Yes Elden Ring is flawed.
The Quest NPC and the lack of Pacing is confusiong in the first try. Dark Souls was the exact same but the world size makes it harder.
On the other side is a second or third run is more fun because you have alot of options in the open world.
I'll agree with this. NPC questlines in Demon's and Dark Souls worked because the levels were a combination of a). mostly contained, b.) intended to be played in more of a specified order, and c.) integrated more into a central hub(s). You could still easily miss NPCs or fail their quests, sure, but at least it was relatively straightforward to encounter them again to continue their quests. Elden Ring's huge open world format doesn't really work for this - it's so easy to entirely miss NPCs or have forgotten about their quest by the time you see them again. Like, it's cool that you can discover different NPCs on different playthroughs...but if I don't have time for that, I'd like to encounter them without using a guide or spending countless hours re-exploring the map.
In other news, what even was the point of this thread... Oh, right. Hmmm, should Larian make a game that is more similar to Elden Ring? Eh probably not, but seeing their attempt would be interesting at least.
