I'm playing Elden Ring for the first time alongside an experienced player guiding me through everything.

I am incredibly impressed with how they clearly put so much time and energy into the combat. The models, the animation, the different types of attacks, the tuned numbers. It is an incredible feat of game design.

So i'm just as equally baffled as to why they decided to have like 30% of the gameplay be platforming, when jumping around feels like knock-off PS1 or N64 platformer. It feels like someone tried to recreate Mario 64 as a mod in Skyrim. Or if someone tried to make a whole sniping stealth game in GTA3.

They put all of that effort into one set of systems, then decided to throw that out the window in exchange for dank jank like 1/3rd of the time.