Elden Ring's early hours are genuinely challenging in ways that resolve into mastery. Players who quit at Margit miss a game that becomes dramatically more rewarding as builds crystallize. If you are not enjoying the loop but you are growing within it — if each failure teaches you something — patience is warranted. Friction that produces learning differs fundamentally from friction that produces only frustration.

If you have given a game six to ten hours and the loop itself is unpleasant rather than merely difficult, that is real information about fit. No game improves enough in hours 20 to 30 to justify suffering through hours 6 to 20 if nothing about the experience is holding you. Critical consensus is not a mandate.