“Looking back, I don’t know why I agreed to do this, why I submitted myself to video game masochism.

“I don’t know why I thought my first experience with a FromSoftware game would be like every other video game review: 30 hours gone, game finished, review written, thank you and goodnight.

“And yet — 30 hours into Elden Ring, I’ve barely made a dent. I didn’t realize until now that I could have so much fun making myself so miserable.

“Beauty and brutality

“Elden Ring is forbidding, majestic, and sick in every sense of the word.

“Its overarching story about a fallen kingdom is deliberately obtuse — an unspecified amount was written by Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin, the rest by Dark Souls mastermind Hidetaka Miyazaki.”

Read more at NPR