Dark Souls games and their successors are very demanding on your attention. The fundamental gameplay involves memorizing enemy telegraphs and then practicing your responses until they’re set in your muscle memory. Until you do, the game punishes you quite thoroughly. Elden Ring less so than the others, but if this ain’t your particular bag of tea then it likely going to be unpleasantly scalding.
I also wouldn’t call the game’s story great. Or even good. As a long time Armored Core player, I’m well acquainted with FromSoftware’s style of developing a lot of background lore and then never directly sharing any of it with the player, leaving it up to them to investigate and infer what is going on. But at least in AC, I knew who I was and what I was doing. I’m a mercenary giant robot combat pilot working for warring corporations in a post apocalyptic hellscape. Easy to grasp.
Elden Ring just tells you that you are Tarnished and want to become an Elden Lord? To which I reply: I’m a what? I want to do what now? Why? If the gameplay is something you enjoy, the mystery of it all and the truly fantastic art direction are probably enough to drive you forward, but I personally need a more digestible premise to get emotionally involved in such an opaque narrative.
