Honestly? I just let the hype train roll me into the steam store. Not gonna pretend it was a smart decision, certainly not gonna advise anyone else do it.
What were the serious technical flaws at launch? I remember some performance issues but nothing super serious.
Fair enough, tbh. A little bit of hype is always nice.
I struggled a fair bit. Performance hit me hard with really bad stutter in particular during some early boss fights, I also had weird CTDs after the first patch, and of course it has the good ol partially-hardcoded key bindings were trying to use alternative input schemes such as cursors, ESDF or truly alternative input devices is a no-go. Though these days I find it difficult to criticize any specific game for that, I hate how ubiquitous this problem has become. Like CP2077 still has it after so many years, Avatar Frontiers of Pandora has it, etc etc.
Oh, and one big one I just recalled: The online would disconnect, but without telling me. This wasn't always bad, but the game would not realize it's no longer online, so sometimes it "stalled" trying to check something online. Never found out what caused that, it was gone after some patch. Long story short I waited a fairly long time, then played it after a bunch of patches when it was mostly - sadly not entirely - fine. And loved it. :)
There were no issues at launch.
Several side quests were unfinished or broken at launch, weren't they?
Not for me or anyone I know. Could have been, but I’d never seen anything not working.
I think I'm remembering this early patch that finished several questlines that seemed to just end:
Honestly? I just let the hype train roll me into the steam store. Not gonna pretend it was a smart decision, certainly not gonna advise anyone else do it.
What were the serious technical flaws at launch? I remember some performance issues but nothing super serious.
Fair enough, tbh. A little bit of hype is always nice.
I struggled a fair bit. Performance hit me hard with really bad stutter in particular during some early boss fights, I also had weird CTDs after the first patch, and of course it has the good ol partially-hardcoded key bindings were trying to use alternative input schemes such as cursors, ESDF or truly alternative input devices is a no-go. Though these days I find it difficult to criticize any specific game for that, I hate how ubiquitous this problem has become. Like CP2077 still has it after so many years, Avatar Frontiers of Pandora has it, etc etc.
Oh, and one big one I just recalled: The online would disconnect, but without telling me. This wasn't always bad, but the game would not realize it's no longer online, so sometimes it "stalled" trying to check something online. Never found out what caused that, it was gone after some patch. Long story short I waited a fairly long time, then played it after a bunch of patches when it was mostly - sadly not entirely - fine. And loved it. :)
There were no issues at launch.
Several side quests were unfinished or broken at launch, weren't they?
Not for me or anyone I know. Could have been, but I’d never seen anything not working.
I think I'm remembering this early patch that finished several questlines that seemed to just end:
https://www.bandainamcoent.com/news/elden-ring-patch-notes-v1-03
But it was fixed how quickly? This doesn’t stand as a reason to not preorder if someone wants to.