Ep. 042: Elden Ring
You Gotta Get Good. Then It Gets Good.
Elden Ring won Game of the Year in 2022, sold over 25 million copies, and generated enough discourse to sustain entire corners of the internet for years after launch — which means that by the time Alex and Luke finally sat down to play it for Low Five Gaming, the game had already been mythologized. That's a strange position to start from: arriving at something the culture has already processed, carrying the weight of everyone else's opinions before the opening cinematic finishes. Both hosts came in as FromSoftware first-timers, both on Xbox Series X, both aware of exactly how much ground they were walking into blind. What they found was not quite the game they'd been told about, and not quite the obstacle course they'd quietly feared — but something more unsettling than either: a game that required them to change before it would give anything back.
Three years late and fully aware of it — that's how Low Five Gaming arrives to Elden Ring, and honestly, it might be the correct way to show up. The discourse has settled, the DLC has dropped, the subreddit has had time to calcify into lore. Two brothers, both FromSoftware first-timers, both on Xbox Series X, both starting from absolute zero. No builds researched in advance. No scouting runs. Just the Lands Between and whatever punishment it decided to hand out that day.
Elden Ring was developed by FromSoftware and released February 25th, 2022, directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki with world-building contributions from George R.R. Martin — who Luke suspects was mostly hired to invent proper nouns starting with G, and who has clearly never been happier to have a distraction. It holds a Metacritic score of 96, making it one of the highest-rated games ever released. HowLongToBeat cites a standard playthrough at around 60 hours, which Luke, 60-to-70 hours deep with two legacy dungeons cleared and a third of the map unlocked, describes as the biggest lie in the database.
The two hosts came to the game differently. Luke had something Alex didn't: a network. A friend named Aaron gave him an early map and some sanity-preserving early-game guidance. A parallel-playing friend named Ace provided real-time commiseration as they hit the same walls at roughly the same time. And then there's Luke's student — a kid with 500 hours logged who functions as a walking wiki, able to name bosses, explain dialogue, and produce quest solutions on demand. Alex, by contrast, had the internet. He Googled "when does Elden Ring become fun?" He is not the first person to have Googled this. He found a Reddit thread. It helped. Their one co-op session — Luke summoned in to help Alex through a boss chokepoint, right before a random online invader materialized and mopped the floor with both of them — turned out to be the session that made the game click for Alex. Before that, he'd been bouncing off every direction and questioning every decision. After that, he was in.
What they both found on the other side of the learning curve is a game that rewards patience in ways that feel genuinely rare. The enemy variety alone stood out to Luke as something he'd never encountered at this density — not the same five Skyrim trolls cycling in rotation, but genuinely new creatures in every region, each requiring its own approach, each capable of catching you off guard even when you're overleveled. The art direction is a masterclass in environmental storytelling: the map is stripped of clutter but legible enough that a distant shape on the horizon reliably means something interesting is over there, which is exactly the promise Breath of the Wild made and the closest comparison either host kept reaching for. The rune system — lose them on death, recover them if you can get back to the spot, lose them forever if you die again — turns out to be a mechanic both hosts ended up respecting, even after some egregiously ill-timed falls wiped out bags worth grinding for. The messages other players leave on the ground are, by overwhelming consensus, dick jokes. Alex took a while to figure that out.
The grievances are real and specific. The lack of a pause button is the only thing either host considers genuinely unforgivable — Luke had a furnace emergency, Alex had firemen walking through his house, and the game did not care about any of it. The quest design operates on a frequency that requires either a second monitor full of guides or the willingness to miss entire storylines entirely, and the summoning system took a YouTube tutorial, a wiki tab, and the start menu running simultaneously before it worked. Luke notes, with some affection, that this is supposedly the most accessible FromSoftware game. Alex finds that information harrowing.
Luke rates it 4.75 out of 5 — he wanted to give it a 9.5 out of 10, and the conversion to five-point scale was the only compromise he'd accept. He would place it in his all-time top ten after beating it. The no-pause deduction is non-negotiable. Alex gives it a 4 out of 5: not his game of the year, not his natural genre, but a game he respects and intends to keep chipping away at in the right mindset — which is, he's concluded, the only mindset that works. They recommend it to anyone who knows what they're signing up for. If you're FromSoftware-curious, this is the entry point. If you need to pause, they have some bad news.
For Side Quests: Alex has been 15 hours into Pokémon Emerald on a new Anbernic handheld, having spent a heroic two hours running dual emulators on his PC to trade all three starters with himself — only to later discover he could have bred them in-game. He also picked up a PS3 off eBay and has been playing Little Big Planet, and has a PlayStation Classic running upscaled through emulators on PC. He got about 40 minutes into Final Fantasy VII and is thinking about Chrono Trigger. Luke has been dipping into Rogue Prince of Persia on Steam Deck — early access, from the Dead Cells team, more platformer-focused than its predecessor, worth watching for a sale or the 1.0 release. He also finished Anthony Bourdain's ghost book (cool art, not recommended), the graphic novel Blankets, and is deep into East of West, a 10-part series whose ninth volume he cannot locate anywhere. He received TMNT: The Last Ronin from Alex for Christmas and has thoughts. Both are anticipating the next one.
This episode is unofficially brought to you in part by Banging with the Bros — specifically Luke's men's retreat, which involved Settlers of Catan, a card game called Bang, no vegetables, and a level of wholesomeness that surprised everyone involved.
Elden Ring is available on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, and PC. Find the full episode wherever you pod, and come share your builds — or your grievances — in the Discord.
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More Low Five Gaming Episodes You Might Like
If Elden Ring clicked for its demanding combat and slow-burn mastery curve, these episodes explore games that reward patience, build experimentation, and learning systems the hard way.
Hollow Knight and Silksong — Hollow Knight channels that same “earn every inch” progression, pairing punishing encounters with exploration that only opens up once you’ve truly learned the game.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom — A different tone, but TOTK shares Elden Ring’s trust in the player, offering a systems-driven world where curiosity and experimentation lead the experience.
Cyberpunk 2077 — While less punishing, Cyberpunk echoes Elden Ring’s build-first approach, letting players shape their experience through gear, skills, and playstyle decisions.
