Elden Ring - Shadow of the Erdtree Review

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey guys, so figured its time for another post and this one will be my review of the Elden Ring DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, which seems to have gotten rave reviews from the critics (bar one!) and has split the fan base right down the middle, with some seeing it as great as the base game and others seeing it as a deeply frustrating exercise in difficulty. 

So, is Shadow of the Erdtree great or not? Well, let's take a closer look at the the game and find out...

So, I will say a little about the plot, so minor SPOILERS AHEAD but not many.

STORY

So, the story basically sees the Tarnished enter the realm of shadow after defeating Mohg, Lord of Blood in an effort to track down the whereabouts of Miquella, who is Malenia's twin (one of the main bosses from the base game). So, the Tarnished must follows a series of clues to where Miquella has gone and work out why he has entered the realm and what his true intentions are...

THOUGHTS

So, for me personally I think Shadow of the Erdtree is a very good DLC, which offers players a huge expansion to the base game, which will keep players busy for many hours. There are also plenty of new weapons and spells as well as other items and consumables to help you navigate through the shadow realm and the fact that you are entering a whole new world essentially really is very impressive in itself given the size and scale of the DLC. 

However, the DLC is of course not without its problems regarding its steep difficulty level, which needs to be mitigated via the use of some new items known as Scadutree fragments and it will punish many a player, who are even very well levelled up making this one of Fromsoft's most challenging expansions to date. Whether or not however, this level of difficulty is fair is open to debate but there certainly has been plenty of pusback from fans about how tough this DLC is and I can see both sides of the argument and can't ignore this issue myself, which I will say more about later in this review.

GAMEPLAY

As for the gameplay, Shadow of the Erdtree follows very much the same format as the base game with its use of combat and traversing with the only real difference this time is the damage mitigation features but I will cover them more in the sub sections below.

WEAPONS AND SPELLS

As for weapons, there are plenty of new weapons to be found in the DLC and there are 8 new weapon categories, which are reverse blades, light greatswords, perfume bottles, throwing blades, martial arts, great katanas, thrusting shields and beast claws. These weapon categories are very welcome additions to the DLC and feature some cool weapons such as Milday for the light greatswords, combining the faster dexterous speed of a sword yet the power of a greatsword. Other good weapons include, great katanas such as the Dragon Hunter Great Katana, back hand blades for reverse swords, the thrusting shield, which doubles up as a weapon as well as a shield and the perfume bottles, which come in different varities such as lightning, fire, frost and poison.

Spells wise, there are some new ones that are mix of gravitational spells such as the gravitational missile to summoning spells such as the impenetrable thorns, which can summons large thorns from the ground that deal bleed damage. There are plenty of incantations that scale with faith here too such as Aspects of the Crucible: thorns, causing thorns to appear out the player's back as they perform a roll, as well as Fire Serpent, which is a flame incantation that can be use to even target enemies from behind. So, there is quite a diverse mix of the spells and incantations on display.

SCADUTREE FRAGMENTS & REVERED SPIRIT ASHES

One of the key new features of the DLC are the scadutree fragments and revered spirit ashes, which are scattered through the realm of shadow and these items help reduce the damage you take while also boosting your own damage output, these can combined into Scadutree blessings of which you can have a max of 20. There are 50 of fragments in total in the realm and you need to collect them all to maximise your damage negation and damage output, which will be necessary given the enemies can hit really hard in this realm. 

You can also collect reversed spirit ashes as well throughout the DLC, which can be used to boost your spirit ash summons in the same way. There are 25 in total throughout the game to be found and these are combined into reversed spirit ash blessings of which you can have a maximum of 10 for your spirit ashes.  

ENEMIES AND BOSSES

As for the enemies in the DLC, there are plenty of new ones to be found throughout the realm as well as a few familiar ones form the base game here and there. These enemies can be very challenging and often hit pretty hard and deal a lot of damage in just two or three hits, so you need to be very wary of them in the DLC, so even standard enemies such as the Messmer soldiers here can pose a serious threat to the player and not just the bosses. 

There are also plenty of other enemies here such as undead priests, that hold candlabras and deal fire damage as well as holy, Cleaver ghosts, who hit like a truck and have a lot of HP. Other enemies include lesser Golden Hippos, who have a nasty bite and can produce thorns, Furnace Golems, who are toweing wicker like trolls that can deal massive fire damage. Last of all are the Aging Untouchables, who are similar to the Winter Lanterns from Bloodborne, who are lethal and do massive frenzy damage to you and can only be killed by parrying them, which is very challenging in itself to do.

