"The old man ring who can breathe".
A few months ago, "Eldon's Circle of Law" opened a round of large-scale online testing, and a group of hungry and red-eyed "undead" poured into the game and began to explore this new world of souls. At that time, limited by the open scope and experience time, many players still had doubts about whether Miyazaki Hidego could do a good job in the open world.
Yesterday, Eldon's Circle of Law kicked off a new round of media trials, and we also experienced the world of the Old Man's Ring in greater depth – when more specific maps and areas are opened up to players, the above doubts may be dispelled.
Without the "despicable air wall", the first feeling of the complete old man ring world is "big".
In the previous online beta version of the open map, the whole process of full collection time is about 8 to 12 hours, according to the size of the map we unlocked this time, it may be only one-third of the prairie castle painting style map. Further out, the map style, monster types, and difficulty change significantly, and it's hard for players to get a glimpse of the boundaries of this world without knowing exactly how many terrains there are.
What is even more surprising is that there is more than one layer in this world. When I came to the bottom of a golden tree that I could only look at in the distance, I found an elevator leading to the underground. At first, I was in the mood to appreciate the beauty of this elevator, but when it didn't stop after 30 seconds, the problem was a little wrong.
For a full minute, the elevator finally slowly landed, and what appeared to the player was a huge underground world. The walls of the dome cave, which are difficult to judge the distance, are covered with mysterious light sources and luminous patterns, illuminating the underground labyrinth like moonlight.
By the dim light, you can see the huge artificial stone pillars towering, the corridor buildings that stretch out, and some of the remains that can no longer be seen in their original form. There are ghostly glowing humanoids, as well as hordes of intelligent creatures (who don't eat weapons) and seem to have unique factions and ecology.
The test does not allow video recording, and this can only mean that the scene is somewhat similar to the player's second creation of "Starry Sky"
This place can be explored on horseback, obviously not an indoor scene, but unfortunately, due to the limitations of level and equipment, I have not been able to explore too much here, and can only judge from the "level 4 forge stone" picked up by the risk of death parkour, this is no longer a novice area on the ground.
A larger map means there will definitely be more ways to move and explore, and it is certainly not okay to sing "365 Mile Road" like the original Dark Souls. In addition to the previous horseback riding and campfire teleportations, I also found multiple map portals that could teleport the protagonist to one or two maps in one go.
In terms of exploration methods, in addition to being actively explored by the naked eye by the spectacles of the roadside, several new sources of clues have emerged. Trigger traps on the side of the road, summon a ghost to lead the way, and follow it to find some dungeon entrances;
Occasionally, NPCs can be heard shouting, who will assign quests, help mark on the map, and guide the protagonist to complete them.
The official trailer for Brother Jar and the Man Who Turns into a Tree are just two of these NPCs
This time, freed from the process schedule constraints, I also (thought to myself) fully explored the second half of Stoneview City. The elaborate design of the traditional soul map is still fully displayed here, but it is somewhat unfinished compared to the large weight of the Stacked Bed Frame House in the Dark Soul Blood Source.
It is worth mentioning that "jumping", an epic breakthrough in the soul game, has also been added to The FromSoftware's map design manual. Several waist-high, low-rise walls that may be considered cliffs by soul-based veteran players will have corners to explore and glittering tempting items to easily cross with jumps.
Not just for the path that has been shown
But beyond these surprises, what's most impressive is the open-world dynamic— the world of Eldon's Law Ring can almost be said to be "alive."
Needless to say, the weather and day and night system has been officially introduced to affect the types and distribution of monsters on the map. We also encountered a special weather of "Golden Rain" at night, when the protagonist appeared on the body of a layer of special effects that were similar to the "Embers" state of Dark Souls 3, and it was uncertain whether the weather system also involved the effect of adding and subtracting bonuses and other effects on the gameplay.
Of course, the old tradition of suffering in soul games is also there, the difficulty of the later process is still online, and after meeting certain conditions (perhaps the number of deaths or play time), the "ring-proof woman" Melina will appear next to the campfire where the protagonist sits.
