Finally bought Elden Ring…and I’m not sure it’s for me.

I’m at 118 minutes, so deciding if I want to refund.

I enjoy RPGs and open worlds, especially ones that have lots of things to find and explore, and where you become more powerful as you do so.

Maybe I’m just not good at souls-like games, but the timing of everything seems to be arbitrary. Sometimes I feel like I see an enemy make a move and it’s slow, and other times they triple hit me with no warning.

I am at what is essentially the start of the game by this big gate. There is a big monster guy through the gate I was able to get to about 1/2 health before I died. The other direction is a little encampment of soldiers where I snuck around and backstabbed a number of them, but then the captain guy kicked my ass. I have tried about 10 times to kill the captain and no matter how I try to roll, I end up flat footed and he comes in with a triple strike.

I’ve increased Vigor 2 times so far, and I figure I can kind of “farm” this little area and increase a bit more, but I doubt it’ll be enough to really help much, and it’ll just make my future upgrades for damage that much more expensive.

There are a zillion guides online, but most of them are about where to go and what to do and they assume you’re not getting killed by the first enemies you meet.

I played some Dark Souls and got to 4 kings before the edition I had basically shut down, and I’ve played a lot of Monster Hunter which has “slow weapons” but I am wondering if maybe this just isn’t going to click. I kept hearing that “even if you don’t like soulslike games this is still accessible” and I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong.

Edit; thanks for the massive amount of feedback and tips 🙂 I’m going to keep it and explore in the other direction and stop using “RPG logic” where I feel like I have to fight every enemy I see cause they might have something good or whatever. It was $35 which isn’t nothing, but that’s the same as a bottle of whiskey which is no good for my health anyway so I’ll skip drinking for a while and make myself lightheaded with the game instead 🙂