With the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion fast approaching, I figured this would be a pretty good time to play through Elden Ring for the umpteenth time and do a bit of a retrospective. However, instead of just gushing about how awesome the game is, I'd instead like to talk about some of its major shortcomings and how they could be fixed - either in the DLC or whatever the next Souls game might be.

This is obviously going to be very subjective as what one person finds annoying another might find utterly captivating. So before you get mad at me, just remember that all of this comes from a place of love. After all if I wasn't a massive fan of Elden Ring, and Souls games in general, I wouldn't have spent the past couple of weeks redoing the entire game in order to get into a proper mood for the new DLC.

Before we begin, I just have to say that I've intentionally kept myself in the dark when it comes to Shadow of the Erdtree as I believe that Souls games are best experienced blind. So if FromSoftware has already announced that they're fixing some of the issues I'll be outlining, I'm perfectly happy looking like a fool as I genuinely do want to see Elden Ring thrive. And without further ado, let us begin in no particular order:

Video version of this retrospective (~14 minutes)

1) Overly repetitive bosses

Given how absurdly vast Elden Ring's world is, it's perfectly reasonable to have a couple of repeat bosses and reused enemies. In fact, if done well these rematches can be an immensely positive experience as smashing a boss that previously gave you trouble is not only highly cathartic, but also something that helps illustrate just how far your skills have progressed.

Unfortunately, Elden Ring does not do this well. Instead of relying on a couple of choice repeats, Elden Ring likes to throw the exact same bosses at you over and over and over again. Sometimes they might get an additional element to one of their attacks, but it's never enough to actually change how you approach the fight. It also doesn't help that instead of repeating some of its more interesting bosses, Elden Ring seems obsessed with duplicating the easy or visually messy ones like the Ulcerated Tree Spirit. I swear I must've fought that thing over 10 times in my latest playthrough, and it most definitely isn't a boss I would've chosen for such an honor!

As such, I really hope that in the future FromSoftware will prioritize quality over quantity. I'd rather go a few hours without bosses and then face off against someone memorable like Malenia rather than just plough through a horde of underwhelming, throwaway bosses where wrestling with the camera is the real challenge.

Despite beating a ten of them, I still can't tell what's actually happening in these fights

2) Uninspired side dungeons

Staying on the same topic, the side dungeons in Elden Ring are an excellent idea that's completely ruined by relentless repetition. The vast majority of the dungeons are just a gauntlet of the same few enemies in the same few locations, topped off with the same few bosses. Combine this with generally mediocre rewards and little story relevance, and you end up with something that sounds like it should be a highlight of the game, but is in reality mostly just flavorless filler.

Much like the bosses, it's not the reused assets that are the problem, but rather the very uninspired way they were cobbled together. For example, the 'secret' dungeon at the very start of the game utilizes the same tileset and enemies as many, many, many other dungeons, yet thanks to its deviously intricate design it's one of the most memorable dungeons in the entire game. It took me nearly an hour to complete it on my first go around, and it was such a harrowing yet exciting adventure that I still get giddy thinking about it.

So once again, I hope FromSoftware will focus on making the side-content just as detailed as the main stuff, even if this does mean that there will be less of it. I doubt anyone would really complain if we got an open world that's smaller in size, yet brimming with all sorts of interesting crevices, caverns and crypts to crawl into.

You'll probably see this exact hallway a dozen times if you're doing side dungeons

3) Wonky difficulty curve

While I do love Elden Ring for giving us the opportunity to explore its world in whichever way we please, this freedom does bring with it a very serious problem - the difficulty curve is a mess! If you spend any notable amount of time exploring side areas you're inevitably going to find yourself overleveled and overpowered, all the way until the Mountaintops of the Giants near the very end of the game.

This is a massive shame because bosses like Morgott are well designed and genuinely a lot of fun to fight if you're not just blasting through their health bar within seconds. Alas, the only way to experience them like this is to either intentionally gimp yourself or just ignore the side attractions, neither of which is something I find particularly fun.

So in the future I'd like to see a more natural difficulty curve that really emphasizes that 'challenging but fair' aspect of the series that I love so very, very much. Maybe the side areas can offer cosmetic items, armor and weaponry rather than heaps of runes, or maybe the bosses could have their stats adjusted based on your level. This is obviously a very complex issue to solve and I doubt there's a straightforward solution for it, but it's definitely a problem worth tackling as the wacky difficulty curve really does clash with the open world design.

Killing a midgame boss in three hits should never happen in a normal run

4) Gank squad bosses

Regardless of what Souls game we're talking about, my favorite boss fights are the ones that would be best described as an elaborate dance. Neither you nor your opponent have the advantage so you have to keep sizing each other up, occasionally striking in the hopes of catching the other by surprise, only to then immediately bounce right back out before the retaliatory strike. For example, this would be Artorias in Dark Souls or my personal favorite in Elden Ring - Godfrey.

