Circling the Dragons

FromSoftware’s ELDEN RING is a fraught and fascinating balance between expansiveness and intrigue.

- By Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

One mark of a great videogame is how clearly you remember it. A decade on from Dark Souls, there are still parts of its flame-cursed world I can readily map out on paper—their layouts, threats, and variables hammered into me by a combination of fabulous aesthetics, surgical perspectives, and brutal trial and error.

I already have a similarly crisp memory of parts of Elden Ring, FromSoftware’s blend of Souls dungeons and combat with an open world and day/night cycle reminiscent of Breath of the Wild. One of the first areas you’ll reach in the early Limgrave region is a crumbling encampment backed by candle-strewn hearses. Guards in red peer into campfires. Others roam the paths, accompanied by wolves. It’s a tidy little murder-maze with some familiar AI behaviors—as in Souls, the canines are fond of circling you before they pounce. Playing as an Enchanted Knight equipped with spear and staff, I do a bit of circling myself—creeping through bushes to different entrance points and felling sentries with Glintstone spells.

STAB LIBBING

One enemy makes it into melee range unscathed—a caped elite with midboss pretensions. It’s a straightforward duel to begin with: Wait out his combos and don’t overextend my own, dividing my stamina carefully between attack and retreat. I experiment with