Featured Image Credit: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Topics: Elden Ring, Fromsoftware
I believe Elden Ring is a truly phenomenal game, but I can also fully appreciate it won't be to everyone's tastes.
Elden Ring is, after all, still a FromSoftware game - and FromSoftware games aren't knowing for being widely approachable experiences that cater to everyone. They are confusing, willfully obtuse, and frequently punishing. Elden Ring explains very little about its world or rules, instead asking you to head out into the wilds and work it out for yourself.
Take a look at some of the most ridiculous, heartbreaking Elden Ring wins and fails below!
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Some people love that about FromSoft, while others hate it. And that's absolutely fine! Not every game needs to be for every player, does it? However, there's one particularly irritating feature of Elden Ring that has drawn the ire of fans and critics alike.
Elden Ring's HUD is fairly basic, but mostly completely self explanatory. You have your health, stamina, FP, and items all on display. A compass at the top indicates the direction of any markers you've placed. It's easy enough to work out with being told exactly what's what.
But even the fans who are on board with FromSoft's approach to a minimalist HUD have to agree with one aspect of it that just doesn't work. As pointed out by Designer-Payment7567 on the Elden Ring subreddit, the completely inscrutable various icons that appear underneath your health and stamina at certain points throughout the game are maddeningly vague.
While most players are likely quick to work out that these icons denote various buffs and debuffs, it's nigh-impossible to work out which is which at any given time.
There's absolutely no indication anywhere in the game as to what each icon means, meaning that so far the community has been forced to deduce them through sheer trial and error. Given that the original post currently has over 21k upvotes, it's clear that even the most die-hard Souls fans agree this is a huge pain.
"Lmao not even the f***ing Wikipedia of the game knows what's going on," observed one commenter. I think that sums it up rather nicely.