She apologized that she had been observing the protagonist, watching the protagonist's performance in his adventures, and complaining that she had doubted whether we were really "chosen children". Melina then teleports the protagonist to a new map with a huge blessing (bonfire) and a host of functional NPCs before unlocking battle elements such as ashes.
This is the new "Fire Sacrifice Ground"
However, compared to the previous online beta version, the media demo version of the old ring looks more friendly to novice players. In front of the first boss "Bad Omen" that had stuck the player for a long time, there was now an additional mark that could summon NPCs. With "Good Brother With", coupled with the summoning skills of three wolves, players can perform 5-on-1 brutal corner kills on bosses.
And the inadvertent interaction between enemy soldiers when wandering around on the map makes me feel that the world is "alive". Creatures resembling goblins and trolls will rush into forts guarded by soldiers with sticks, and dozens of wolves will besiege a long-armed brown bear monster at the foot of the mountain, selectively ignoring the presence of the protagonist as they pass by.
It is this kind of action that resembles an elite bear monster of a lion ape
Although there was a story in the previous soul games, players still have a feeling of "the whole world is targeting me". The fierce battle between the red and blue Ruslik armies in Dark Souls 3 is easy to ignore, leaving only the corpses on the ground; in "Only Wolf", the Reed Army and the Red Army are nominally fighting, but there is only one impressive scene; and I just walked around the "Eldon's Ring" and found two scenes of fighting between enemy soldiers of different factions - but also with obvious design traces, and perhaps there will be more such ecology in the official version.
This sense of "dynamics" felt from the game makes one feel like reading George Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire: when focusing on only one point of view, the dark tide of the world is still rolling forward. Although Martin only wrote the background of the story for Eldon's Circle of Law, I still had this association during the game, and soul games have always had a tradition of narrating with hostile AI between enemy soldiers or damage increases and decreases.
Even if the game's plot always depends on the player to promote, this sense of substitution is still precious to the open world, allowing players to truly feel the existence of the world. And back to the gameplay, Eldon's Ring of Law does add a lot of new RPG elements.
In the pinch phase at the beginning of the game, there are nearly 10 classes and companion items to choose from. These include the officially announced nomadic warriors, prisoners, as well as unpublished samurai, stargazers, no owners, etc., and the online version of the war ghost and magic knight is no longer available.
The class in Eldon's Ring of Law is just an initial template like the previous Souls game. If you want, you can still play as a "bucket number" that can do everything, but at a higher cost. The importance of this "ashes" system is significantly higher than the "combat skills" of Dark Souls 3, and the skill teacher is no longer exclusive to several magic classes.
In the wild, I also found several teachers corresponding to professions, even warriors who relied more heavily on flat slashing, and there were teachers who carried dozens of kinds of war ashes to "cheat money". Different ashes, spoilage and combinations between weapons, there must be a lot of gameplay that can be concocted.
There are also many factions of spells
In previous soul games, the most popular RPG element was dark Souls 2, which was the most unpopular, and although it was not directly directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, many influences from it could be seen in The Ring of Eldon.
To take one of the most difficult spoilers, in the narrow passage of a dungeon somewhere, there is a horse-drawn carriage that rumbles and roars away, full of malicious intent at the touch, and it is obviously inspired by Soul 2's famous playing boss "Arena Carriage", which can't help but look forward to how many tributes to past FromSoftware works in the game.
Finally, let's mention the technical improvements outside of the game's content. This time we were using the PS5 version of the game, and we didn't encounter any bugs or any additional readings – except for countless deaths. The delay and stuttering problems that were previously reported by many players in the online beta version were not noticed this time.
At present, players can't understand how the game is optimized on PC, but according to the first optimization of Several games in FromSoftware's previous games, there should be no need to worry. The open world of Eldon's Circle of Law seems well prepared, waiting for the faders to arrive.