Is Elden Ring really the best game of the last decade?

[Forge89]

Elden Ring swept basically every major game of the year award and keeps getting cited as the defining game of the last decade, praised for combining FromSoftware's genuinely demanding combat with an open world structure that finally gave players real freedom in exploration order. Millions of copies sold and a genuinely massive ongoing community suggest the acclaim wasn't just critic hype either. Curious whether people think it actually earns that decade defining reputation or whether something else deserves the crown instead

The counterargument usually points to games like Breath of the Wild arguably doing the open world reinvention first and more elegantly, or The Last of Us Part II pushing narrative ambition further even if it proved genuinely divisive among players. Elden Ring's genuinely brutal difficulty also locked plenty of players out entirely from ever finishing it. Feels like a real tension between critical acclaim, commercial success and actual accessibility

What's your actual pick for the best game of the last ten years. Genuinely curious how people are weighing all these different factors here

[Zoe90]

Still think Elden Ring earns it specifically because of how the game respects player intelligence, giving almost zero hand holding while still remaining genuinely fair if you actually pay attention to its systems.

That trust in the player is genuinely rare in modern game design. Nothing else this decade demanded and rewarded that level of attentiveness quite as consistently

[NeutrinoX54]

Breath of the Wild still gets my vote honestly, mostly for doing the open world freedom thing genuinely first among the two, giving players real physics based systems to experiment with rather than just an open map to explore. Elden Ring built brilliantly on that foundation but didn't necessarily invent it. Innovation should count for a lot in this specific debate

[AntiMatterX69]

Elden Ring's the correct pick for me mostly due to sheer cultural impact, the sheer volume of builds, lore theories and community content it generated over multiple years easily outpaces anything else released this decade. Cultural staying power matters as much as any individual technical achievement. Still actively discussed years after release which says a lot

[KeyboardWarrior]

Baldur's Gate 3 might honestly be the better pick for pure ambition, given how it managed to make player choice genuinely consequential at a scale most RPGs never even attempt seriously. Different genre than Elden Ring entirely though, which makes a direct comparison genuinely tricky. Depends heavily on which specific genre's achievements you value most

[PhaseShift]

Hades honestly deserves consideration too, for how it managed to make repeated failure genuinely feel like meaningful narrative progress rather than pure frustration. Smaller scope than Elden Ring but arguably tighter and more focused as a complete experience. Scope shouldn't automatically win over pure craft and cohesion

[Kane72]

Red Dead Redemption 2 deserves serious consideration too, purely for the sheer density and attention to detail in the world building, even if the pacing genuinely frustrated some players early on. Different kind of achievement than Elden Ring's combat and exploration focus entirely. Depends what you're actually rewarding as the defining quality

[ParallelSelf50]

The Last of Us Part II deserves way more credit in these debates than it usually gets, purely for how uncomfortable and genuinely divisive it was willing to be with its own narrative choices. Elden Ring never really challenges players emotionally the same way. Different kind of ambition and arguably a braver one