Elden Ring receives the best game award at the Japan Game Awards

Elden Ring represents developer FromSoftware at its beautiful, brilliant best. That applies not only to the game’s design but also to its worldwide reception. In fact, it’s already picking up awards in Japan.

The Japan Game Awards winners have been crowned, and Elden Ring received the coveted Grand Award, labeling it the organization’s choice for the best game of 2022. “This video game, featuring the dark fantasy world with overwhelming volume and quality, receives tremendous support from many users,” the group reasoned. “In the general votes, enthusiastic fans say, ‘it is no doubt this game is a masterpiece. Everything is awesome.'”

Elden Ring won big, and so did game director Hidetaka Miyazaki. He was the recipient of the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award, which is “given to individuals who have contributed to the development of the computer game industry.” Miyazaki’s work on Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice was also called out as having helped “establish an original genre” of games.

Taking the Game Designer’s Award (decided by a group of Japanese developers) was Inscryption, which was already a previous Game of the Year winner before being ported to PlayStation in 2022. Excellence Awards were also given out to titles like Resident Evil Village (Gamepur’s own Game of the Year 2021), Final Fantasy XIV’s Endwalker expansion, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, and more. Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl won an award for its strong performance outside of Japan, while Call of Duty: Vanguard was awarded for the inverse — being a foreign game that did well in Japan.

If all this award talk has you interested in trying out Elden Ring for yourself, we have plenty of guides to show you what to do and where to go first. For those who’ve already put some time into the game but need a little boost (not everyone can beat Malenia at Level 1), we also have a list of the best rune farming spots in Elden Ring.