ELDEN RING

When you see the negative reviews from people like me with hundreds and thousands of hours of playtime, that's your signal that something happened. Something went wrong. Elden Ring is a masterpiece of a game with excellent story telling and visuals. It's a piece of art that I intend to continue to share with as many people as I can because good art deserves to be seen. So why the negative. FromSoftwares parent company recently had a shift in power via a stock buy from a company who has shown anticonsumer interests in the past. Now I'm not going to lie to you about the contents of the 5$ addon. It's something like 5 sets of armor, 2 npc encounters, and 3 cosmetic skins for your steed. These may not be the exact details, and in any other game this would be not the most egregious addon on offer. But this is the first of it's kind in a fromsoft title. It's a canary so to speak. What is more important to me is the history of the addon itself. The addon was a way to move copies for the switch 2. This extra content was exclusive to the switch 2 for a period and is now being allowed to branch out to the other versions. Which is fine, that's how business works. The problem, however, is that the switch 2 copy of elden ring is the exact same price as the shadow of the erdtree bundle. Meaning switch 2 has the new addon content, the dlc, and the base game for 79.99. Everyone else is the ONLY ONES footing the "bill" for this addon content. Recently a "community quest" went live. It doesn't matter what the challenges are, the rewards are artwork and twitch badges which irrelevant to the game. This is a blatant bid to boost player count. The company that bought the controlling interest is a hedge fund, more players means higher share price. I'm not fooled and neither should you be. Participate in the quests, there's no harm in playing the game you love. But don't buy the horse armor. It's a trap, a crack in the ice, the first of many needles.

added microtransactions which can determine your starting class. i have way more hours in souls and elden ring than steam shows btw, but if you support microtransactions like this the slippery slope will eventually no longer be a fallacy

Elden Ring is one of the best games ever made. I'm leaving this negative review as a warning sign to the chinese hedge fund Oasis (infamous for proposing to Nintendo that they implement a 99 cent microtransaction to make Mario jump higher in mobile games) that recently bought majority shares in Kadokawa which owns Fromsoftware and are now forcing microtransactions and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ twitch promos into the game, as well as overpriced toy replicas. When Nightreign came out most people were ok with a small experimental game that reused many assets because Fromsoft had gained that good will. This is where that good will ends, from now on everything that Fromsoft makes is likely going to be just as bad as all the other AAA companies trying to squeeze out as much money from the consumers while offering as little value as possible. I guess nothing good lasts forever. R.I.P. Fromsoftware, you were dearly loved by all.

Good game but ♥♥♥♥ devs who leech money for extra weapons and classes. Scummy fraudster lolcows