Intro

Shadow of the Erdtree is being hailed as the best DLC released to date but I do have two issues with those claims. First, while an expansion technically falls under the “DLC” section, I would prefer to keep calling SotE an expansion due to the size of the thing. Second, I don’t think it’s the best DLC or expansion released in the history of gaming.

Some players claimed it is too difficult, which is debatable, and others pointed other major issues such as poor performance and the new “leveling” system introduced in the expansion.

Expansion, not DLC

Like I already said, I prefer to call Shadow of the Erdtree an expansion rather than DLC because the latter term is often used for smaller content packs such as armors, weapons, cosmetics or even a single red dot. Therefore, the calling this massive amount of content by the same name would just be unfair.

Some of the content highlights include:

• 8 new weapon types, all of which include multiple weapons, some of which change gameplay style drastically
• 103 new weapons in total
• 30 armor sets
• New set of maps that is roughly the size of Liurnia, Limgrave, Weeping Penninsula and Caelid together
• 78 new boss fights

With this amount of content, it’s hard to imagine something would be bad unless it’s terribly executed. While not flawless, the execution of Shadow of the Erdtree was still really good.

Gameplay

When people ask for more of the same, because the base project is already fantastic, many companies ignore it and try to one-up the expectations or just go off the rails and ruin the whole thing. These approaches are not mutually exclusive and often end up with the same result. Thankfully, FromSoftware listened to the players and delivered exactly what was asked for – more Elden Ring.

In that aspect, the expansion is fantastic. There is a ton of new weapons to create crazy builds with, new enemies whose moves we need to adapt to and a ton of bosses to duke it out with. However, this is also where the first glimpses of the bad parts start to pop up. Many of the bosses are just not fun to fight but more on that in the “Difficulty” section below. That said, there are still plenty of them to enjoy. After all, there are 78 boss fights and there is bound to be something everyone will like.

New weapons feel fantastic, although it remains to be seen if they will present a headache when players figure out how to use them optimally. PvP community is already complaining about Backhand Blades being too oppressive and PvE players pretty much trivialized the game’s difficulty with certain perfume bottles.

Remembrance weapons are once again fantastic and there is something to be found for everyone – be it your desire to optimize a build or do crazy stunts while blowing everything up. Unfortunately, getting some of those weapons is less than enjoyable.

While the game does its best to remove the rush you get from beating a boss from certain fights, it also offers a ton of other fights to get you addicted and FromSoftware folks do it best. As far as gameplay goes, the positives far outweigh the negatives, most of which are attributed to supposed difficulty and bad performance.

In my own experience, it was about bad design in a few places and bad performance.

Difficulty

Is SotE too difficult? That’s a loaded question. I can only imagine the Git Gud crew salivating in anticipation of another game journo saying the magic words that would give them a much-needed dopamine shot.

Nope. I don’t think it was that difficult nor was the Scadutree scaling buff needed.

I do have issues with how the difficulty was achieved though.

Frame rate killers

Other than Rellana, I beat all the bosses solo. No summons, not even spirit ashes. The only reason I used them for Rellana is because the first thing she slashed was my frame rate and then proceeded to cheese me in a glorified slideshow. With frame rate on her side, I popped a mimic and summoned Leda who proceeded to constantly break her stance, allowing a disappointingly easy kill for me.

Component	My PC	SotE recommended specs
CPU	Ryzen 5 3600	Ryzen 5 3600X
GPU	AMD RX 5700 XT	AMD RX Vega 56
RAM	16 GB	16 GB
Storage	80 GB M.2 NVMe	80 GB

With that, I have mentioned my first gripe with SotE’s difficulty – terrible performance. I have no idea why FromSoftware insists on overloading boss fights with visual effects. If you thought Mohg was bad, wait until you see some of the bosses in SotE.

Many boss fights feel like they were directed by Michael Bay. Countless explosions and layers upon layers of VFX. Visual clutter is so ridiculous that the meme from Elden Ring’s launch now looks less like a dunk on Ubisoft and more a prediction of the sad future.

If you don’t believe me, let’s observe one of the first things you see in the fight against Messmer the Impaler.

I could be cherry picking though, right? Maybe this explosion happens only twice in a fight. How about a move with which he starts half his combos?

Visual effects get even crazier with mid-air fiery spear swings and stabs, but why am I boring you with individual screenshots? Check out the full fight and see how much visual clutter there is. Ironically, this fight didn’t cause as much FPS variation as Rellana did.

As you can imagine, Messmer is not the only boss with overwhelming visual effects. I didn’t fight all 78 of them yet but from what I’ve seen so far, at least half the boss designs sacrificed visual clarity and game performance at the altar of visual spectacle. Out of the 4 required bosses for beating the expansion, Messmer and the final boss, which is even worse than the snake man, have ridiculous amounts of VFX.

Dodge all the way to the moon

Elden Ring was already getting people fatigued with boss fights because many of them became homogenous and started feeling like the same boss is just putting on new suits with new flashy moves.

