Why I HATE Elden Ring (after playing for 200 hours)

I recently just finished Elden Ring.

After 200 hours, I finally beat the game,

and I'm going to do a second playthrough.

So I quite enjoyed playing it, but there's

just been a few things about it that I

really hated, that I found extremely

frustrating, and I hope they would fix.

One of the most frustrating things that I

found was when you're fighting a very

difficult boss and you keep losing, and

then the respawn point is quite far away

from the beginning entrance of the boss

battle. Now, some boss battles are not too

bad, and they've got the Stake of Marika

right outside of the gate, but there's

been so many bosses where I actually timed

how long it took to run from the respawn

point back to the beginning of the boss.

And so many times I had to run for about

30 seconds all the way back to the boss

entrance bit. And when you're dying

hundreds and hundreds of times, those 30

seconds get multiplied by hundreds of

times, and then you end up spending

probably hours just running backwards and

forwards from the respawn point back to

the beginning of the boss. I just feel

like this is so unnecessary. Why don't

they just put the Stake of Marika or the

grace location right outside the gate of

the boss? For example, every time you

fight this boss called Beast Clergyman,

you have to start all the way in this

little building, go up a flight of stairs,

and run across a bridge back to the gate.

And this takes like 30 seconds, and I had

to do that run probably 100 times at least

before I managed to defeat the boss. And

what makes it even more annoying is when

you enter the boss area, you load into the

area and you instantly get attacked by the

boss. He doesn't even give you a second to

prepare your summons or your potions or

your incantations. And there's a weird

glitch where if you have enemies chasing

you from behind and and you load into the

boss area through the yellow golden gate

thing, you can still get attacked from

behind because the enemies are attacking

you from behind the, the barrier, the

yellow misty cloudy barrier, and the

attacks can actually hit you. It's just

really annoying that the attacks can get

through the barrier, which they're not

supposed to be able to, and it just ruins

your preparation, and then you get hit in

the face by the boss. Also, if you summon

minions, the minions will try to attack

the NPCs that are behind the barrier

behind you instead of attacking the boss,

which is in front of of you, which is

really frustrating. I also had this weird

problem with my mimic summon when the boss

would do some kind of aerial attack on top

of the mimic and push the mimic into the

ground, and then the mimic would actually

fall through the ground and die. It's just

so annoying after you've just run all the

way back to the beginning of the boss

ready to have another attempt, and then

some stupid weird glitch happens where you

get hit from behind or your mimic falls

through the ground and falls to its death,

and then you've got to reset the fight and

run all the way back again to the

beginning of the boss. I don't know why

Elden Ring really seems to enjoy wasting

the player's time by forcing us to do this

unnecessary running backwards and

forwards. It's not just the boss battles

that are a problem. When it comes to

upgrading your weapons, the weapon

upgrading system is really annoying and

convoluted. So in order to upgrade your

weapon, you need smithing stones, and you

can loot these in dungeons and outside in

the open world from enemies. And that's

fine and everything until you get to the

point where you keep running out of

smithing stones, and that's when you need

a smithing bell, which you can loot from a

chest somewhere. Then you give that bell

to the Twin Head Maiden in the Roundtable

Hold area, and then you have to keep going

backwards and forwards between the Twin

Maiden NPC that sells the smithing stones

and the blacksmith. And it's really

frustrating because you're just trying to

upgrade your weapon. It says you need 5

smithing stone ones, so you give them 5

smithing stones, and then it'll say you

need another 10, so you need to go back to

the Twin Maiden person to go and buy 10,

and then you run back to the Blacksmith

person now needs smithing stone two times

five. So you go all the way back to the

twin maiden NPC person, and then you're

just running backwards and forwards,

backwards and forwards, trying to upgrade

your damn weapon. And it's just so

unnecessary. Why couldn't they put the

twin maiden NPC right next to the

blacksmith? Or better yet, why couldn't

they just get the blacksmith to sell the

smithing stones? Wouldn't that make more

sense? Because you know he's a blacksmith,

so he would have the smithing stones.

