Carbot Animation's Elden Ring

The feeling one gets after defeating a boss, they spent 1h+ fighting, is something, that no other game ever did, not even the Dark Souls trilogy. I consider all Dark Souls games great. Elden Ring trumps them by getting rid of boring and repetitive mechanics like the constant run-backs and replaced them by generally more difficult bosses, which is great, because you can have more tries per hour due to the Stakes of Marika in front of the boss doors. All in all a generational masterpiece.

The story is not as apparent as other singleplayer titles. The player can choose to follow the lore or simply focus on gameplay. However, the lore goes very deep if you choose to read through all item descriptions and scrolls, and adds tremendous value to the overall experience.