Sporting some of the highest player numbers on the Steam platform, Elden Ring seems to have lived up to its pre-launch hype. With an open world filled to the brim with content, gameplay indicative of the Souls franchise, as well as an incredibly deep lore and story, Elden Ring is certainly a Game of the Year candidate in the making.
Much of the game's success can be attributed to its new take on Souls games: its open world nature makes it a much more accessible title than previous FromSoftware games. Encounters like Elden Ring's sleeping dragon reward players heavily for exploration, allowing them to become incredibly powerful before facing the game's main bosses.
It goes without saying that FromSoftware has a track record for making incredibly challenging boss fights. The fights vary heavily in Elden Ring specifically, with bosses like the Tree Sentinel and Elden Ring's Crucible Knight providing insane challenges early into a new game. Perhaps the greatest challenge many players have faced so far is the game's first story boss, Margit, The Fell Omen.
Y'all MFers had me SO scared of Margit, that I grinded to lvl 93 over like 40 hrs before even attempting... from Eldenring
This particular boss has been an incredibly hot topic on the internet due not only to its difficulty but also how early players could encounter it, making for one of the hardest FromSoftware encounters ever with all factors considered. Because of the gossip about the boss' difficulty, Reddit user robot_tron grew afraid of even attempting the boss, and thus decided to grind all the way to level 93 before their first attempt. While there are many ways to defeat Margit in Elden Ring, one simple way to defeat the boss is to heavily overlevel a character, and robot_tron is the perfect example.
One of the biggest arguments surrounding the game, especially after the network test, was the idea that the game looked too easy. In the network test, players were carving their way through the first area, finding powerful weapons, armor, and spells very early on. Although the final version of the game took away many of these early advantages, it did leave the ability to become powerful through exploration. Robot_tron's overleveling is one example of this, while other examples exist such as Elden Ring's Rogier's Rapier weapon. Many have argued that Elden Ring and other games should have difficulty settings, but in truth systems in the game such as the ability to grow powerful early serve as a way to change difficulty as they allow players to make the game less tough through their actions.
It must be noted that robot_tron's level of 93 is an absurd level, especially considering they had not yet fought Margit. A character of much lower level would have a solid chance of completing most of the game, but a level 93 character could be one expected to have already beaten every boss. At this level of commitment, it would be safe to say that robot_tron may even achieve a 100% completion rating in Elden Ring.
Elden Ring is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.