raikalasahan
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ELDEN RING
Free Download Repacklab In the 87 hours that it took me to beat Elden Ring, I was put through an absolute wringer of emotion: Anger as I was beaten down by its toughest challenges, exhilaration when I finally overcame them, and a fair amount of sorrow for the mountains of exp I lost along the way to some of the toughest boss encounters FromSoftware has ever conceived. But more than anything else I was in near-constant awe – from the many absolutely jaw-dropping vistas, the sheer scope of an absolutely enormous world, the frequently harrowing enemies, and the way in which Elden Ring nearly always rewarded my curiosity with either an interesting encounter, a valuable reward, or something even greater. FromSoftware takes the ball that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild got rolling and runs with it, creating a fascinating and dense open world about freedom and exploration above all else, while also somehow managing to seamlessly weave a full-on Dark Souls game into the middle of it. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that Elden Ring ended up as one of the most unforgettable gaming experiences I’ve ever had.
ELDEN RING Free Download Repacklab
To set the stage, all you know from the outset is that you play as a “Tarnished” of no renown, blessed by grace, and are compelled to make the journey to The Lands Between and become an Elden Lord. What that actually means, how one might go about doing that, and what the deal is with that giant glowing golden tree are all things that you have to discover yourself. Like other FromSoft games, the grand story is hard to fully digest on a first playthrough, especially because there’s no in-game journal to refresh you on the events, characters, or unique terms you encounter across dozens of hours. There really should be, but it is a story I nonetheless enjoyed trying to piece together for myself. I look forward to supplementing that knowledge with the inevitable painstakingly detailed lore videos that emerge from the community later.
ELDEN RING DELUXE EDITION
The Dark Souls series, including Demon’s Souls and Bloodborne, were open worlds before the term referred to the structure of games like Grand Theft Auto and Assassin’s Creed. Far off castles and swamps caught your eye, you puzzled out a linear path towards them, fell down a hole and went looking for a new destination. They didn’t need maps or icons, because their worlds were dense with clues and lures leading to new paths and back to old locations. It worked, but spreading the mysteries and challenges of Dark Souls across an open world in the conventional sense—castles to infiltrate from many angles, swamps to ride through on horse, and beasts to chase you down—is the kind of thing you dream about.
Elden Ring, FromSoftware’s successor to the Souls series, is huge in comparison to the previous games, and what’s in its open world is undeniably Dark Souls. It was a little better as a dream, though. The real Elden Ring is so much like Dark Souls at times that it feels distracting: there’s a woman who levels you up, there’s a throne to usurp, and many of the same types of monsters you find in Souls games, including some that are almost entirely identical. Scattering those things around an open world, it turns out, doesn’t improve them, and robs them of the significance they had in the other games. The Souls games are excellent, so despite reusing much of what we’ve seen before, it all works. Where Elden Ring retreads the past, it’s like playing a new, remixed and remastered version of a Souls game—with some frustrating technical problems to really replicate those old times. And when Elden Ring reaches for something more, it soars.
ELDEN RING DIGITAL ARTBOOK & ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK
It ended up being the organic side stories that kept me most enthralled rather than the grand overarching plot that credits Game of Thrones’ George R.R. Martin as its scenario writer. FromSoft smartly doesn’t change much in its approach to these from the Souls games, Bloodborne, or Sekiro; you’ll just naturally meet characters as you explore and discover the world and become involved in their problems. There are no “!” markers on the map, no waypoints to guide you to them, and these characters don’t always flag you down or initially want or need anything from you. They’re just people with their own agendas and goals, whose stories are impacted based on your own actions or inactions.
That was actually kind of refreshing in an open world as vast as this one, and it was always exciting to see a familiar face pop up again later as I was eager to learn about what brought them to this new part of the world and how their journey had progressed. The trade-off, of course, is that without any markers, quest log, or journal, it becomes very easy to forget about certain plot threads and accidentally leave them unresolved by the end. That’s a bummer, and I’ve already felt regret at missing out on stories that some of my colleagues have had – but for me it was worth it, because even after 87 hours, I never once felt the open-world fatigue that usually sets in when my brain gets overloaded by a map absolutely full of unresolved sidequest markers. Besides, any missed quests give me extra incentive to continue onto New Game+.
BONUS GESTURE
Elden Ring’s first few hours might remind you of gentler times in a game like Breath of the Wild, but no, FromSoftware has not abandoned its traditional brutality. Because of the open world, there are opportunities to circumvent some of the third-person, häçk-and-slash fights that would eviscerate you in another Souls game, but it’s still difficult—for me, one of the most difficult FromSoftware games. Elden Ring features the same deliberate combat that’s now conventional for these types of games, except here it’s fully refined. You swing, the enemy swings, and both of you can interrupt each other’s attacks with acute timing. The best Elden Ring fights, like the best Souls fights, ask that you study the way an enemy lunges at you and look for openings to punish them when they miss.
In action, it’s almost turn-based as you make your move and wait for the enemy to make theirs. These games are compelling because it rarely feels like the enemies use a different ruleset than you, so when you find a way to eke out a win, whether it’s through magic spells or explosive bombs, it’s like you outsmarted a dungeon master. Elden Ring echoes some of the best fights in the series with towering bosses and groups of enemies that force you to make snap judgments about which to prioritize, but it also echoes some of the worst, giving its late-game enemies and bosses so much health that beating them can be laborious instead of fun. It’s the scale of it that tricks you into thinking it’s gentler at first. I spent hours prodding at the autumnal landscapes of Limgrave and Liurnia and didn’t meaningfully raise my stats enough to withstand more than a swing from one of the two early major bosses.
AN EPIC DRAMA BORN FROM A MYTH
I defeated creatures on the surface and underneath the Lands Between, picked up useful items and gear, and upgraded my kit with the blacksmith, but none of that prepared me for Elden Ring’s biggest threats. There are weapons and shields that confer unique powers, such as a shield that deflects magic back at enemies or a sword that flings out a bladeprojectile after a short charge up. They’re all fun to play with while fighting weaker enemies out in the open world, but when it comes time to fight inside one of the game’s “Legacy” dungeons, which are essentially Dark Souls levels set in castles and swamps, they don’t often make a clear difference. his glacial progression makes some bosses, whether within one of Elden Ring’s tough “Legacy” dungeons or out in the world, seem insurmountable without another player splitting the attention of the boss so that, for at least a moment, you can squeeze a hit in.
Elden Ring remained hostile for the 60 hours I’ve put into it, making the trek through it occasionally frustrating and directionless. One pocket of land might house undead soldiers who fall to pieces with a poof of magic, while another one might contain ruthless giants who can shrug off an axe cleaved into their side. I spent much of Elden Ring unsure of how strong my character was and where I could go. It makes sense from my character’s perspective—she’s intruding on the land that exiled her—but for me, inscrutable encounters with high-health enemies felt like hitting an MMO level gate, except that because this is a Souls game, I couldn’t tell whether I was expected to spend hours mastering these fights or leave them until later. That’s one of the reasons Dark Souls worked better with carefully crafted boundaries.
Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10
Processor: INTEL CORE I5-8400 or AMD RYZEN 3 3300X
Memory: 12 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1060 3 GB or AMD RADEON RX 580 4 GB
DirectX: Version 12
Storage: 60 GB available space
Sound Card: Windows Compatible Audio Device
Additional Notes: Windows-compatible keyboard and mouse required, optional Microsoft XBOX360 controller or compatible
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