By now, the players already know what I’m talking about. Gameplay loop at these bosses consists of dodging a long barrage of attacks and then slapping them once. Twice if the boss is feeling generous in the current outfit.

This isn’t the first time FormSoft introduced aggressive bosses but it is the first time you have to obey the same “dodge for 20 seconds, strike once” gameplay loop.

In their previous games, players could get more opportunities to strike by manipulating the battlefield, good positioning, sticking close to the boss or being aggressive or passive yourself.

In Elden Ring, all the “difficult” bosses have:

• Deceptively long range so battlefield manipulation is out of the question
• Quick escape attacks, sometimes with major damage attached, so you can’t “stay sticky”
• Quick attacks that strike behind their back, much like the hated Heide Knights in DS2, so you can’t rely on good positioning

On top of it all, visual clarity has been obliterated so you don’t really get an opportunity to react to some, potentially devastating attacks.

With all that combined, gameplay variety is sacrificed and players are herded into a single gameplay style – keep dying until you memorize the moves, dodge for extended periods of time, do a small punish. This repeats whenever a “difficult” boss emerges in Elden Ring. It is tiresome and it stopped being fun by the time the boss put on his third outfit.

While disappointed, I wasn’t surprised that FromSoftware doubled down on this design style with Shadow of the Erdtree. After all, Elden Ring had glowing reviews, sold better than hotcakes and any criticism was suffocated by the Git Gud crew.

Granted, a lot of criticism comes from bad players who have no idea why daggers are a bad weapon for newcomers but genuine concerns ended up being collateral damage. As a result, the aforementioned design issues never really had a chance of getting corrected.

Why is it always camera?

Camera issues have always been present in FromSoft games. Unfortunately, not only does it seem like they are unable to deal with that but Shadow of the Erdtree suggests the devs are leaning into this problem to squeeze out a little bit more difficulty out of the game.

Divine Beast Dancing Lion boss fight is a clear proof of that. These two dudes in a costume actively wield the game’s inadequate camera controls as a weapon. The boss is oversized, moves erratically all over the place and when it does the spinning breath attack, it is actively chasing the player down, forcing the camera towards the sky while the damaging wave occurs at the floor level.

This move makes the fight incredibly cheap and while it’s the most infuriating part, the entire moveset of this creature abuses the camera controls at all times. Sure, you can try to combine locked and unlocked camera during the fight but with its speed, you are likely to get hit while trying to find the arena anyway.

Dancing Lion is the second-worst boss I ever fought in a Soulslike, the first one being the Old Demon King. Surprise, it’s another camera abuser. At least it doesn’t appear twice, like the Dancing Lion does.

Elden Ring is a game created with gamepad controls in mind. Gamepad sticks simply don’t have the necessary combination of speed and accuracy required to keep up with oversized, quick and erratic enemies. This is why lock-on exists, it is a crutch for the game’s shortcomings. Putting these issues into spotlight is simply bad design.

Dancing Lion is not the only camera abuser in Shadow of the Erdtree, it is just the worst among them, which is why I chose it as the example.

Story (?)

If there is one thing FromSoft games truly defeated me in, it’s the story. Storytelling in all Soulsbornes so far has been atrocious.

Is the story any good? It could be. Or maybe it is horrendous. I don’t know, because storytelling is atrocious. I’m not going through a massive catalogue of post-it notes stuck to various pieces of gear just to understand what’s going on in the game world. There are NPCs and quests, they are supposed to relay this information to the player, in a comprehensible manner.

This trend continues with Shadow of the Erdtree. Everyone speaks in puzzles with ominous undertones and I just go through the bosses without know what is going on. Why is Miquella in the shadow realm? Why is he pretending to be Jesus? How does Rellana fit into all this? I have no clue and neither will you unless you painstakingly read every item description or check out a lore video.

Similarly, I didn’t know nor did I care to learn about Miquella’s importance until Shadow of the Erdtree. Nothing gave me the impression he is important at all, until I read his lore on wiki in hopes I would manage to make sense of the story in the DLC. That didn’t pan out.

Miyazaki didn’t lie. I really felt George R.R. Martin’s involvement during the final boss fight, even if he didn’t write what’s happening with the characters. At least that was fun.

After going through lore discussions, wiki and videos, a pretty good story started to surface. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to experience it first-hand because the game didn’t tell any of those cool details. Instead, they can be found in obscure places.

And to think the living jars are in the center of it all.

Interesting details that pop up in the story did serve as a counterweight for the lack of storytelling so I won’t hold it against FromSoft this time around. That said, if you want to know things, you’ll have an easier time finding them outside the game.

Performance

If you skipped to this part, you will want to consult the “Frame Rate Killers” portion of the “Difficulty” section first.

Adding to the issues related to VFX overload, I noticed frame rate nosediving multiple times in the open world when nothing noteworthy is happening. When something noteworthy started happening as NPCs were fighting a dragon, my FPS plunged further.

I am not sure what caused the new performance issues but I’m betting on a poor anti-cheat implementation since even the base game’s performance is now worse than before.