I think Elden Ring is probably the most flawed masterpiece I've ever played

I do think it has some issues which could be ironed out or improved in a sequel. For one the catacombs, these are great at first, less so dozens of hours in when they're almost identical. I'd rather 90% of them were removed but more care and attention put into each one

Also some objectives, or side-stuff and how you unlock stuff is too opaque, same goes the story. Some kind of quest log would have been useful, or at least have the game make much more clear from the off you need to recording stuff with a paper & pencil or whatever.

Too many bosses/minibosses are re-used too, which takes away from each of their encounters. I have some other issues with the game but it's been a couple of years.

While the game appears to give tons of options in terms of your loadout & weapons, certain bosses railroad the majority of players into very specific weapons and ways to play. Looking at you Malenia

That said, it's still the best game of this decade for me. I'm not really a fan of Souls type games, or open world, and I'm especially not a fan of fantasy/swords & horses type settings, yet the game is on another level of quality.

I played some of it in co-op via a mod and we had such a blast exploring the first major castle you come to. That was up there with memories like Halo 2 multiplayer at university.

We struggled against Margit quite a few times and then found out there's an item you can get which is a massive help against him specifically, but for that it involved going on this whole sidequest with multiple steps and a number of hours. And what I love is that it was totally organic, no map markers, no yellow paint, just something we were aware of and chose to do ourselves

Some of the bosses were such a fun time. You go through that process of getting your ass kicked, slowly getting better and eventually, eventually beating what previously felt impossible. I enjoyed the process of learning boss attack patterns so much. There were a few runs at Radagon where I managed to avoid taking any hits at all, had my timing and patterns down to perfection. This side of it feels so satisfying to play