izigame.me

From the very start, I thought this concept was interesting but I was very cautious. I'm very glad that From Software is experimenting and allowing other devs than Miyazaki to direct. I played the network test on PS5 and thought the first couple of runs were atrocious before the game started clicking with me. Still, by the end I only thought it was okay and would be fun for a bit and had lots of worries. Sadly, basically all of those worries weren't properly addressed in the full game.
Content
I did a few runs with randoms but most of my game time was with two other friends. We've managed to beat every boss and I personally was able to complete two character quests in full. There is only one world event that I haven't managed to do yet so a good chunk of the game has been explored. After all of that, I still think that this game fails at being a proper roguelike.
It isn't full of content as I would like and the map itself and POI's in it feel way too repetitive. So much of our routing felt similar and many of our builds ended up being stuff we'd done maybe even in the very previous run. There's not as many bosses in the game as I thought they would have with it being a roguelike. At the end of each run, it feels like we are largely doing chores by following set plans rather than fully catering to things within the match.
Gameplay
It is mainly Elden Ring but with both improvements and worse elements. There's some neat stuff here that I would love the main games to include like how the Ironeye class redefines ranged weapons in this game and how the Recluse has an interesting magic system. Honestly, every class feels unique and largely good, though I haven't tried much of the more magic based characters.
This game feels far more janky than Elden Ring. The mantling system and being able to climb whatever is nice but feels worse than Sekiro. Sometimes, it just doesn't happen. The super sprint is interesting but the stamina drain is intense and overall stamina in this game feels like a tedious amount. The way some bosses hitboxes end up hitting behind them sometimes feels annoying. All of these things could be improved tremendously and I hope they do so.
The controls are even janky too. It's slightly modified from their prior Souls games. The controls all throughout the series have never been particularly great but some stuff here is silly and easy to mess up like scrolling through items with the down key and up to use. A big part of it is also likely because healing flask isn't a hotbar item in this game.
Bosses
There are a ton of annoying bosses in this game. The day 1 and 2 and field bosses are all things we've seen before from Elden Ring and a bit of Souls. I would have loved more from the latter and was disappointed with the small selection. Still, the slightly modified movesets are interesting but still feel like a let down when there could have been many more.
Nearly half the Nightlord bosses are just outright annoying and even various levels of trash. So many just run away nonstop making things extremely tedious. All play out like raidbosses in an MMO and that's perfectly fine. The highlights include the first boss and more of the final ones that just straight up fight you and offer up many chances to attack instead of running. The worst boss in the game has to be a discount Elden Beast fight. The final boss is quite a treat at least.
We ended up doing the worst bosses first and the first half of my playtime at the time of writing was legitimately one of the most average and even annoying experiences I've had gaming. The final runs helped make up for it.
Speed
This is my biggest complaint about the game. The zone is just a bother and the timer with it. I feel like the game would vastly improve without either of those things or both. There is absolutely no time to just explore, take in the sights, collect your thoughts, and celebrate or riff with friends. It's always go here, ping that, route here, fight this boss, over and over until the run is done. It's just terrible and elevates any grievances with the entire game. Even just a five minute increase to the days might do a whole lot help the matter. I would love to let my fingers off the run and sprint buttons please.
Also, why isn't the clock that's in Elden Ring when you pass time in this game's UI somewhere? It would help indicate the time which would also help figure out better routing. It very well just might help make things not feel so damn chaotic all the time.
Story
This has never been a reason to play From Software games but the character quests offer interesting lore. They're all basically glorified fetch quests though but that didn't detract much from the experience. I would still vastly prefer From Software have good lore and good storytelling rather than just the former.
Final Thoughts
Halfway through this game, I would absolutely not have recommended it but I would have commended it for being a good experiment that all game devs should strive for. I don't mean this exact kind of game but it's important to explore different ideas. We don't want anything to be milked and, despite this being an Elden Ring spinoff, this hardly feels like a cashgrab considering it's a roguelike which is already a niche genre.
By the time the credits rolled after defeating each Nightlord including the amazing final one, I do recommend this game but hope that it will be improved drastically. I think it's an overall okay game with tons of terrible stuff but the highs I felt toward the end feel like they made up for it. Maybe it's just because it's the last thing I felt as credits roll but it really did do a lot for me.
For all the solo players, I hope there's patches to help make the experience better. I hope there's a duo mode added since it's silly that it's only solos and trios. I hope that they fix all the jank in the game. Most of all, I hope they realize how many trash bosses are in here and don't do them again in another game but, then again, we had what felt like a million annoying dragons in Elden Ring so we shall see.
Considering all of these thoughts are from veteran players of these games, I feel like any issues would be made worse for newcomers. The tutorial isn't really that great and the game is just so damn overwhelming no matter what. I have no frame of reference for how this game might be for them but I feel like it won't be good.
I recommend just enough.