Tarnished State of Mind: A Love Letter to Elden Ring

One of my all-time favorite gaming experiences began on a drunken August night in 2025 while hanging out with one of my best friends. We were sitting in my living room and had just switched from Aperol Spritzes to Manhattans when Elden Ring came up. Again. For months, my friend had been pushing me to play it.

“If you like Breath of the Wild, you’re going to love Elden Ring,” he would say.

I had heard all the accolades: one of the best games of all time, one of the hardest games ever, and so on. I kept telling him I wasn't ready to dive into such an adventure. My video game playing was mostly limited to thirty-minute spurts nowadays. A couple rounds of Mario Kart. A game of No Return in The Last of Us Part II. Something I could pick up and put down. But he insisted. And on this particular drunken night, he finally convinced me to buy Elden Ring on my PS5. In my feel-good, drunken state, I clicked one of the most sacred words in gaming:

DOWNLOAD.

We came back to it thirty minutes later and booted up the game. The character creation screen was hazy, and my friend chose my character—a Confessor. I remember walking around an abandoned graveyard and encountering some spider-like beast. I died within seconds. I did the tutorial (at least my friend said I did… I barely remember it). Eventually, I told my friend I would play again when I was sober. He agreed.

The next morning, half hungover, I turned on my PS5 and found my character standing in an underground chamber. I made my way toward the light and eventually opened the doors to the world in front of me.

I was left breathless.

It created one of the greatest video game moments I've ever experienced: the first time I saw Limgrave. Before me was a landscape of rolling hills and crumbling structures. A giant knight, decked in golden armor, sat atop a stallion of equal size and poise, leisurely patrolling the open field. And of course, at the center of it all, was the Erdtree. That colossal golden tree that felt so close, yet so impossibly far away.

Then there was the music.

Oh, that wonderful Limgrave score.

The last time I experienced a video game moment like that was when Link emerged from the Shrine of Resurrection in Breath of the Wild and I was given that magnificent first view of Hyrule. It was the same feeling of possibility. That sense that there was an entire world in front of me, and I could go wherever I wanted.

I was ready to tackle the Lands Between.

I was ready to become Elden Lord.

I saw my first enemy, my first victim, right out of the gates. It was that giant golden knight leisurely pacing around on his enormous stallion. Surely, I thought, he would be my first kill. I lasted two swings and didn't hit him once. He slashed my ass, and I was introduced to the most iconic words in the Soulsborne genre:

YOU DIED.

I foolishly attempted him two more times. Same result. That's when I learned my first lesson in Elden Ring: if an enemy is too hard, you probably aren't ready to fight that enemy yet. So I walked out of his field of vision and truly began my quest.

Not far from the starting area, I found my first cave and inside, a pack of hungry wolves. I died a few times, but eventually, I slaughtered them all. A dark path led me deeper into the cave until I reached a wall of mist. I walked through.

My first boss.

The Beastman of Farum Azula.

This fucker almost made me quit the entire game. I easily died more than twenty times. I texted my friend and told him I couldn't do this, that this game wasn't for me. My friend texted back that I was exactly where I needed to be. Don't give up. Observe the Beastman's moves. Learn from your mistakes. Keep trying.

And so I did.

Each attempt brought a little more progress. I kept dying, but his health bar kept getting lower. Slowly, I began recognizing his attacks. I started understanding when I could roll and when I could strike. I stopped blindly swinging my weapon and started paying attention.

Then it happened.

I killed him.

I KILLED THAT MOTHERFUCKER.

I felt like a god.

And that was the first of many dopamine hits Elden Ring would give me. That is the beauty of Elden Ring, and Soulsborne games in general. That feeling. That euphoria when you've conquered a difficult boss or survived a ridiculously hard area. When you've learned from your mistakes after dying over and over again. You try a different sword. You roll to a different side. You take one swing instead of three. These games require patience. They punish rushing and they punish greed.

And when you finally succeed, the reward isn't just whatever item or runes the game gives you. The reward is knowing that you got better.

Limgrave was the perfect opening area. You have everything there that you will encounter throughout Elden Ring: swarms of enemies, difficult bosses, dragons, caves, catacombs, and castles. Oh, the castles. Two different, beautiful castles in Limgrave that have since become core gaming memories for me.

The scale of the world was unreal. I didn't know you could put so much into a single game. Tears of the Kingdom also pushed the boundaries in that regard, but the Lands Between felt so massive and varied that I constantly found myself wondering what could possibly be over the next hill. Every direction seemed to promise something new, and somehow, the game almost always delivered.

I was addicted.

All I wanted to do was return to the Lands Between and kill some inbred monsters. I wanted to jam a pike up a soldier's ass until it came out the other side, collect his runes, use them as currency, and level up. I wanted to ride my half-horse, half-goat steed across the fields, searching for enemies to kill. I wanted to discover more castles, more bosses, more weapons, and more armor. I wanted to watch my character become stronger and stronger as I moved closer to my ultimate goal: becoming Elden Lord.

And I did all of that.

Then one day, after more than 200 hours of gaming, I finished Elden Ring.

And I knew gaming would never be the same for me.

I would thirst for more Souls. More challenges. More seemingly impossible obstacles that I would have to overcome. I needed to play the games that came before this one. So I went back to the beginning, to the game that made the genre famous.

Dark Souls.

But that is another post for another time.

For now, I can say this: Elden Ring is my favorite video game of all time. And with its arrival on the Nintendo Switch 2, I am more than happy to return to the Lands Between.

Arise now, ye Tarnished. Ye dead, who yet live. The call of long-lost grace speaks to us all!