I played Elden Ring wrong for two years
A Polygon article chronicles one player’s unconventional two-year journey with FromSoftware’s Elden Ring. The author began playing at the game’s launch in February 2022, marking their first experience with a FromSoftware title. Despite accumulating over 200 hours of playtime, the player has yet to complete the game, having spent much of that time playing incorrectly due to self-imposed assumptions and anxieties about how the game should be approached.
The piece explores how misconceptions about FromSoftware game design and uncertainty about optimal strategies led the player astray, resulting in an inefficient and unnecessarily difficult experience. Rather than following conventional wisdom or the game’s intended design philosophy, the player’s assumptions drove them toward suboptimal playstyle choices that extended their journey significantly beyond what it might have been with better foundational understanding.