What does Elden Ring want from me, anyway?

It’s Shadow Of The Erdtree week (month?), so naturally we’ve been covering it a bit. I wrote about some discourse. I had some opinions. I tried to write some more, and in the process of doing that, I ended up having to confront my own thoughts on the base game, and why I’ve always felt at odds with a lot of the critical reception to it. I keep seeing very big words written about it, so thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to write a very small review.