Having to upgrade your weapons and your

shields in the game is one of the most

frustrating things, the most tedious

things you have to do. And it's a real

shame because there's so many cool weapons

in the game. I've got loads of cool

weapons that I would love to use, but I

just cannot be bothered to farm all of the

smithing stones and runes that you need to

upgrade the weapon to max level. To

upgrade a weapon to max level, you need

like 300,000 runes to be able to purchase

all of the smithing stones, and then

you've got to keep running backwards and

forwards like I mentioned earlier. And the

same thing applies when you're trying to

upgrade your summons. You have to keep

going backwards and forwards between the

Spirit Tuning Girl and the Twin Maiden

woman who sells the flowers that you need

to upgrade the summons. I just feel like

the whole upgrade system is completely

unnecessary. It's not difficult or

challenging to upgrade your weapon. You

just have to farm. You have to farm loads

of runes so you can buy loads of smithing

stones or loads of those flowers for your

summon upgrades. What is the point of it

apart from to waste the player's time?

I've spent entire days and dozens and

dozens of hours just grinding runes and

farming runes so I could get stones so I

could upgrade my gear. So they're actually

useful in difficult areas. And it's also

really frustrating to sell stuff after

you've done a lot of farming and you've

acquired a lot of loot. Usually end up

with loads and loads and loads of pieces

of armor from the same kind of enemy, and

trying to get rid of all of these

duplicate items of armor, so tedious. You

have to keep pressing A, sell, press A,

sell, press A, sell, over and over again

for each item one by one. Why is there no

sell everything button? Why can't you just

group certain specific items into one

category? Togori and then press sell

everything. And finally, my biggest

complaint about the game has to be when

you finish the game. Now don't worry, I'm

not going to spoil the story because

honestly I don't even understand what

happened in the story. The ending I got,

basically I became the Elden Lord and I

have no idea what that means or what

happens to the other characters or what's

going to happen from now on. It just feels

like the entire story of the game was

completely meaningless. After you finish

watching the end credits, it'll give you

an option to begin Journey 2, yes or no.

And I chose yes. I don't know what happens

if you press no, but when you press yes,

basically the entire game resets back to

the beginning. I thought after I finished

the last boss and I see the ending, I

could go back into the game and then carry

on exploring and go back to places that I

haven't finished yet and carry on playing

the game as if nothing really happened.

But no, the whole game start straight from

the beginning again. The only difference

is you get to keep everything that you

still have. For example, you still have

all of your items and weapons and

abilities and your runes, and you still

are at the same level that you finish the

game at. You don't have to start from

level 1 again, but you lose all of your

grace location sites on the map, so you

can't teleport anywhere anymore. So you

have to go through the map all over again

to recollect all of your grace location

points to be able to teleport again. And

in order to get through the map, you have

to obviously defeat the bosses all over

again. But now that I'm level 140 and I've

got all of this amazing gear and weapons,

the entire game is basically just really

easy and there's no challenge at all.

When you get the Mimic summon and you get

Flame of the Redmanes, the entire game is

so easy. Every single boss encounter

basically just revolves around spamming

Flame of the Redmanes, and your Mimic also

spams it as well. And it only takes about

2 or 3 hits from Flame of the Redmanes to

knock down a boss. You just keep spamming

it and over and over again, and you can

effectively almost stun-lock a boss. And

another frustrating thing when the game

resets from the beginning is you lose all

of your smithing bells. So if you want to

buy smithing stones from the Twin Maiden

NPC to upgrade some weapons you might have

missed out on, then you can't buy smithing

stones anymore. You've got to go back

through every single dungeon all over

again to collect the smithing bells. I

just don't understand why the game has to

reset after you finish it. Why can't it

just let you carry on exploring the world

as you left it before you finished the

last final boss. That's how most

open-world RPG games function. So yeah,

it's a little bit annoying and frustrating

that I have to now do everything all over

again straight from the beginning in order

to get back to where I was before I

finished the game so that I can finish

exploring all of the other areas that I

didn't explore because I thought— I didn't

even know I was on the last boss actually

when I finished the game. I kind of

finished the game by accident. Those are

just a few things that I found fairly

frustrating and annoying about the game.

Hopefully they get fixed, but probably by

the time they have been fixed, I may have

moved on from the game and I don't really

play it anymore. But in general, I had a

really great time playing Elden Ring.

Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to

put 200 hours into the game. Last time I

played the game this much was New World

last year. I think I played that for about

500 hours, so I guess it kind of shows

that I did genuinely enjoy playing Elden

Ring. It's just been a bit frustrating

along the way.