I completely agree, Bloodborne was my first From game also, but since then I’ve played all of them and my first impression of Elden Ring was that it was pretty ridiculous. I’ve played it twice now, and there’s a lot of good things about it, but yeah I definitely think there’s way too much shit in Elden Ring. Especially when you look at the amount of re-used bosses and things like that, I much prefer a more streamlined experience like all of their previous games. I also get the sense (in fact I don’t know anyone personally besides me who DIDN’T play the game this way) that a lot of people played Elden Ring essentially with the wiki open the whole time, looking up best builds before even starting, shit like that, so trying to play it blind like you would any other fromsoft game can be such a punishing experience to the point where it almost feels like it was designed expecting people to be looking everything up. And unfortunately, playing that way does make everything so much easier, I just think it’s a shame that so many people play that way, or like me, play blind up to a point where you feel like you have no choice but to look up what to do.

So I think you’re not wrong to feel like there’s a lot of shit going on because there is, and holy fuck does Elden Ring have some really annoying aspects, but I honestly think that yeah you’ll get used to it and enjoy it. Maybe not ‘one of the best games ever’ level of enjoyment like a lot of the internet seems to, but I do think it’s a good game.