Elden Ring

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Joan Rambo in Elden Ring.

Elden Ring two-sentence review: Medieval melee extravagance. Keep your balance while cutting, bashing, and magi-calling your way through a giganto-bestiary during a soft-spoken horror movie marathon where heroes cry.

I’m listing past streams of my disjointed Elden Ring playthrough, started alone, continued with my friend Arthur using the seamless co-op mod.

As the old African saying goes: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to far, go together. If you want to go far and fast, go as a duo, preferably with Arthur on your team!

I may write a longer review of this bloody beautiful game one sunny day, now that I’ve made my tortuous way to one of its endings. Thank you, Arthur, and also Josh, for carrying me!

Life too short for discovering everything in the game by yourself? Use this Elden Ring wiki and thank the gods, Nature, and Providence.


Into the final storm with an old friend.

High-hearted son of Tydeus, why ask of my generation?
As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity.
The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber
burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning.
So one generation of men grows while another dies … "
Trans. Lattimore (1951)

Homer, The Iliad, ~6.145 (see also Samuel Butler’s translation)


Elden Lord of ruins.

If you’ve immersed yourself in the principles of truth, the briefest, most random reminder is enough to dispel all fear and pain:

…leaves that the wind
Drives earthward; such are the generations of men.

Your children, leaves.

Leaves applauding loyally and heaping praise upon you, or turning around and calling down curses, sneering and mocking from a safe distance.

A glorious reputation handed down by leaves.

All of these “spring up in springtime”—and the wind blows them all away. And the tree puts forth others to replace them.

None of us have much time. And yet you act as if things were eternal—the way you fear and long for them.… Before long, darkness. And whoever buries you mourned in their turn.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 10.34, page 141


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