The bosses I enjoy the least are the ones that just throw two fully fledged bosses at you, or even an entire gank squad of enemies. While previous Souls games had a couple of these, I never found the group bosses to be as pervasive or as annoying of an issue as I did in Elden Ring. The main reason for this? Well, unlike something like the gargoyles in Dark Souls, very few of Elden Ring's multi-boss encounters feel like they were designed to be fun on top of challenging.

I understand that these bosses can be made significantly easier through jolly co-operation or spirit ashes, but that's mostly because you can then ignore a good chunk of the fight's mechanics and simply burst down one of the bosses. Meanwhile if you choose to go solo, you can only really run around in a circle hoping that their pathfinding will get confused for long enough to give you some breathing room. Because of this, I didn't enjoy a single multi-boss encounter in Elden Ring. They were challenging, sure, but I just didn't find them particularly fun.

As such, I really do hope that Shadow of the Erdtree and future Souls games will do their best to make bosses unique and exciting on their own, rather than have them rely on sheer numbers to make up for otherwise lackluster or easy to counter movesets.

Who doesn't love constantly running around in a circle to unstick the bosses...

5) Cryptic and convoluted quests

While many of the things I've mentioned so far can be argued against, I doubt many people will disagree with me when I say that Elden Ring's quest system sucks. The NPCs move randomly across the map and stand in weird locations. You're also rarely told where to go and what to do, so unless you're using a wiki it can be incredibly easy to miss entire questlines.

To make matters worse, there is no journal system to let you keep track of who's who and what they're trying to do. This is especially annoying for explorers like me since some characters only appear once every ~20 hours, so by the time you see them again you've likely forgotten all of the finer details about them.

That said, I don't want to see the cryptic nature of these characters and questlines removed. Rather, I would like better in-game directions so, with a bit of effort, even a non-obsessive player will be able to see them through to completion. Bonus points if there's also an in-game glossary and journal so we can reference previous dialogue and events at a moment's notice - something that would also be quite handy for people coming back after an extended break.

Even Melina can disappear for dozens of hours if you go exploring

6) Lacking open world rewards

I mentioned previously how the side dungeons often have mediocre rewards, and unfortunately this same problem extends to the open world as well. Since everyone can go everywhere at any point, FromSoftware played it overly safe and made it so the open world itself is mostly devoid of interesting rewards.

When you remove seeds and tears, the two items that directly improve your flasks and appear very rarely, most of what you'll find in Elden Ring's open world is low tier upgrade materials, some runes, enemies that generally drop a low amount of runes regardless of their difficulty level, and an overabundance of herbs that you've probably stopped picking up 30 hours ago. And this never changes. Even in the final areas of the game there's very little interesting loot to find outside of marked points of interest. In fact, unless you're an obsessive adventurer like I am you could very easily skip 70-80% of each mid and lategame zone without missing out on much of anything. Needless to say, this is a real shame since Elden Ring's world is beautiful and just begging to be explored.

So with Shadow of the Erdtree, and Souls games in the future, I'd like to see more unique thingamabobs hidden all throughout the world, and not just in one or two major locations in each zone. And mind you, these don't all have to be positive things. Even a trap chest that teleports you somewhere weird and gets you into trouble is a fun little treat to discover. Just please, anything other than a random corpse tucked away in a random corner of the map with only a random bit of runes in its pockets!

The sights really are gorgeous though!

7) Torrent deserves more love

Last and definitely least, we have an issue that probably bothers me and me alone, but this is my article so I thankfully get to talk about it. And my problem? Well, that would be Torrent.

First of all, it's important to make it clear that Torrent is a good boy! He makes navigating the world fun and interactive, he's great at getting you out of trouble, and most importantly of all, he can be used to Skyrim your way down sheer cliffs to unlock a bunch of 'totally intended' hidden shortcuts! As such, I'm sad that there just isn't any way to improve him. You as the player can go from a nobody to a literal god, yet poor ol' Torrent can never rise above his station.

So with Shadow of the Erdtree I really hope FromSoftware will expand his moveset, thus making exploration an even more enjoyable experience. I'd also love to see some new customization options. After all, 'Fashion Souls' is the true endgame of every Souls game, and getting Torrent in on the action is only fair! As an added bonus, these power-ups and cosmetics could potentially be found by beating various side dungeons or just somewhere in the open world, thus dispelling three of my problems at once!

At least we have mods to help out with the customization

Closing thoughts

And there you have it, seven of my biggest pet peeves with Elden Ring and seven issues that I hope to see at least somewhat resolved in Shadow of the Erdtree. Now, realistically, are they all going to be sorted out? Probably not given that some of them would require a drastic shift in Elden Ring's design, but even so I'm quite curious to see just how much Shadow of the Erdtree will elevate the base game.

To end all of this on a positive note because I have been ranting for a while, I would like to reiterate that Elden Ring is an amazing game. FromSoftware tried to do a whole bunch of new things, and while some of them may have failed, a whole lot more of them ended up being great! So while I do have some gripes with Elden Ring, the one thing I truly never want to see is FromSoftware playing it safe and sticking to conventions. Now that would be the greatest problem of them all!