Game Journal: Elden Ring

Jotting down my thoughts on my third playthrough of Elden Ring and the new expansion.

Nicholas Thien Min Jit

25 Jun 2024 — 3 min read

The Game Journal series is a throwback to the days when Let’s Play were in a written format and not hour long YouTube streams. I don’t write reviews for a living but I still want to share my thoughts and experiences of a game the only difference is that these opinions come as I play through the game.

Side Note: If you’re familiar with the game, the earlier screenshots might seem to be taken from areas a little further along into the game and you’d be right. I decided to do this “blog my progress thing” after I had already started the game and didn’t get screenshots from the beginning. But hopefully after a while they’ll start to match.

I decided to head back into the world of Elden Ring. I’m pretty excited for the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, but I hadn’t had the chance to purchase it yet. I’m still waiting to get the physical edition that comes with the DLC to add to my collection. Although, I’ve heard through the grapevine that the DLC is just a redemption code, I’m hoping that at the very least the game data on the disc will be the most up-to-date version.

New Elden Ring loading screens — Even if you don’t have the DLC, new loading screens have been added to the base game that are from the new DLC.

Another roadblock that stopped me from purchasing the new DLC immediately, besides the fact that all my toons are now on their NG++ campaign, is that to access the new DLC area, the Shadow Realm, I need to defeat Mohg, Lord of Blood (not to be confused with Mohg, the Omen) and interact with the caccooned body of Miquella. While defeating Mohg is not an issue, he is however one of late game bosses in the game. Which means a significant time investment to reach him from the beginning of the game and if I were to do it on NG++ that would further extend the time it would take me to get to Mohg. Since I had to replay the game anyways, I might as well make my life a little easier by starting the game over from scratch.

Was influenced by the show *Shogun* to roll a samurai class this time around.

Typically when I start a new Souls game, I go with whatever that games’ equivalent of a Quality build (weapons that scale equally with both the strength (STR) and dexterity (DEX) stats) so that I could go with what I felt were the most balanced weapons in the game. Not too fast, but not too slow. In the past, I would stick with this through the whole game. However, in Elden Ring as I made my way through my first playthrough, I slowly gravitated to the Bloodhound’s Fang and then finally to the Greatsword when I reached the final 2 legacy dungeons of the game. I felt that having the ability to stagger enemies quickly as well as having the long reach of the Greatsword combined with the Mimic Tear Ashes was my recipe for success in Elden Ring and I continued to use that set up through NG+ as well.

Horseback riding, a katana in your hand, it’s just you against the world.

As my build was mostly STR focused previously, I decided in this new playthrough to go DEX. I had just finished another playthrough of Bloodborne and watched the first season of Shogun, so I was in a little bit of Samurai kick. But if you think choosing a class that specs towards DEX you’d have a toon that was specialized in very quick attacks. I tell you now, that was not the case. Even two handing the Uchigatana did not significantly speed up my attacks. And coming off a playthrough of quick strikes, rushing in tactics and just all around aggressive gameplay of Bloodborne, it was a rude wake up call when I got killed by the tutorial boss of Elden Ring.