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My second thought is “dammit” as it squashes me dead. My first reaction is to marvel at the wildly creative design, something FromSoftware continues to excel at. I enter a square room and a dog-faced statue starts hopping toward me with a giant sword in hand. Instead, my first boss fight happens in a cave north of that monster. It’s as if the first enemy you met in Breath of the Wild was a Lynel. It kills me so fast, I assume I’m not even supposed to beat him yet and continue past him. The very first enemy I encounter is a giant knight on an armored horse that comes sprinting out across the field. At one point, I got a text from my neighbor asking if I was OK because he’d heard me shouting F-bombs through the wall. Early on, bosses routinely chewed me up and spit me out within two hits. You’ve waited long enough let’s talk about difficulty. Elden Ring lets you take that stroll within the game instead. Usually, when you get heated during a Dark Souls game, you have no choice but to get up and take a walk to cool down. There are likely limits to that, but I spent a good six hours taking down optional bosses before stepping foot in Stormveil Castle, which is where I needed to end up eventually to fight the demo’s Great Foe (the only boss you actually need to beat to progress). I don’t just have to grind out runes to level up. If I meet a tough boss in a cave, there are dozens of other fights I can pick first - and fast traveling makes it easy to come back when I’m ready. Mercifully, that doesn’t seem to be the case in Elden Ring.

There’s some exploration I can do before that, but I’ll have to grit my teeth and take him down sooner rather than later. In Bloodborne, I feel like there’s not much I can do if Father Gascoigne is giving me trouble except try again immediately. When I’ve tried Souls games in the past, it always felt like I needed to smash my head against a wall to progress. This also happens to be the first moment where I start to embrace the game over some of its spiritual predecessors. Still, it seems like the emphasis is more on open space than shortcut-filled corridors. I get the sense that those areas could become larger and more complex as the game progresses, especially as the demo cuts off right at the heart of the huge Stormveil Castle that can be breached in two different ways. They’re short, optional challenges usually centered around a boss fight. These little zones feel a bit like Zelda’s shrines. It’s another moment where Breath of the Wild’s DNA is most felt. I then take the only other path available until I find a level that unlocks that door, and then head back. In one area, I walk until I find a locked boss door. I’m not exploring large chasms and finding a bunch of secrets and shortcuts. The ones I find during my demo are fairly linear micro areas. As I explore, I begin to find little caves tucked away. Rather than winding through tight corridors, I’m largely traveling through the wide-open plains of Limgrave. The game’s approach to world design is quite different than other Souls games in ways that might prove a little polarizing to longtime fans. It’s the opening of Breath of the Wild, beat for beat. Instead, I safely emerge into a sprawling plain that triggers a sublime sensation. As I walk through it, searching for an exit, I assume I’m going to be jumped by some low-level monsters. The game seems to take cues from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, starting from its opening moment. Take a walk on the wild sideĮlden Ring makes a lot of tweaks to the standard Dark Souls formula, but the most obvious change is its pivot to open-world gameplay. Then I stopped playing it like a Dark Souls game. I was once again preparing to feel like a contrarian outcast as I anticipated a wave of previews declaring it the next Ocarina of Time. Fights required superhuman patience, swordplay was arduous, and I often felt like I was fighting the camera more than the giant boss in front of me. As enamored as I was with its gorgeous open world, parts of it still felt like torture. I’ve simply never understood the appeal of Dark Souls and other FromSoftware games and, at first, it seemed like Elden Ring wasn’t going to change that. Six hours into my hands-on Elden Ring demo, I was miserable.