As for the bosses there are plenty of new ones to be found here and they certainly provide a stern challenge for any player and there are some mandatory bosses and plenty of optional ones and suffice to say they all hit like trucks! Some of the bosses were note here are the Divine Beast Dancing Lion, a large lionesque creature that dances around and can do lighting and frost attacks. Then there is Rellana, who is the sister of Relanna, and wields two light greatswords, one magic and one fire. Then of course we have Messmer, the impaler, who is the signature boss of the DLC and we see in the posters for the expansion itself, who uses a fire infused great spear and then there is the final bosss and well...I'll not say anymore! So, its fair to say, this DLC is not short on difficult bosses! 

GRAPHICS 

Moving onto the game's graphics, Shadow of the Erdtree of course uses the same engine as the base game, so no real change is seen in terms of the character models and level of envrionment detail. However, the new DLC environments all look stunning and are easily some of the most impressive I've ever seen in a Fromsoft game. Standout areas for me personally were Jagged Peak, which is domain to most of the dragons in the game, the Cerulean coast, which features beautiful fields of blue grass, Stone Coffin Fissure, which is a vast underground area and perhaps the most pretty area in any From game, the Ancient Ruins of Ruah, which is a plush green landscape with a cavernous underground area. So, this DLC is certainly one of most visually impressive achievements that Fromsoft have created to date.

MUSIC 

As for the music, again we have an excellent soundtrack from the same composers in the main game, featuring Tsukasa Saitoh, Yuka Kitamura (who has since left Fromsoft) and Shoi Miyazawa as well a few others. The themes used are probably not quite as memorable as the ones we are used to in the main game but they are still very good for the most part with Relanna's theme, the final boss theme and most of all the Divine Beast theme being the real standout. The area themes are also pretty good with the Plainsite grave and Belurat, Tower Settlement being the best of these. 

FLAWS (Warning: this section may contain some spoilers and is also purely my subjective viewpoint, so if yours differs, that's fine with me).

As for flaws...yes, Shadow of the Erdtree is not perfect imho but these are just my thoughts, so feel free to disagree (and don't shoot me lol!).

For starters, I think a lot of crticism levelled at the game's difficulty to an extent is quite well justified, as it feels like they did overtune the difficulty of the enemies and bosses in this game a bit too much, especialy on release the damage was just ridiculous with you getting one or two shotted with 50 vigor! And this was made worse by the fact that its not just stronger enemies that dealt heavier damage, this was also basic enemies such as Messmer's soldiers, who engage a buff and with that, they can also hit like a truck and destroy you in maybe 2 or 3 hits. The Scadutree fragments are of course supposed to help with this but I felt like, the damage mitigation I had seen wasn't frankly that great by comparison and should be better.

And this brings me onto the Scadutree and Spirit Ash fragment system, which in theory is a good idea but in practice, it does feel pretty flawed as its ability to mitigate damage per enemy is debatable, on weakier it may prove useful. However on stronger enemies such as say the enemy NPC at the start of the DLC with bear claws, wandering in his underwear (as you do!) they can still pulverise your HP and they did the same to me even with 13 Scadutree blessings at this point! So, at this stage, I felt like what is the use of these fragments if even against stronger enemies, the damage negation feels worthless?? Further to that, what is the point of armour sets and damage reduction items, if you still get obliterated regardless??

I also felt that the new NPC's were mostly all frankly quite boring and had little or no personality and none of them had the character of the some of the more coloruful NPC's in the base game as they barely had any humour in their dialogue compared to the main game's characters. In fact the only real memorable dialogue came from the NPC, Igon, who rants crazily about a powerful dragon called Bayle and delivers the already memed line "CURSE YOU, BAYLE!!!". I also felt the NPC questlines were quite empty and pointless with just some exchanges that lead to them going to a new area after a while and getting a few items off them and that's it and again compared to the base game, nothing interesting really happened with them. 

I also felt like the game could have with other inclusions such as more merchants other than the two we got in Thioller and Moore (unless I missed anyone else) both of whom offered limited items, some of which are useful. But we could have had more that sold weapons or other items of use rather than these two guys, plus I wish there was a new blacksmith in the DLC, as that would have been nice inclusion for your character to stay within the the shadow realm than go back to Hewg at the Roundtable. So, overall the NPC's felt really underwhelming here. 

