This weekend a select few people were given some time to experience the amazing world of The Lands Between in the Elden Ring Closed Network Test. Each test moment was only 3 hours long and came at some inconvenient times depending on your timezone, but we still had about 7.5 hours worth of playtime. Let’s discuss!

Elden Ring is the next souls-like by FromSoftware, the inventors of the genre with their famous titles like Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro. Players who are familiar with their games know what to expect: brutally difficult gameplay with even regular enemy encounters posing a lethal threat and bosses taking multiple tries to defeat.

Story time

One of the elements that were used to really build some hype around Elden Ring was the involvement of George RR Martin, who you might know as the author of A Song of Ice and Fire which was translated into Game Of Thrones, the massively popular TV show. He’s working on the script of the game, but this test was pretty light on lore and storytelling.

Having to dig for the story has been somewhat of a Dark Souls staple, with most of the lore hidden in the world through item descriptions and the occasional conversation with one of the NPCs. The same is true in Elden Ring, but luckily Melina blesses us with some of her knowledge and insights whenever she visits at a save point.

Melina plays the role of your Finger Maiden, but what exactly that means wasn’t entirely clear from the limited story included in that network test. What was clear though, is that many of Dark Souls’ elements have been copied over, albeit with new names.

You no longer have Estus Flasks to restore your health, but you can now choose how to divide your four held useable items between Crimson Flasks (HP restoring) and Cerulean Flasks (FP restoring).

You’re no longer called a Chosen Undead, but you’re called Tarnished. And you don’t save your game and level up at a bonfire but instead, do so at a Touch of Grace.

It’s like a find and replace with mechanics copied over but being given a new name. But you know what they say; if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And what I’ve gotten to play here is far from broken.

More forgiving

Perhaps the biggest improvement for me, as someone who shouldn’t be labeled as a pro-souls-like player, is that the game is far more forgiving. The above-mentioned save points are far more common than in any other FromSoftware title I’ve played and they even throw in additional checkpoints.

This is godsent and makes the entire experience a lot less frustrating with minimal backtracking needed to go back to where you perished the previous time. And you will die. A lot!

When you do get killed, you’ll drop all of your gathered Runes, which replace the titular Souls from Dark Souls (see, another word they replaced), and which is the game’s main currency. Runes are used both for leveling up at bonfir… Err, I mean Touch of Grace savepoints, as well as buying new spells and gear at merchants.

And you only get one shot at reclaiming those lost runes because if you die on the way to retrieve them, they are gone for good.

Combat plays out much like in a Dark Souls title as well, slower and more methodical than Bloodborne for instance. Depending on which characters class you picked at the start of the game, you’ll be blocking and parrying enemy attacks, dodge rolling out of the way, or simply staying at a safe distance and throwing magic spells at them.