Elden Ring Review (The Quests Suck)
Feb 18 2025
On Christmas I picked up Elden Ring to be the first game on my Steam Deck. It's the first Fromsoft or soulslike game I've ever touched. I should preface this review by saying that, despite its flaws, Elden Ring is an amazing game. But it DEFINITELY has flaws, and they are glaring.
Let's start by looking at the positives. Or the positive. I have a lot I could say about how great this game is but honestly, its already been said a million times in a much better way by other people, so I'm just gonna shine a spotlight on my favourite part. As my first soulslike game, Elden Ring was a wonderful introduction to the genre. I've been hesitant to play these kinds of games because all I seem to hear is how frustrating and punishing they are, but by the time I racked up a few hours in the game, I just thought...why the fuck were people saying this? I'm sure this sentiment applies to other Fromsoft games, but absolutely not to Elden Ring. There are a couple of reasons why I think this but I'll keep it brief and say that Fromsoft did a great job at making the difficulty subtly customizable. This has been talked to death already but for good reason - summons, magic, and the open world format make it possible for less experienced players to make the game much easier. I played Elden Ring with a full melee build and only pulled out summons when I started getting frustrated... or I'd just leave and come back later. I never found myself getting too frustrated because of this. Even when I did use summons to beat a difficult boss, I still got that sense of achievement that soulslike games give you.
There are three big problems I had with Elden Ring: direction, quests, and scaling. Direction and quests are two issues which kind of function as a bundle so I'll go over them together, and then tackle the scaling.
When I say "direction", I literally mean the direction that the game takes you in - the way that you are guided throughout the game. In an open world game like Elden Ring, I don't expect there to be such a solid sense of direction, as the idea is to explore as much as possible. However, Elden Ring seems to be unique from most other open world games (that I've played at least) in that it lacks direction to the point where it seriously harms the player experience. Most open world games have map icons that tell the player where to go next in order to progress the game properly. It's understandable that Elden Ring doesn't have these, because a lack of map icons and minimaps is a staple of Fromsoft games, and personally I'm glad they didn't change this as it really enhances the sense of exploration. So, what other solutions are there to this issue? Quests.
The quests in Elden Ring are already confusing enough that they warrant a complete overhaul just for existing, but when you factor in how much the game as a whole could benefit from quests being more linear and directive, it actually becomes baffling that Fromsoft somehow failed to fix this. I don't think Fromsoft realized that you can't have both vague and confusing quests, plus an open world game - you've got to choose one or the other, or else the quests will usually be ignored due to how much else there is to do, and how easy it is to miss NPC encounters entirely. This is unfortunate because I truly believe that the side quests have the most potential to direct the player through the game in a subtle and natural way. Most quests do guide you through the game - for example, White Mask Varre, the first NPC you'll meet, brings you to Liurnia of the Lakes. Ranni takes you from Liurnia to Caelid and several other locations that are level appropriate. The issue with these quests is that since there is no quest tracker, and the directions given to you are so confusing, this method of directing the player through the game doesn't end up working. The simple and unfortunate truth is that a quest tracker would solve both the issue of the game feeling directionless and the issue of the quests being too confusing to complete without a guide.
Now I'd like to elaborate on my claim that "Elden Ring's lack of direction seriously harms the player experience." This is where the issue of scaling comes in. If you've played Elden Ring, chances are that there have been many, many times where you've walked into a boss arena at the end of a mini-dungeon and accidentally beat the boss in like, three swings. This overleveling is a direct consequence of the lack of direction that the game gives you. It's a remarkably common issue to be overleveled. This issue can be fixed in two ways:
1. Give the player more direction so that they are over or under leveled as little as possible. Do this by overhauling the quest system, as written above.
2. Automatically scale enemies.
I think I speak for all of us when I say that automatically scaling enemies removes a lot of the fun and satisfaction from getting better at these kinds of games. From about 2 seconds of reasearch it really does seem like a deeply unpopular stance, and I agree that it wouldn't work very well.
I guess this whole critique boils down to the idea that side quests in Elden Ring really suck. So yeah. I really enjoyed the rest of the game though, it was a lovely experience. Maybe I'll write up another post detailing more things I liked about it.
Overall rating: 9/10