Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

Big and beautiful, but empty world. Frustrating boss fights (bugged hitboxes, huge performance drops during specific attacks). If you are not a souls games psychofan I’d not recommend the expansion.

Bayle Vaile Bayle Oh Terror incarnate There’s Life In Me Yet I Will Soon Feast Upon Your heaaaaarrt Maaark My Word You Too Shall Know Feaaaarrrrrrrrr

This is not even a dlc. It’s a whole ass game by itself , and I loved every part of it.

Not as good as the main game and certainly not as good as the gaming journalists or fanboys would have you believe.

The open world and some of the locations are great, but the game feels big for the sake of being big at times, with certain areas feeling underutilized. Traversal can be annoying in parts, especially when you’re looking at the map and trying to figure out how to reach the next location, usually below a cliff that you’re standing on.

The bosses feel overtuned and overpowered in some aspects, especially with their combos seemingly never ending. They are also extremely aggressive right off the bat, which would be fine for some but it seems to exist solely to punish players for summoning rather than anything else.

The final boss feels especially unfair due to his combos, aoe attacks and general overpoweredness in terms of damage and health. I’m sure you’ve all seen people comment on this already so I don’t need to go into detail. I’ll add that the framerate issues and certain other issues present in the game certainly don’t help during boss fights such as this one.

Finally, there is the new leveling/ash system where you are “forced” to go around the map looking for these arbitrary items. Firstly, this is sort of a fuck you to the players who spent time in the original game, exploring, fighting, mastering the game and leveling up. It makes the entire system of getting stronger in Elden Ring (and other Souls games before it) feel completely meaningless. Secondly, these items sort of force you to explore the map and go everywhere. What I mean by this is that the exploration doesn’t feel authentic anymore as you’re not spurred to do it by your own volition or desire but instead by a forced mechanic.

Even if you explore the locations yourself, these ashes are so inconsistent and can appear in many different places and forms. At a certain point, an average person will just open a wiki guide and go from point to point on the map, collecting these items. It stalls progression in an artificial way, doesn’t add anything of substance to the game, and simply feels like a way for the developers to pad out the length of the DLC, which is certainly something this type of game doesn’t need.

All in all, I am giving this DLC a 7/10.

I'm biased as hell there's like so many stinker bosses but the overall experience was so awesome I can't give it anything less than a 10

From software average W