After Elden Ring dropped in 2022 and made waves across the entire gaming world, a ton of people obviously anticipated whatever expansion/DLC content FromSoftware would release. Shadow of the Erdtree, the name of the expansion for Elden Ring, took just over two whole years to release after the base game, which is uncharacteristically long for FromSoftware, but also made perfect sense considering the size of Elden Ring’s base game; after all Elden Ring is way bigger in scope and content than any of the previous Dark Souls games. The expectation for Shadow of the Erdtree naturally rose as well, and perhaps that was to my detriment, because after beating the DLC’s final boss and unlocking all the different regions in the new map, I honestly felt a little disappointed. The DLC is good, without a doubt, but I have a lot of issues with it that prevented it from being the best thing since sliced bread.
Shadow of the Erdtree takes place in an entirely new region of the Lands Between called the Land of Shadows, with a completely separate map. To access it, one must progress the main game to the point they have defeated Radahn and Mohg, so it is more or less intended to be late-game content as Mohg is considered to generally be a late-game encounter. Shadow of the Erdtree introduces a new mechanic that is only applicable while in the new region, which are blessings that are applicable to the player character and to whatever spirit summons they can use. These blessings increase the damage one deals, as well as reduces damage taken, so these are basically just straight character stat buffs. In order to strengthen these blessings, one must find the corresponding upgrade materials scattered across the region, very similar to upgrading the healing flask in the base game (Scadutree Fragments and Revered Spirit Ashes respectively). The game does not explicitly force the player to find these materials to upgrade the blessing, but it will soon be very apparent to the player if they decide to forego them; enjoy being 1/2-shot by most things in the game or hitting like a wet noodle against even smaller enemies. I am personally rather indifferent towards this mechanic; I think it is an interesting way to reward players for exploring and gives a flexibility option for more masochistic players looking for a challenge as it is possible to just ignore those fragments altogether. My personal gripe with it is that there are only just enough upgrade materials to max out the blessings with no extras left over, in contrast to the golden seeds used to upgrade the healing flask charges. In the base game, there are plenty of golden seeds around the map that one can reasonably still fully upgrade the flask without having to meticulously comb the map or look up a guide, or worry about progressing past a major story checkpoint and worrying about potential upgrades being lost, but that flexibility is not there with the fragments in Shadow of the Erdtree.
I enjoyed exploring the Land of Shadows, but frankly there were really only a couple of locations that really stood out to me. There were a couple of dungeons that matched the scale of the legacy dungeons in the base game, but there were also a lot of places I went to were rather shallow and did not have as much to do as I would have expected from looking at the map. The most egregious example would be the various Finger Ruins that one can explore as part of a certain NPC’s quest line. They take up huge spaces of the map which led me to believe that those areas would have a lot to explore, but after actually reaching those places they ended up being mostly empty with very few unique enemies or points of interest aside from whatever was concerned with the quest line.
At the end of the day, the most relevant content to me that comes in the various Souls expansions are the bosses and the cool new weapons and spells. Are the bosses mostly fun to right? Do they drop stuff that is cool and worth using? How are the new weapons and armor sets? Regarding the bosses, they honestly felt like a mixed bag. There were a few excellent fights, but for every great fight there were also bosses that were just plain annoying and tedious to defeat. I noticed with a lot of the DLC bosses FromSoftware decided to give them all crack cocaine, with a lot of them all having multi-hit combo strings and generally having smaller windows to actually punish them. Some of these bosses felt straight out of a faster-paced action game like Sekiro or Stellar Blade, and the player character feels like a slug in comparison. The thing is a lot of these bosses are ultimately are not that difficult in the grand scheme of things especially if one decides to use everything at their disposal, but half the time they felt more annoying than anything. There were definitely some encounters I enjoyed, but for a good chunk of the bosses I fought I found them to be more frustrating than fun and bulldozed them with my trusty Mimic Tear and a large shield (no need to worry about having to roll 10 times to dodge a combo string when I can just block them and guard counter). In a lot of the previous FromSoftware games I felt a lot of satisfaction from learning and taking down challenging bosses (even in the Elden Ring base game), but a lot of the “harder” bosses in Shadow of the Erdtree I really could not be bothered. Maybe I am older and have less patience to spend hours on grinding a boss, but after I died a couple of times to the final boss of the DLC due to its 10+ attack combos and laser light shows annihilating my frame rate (on a set-up with a 3080TI no less) I decided I could not actually give a damn anymore and just busted out a summon, equipped a greatshield, and stabbed it to death in like a minute. The worst part about that fight? The rewards are also terrible so it is not like I even got a cool toy to use out of it.
Speaking of rewards, at least I was pretty satisfied with a lot of the new gear to be found in Shadow of the Erdtree. Aside from the fact that the DLC is in its initial release phase and that there are obvious balancing issues that need to be ironed out, overall there is a lot to be happy with. My first run into the expansion was with a new character I created explicitly for clearing the DLC as I wanted to re-experience the game again after not having touched it for a year or more (this also made me once again realize how tedious repeat play-throughs of Elden Ring are due to its scale), and I rolled with a paladin character that focused mostly on Strength with some stat points allocated into Faith to cast a few strong incantations. The Lands of Shadow had plenty to give for Strength/Faith-focused characters, and I enjoyed running through the DLC with quite a few of the new weapons and armor I found.
The worst part of the expansion is easily the performance issues, not too unlike the base game at launch. I frequently run into micro-stutters where the game would freeze for like a split second, loading screens are insufferably long, and there were a few boss fights that involved some heavy particle effects that would cause my frames to absolutely tank (the final boss being the biggest offender). I have a high-end graphics card and Elden Ring caps out at 60 frames per second; these performance issues are frankly unacceptable, and that is already me putting up with the fact that I cannot play this game at a higher refresh rate without giving up the ability to play multiplayer.
Overall, I still had a good amount of fun clearing Shadow of the Erdtree. Exploring the new map, picking up new weapons, and cooperating with my friends to clear difficult dungeons are all things that made the base game incredible, and Shadow of the Erdtree allowed me to experience those feelings fresh again, and there is plenty of new content. However, it is not without its issues, and honestly for something that took two entire years to release, I cannot help but feel like I expected more out of it. Maybe the abysmal final boss soured my taste on the overall experience, but it really felt like FromSoftware more or less just continued with the same philosophies they had for the base game in the DLC, both good and bad, which gives me the impression that they did not really learn from any of their previous design mistakes.
Rating: Shadow of the Erdtree is good, and the amount of content it has justifies the $40 price tag, but I found a lot of issues with it that will hopefully be ironed out in future updates to recommend it as an immediate must-buy.
