Two weeks before the release of Eldon's Circle of Law, friends from some of my Souls player base occasionally post memes and joke with each other in "years" as a unit to wait for the final countdown before the party.
I'm also part of the Club. Luckily, I got a demo opportunity from Sony to travel to Shanghai in the hazy spring rain, and enjoy an unforgettable journey with the eager media players in the vast world of Eldon's Circle of Law, and share the experience with the kings.
The first open world in the Souls series
Previously, when talking about the Dark Souls series, it is easy to mention the word "map design" and use this to evaluate whether a scene design of a previous work is exquisite or "just like that", one of the panoramic pictures has appeared in many articles, and friends who have studied related spiritual science must have seen it:
yes. The box-style map design has always been a fascinating aspect of Dark Souls. You'll always encounter quite a few misdirections in each area, and it's the encounters at the end of those awfulnesses — enemies, power-ups, or an interactive NPC — that make the scene worth exploring.
In this "Elden Ring of Law", Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team added a crucial new element to the map design: the open world.
In Eldon's Ring of Law, the scene has a time shift and a weather system has been added
When I woke up as a fader and stood on a high slope and looked down, the whole field was an area for me to explore. In the earliest part of the game, I stumbled to a cave where I challenged a group of wolves and encountered a beast warrior with a bone sword in the deepest part of the cave, defeating the Flame Amulet he had obtained, and surviving several times during my subsequent exploration of the castle.
Step into the wilderness and encounter giant bears wandering here; climb the platform and maybe meet the knights who hunt their opponents here; step into the abandoned magic tower of the wilderness, and there will be a puzzle waiting for you to "show wisdom"... These small encounters and small fierce battles, scattered throughout the big scenes where I can step on, are countless in Eldon's Ring of Law, and they also intuitively bring about an increase in the order of magnitude of playable content - or the magnitude of Miyazaki's conspiracy (laughs).
Around the Golden Tree, I embarked on a series of explorations
In addition to these content enhancements, the open world of "Eldon's Law Ring" also adds a lot of fun to the exploration process of this work. I can search the world for various materials and discover various production manuals to make tactical props that will make my journey of exploration more comfortable;
I can use the mount's two-stage jump and magic airflow to achieve three-dimensional maneuvering between different terrains, and they are also an important means of solving puzzles in some areas;
With the help of terrain such as grass, I can now use stealth to pass through some areas to avoid battles that I don't want to trigger, and I can also use this to quickly obtain some good treasure chests;
Early in the game, you can also get a spell to summon the three wolves from a "Snow Witch", and with the help of this useful helper, you can reduce a lot of stress on the battles on the field.
Of course, there's no need to worry that the open-world architecture will overwhelm the world of Eldon's Circle of Law. Whenever you unlock a blessing, you can see the light to give you a vague direction, and I choose to follow this blurred direction in most of the scenes, so I am exposed to a series of events on the way to the next blessing.
Similarly, The Eldon's Ring of Law is the first [map] in the Soul series, but there's no need to worry about giving you a grand map and individual marker points at the beginning of the game. Instead, the map itself will be gradually completed during your exploration, and the biggest function is to provide you with convenience, not task-based guidance.
But we'll have to wait—having said the open-world part, you might be wondering how the work is presented in the "main line" section, but my understanding is that this part and the open world seem to be independent of each other, still maintaining the essence of the soul work. In the wilderness, I can summon mounts and collect materials, and these elements are unusable when entering the area of The Raiders "Bad Omen" Marchit.
In the raider area, which exists like a copy, what can be felt is still a rather original exploration experience: the door that can only be opened from the other side, the elevator that can be activated from nowhere, and even the malice of Miyazaki Hidetaka is so familiar. And thanks to the incredible ability of the Faders to jump, the puzzles on the map have become surprisingly three-dimensional—you know the designer never makes useless systems.
Also another interesting place to stay. In fact, many advanced soul players know the "parkour" method of drawing, that is, the strategy of not having enemies in the pipe at all, and directly running to the campfire to sit on the campfire. After getting a mount in this game, there will also be a challenge that encourages you to "parkour", it seems that Mr. Miyazaki has always known how everyone is playing this game, and also provides his way to interact with this kind of play in this game.
It is worth mentioning that "Elden's Ring of Law" greatly exceeds the previous series in terms of screen quality and scene scale, but under the 4K resolution game provided by PS5, I can feel a very stable frame rate during the whole process of playing - whether it is exploring in the cave, walking in the wilderness, or fighting with the boss, in the "frame rate priority" mode, I almost completely do not feel the frame drop, smooth and silky feeling is always the same. After going through the full low frame of the Bloodborne Curse era, I am very happy to be able to play such a smooth "Eldon's Ring of Law" on the PS5.
A new rhythm of battle
When I first got started with the Eldon Ring's combat system, I felt pretty close to Dark Souls 3, not only in terms of button layout, but also in the general feel of each type of weapon. And as the process progressed, the charm of "Eldon's Law Ring" at the end of the battle was gradually revealed to me.
For example, the "jump attack" brought by the new "jump", you can understand it as a heavy attack with a fusion displacement, which can suddenly come up when circling with the enemy, and use this to get a continuous output opportunity;
Or a new combat mechanic. Unlike the weapon-to-combat technique binding mechanism in Dark Souls 3, in this Edition of Eldon, weapons and combat techniques are separated. I can equip any one-handed sword in my hand and change it as appropriate.
I really like the new combat system. With a favorite weapon, I now have more possibilities to develop it and more strategies to use against enemies. In the example of the combat technique I gained in this demo, I can equip the sword with "turn and turn" and use color when the rats are preparing to besiege me, and when fighting the tricky axe knights, I can cast storm spikes at medium range, dealing damage to them with the lowest risk. Compared with "Dark Souls 3", the combat skills of this game can be regarded as accurate positioning.
