Elderborn is a first-person souls-like slasher with some basic RPG elements. It tries to be a mix of Dark Souls, Dark Messiah, and Skyrim (stiff combat), but unfortunately, it's nowhere as good as them. I can forgive below average visuals and a weak story, but the main dish - combat - is also not good.
The game is also super short. I was able to beat it in less than 4 hours on normal difficulty. You can try the NewGame+ if you really want, but it doesn't add anything interesting to the game.
In an endless wave of souls-likes, Elderborn is just yet another title that didn't deliver anything memorable. It has some elements that aren't bad, but they are buried beneath the mediocrity. I can't recommend it.

Story
The story is kept minimalistic and vague. A generic warrior man/woman tries to reclaim city from the evil. Some slashing and dashing later - oh no! The elders who gave us our quest are evil! No way! Dear authors... If you want to copy the way that Dark Souls tells its story, at least do it well... I couldn't care less about what was going on.

Gameplay
I'm confused by the reviews that claim that the gameplay in Elderborn is fun. Sure, it's not BAD bad, but it's also not engaging at all.
I'll start with the combat. It's extremely simple, with light attacks, heavy attacks, block, parry, kick, and dash. There are no directional attacks, so most of the time you're just smashing light attacks with some dashes and kicks. Be aware that your attacks can whiff when you're too close to the enemy. I'm not sure if this is intended or not, but it can be annoying when using sickles or katars. What's worse, the attack animations are floaty. It makes the attacks feel slower and less powerful, which can be detrimental when fighting more than one enemy.
There are dozens of weapons to find - slow greatswords and maces, fast sickles and katars, spears with higher range, and more "universal" 1-h swords. You'll find something for your playstyle for sure.
The mobs are beyond stupid. You can easily cheese them, especially if you have the high ground. You can easily "read" their next attack because they have so few of them. They also often don't react to getting hit/kicked. The bosses are also a joke - all three of them.
Whoever was responsible for level design did an awful job with it. The locations are simple in layout, but (somehow) it's still hard to navigate through them. The tunnels of the first map weren't as bad, but the city was insanely irritating.
Similarly to other titles from the souls-like genre, you'll lose the XP when you die (you can retrieve it). There are also limited potions, "bonfires" where you can respawn enemies, and attack-to-heal from Bloodborne.
The RPG progression is super shallow. You can use your XP points to increase damage, attack speed, or hp by a tiny percentages. When you hit a certain threshold, you can buy perks (there are 9 of them; most of them are useless).

Visuals and Audio
Visually, there's nothing to talk about - bland, wannabe retro graphics. The location, enemies, and weapons designs are uninspiring at best, boring at worst.
The soundtrack is solid. Unfortunately, it rarely feels like it fits the game. For comparison: when you hear the Doom soundtrack, you know from which game it comes. Here? Not so much.

Technicalities
On top of the problems that I mentioned in the Gameplay section, there are other smaller issues. The indicators to parry are almost always wrong, so it's really hard to time them correctly. Even if you somehow parry correctly, there are moments where it doesn't block the incoming damage.
At least the performance is good. I didn't have any problems with achieving stable 144 FPS.

yeet

Need to Rip and Slash for 3 hours buy this game.