I played Elden Ring wrong for two years

How far have you made it in a video game before you realized you were playing it wrong?

I started Elden Ring on launch day in 2022. I made it all the way to the Fire Giant and Commander Niall before I found out my build was busted… in 2024. Two years and 200 hours of gameplay later.

Anyway, I fixed it, AND I’M NOW THE BEST PLAYER IN THE WORLD!!

No, I still kinda suck. Obviously.

But why was I having such a hard time, and why did I spend 200 hours playing a game I’m bad at? Learn from my story.

First, some context: I’m not good at games. Some people are surprised by this. And other people are like… Of course you’re bad at games… you’re a games journalist…

ANYWAY, this is important. Because I’ve always loved games, but I didn’t grow up with consoles. I played PC games like Age of Empires 2 and Fable… 2. And while my brother spent many hours getting proficient at Counter-Strike when we were teens, I spent a lot of time doing missions with my real-life friends in City of Heroes. Gender!

All this to say, in my ripe old age, dexterity is something I struggle with. Which doesn’t mean I don’t have fun; it just means that people get mad when they have to watch me play!

I had a lot of appreciation for what FromSoft was bringing to the table, though, especially after my coworker Pat made a whole big video about how much modern action games have been influenced by Dark Souls’ design.

But I had no hands-on experience with FromSoft games themselves.

So when I started playing Elden Ring, it did not surprise me that it was DIFFICULT! FromSoft games are hard; it’s one of the few things I knew going in. Also that this one had a horse. Kinda.

I countered the difficulty by adopting an aggressively resigned mindset. I was gonna die. So what. I will die… and I will die again… and I will persevere, because that’s what these games are about... probably?

But I ended up making things a lot more difficult than necessary, and it all stemmed from my assumptions about what it means to play a FromSoft game “correctly.”

I wasn’t naturally as good at it as people who had already played FromSoft games, and I let that drive me… to madness.

Check out the video above to find out all the myriad and incredibly dumb ways I managed to increase the difficulty of an already difficult game. And if you’re not subscribed to Polygon on YouTube... do that! You’ll see more videos from me, and from people who are better at video games than me.