

NinjaBoiX

Member
Some people even think Elden Ring has a good combat system. Kool aid comes in all flavors with Souls games.
I think it has a pretty decent combat system to be fair. It’s fairly rudimentary in some respects but it’s certainly well above average for the company it keeps.

You’ve got to bear in mind the breadth and depth of the options available, it’s not really comparable to something like a platinum or team ninja game with a much narrower scope.
 

TonyK

Member
Game is amazing but as I play a strength build (I don't use magic in any Souls), when I managed to upgrade my favourite legendary weapon to the max level, got a good heavy armor and reached level 150, suddenly there is no more character progression. But game is far from being finished, there is a ton of content to explore yet but I can't progress more. All quests and dungeons end in items I don't need. So, slowly, game is becoming a bit tedious as I play only to see new levels and beat bosses, but there is no character progression. I mean, when the RPG element disappears, game is not as good.
 
Game is amazing but as I play a strength build (I don't use magic in any Souls), when I managed to upgrade my favourite legendary weapon to the max level, got a good heavy armor and reached level 150, suddenly there is no more character progression. But game is far from being finished, there is a ton of content to explore yet but I can't progress more. All quests and dungeons end in items I don't need. So, slowly, game is becoming a bit tedious as I play only to see new levels and beat bosses, but there is no character progression. I mean, when the RPG element disappears, game is not as good.
I mean, I get what you're saying but I don't think you can really expect infinite progression when it comes to items. At least that's not my understanding of how Souls games works.

I'm level 143 on my dex/arcane build and have around 100 hours into the game. this is my 3rd character so I actually got to that point quicker than I would have if I was less experienced with the world. I think it's fair if you get rewarded with progression for at least 100 hours before hitting a wall.

Anyways my goal is to hit 150 then focus on PvP with this character. Been having a blast with PvP, and it appears that 150 is the meta when it comes to PvP.
 
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