Becoming the Elden Lord!

I played a lot of amazing games this year. One of them is Elden Ring, which was my first souls-like game from FromSoft Studios. I was expecting a big challenge, and it didn't disappoint me in that regard. In fact, the first time I played it many months ago, I just gave up on a tough boss in the later part of the game. But last month I picked it up again and restarted my whole journey from scratch, and I could see the improvement straight away. I reached the Fire Giant boss in half the time of my first playthrough. That is the boss who killed me over and over, which made me lose interest in the game.

This time, I was a bit more prepared, both with better weapons and mentally. It still took me a few tries, but I defeated this giant. This has three different phases and feels like fighting a huge building constantly exploding and going off in flames.

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We just wanted to become the Elden Lord; was it too much to ask? xD

For that, we needed to enter the base of the erdtree, but we were blocked by impassable thorns of the erdtree. That's why we defeated the Fire giant to get its flame and burn down the tree. But that means it is the end of Melina's journey as well. She will be burning up in flames. There is another ending where I can save her, but I couldn't find a way to do it, and I didn't want to look it up.

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There are so few cutscenes in the game; this one felt like losing a friend, even though the game never developed her character that much. She was just a support character interacting with us a few times in the journey and guiding us.

We were teleported to a new place after this. This was the first time I was here.

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This one was a crumbling island in the middle of nowhere. This place was filled with a lot of dragons. I think I killed like 4-5 dragons here.

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The final boss here was one of the hardest I fought. Maliketh, the Black Blade. It's a cool-looking boss, too. We teleport back to the royal city of Leyndell, but this time it is covered with the ash from the erdtree.

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This is where the boss rush starts. We face like 3 bosses back to back here.

The first one and probably the easiest for me was Sir Gidean Ofnir, the All-Knowing. He was a good mage but had relatively lower health. If you get ultra-aggressive, it wouldn't take too long to kill it.

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Just before entering the Erdtree, we had to fight Hoarah Loux. His first phase is not too difficult, but the second phase, when he becomes Hoarah Loux and drops his axe. He is too aggressive in that phase. It took me a long time to learn this fight.

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The final boss of the base game is not just a single boss but a dual boss. You fight them one at a time. Radagon of the final order is the first one. They beat the sh*t out of you with a hammer. This was such a tough fight, but at the same time very rewarding.

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Fighting two bosses back-to-back without resting is insane. That meant I had to beat Radagon and still have enough healing flasks to beat the Elden Lord.

I wasn't expecting the last boss of Elden Ring to look this beautiful. This game is full of ugly beasts that, looking at the Elden Beast, you feel mesmerised and enchanted. The music is so good, those elegant dance moves it makes while launching hundreds of magic lasers at you look so cool.

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I forgot even to dodge a few times because I was distracted by looking at its moves. Now that I think of it, it would make little sense to have a final boss as another ugly beast. You have already fought like 100s of them by now, so it wouldn't be that special. But I bet no one is going to forget about this final boss, just because it is so unique in the game.

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In terms of difficulty, it wasn't as difficult as Radagon, in my opinion. It was extremely annoying how this beast kept teleporting to a hundred meters away from me every 10 seconds.

This was one of the best games I played. At times, it was challenging or annoying. Losing a lot of runes can be painful, but once you start worrying less about the runes, it gets better. Sometimes, the best thing to do is to explore another area rather than fighting a boss with your underlevelled gear. I think the biggest challenge in such a game is to let go of your ego and remember that everyone struggles sometimes.

I won't even say it was the most challenging game I played. It was easier than Hollow Knight Silksong for me.

Until next time...