I’ve been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don’t mind so much the fact that it’s different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I’m bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
Huge ds1/ds3 fan here. I can complete those multiple times in a row, without skipping any content and still find it enjoyable. I did one single playthrough of elden ring and that’s enough, too much filler content, I feel like a new playthrough would be just me riding torrent from an item to another on a giant map filled with content which I would have no incentive to interact with. All of this to make a build that I would use in some of the worst boss fights fromsoft ever designed. The wow factor made me enjoy that first run but there won’t be a second one.
I think that FromSoft created a great product, however something of this scale ultimately means that things will fall through the cracks. I’m with you that I got bored on replay, I still did it because the game does have its moments but ultimately it’s not something I’ll be going through like the souls games or sekiro (I don’t have bloodborne, PC gamer).
Shadow of the Erdtree improved things somewhat but, at the end of the day, it’s still Elden Ring. What I’m waiting for is FromSoft’s equivalent to Tears of the Kingdom. If they end up doing something like Elden Ring again, while taking inference from something like TotK, it has the potential to be one of the greatest games of all time.