Elden Ring hands-on preview with closed network test

Over the past six months, we’ve seen a lot from Elden Ring, we’ve heard a lot about Elden Ring, but very few, if any, people outside of From Software have played Elden ring. That’s no longer the case because over the last weekend I found myself completely engrossed in the world of The Lands Between. Like many others, they will also be once the Closed Net Test opens for all who are chosen to participate from November 12-14.

However, for those who want an early look at what to expect, these are my impressions of the Elden Ring closed network test.

Elden Ring Gameplay Trailer 4K Screenshots – Summer of Games

Before we dive into what’s new at Elden Ring, let’s see what’s familiar. After all, this is the next game in FromSoft’s action RPG series that has long outgrown any kind of convenient, all-encompassing label, unless you prefer to call the series the “Elden-Seki-” series. Souls-Borne “.

Slow but safe

Elden Ring largely represents a return to the Souls style, which is most evident in its dark fantasy setting, but rings true in its gameplay and mechanics as well. Bring back the Estus Flask split system from Dark Souls 3, allowing you to choose to prioritize health restorers or mana restorers by distributing your flasks as you see fit.

Combat is slower and much more methodical than Sekiro and Bloodborne, with often quite long startup and cooldown times on most of your attacks and heals, forcing you to pick your locations and pick the right times to attack, defend. and take a sip. from a flask.

This time there are also a couple of new tools. A new technique called Guard Counter allows you to perform a crushing counterattack after blocking a hit with your shield. And on the offensive side, you can execute a super satisfying jump attack that splits the helm and can smash through shields and render weaker foes defenseless.

However, the biggest change in terms of the actual mechanics is how the Elden Ring handles weapon arts (or abilities) and upgrade paths.

Previously, weapon arts were special abilities that were unique to a weapon or weapon class, such as the battoujutsu Stance with katana-class weapons in Dark Souls 3. Upgrade paths, on the other hand, refer to your ability to transform a weapon into a different type, taking it down a path that gives it more base damage, an elemental affinity, or a larger scale with a particular statistic.

These two mechanics have essentially been combined in the Elden Ring in the form of Ashes of War. As you play, you will find new Ashes of War that can be equipped with your weapons at Grace’s sites, the Elden Ring’s version of a bonfire. Equipping a new Ash of War to a weapon will not only change that weapon’s stats and scale, it will also overwrite the weapon’s innate ability with a new one, unique to that Ash of War.

As an example, let’s say my intelligence-focused character finds a Twinblade. It’s not usually a weapon I’d like to use on a magic-focused character, but it’s the best I have and, well, it has a cool moveset. Later, I find an Ash of War: Glintsword Arch, which not only gives Twinblade intelligence scale, making it viable as a melee weapon for my build. But it also grants me the Glintsword Arch ability that summons four magic swords that automatically fly towards approaching enemies. Now the Twinblade not only works as a great melee weapon for my build, it also comes with a powerful spell that doesn’t take up any of my actual spell slots.

However, the best part is that Ashes of War are transferable and don’t burn out with use, so if I find a weapon later that I enjoy more than the Twinblade, I can put the Glintstone Arch Ash of War on it and do the transition easily. to a new weapon, which has always been a difficult and expensive thing to do in other Souls games once you’ve taken a weapon down a specific upgrade path.

If it’s still not very clear, I love this. It encourages experimentation with different weapons, opens up a ton of variety in building options, gives me another type of reward to get excited about finding in the world, and the abilities themselves are great to play with.

A truly open world

While the ashes of war are great, the Elden Ring’s big departure is the shift to a completely open-world structure. From the moment you exit the tutorial cave, you are free to go in whatever direction you choose. You can follow the recommended path, illuminated by the light of grace; you can take a look to your right and decide to explore the lake and the ominous looking ruins, or you can turn around and see a lonely island in the distance and think to yourself: “I wonder how I can get there …”

The areas were also not closed due to having tougher enemies in one place than another. You will find equally challenging fights in all directions, and you can face them in the order you choose. That said, the area in the closed test is surrounded by invisible barriers, so it’s hard to say how this will play out in the full game.

What is especially impressive about this closed-net test is that even though it was enclosed in a relatively small area, there was still much to explore and discover. From hidden NPCs to bosses that just roam the countryside, to a group of extremely tough enemies that you could try to farm for weapon upgrade shards, to a patch of land where lighting continually hits and leaves electrically charged rocks that you can collect. I felt like every five minutes I would come across something that made me say “what the heck is that ?!”

And then there are the dungeons and catacombs that are hidden all over the world, just like the shrines in Breath of the Wild. These dungeons varied greatly in their design, with some including only two or three rooms, a handful of enemies, and a boss fight at the end. Others needed a torch to see the enemies and the dangers within; and others were still decently large, multi-level caverns, with a few surprises for the veterans that I don’t want to spoil.

The bosses within these dungeons are not as difficult as the main world bosses, but they are still worth looking for, as the internal rewards have always been worth the effort in my experience.

Elden Ring – Game Demo Screenshots

Elden Ring is also surprisingly forgiving when it comes to its open world exploration. Your character does not spend stamina when out of combat, so you can run, jump and roll incessantly. There are spawn points that trigger automatically in key areas that are difficult to overcome, so you will rarely have to make the long way of shame back to your dropped coin if you die. And enemies will even retain their damage if you run away, so you can play hit and run on your horse all you want.

What is a legacy? [Dungeon]?

While I loved every part of exploring the open world, I felt like something was missing from the overall package that wasn’t filled by the relatively straightforward dungeons hidden all over the world. Fortunately, that’s where legacy dungeons come in. These are long linear levels in the vein of something like Anor Londo in Dark Souls.

I only tried a small sample of Stormveil Castle, the first of the inherited dungeons in the Elden Ring, but that small part was more than enough to whet my appetite for more. Stormveil Castle is huge, with multiple paths from the beginning, each with its own challenges. Take the side road and you’ll come across treacherous terrain and the classic From Software trope of having a group of firebombed dudes overseeing a road with a bunch of explosive barrels. Take the main path and you will meet a small army and a handful of ballistae, all trained to shoot on sight.

At the gate of Stormveil castle

Even though I was presented with the option of doing one or the other, I still found myself going both ways. And while they both eventually crash for the sake of network testing, I can’t wait to see how they connect to each other in the full version.

I didn’t get much of a chance to try multiplayer due to the relatively small number of players in the Closed Network Test right now, but it all seems like a pretty standard fee. You can leave summoning signals for both cooperative and competitive play, you can invade other people’s worlds, you can wear rings that will summon you to worlds that are being invaded so you can try to defend the innocent, and you can wear rings that will call for help when they invade you.

However, there are a couple of things to keep in mind: it seems that you are only open to PVP invasions if you have summoned a player to play cooperatively with you. Otherwise, he uses an item called the Trickster’s Tongue, which invites invaders into his world even without having a cooperative partner to help him. There is also an item called Finger Phantoms that can only be used during multiplayer invasion, but I haven’t been able to find any in my playtime.

I’ve spent nearly 15 hours on this closed test alone, going through each of the initial five classes and putting them through their paces, and I’m still having a great time. If the full version of Elden Ring continues to match the quality of open-world design found only in this first area, then a very special game awaits us in February of next year.

Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer for IGN. You can find it on Twitter @JurassicRabbit