In addition, in this game, the items that the player can get at the beginning of the game will be more valuable, such as directly selecting two gold seeds, and getting additional holy grail bottles (recovery items) at the beginning. This also allows the spell stream, which is a bit stretched in Dark Souls 3, to have more spell releases, making it a strong option at the beginning of the game.
Of course, the innovation of the combat technology system is also the embodiment of the producer's encouragement of the player's subjective initiative in my body.
The shield knight throughout the three generations is still available in this game, but from the mob to the boss, almost all the enemy attack desire has been greatly improved (my body feeling is about 20% stronger), and the initial stretched endurance groove makes it almost difficult for the shield sword flow to complete the classic "turn-based tactics" - when any enemy can break the shield with two knives, it is better to choose to play the first hand to suppress it than the passive play of the shield file with two knives, anyway, there is a certain probability of recovering the Holy Grail bottle supply after knocking down the humanoid enemy.
In Eldon's Ring of Law, there are quite a few difficult enemies to deal with, and almost everyone has a set of black and white segments that hit the player to the screen, and the one that makes me feel the most refreshed is the "Silver Knights" I encounter in the royal city.
These armored knights, symbolizing the "elite mobs", are all hard bones that stand in the way of players' exploration in the series of souls in the past, but the old players have also summed up a set of back-to-back playing methods, which can rely on the two-person transfer backstab to batch process the knights.
This set of turn-based rules of complete victory no longer exists in The Eldon Circle. Knights, who symbolize the warriors among the warriors, now not only have a significant increase in the frequency of attacks, but also skillfully incorporate various combat techniques in their attacks, and the flaws that can be wrapped around the back are quite difficult to grasp; and if you try to press up and grab a few knives, they often have a whole set of counterattack techniques waiting for you. I believe that shield and sword players who have long been accustomed to the "turn-based" play style of the soul system's previous game will find a new experience in front of the king's army knights in the capital (laughs).
Still tough, still low fault tolerance
At the demo site, even when I put on the noise-cancelling headphones, I could always hear the lamentations that came and went. Looking back, the screens are full of pictures of the new rice faders fighting with one of the enemies with long blood bars, and "YOU DIED". Some media friends joked that this was the most serious trial he had ever experienced, and the atmosphere was so serious that he felt like he was taking a high-number exam.
Yes, don't be fooled by the previous trials offered by Close Beta, The Eldon Ring is hard, at least for less proficient players, it's a lot harder than Dark Souls 3.
This aspect is reflected in the number of blessings.
Interestingly, in the wild areas where the large map can be consulted at any time, the blessings are so generous that you can find them in all parts of an area; but once you enter the soul-based classic dungeon exploration, you will find that the blessings become quite restrained in the exploration. In Stonewell, I found only three bonfires—two except for the one in front of "Pick-up" Grecker, a figure that made the fault tolerance rate quite low in my exploration of this magnificent city, especially as I planned to explore the secrets of the city and meet the elite enemies stationed everywhere.
Stonewell looks like the Walls of Los Rick, but in reality...
On the other hand, it is to attack the early chiefs who are eager to be strong.
In the case of the "bad omen" Malkett and "successor" Greg that most media players in the demo experienced, these two "regional janitor" level main line bosses have a suppressive, stormy attack, and the intensity after the transition stage will be further increased, and the move flaws are not easy to grasp. I thought that I had taken the "bad omen" first level in the demo version, presumably there was no big problem, but in this trial, I still repeatedly challenged it here several times, and finally skipped class with the help of NPCs.
Some media friends at the scene jokingly compared the "bad omen" Market to The Guda who tested the quality of the remaining ashes in "Dark Souls 3", so please be prepared, this time the trial can be much harsher. At the end of the trial, most of the players' progress is just after the "pick-up" Grey challenge, and there is also a "bad omen" of Shankar, which should reflect the difficulty of this game.
Of course, the increase in difficulty is certainly good news for the old players of the series. Dark Souls 3 was repeatedly criticized for being too low difficult before the advent of the DLC, and only from the few bosses I came into contact with to deduce the subsequent boss battles, in such a suppressive attack, and the flaws are more difficult to grasp, it will be quite difficult to leisurely play turn-based battles with the bosses, and you must read the boss's attacks carefully and study the corresponding countermeasures to complete the final strategy. As a player who has completed the full game of the series, I can say with a ticket that the boss battle of this game will still make every soul boil with blood and die enough.
For new players, don't worry too much about the difficulty of this game. New summon symbols have been added in each area, and players who feel that it is difficult to raid can summon online here, and at the door of the Boss War, there will now basically be an auxiliary NPC waiting, as long as the area mission is completed, they can summon. Early in the game, there is also a "white-haired witch" who will give the player a reliable spell to summon three wolves, which can attract the attention of the enemy during the boss battle to gain additional output opportunities for themselves. In other words, despite the difficulties, Hidetaka Miyazaki still gave enough "skipping class" play.
epilogue
That's too brief in this passage (I hope I'll let me try it out for 50 hours!). In the time, I had some hands-on experiences with Eldon's Ring of Law. Having finally been able to climb Stonewell's ladder, the game looks very different from what I did in my previous test. In addition to the above parts, "Eldon's Ring of Law" can achieve smooth play in 4K quality on the PS5, and with the help of SSD can quickly read the disk after death and other comfortable performance, it also proves that it is a complete body that has been polished in all aspects. Next, perhaps the hardest part is how to spend the two weeks before the release.
Let's take a time machine and be able to travel to February 25 at regular intervals