My return to The Lands Between was one marked with awe, failure, and triumph, to where Shadow of the Erdtree has become one of my favourite experiences of 2024.

(SPOILERS BELOW)

It’s been two years since Elden Ring was initially released. Back then, I dared not touch anything close to the idea of playing a “Soulsborne” game. Yet I persisted, and after almost 200 hours of grinding, fighting, raging, more fighting, and eventually prevailing over the most insane & unique bosses in recent memory, I not only finished Elden Ring, but I ran through it three more times & added it to my Playstation platinum trophy collection. It was an amazing game, a once in a lifetime experience. Yet, here we are with Shadow of the Erdtree, an expansion two years in the making. From Software underestimated how insanely popular Elden Ring would get with mainstream gamers, so the hype was more than justified to see what Miyazaki & his team could conjure. In the end, I believe that Shadow of the Erdtree builds on the best qualities of Elden Ring, while also feeding into some of its more frustrating aspects of the franchise, for better and for worse.

The “Dark Souls” of DLC?

Ever since Shadow of the Erdtree was released, there’s been talk regarding this expansion being “too hard” and everytime I hear this argument, I honestly think its overplayed. Many expected to jump into Shadow of the Erdtree without issue, and sweep the entire map easily. However, this is a souls game, and any player would be foolish to underestimate the difficulty curve. It’s been stated that Elden Ring isn’t getting any more DLC after this, so you’re basically getting an All-Star gauntlet of challenges worthy of those who want more outside of the base game. The DLC also requires you to have already beat both Mohg & Radahn, two mid-late game fights that should see your character at some level of progression. Shadow of the Erdtree also has its own power scaling option with both the Scadutree Fragments (that increase your power & damage resistance) & the Revered Spirit Ash (which is used to buff your Spirit Ashes). However, I’m not implying that these collectables are the sole reason that gamers seem to struggle with Shadow of the Erdtree.

The benefit of a game like Elden Ring is that there’s no set path. The first main area that you can access, Belurat, offers both fairness in its combat & and imposes to me a feeling of “you’ve done this before & we’re gonna show you true pain”. In Belurat, I found that every encounter didn’t need to be solved by killing everything in sight. Is there an enemy that’s to dangerous to fight head on? Pull out a bow & arrow or drop some magic on it. You see an imposing guard who can decapitate you in two seconds? Try sneaking around him. There is more than enough tools available to you in both the main game and the expansion that allows you to fully flush out your characters & tackle any challenege that arises. From massive hulking builds that tank hits, enchanted spellcasters that can wipe you off the face of the planet, to the popular holy builds, there is no wrong way to play Elden Ring & I hate that much of the fanbase has adopted this mentality that you have to play Elden Ring without using popular weapons, spells, or spirit ashes. They were put in the game to begin with & I fail to see how it’s an issue in a single player game.

TL:DR is the DLC too hard? No, it’s not. I believe it’s more of a case that people have been away from Elden Ring for too long, and forget how open the overall gameplay is. If you want my advice, use some of the consumable items that sit in your inventory, they helped me so much in the latter boss fights.

The Actual Review

Now that my little quarrel regarding the difficulty controversy is complete, I want to start off by complementing the thing that Shadow of the Erdtree does best, and that’s the visuals. I can 100% say that Shadow of the Erdtree (& Elden Ring as well) has the best visuals and graphics out of any game I’ve played. Enemy and character design is varied and completely mesmerizing and the countless jaw-dropping sceneries that are oozing with colour. From the Abyssal Woods, to the Jagged Peak, Shadow of the Erdtree is like cocaine for your eyes. I literally spent maybe five minutes in the Cerulean Coast just staring at the scenery because it was so breathtaking. From Software & Bandai Namco should be applauded for being able to utilize this much detail into such a sprawling world in such little time. Even in many new details like the Shadow Graves that populate the map, to enemy characters fighting other races of enemies in the distance, it makes the world itself feel more open and lively instead of just a static playground. Also, the cutscenes were sublime, with cameraowkr & rendering on the enemies & backgrounds being so captivating, albiet instead of watching the cutscenes & paying attention, I kept taking screenshots because they looked so damn good.

A Choice between Ice & Fire

In regards to gameplay, this is where Shadow of the Erdtree shows some minor cracks. First, the new weapons & armour provided are plentiful. It isn’t simply “let’s take existing weapons from the base game and give it a new coat of paint.” Rather, you can see the amount of different options that players are given as they jump into this new world. From poisonous poleaxes, double ended staffs, and even your own fists, you’re given so many different options that you can dish out throughout the DLC, but also carry over into the base game. It helps the overall replayability of Elden Ring & Shadow of the Erdtree, while helping you understand enemy weaknesses, strengths, and movements better. Now, I wouldn’t say that the selection here beats out the base game since I found myself mainly relying on mostly weapons for my original run (Dexterity & Arcane based Bleed Build), but if you’re somebody who favours frostbite or flame weapons, there’s plenty of new stuff here for you to rack havoc with.