Another infuriating thing is that there are several bosses in the game that try and insta-kill you or at the very least attack you as soon as you go through the fog wall! So, if you want to try and summon e.g. the mimic tear, you might get wiped out first before you get a chance! There are a few prime examples of this such as Commander Gaius (although to be fair they did patch his spawn to further away), Messmer, who does a leap attack at you also, giving little to prepare your summon, not to mention the NPC summon is INSIDE THE ROOM and NOT OUTSIDE! Then we have the boss, Jorl, Elder Inquisitor, who fires some holy BS at you, again right as you step inside the boss arena, so if you want to summon again, you need to find a window to do so (usually stand behind some stone pillars or something). 

WARNING: SPOILER AHEAD REFERS TO THE FINAL BOSS OF THE GAME!

And of course there is the final boss of the game...sigh! Yeah, the final boss is a bit of a nightmare to say the least, Promised Consort Radahn, who is a reskinned version of Starscourge Radahn from the base game and is supposed to be General Radahn in his prime. So, yes naturally this is a very tough fight and the first phase to be fair does feel somewhat more balanced in its challenge, however the second phase is a different story altogether! 

In the second phase, we get Miquella join Radahn by jumping onto his back and he therefore proceeds to somehow buff Radahn's attacks with holy power, which with certain moves can totally obliterate your health! In fact, with Miquella involved, this instantly made me think of this being a redo of the Twin Princes boss from Dark Souls 3. Plus throw into the mix a bunch of fast and frantic moves from Radahn, making things near impossible at times to see what is going on during the fight! Miquella also has an unblockable move where he puts a charm on you, which if he does it twice, it will kill you. However you can remove this effect with a special item but in order to do so, you need to fight yet another boss to get it first although to be fair, that boss (Scadutree Avatar) isn't too difficult.

Plus during this fight, Radahn's attacks are so relentless, it leaves you precious little breathing room to attack him yourself and I like many others, had to resort to using a greatshield and a thrusting weapon imbued with bleed or frostbite to finish him off. And this fight to me was very much an exercise in defense rather than offense as the boss himself gives little or no room to really retaliate, which for me isn't what makes for a good boss fight. 

I also felt that the process to find the Scadutree fragements and spirit ash fragments was also pretty tedious and drawn out, given they are scattered all over the realm. It meant again having to rely heavily on using Fextralife or one of the other websites to tell me the exact location of these fragments. To be fair at first, the first ten or so are easy to find but after this, they slowly start to become a real chore.

And last of all is a point that relates also to the base game, which is the map systems is once again deeply flawed, as it simply does NOT account for verticality at all! And a prime example of this are two locations, which appear very close to each other on the map, which are the Curelean coast and Charo's hidden grave. However, the map does not consider the verticality issues here in finding them, especially Charo's hidden grave, which is miles higher up than the coast. So, this becomes very misleading when you are trying to navigate to certain spots in the game and again leads to looking at Youtube videos to decipher where you are going.

So, that's it for the flaws.

SUM UP

So, to sum up, Shadow of the Erdtree is overall a very solid DLC that compliments the main game very well for the most part. The new weapons and spells are also pretty cool, especially the different weapon classes and the visuals of the DLC are also stunning and provides us with some of the best designed areas From have come up with. Some of the boss fights are also pretty good and quite engaging, even if they are somewhat overtuned in their difficulty at times. 

The game isn't perfect of course as I said above with the enemy and boss damage being a bit too much at times and the Scadutree fragments effectiveness can be debatable based on what enemies you fight. In fact I really think that Fromsoft needs re-evaluate enemy damage output in future games as right now its just tweaked too much in the wrong direction with one or two shot attacks. There are also some issues with the NPC's and their quests, which I found to be mostly very underwhelming and their characters were not very interesting.

However that all aside, I still like the DLC, even if it has its issues, it wouldn't stop me returning to it athough maybe not with the same level of vigour and keeness as I did with the main game but that said, Shadow of the Erdtree is definitely worth taking a look at.

So, I will rate it:

8.5 out of 10 

So, that's it for now and I will be back again soon with another review, until then, its bye for now! 

P.S. If you want to check out my Youtube channel, I have a full playthrough of the Elden Ring DLC, which is close to being finished. The link to my channel is below, so feel free to check it out.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMJJ44Q0efVPBqj6g30lYow