Elden Ring - Preview @ PCInvasion

PCInvasion, among many others, played the game for 6 hours and shared their first impressions.

Elden Ring preview — Ringing in a new age

One Elden Ring to rule them all.

If there’s one thing I can easily state after six-ish hours of Elden Ring hands-on preview time on PC, it’s that the game is very definitely a ‘Soulsborne’ game. In fact, I can go one step further: it’s pretty much a Dark Souls game. Shields are useful. Combat is… well, not ponderous, but weightier than Sekiro or Bloodborne. Poise, staggering, and item weight are things of huge importance.

In a lot of ways, Elden Ring feels like Dark Souls 4 with the names swapped out. I mean, the spell styles (Sorceries and Incantations) have different names and are mashed up a bit, but they’re effectively used the same way. Bonfires are Sites of Grace, and Souls are Runes, etc. But for all of that? If this is Dark Souls 4, then it’s had a lot more meaningful additions than we saw at any time between Souls and Souls 3.

[...]

Because this is both a bit long and because I don’t want to spoil anything else, I’ll finish here. I normally try to end previews with “but it might be a bit shit,” and there is always the possibility that it’ll fall apart a bit after extended play. Equally, if you’ve never enjoyed the Dark Souls combat or challenge, then Elden Ring isn’t likely to change that. It’s as hard as ever: it just gives you plenty more options in terms of what to deal with and how to deal with it to let you play at your own pace and with your own style.

However! I played the Elden Ring preview for six hours without so much as taking a break for food, and I could happily have played for six more — not least because when I was banging my head against a boss I could easily just go explore somewhere else in this gorgeous, horrifying world and bang my head against something else. If the fact that I couldn’t put the damned thing down isn’t an indication that you should really pay attention to Elden Ring, then I don’t know what is. While Bloodborne and Sekiro tried different things, Elden Ring feels like the natural evolution of Dark Souls: familiar, but fresh.