Finally, the pinnacle of DLCs has dropped and I will be brutally honest, I was bullied so hard that I felt like my life was the beginning of an Isekai. Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree DLC is here and the very first boss to get into the expansion beat me so damn bad, I broke a keyboard.
I am telling the truth. I became so angry in the first week of trying to triumph over the first damn boss I broke my keyboard. So please believe me when I say the difficulty level of this game is Hell. And the Land of Shadows keeps on proving it. The battles and bosses spread throughout the expansion are some of the toughest encounters from any FromSoftware game I’ve had the privilege of playing.
Now that I have vented my biggest issue of the DLC let me tell you the rest of my play time was astounding. First off, let me start by stating the obvious. Prismatic colors and the designs of the game are lustrious and astounding. The artful cosmetics and enemy designs were simply spectacular.
The overall scale and intricacy of the map and dungeons with the many extra locations, provided more than enough content to fill a whole separate game. The world comes alive with the dark dense forest, the massively well-detailed fortresses, and of course, one of my favorite areas of all time the poison swamps. They are still packed with plentiful delights like hidden paths or other deeper secrets.
The DLC has two new items only effective in the Shadow Realm, Scadutree Fragments and Revered Spirit Ashes. Collecting Scadutree Fragments offers a substantial boost to both your damage output and damage negation, and the Revered Spirit Ashes does the equivalent for your Spirit Ashes.
It became very clear that if I was planning on doing any kind of damage in this world, then I was going to need them. After having my rear side handed to me for the first 4 hours hours, I knew I was going to need LOTS of them. Luckily with the new items we also have a ton of more toys to play with from 95 new weapons, to 30 new armor sets, not counting new sorcerites and incantations.
The new weapon categories have intriguing move sets with them and when combined with some of the new skills this will diversify gameplay and PVP even further. Many of the new armor sets have special effects, which make them worth putting in the time to collect, and the new talismans add extras that everyone will want for the base game as well.
Throughout the open world, you will be spotted miles away from a new enemy on the battlefield. These enormous basket-headed mechanical creatures that rain fireballs from the heavens down on you are known as Furnace Golems. After trial and error, I determined that they only take damage at precise points and start spewing dinosaur-ending amounts of fireballs. The best way to deal with these beings is to hurl Hefty Pots into their “basket” receptacles, however, I decided it was quicker to just run. I was more interested in seeing what else the Shadow of the Erdtree had for me to learn.
While I do know there have been a lot of complaints about the performance side of the game, luckily for me and my battle rig the game ran effectively. I had a ton of rubber-banding, by these I mean there were parts where I was attacking or running and then quickly ported back a few seconds as if I was just starting the attack over. This became a very unpleasant reaction and of course, it did it as some of the most irritating of times, like boss fights. Now please do not take my distance as this is a game breaker, it did not ruin the game for me, but my irritation levels did rise from time to time. I have no doubts these issues will be resolved soon in an upcoming patch, so I kept that in the back of my mind as I lunged onward.
Shadow of the Erdtree is an artisan-level masterpiece of a DLC for what was already a wonderful base game. Providing something for everyone from novice players or people who have been battling for over 2 years in this world. Its secrets and twists will bring the player to not only wish to beat the game but replay it to see different outcomes as well. For any completionist players the lore alone is a cornucopia of information, then for the PVP players, the new weapons and skills unleash a whole new feel for destruction. This expansion is proof of what a gaming DLC should be all about and for me, all the hell I went through, was so worth it.
This review was written based on a PC review code for Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtre by FromSoftware Inc.
