When Dark Souls was released, its seamless integration of environments into one expansive map was seen as a major improvement over the hub-based level selection used in Demon’s Souls. Ever since, the conceit has always been to make these kinds of action RPGs feel like living and breathing worlds with a palpable sense of place. For a while, it seemed like the template to make the best soulslike would depend entirely on how interesting the enemies were and how clever the level design tied everything together.
Nobody ever thought to try to apply FromSoftware’s sensibilities to an open world. The idea of it just seemed pointless since most soulslikes are open-ended and already foster exploration. It turns out everybody had no sense of epicness until FromSoftware showed them how it can be done, and it became the most beloved game of 2022 and is widely considered one of the best games ever made. Elden Ring was a behemoth on PlayStation 4 and 5, but as Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition, how does it fare on Nintendo Switch 2?
Like in most of FromSoftware’s “souls” games, Elden Ring‘s narrative doesn’t follow a traditional plot structure. Once players are dropped into a bleak medieval world, they’re expected to piece together clues to understand the grander picture. The thing is, not every character is forthcoming and a lot of the time they’re unreliable liars with ulterior motives. Figuring things out from item descriptions can help, but Elden Ring’s world is a twisted, decaying nightmare where old demigods still roam among the people… Though they’re usually past their prime, driven insane with rage, or monstrously deformed.
The setting is a once-prosperous realm sustained by the Elden Ring, a cosmic artefact that embodies the Golden Order imposed by the Greater Will. A queen once held the ring, ruling as a living god, until she broke it, shattering the world’s order and scattering its fragments as Great Runes among her demigod children. The resulting civil war, known as the Shattering, left the land in ruin. Demigods warred endlessly for power, their conflicts scarring the land with undead, monsters, and decay. Grace, the guiding light of the Erdtree, withdrew from most people, leaving only the Tarnished exiles, who had been banished long ago, able to see it again.
The player assumes the role of a Tarnished, and after creating their character, they are set loose to form their own stories. The overarching plot of the civil war between the factions is a lot to take in and hard to follow, given the opaque storytelling. At its heart, Elden Ring explores themes of fractured divinity, ambition, and the quest to find new meaning in a broken world. However, the game doesn’t impose this story on players; instead, it primarily focuses on the struggle for survival against unbelievably intimidating enemies and overwhelming odds. If the Tarnished’s quest seems hopeless, it’s because it is. Elden Ring takes great joy in imposing ridiculously fearsome monsters and threats that it’s easy to feel like a deer caught in the headlights while trying to absorb the sheer lunacy that the game has in store.
In prior Dark Souls games, most areas were set in a confined map that featured beautiful scenery and background elements that were mostly for show and atmosphere. Elden Ring makes those background setpieces the entire game’s interactable world and dares players to venture forth. It’s a feeling that brings back memories of playing The Legend of Zelda on the Nintendo Entertainment System. It’s like discovering how to play a video game for the first time, with a world bursting with mysteries, dangers, and intrigue, yet trusting players to figure things out on their own. A casual wander might lead someone to a ruin with an elevator that carries them miles below the surface, into a vast underground city where diamonds embedded in the rock glitter like a radiant night sky. The experience is indescribable, and they don’t have a word for it yet.
Elden Ring boasts a huge map that’s largely explorable in any direction in the early game. Fast travel via Sites of Grace (Elden Ring‘s version of bonfires) is more frequent, and the spectral steed Torrent enables rapid overworld travel, mounted combat, and double jumps. A dedicated jump button also expands platforming and vertical exploration far beyond the limited or absent jumping of earlier titles. The sheer density and scale of the land are so massive that it could easily hold enough content for two full-fledged Dark Souls games, and that’s not even counting the DLC region, which alone has enough landmass to feel like an entire game. There must be over 250 boss fights scattered throughout the overworld’s ninety-something dungeons. It almost feels illegal that FromSoftware was allowed to produce this much game.
Mercifully, most of Elden Ring‘s offerings are optional and in some cases are completely secret. This is a game that expects players to go off the beaten main path and is seemingly designed around it. Following the story beats will inevitably pit the Tarnished against a relentless boss that just obliterates all defences and utterly melts the protagonist with the fat side of an uprooted tree stump. Trying to fight this main story boss at this juncture is wrong, and Elden Ring actually nudges the player to call it quits and go in another direction away from the main path to explore and build their character. In a way, Elden Ring is the most accessible game FromSoftware has made despite it also having the most difficulty walls in it. There are so many more ways to level up and different things to do if something is being especially hard. Pursuing different activities lets you acquire new gear or resources, which helps you overcome previously insurmountable challenges.
While the option to go do other things to get stronger is always there, that does not mean Elden Ring isn’t without its cheap moments. Quite a few bosses have overextended wind-up animations that feel unconvincing and seem designed to trick players. Other times, some bosses will have ridiculously long and complex combos that defy reason and the fairness of the dodge roll’s i-frames. Probably the absolute worst is when a boss looks like it finished a combo, then pulls a cheap underhanded bonus attack at the last second that seems diabolically timed to the player character’s proximity. This feels especially unfair for a skilled but under-levelled player who could feasibly handle the challenge with patience and strategy, but the cheap tactic seems intended to force players to reach a high enough level to survive the hit if they lack a ranged attack.
Originally, Elden Ring was supposed to come out much sooner on Nintendo Switch 2, but was delayed for quality concerns. The delay was definitely worth it, as this is a fantastic port that looks and performs as well as possible for such a huge and ambitious game running on modest hardware. While Lies of P was able to reach a very stable 60fps, Elden Ring is a far more demanding game, and for the most part it reaches and stays at its 30fps target. It’s roughly on par with the PlayStation 4 version, which in itself is a reasonable baseline to expect for a game like this. Expect frame rate drops during ludicrous boss battles, where intense attacks can push performance down into the 20s. While it won’t be as smooth as versions running on other consoles or a high-end gaming PC, there’s no going wrong with this version. Elden Ring isn’t exactly Devil May Cry, and combat is already weighty and methodical, so stressing over frame rate is not as big of a deal as it may seem.
