Elden Ring's Underdark and Up to the Mountains

 It's amazing to me how sometimes in Souls games I'll find some very difficult route to the next "bonfire" only to realize there was a fantastic shortcut all along.

Following the defeat of the two bosses in Leyndell (which is not the final area of the game, though you might assume that when you start off) I took another tour around the city, eventually discovering the way forward (it was in a direction I expected, though I'm glad I hung back and beat the area's bosses, as I needed an item off them to continue).

Following the defeat of Starscourge Radahn, I followed up with Ranni's quests at Ranni's Rise. I have to say, as the prerequisites for the secret ending, these are more involved than the Lord of Hollows ending for Dark Souls III (which I haven't actually ever gotten, because I still haven't taken down Midir or Gael, and thus haven't gone on to the Soul of Cinder).

One thing I'm really appreciating about Elden Ring is that it is genuinely easier (so far) than Dark Souls III. With the exception of the Draconic Tree Sentinel (whom you need to beat to get into Leyndell, unless there's some alternate route) I haven't ever really felt "stuck" on a boss. Rennala took me a few attempts (and ultimately I co-op'd it) but I've been able to take down most bosses in just 2-5 attempts, which I think is a pretty good sweet spot for challenging but not infuriating. I am playing a ranged character, of course, so I might be skewing things a little.

Anyway, Ranni's quests take you on a fairly extensive quest chain through Elden Ring's Underdark-equivalent, where you travel through ancient, ruined cities where, weirdly, the most dangerous foes are giant spheres (that you can usually wedge into a doorway so you can take potshots).

I do think that I'd recommend every character get some ranged capability. I think I might make a Samurai as my next character and see if I can make archery a viable primary combat option.

Anyway, Ranni's quest chain eventually has you fight a very eldrtich-looking alien monster, which wasn't terribly difficult. Far more difficult was the Lake of Rot that you need to cross before you can face it. This is basically a test to see how fast you can run across a horrific, pink-and-red lake of awfulness filled with basilisks (which, traumatizingly, have the same model more or less as they did in the Dark Souls games).

Something like 30 hours in and I have to say this is a remarkable achievement on the part of FromSoft. I'm skeptical as always about open-world games, and I don't think the game escapes all of that genre's pitfalls (the biggest being the overwhelming sense that there's an infinite number of things to do) but I also think that the open-world aspect of the game softens the hard edges of the Souls-like genre - there is so much to do that you can usually find something that is fairly manageable.