Very intense game. Way darker than the first part. Great story. Great graphics. Get it!
I enjoyed re-playing the game with some visual mods but no content or game play mods. This was maybe a wrong decision as the leveling system and the HUD a both pretty annoying at some point.
I was very eager to play this game and finally got my hands on a graphics card that can actually run it. But boy, maybe I should not have played Elden Ring before this... I started several times, read starters guides and tips. But it simply is completely confusing and inaccessible to me. Shall I hack or shoot? Does not seem to make much of a difference. What to upgrade? What (side-) missions to do without dying instantly... The Graphics are OK but even with beefy AMD graphics I still disable RT. So much smoother to run. The background sounds of faults and technical defects are simply terrible to listen to with headphones. Sorry, but not for me.
My different aspects to the game: Graphics are very nice. Great? Maybe. Ray tracing reference? Nah. Played both with & without RTX. Yes looks nicer but is not a game-changer like in Metro. Game-play? Very good up to about 2/3 of the game. Then the Hiss gets so annoying that you permanently die. Try to defeat a swarm of level 8 floating Hiss that regenerates health. I maxed out most of my abilities and still this is hours of fighting & dying I switched to on-shot kill for the last third of the game and still died quite frequently. Story and ending? OK if you do a lot of reading. Replay value? Zero. Bugs & stability? Just the one crash with fighting the anchor. Recommend? Yes, but not at full price.
Played the main game twice, once normal edition, once enhanced as soon I got a new graphics card and loved it. The game is different to the previous ones as t is somewhat open map design. It mainly consists of 5 large levels from which you can explore 3 to a great extend on your own liking. I had no crashes at all on both editions, so maybe this was fixed in the releases I played. Also no idea why jet_sextus could not figure out how to save the game (???). You just can't save in combat or if there is a save already going on. I did not like the DLCs that much. Sam's Story is a pretty tough straight shooter part. OK but not great. In The Two Colonels you can watch (!) the father of the boy from the main game die for about 2 hours. Almost no game play there just watching dialogues an cut-scenes.
I think basically all has been said before, but a small recap from my point of view. 100% the same concept as the Ubisoft sandbox games (AC, FC, etc) but very well done. Great setting and design. The story is OK to good. Depends how much you want to read the notes and listen to all recordings you find to dig deeper into it. Also the PC port ist very well done. Did not think for a second to switch from M/K to controller. Performance is also very well optimized by still looking GREAT. Some small downsides: You easily get all the skills (at least with Fozen Wilds), so no different character development paths. NPCs are rather pale amd more or less meaningless for the game. Fighting with NPC is as usual more of an handycap than support. Riding is comletely useless. But overall clearly recommended!
Wirklich nettes, wunderschönes Spiel! Minimaler Kritikpunkt ist die manchmal etwas langwierige Suche nach Plätzen, Personen oder Items und die etwas mühsame End-Quest. Trotzdem absolute Empfehlung!
I just can agree to the many reviews about the atmosphere and the great story. Some positive technical stuff: Absolutely no issues on on arch with the open amdgpu driver and Mesa 13 on a 380x.
