Where does Elden Ring stand eight months after release? We check the validity of our tech devaluation at the time and take a look at the new PvP coliseum
I like to look back at the many places I”ve done it: In bed, on the sofa, on the loo, on a public bus, in two parks and right in front of my girlfriend”s parents, in the middle of their living room. Elden Ring is fun everywhere!
If you have a Steam Deck or similar device, Elden Ring will undoubtedly give you a breathtaking gaming experience at any time and in any place. I”ve played through it five or six times by now and still like to take it with me on the road. It also plays great on the computer at home.
When the open-world RPG was released in February 2022, we gave it the second highest rating in GlobalESportNews history – and deducted two points because of technical problems. Ten months later, coinciding with the release of the new PvP update in the Coliseum, it”s time for a review: Is the downgrade for Elden Ring still justified? Or does the post-test also provide reason for joy here?
Important changes in detail
If you”re not playing Elden Ring regularly and intensively right now, chances are good that you won”t even feel the effects of the patches of the past months. You can now swing one or the other weapon a few frames faster than before, here and there the range or energy consumption of certain abilities or spells have been adjusted.
The Bloodhound Step, for example, has been losing effectiveness drastically for quite a while when you spam it. Doesn”t that mean anything to you? Exactly. A large part of these rather subtle adjustments primarily affect PVP.
In fact, some of the more recent balancing adjustments explicitly revolve around player combat and have no effect on the rest of the game. Weapons, spells and summons that you”ve used to effortlessly axe bosses in the past remain powerful. Yes, your Mimic Tear may no longer be able to replace you 100 per cent at lunchtime, but properly equipped, the thing is still wickedly powerful.
Elden Ring plays as well as ever, now just without the stupid jerks. Even in the thickest arena carnage I can”t get the thing to crash anymore. However, if you are hoping to play at more than 60 FPS or in Ultrawide format without mods, you will be disappointed. The promised ray tracing update is still a long time coming.
Meanwhile, those who like to take on human opponents and not just the AI will have to rethink their tactics a little. Thankfully, just sucking on R2 for Rivers of Blood will no longer (constantly) lead you to victory.
Wonderful Chaos
Those who don”t shamefully ignore Elden Ring”s multiplayer features will be pleased to know that the three PVP arenas in Limgrave, Caelid and Leyndell have finally opened their doors. There you will engage in duels, team fights for up to three against three players per side or deathmatches everyone against everyone for up to six participants.
Depending on which coliseum you enter, the rules of the game will vary somewhat. Not every arena allows you to suck on your vial for healing, Limgrave and Leyndell strictly forbid summoning, while Caelid allows you to summon spirits as if your life depended on it. Once you”ve visited an arena in person, you can now teleport there comfortably via the Round Table.
While none of this has any deeper meaning, at least the arena battles are fun. As I write this article, participants are found relatively quickly. When six bloodthirsty gladiators hack wildly at each other in the coliseum of Caelid and each also summons his Mimic Tear, the resulting clusterfuck of twelve warriors is still fun even if you might not otherwise be crazy about PVP.
A High Fantasy Royal Rumble like this for in between makes for some laughs, even if you can”t or shouldn”t take it seriously under any circumstances. You don”t win anything, there are no rankings, these brawls simply exist as an end in themselves. At least: If you”re afraid of brawls, you”ll also get two new hairstyles in the latest update for the game and won”t have to go completely empty-handed.
Refresh please
With all the enthusiasm for this fabulous game, the first “real” DLC can be announced slowly. I now know every boss, every cave and every blade of grass on a first-name basis, my main character is now almost level 300 and thanks to the crummy scaling in New Game Plus, everything falls over after two hits in the first half of the game.
Like countless other fans, I long for new bosses, new challenges, even more skills and equipment, and additional secrets and discoveries.
Until that happens, not much has changed dramatically aside from the freshly added arenas. A few balancing tweaks have been made, the performance issues have been fixed. It”s the same great game, just less jerky.
Editor”s verdict
I have now tested Elden Ring on four different systems and on none of them does it still jerk like it did at release. I only had crashes after intensive playing on the mobile Onexplayer, which also has to allocate its modest 16 GB of system memory for the graphics, completely without a dedicated graphics card. I think we can safely forget the downgrading for jerks and crashes. Yes, I know, there is still no native support for more than 60 FPS or Ultrawide, but we don”t devalue for that either.
The new PVP arenas are great, even if you don”t appreciate them. Of course, I would have preferred new PVE content as well. I hope From Software won”t keep us waiting too much longer in this respect. I had a lot of fun with Elden Ring, and Steam now shows a whopping 220 hours of playtime. No other title has captivated me so long and intensely this year. Please don”t make me want to bridge the waiting time for new content with Dark Souls 3 again and start New Game +35.
