Elden Ring is the latest game developed by FromSoftware, a company well-known for its Souls franchise. This time, FromSoftware took a departure from its standard linear/semi-open world approach to its game development. Instead, it opted for an open-world approach, with heavy reliance on Souls’ game mechanics. After I learned that Elden Ring would be developed as an open-world Souls game, I was worried about how the game would turn out. However, Elden Ring turned out to be something far better than I had imagined.

Pros:
- A vast world filled with activities, secrets, sidequests, enemies, and bosses that will entertain players for hundreds of hours
- A wonderful sense of exploration that is unparalleled in its scope and design
- Boss battles that are difficult yet extremely satisfying
- Beautiful graphics that show noticeable improvements over older titles, such as Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro
- Great map system that guides players in the right direction and helps them search for secrets and activities.
- A wide variety of weapons with different ashes of war that allows for diverse gameplay
- An intuitive and efficient weapon upgrade system
- A wide variety of spells, incantations, talismans, and armors to choose from
- Stellar aesthetics/art design

Cons:
- Performance issues: micro-stuttering and framerate drops that got better compared to the launch version but still need more work
- While enemies/bosses are mostly fair, a few of them are overly difficult and can feel a little cheap

Overall, I think Elden Ring is a masterpiece that offers new possibilities to an open-world genre, which has become somewhat stale in recent years. Similar to what Breath of the Wild did five years ago, Elden Ring proves that the open-world genre can evolve and become something truly remarkable.