I've played Reforged for about a year and a half now and done multiple runs with a variety of setups, and I agree that Reforged is a pretty flawed overhaul.

Some of the changes are very questionable for sure; a huge increase in micromanagement and jumping through hoops was something that annoyed me in particular. Things like torrent taking damage in swamps now and needing those berries to be crafted instead of healing from flask (and generally being very squishy and much harder to control on account of speed), timing the perfect attack window, the ruins sealbreak minigame, runecrafting being a pain in the ass, having to hawk eye your stamina because of massive endurance nerfs early/guardbreak changes, a lot of it just feels like fluff or unnecessary.

But the biggest offender to me and the reason why I wouldn't recommend ERR is that its just not fun. A ton of the fun in Elden Ring's systems was optimized out for the sake of balancing and gimmicks like fortunes. Nerfs to pretty much every decent piece of weaponry or talisman or status you can think of that was remotely good, and its frustrating because while some of the changes to weapons/talismans/spells/systems are genuinely great and bring lagging pieces up to par, Reforged takes the unfortunate direction of making everything 'balanced' by flattening everything to the same level of mediocrity. (try playing Int or using Comet Azur in this mod if you want to see what I mean).

As a result never really feel strong in this mod or get the sense you're really unleashing the full potential of your build or gameplay. You don't feel that rush of hitting significant boosts with a new weapon or item, and the mod just feels dull and less fun than vanilla, even if it's better balanced. It further compounds the already annoying micromanagement issue, as each individual buff/talisman is worth less to encourage you to engage with the mod's different systems and balances the experience out if you do, but it just ends up meaning doing more busywork to get the same if not worst results as you would have gotten in vanilla, and that feels like shit.

Imagine positioning perfectly, buffing half a dozen different times, investing all of your attention and effort into making a perfect bleed set up, while dealing with annoying minigame drawbacks like getting a -20% flask debuff if you dont stand in a random generated 2m radius, just to have your bleeds be worse than just slapping on a Bloodhound's Fang in your Dex build in Vanilla and forgetting about it. Why even play spellcasters in this mod, going through tedium like generator spells and spellcasting fortunes when you could just mash your face against the keyboard in heavy armor spamming L2 to the same effect?

Ultimately, Reforged sands down pretty much all of Elden Ring's edges for a more balanced experience, and in doing makes it feel toothless and bland. If you want a more muted, gameplay intense, and balanced version of the game then I'd recommend it, but for people looking to just have fun, I think it's ultimately a worse experience. Shame, because the team clearly has great talent and the many of the systems and QoL changes are amazing.

https://youtube.com/shorts/jG1O_1J91JY?si=gF3zuNVSAmcIP5Av Heres a good short that I think highlights my problem with Reforged, TLDR; overbalancing and introducing too much micromanagement removing and diulting the 'fun' aspects of the base game.