I also found customizing my character with new armour & talismens to be an experiment onto itself. With new enemies & bosses come new garments & unlockables abter beating said boss. Boss weapons & spells were incredibly useful, with my favourite being Rellana’s Twin Blades & the Spear of the Impaler. I also liked using the Armour that you get after beating Radahn & Rellana, as I found them to be more crucial in regrads to experimenting on how I wanted to play. New talismans that populate the Realm of Shadows fall into two camps, either providing you with better versions of existing talismans, or new ones that can make your existing builds more dangerous, like a talisman that speeds up casting spells or boosting attack once a summoned spirit dies.

Then there’s the bosses, and they honestly felt like a mixed bag in my opinion. You do have major battles with bosses like Bayle, my personal favourite and the second encounter with Radahn, then there’s the other side of the spectrum that I could honestly classify as “beyblade bosses.” When fighting bosses like Mesmer & Commander Gaius, their entire strategy is solely based on spinning & stringing attacks costantly. All while giving you next to no range to attack or even recover because they chipped away at you with their ridiculous attack chain. Now I know the song & dance of fighting these types of bosses, in which you need to learn & adapt yourself to better handle their strategies, yet my issue is that these bosses can zap your entire healthbar in an instant because of another issue with the DLC, the performance. I played & finished Shadow of the Erdtree on my PS5, and notonce during my entire time of playing Elden Ring did I run into any slowdown or performance issues. Yet, I encounted plenty of slowdown during important battles, in dungeons, and especially during boss battles. It also doesn’t help that I’ve died plenty of times because the enemy’s movements were so brazen, the game couldn’t catch up to them & I ended up slain as a result (this mainly happened with Messmer).

Now there were bosses that I would say were a little too easy (i.e. Romina & the Mother Finger) but I feel like that’s necessary to kind of balance out the ledger, especially when you need to kill one boss three times in a row in order to suceed (who ever thought that was a great idea needs to be fed to Bayle).

The Ends Don’t Justify the Means

Not going to lie, after everything that Shadow of the Erdtree had thrown at me in my quest to stop Miquella from ascending to Godhood, I felt really dissapointed with where the narrative ends. Now this isn’t to say that the overall story isn’t a dissapointment, far from it. Mind you that the narrative for the DLC is what you can gather conjoining sentences from NPC’s & icons spread throughout the map, but if you play your cards right and to the right people, you realized Miquella’s true plot & can challenge his claim to Godhood. It’s great to see characters like Ansbach & Thiollier realize the true evil plauging the Realm of Shadow & get revenge for their lords (I like the continuity of Ansbach forgiving you for killing Mohg which is nice). I also like how you killing the two bosses is what leads to the events of the DLC, which is both tragic & hilarious.

Yet, I wish I could say as much regarding the ending. After killing Radhan, I expected there to be some sort of choice, or option to see different endings. Hell I would’ve expected there to be an ending. But instead, we got a cutscene of Miquella, and that’s it. No credits, no ending cut scene, and you recieve a crown for your trouble. This to me was the most upsetting aspect of the Shadow of the Erdtree. Why couldn’t we have taken the title of Lord alongside Miquella? Maybe we could’ve sided with one of the bosses that we fought along the way like Messmer or the Lord of Frenzied Flame? Better yet, why not allow your ending in the base game to bleed into your ending in the DLC. Any of these ideas would’ve been fine instead of what we got, and to me, it felt like development on the ending might’ve been rushed to meet a deadline, which is unfortunate.

Regardless, I had a full on blast revisiting Elden Ring & beating Shadow of the Erdtree. I took down all the major bosses & after smiting Radhan, I felt so invigorated. I don’t need to say that if you enjoyed Elden Ring, you should buy this expansion, because I’m pretty sure that everyone who owns Elden Ring probably bought this at launch. However, if you’re someone who wants to get into Soulsborne-like games and wants to see what all the hype regarding the expansion is about, I’d personally invite you to The Lands Between & the Realm of Shadow anytime. For me, Elden Ring & Shadow of the Erdtree stand the test of time as a quality game (something that we rarely get nowadays) and even though it is a hard son of a bitch to get through, it is more than rewarding once you triumph over that one boss or through that one dungeon.

8/10

(BAYLE, VILE BAYLE)