So I have to talk about the new Elden Ring DLC shadow of the Erdtree. I've played over 10 hours so far on the new DLC and I have to say so far the experience I've had with this DLC has been kind of disappointing and lacking in a certain kind of luster that I wasn't quite expecting.
I am a massive fan of Elden ring, when it came out in 2022 I played it so much and I have over 444 hours played on Elden ring. I have multiple new game pluses and I beat the game multiple times and I'm like level 242 so I thought when DLC would come out my character who is level 242 with all of the weapons unlocked, all of the abilities unlocked, I've tested out all these different kinds of builds to find the best build that can destroy everything.
I thought I would be able to destroy this DLC when it came out with my ultimate overpowered character. Unfortunately that hasn't quite been the case. The Elden ring DLC shadow of the Erdtree, is stupidly difficult and I'm not saying it's like difficult in a fun challenging way, it's like a Souls game obviously it's going to be difficult and challenging that's what makes it fun.
However, it's not like that, it's not fun it's difficult in a really stupidly annoying way and frustrating way to the point where I actually want to smash my controller into the wall. So basically if you didn't like aspects of Elden ring or if you just didn't like Elden ring at all then you're not really going to like the DLC.
All of the problems that the base game had like clunky mechanics, slow movement, annoyingly stupid bosses that take ages to defeat and the only way to defeat them is not through skill is through memorization of their attack patterns, once you've memorized their attack patterns all of the bosses are a cakewalk it's not difficult it's just a matter of memorizing what they do and then just cakewalking them. So they've added a bunch of new stuff to the DLC but it's not already new stuff in the sense that it's new to the game, like new mechanics or new way to play the game. It's just basically more of the same stuff that was already in the base game, so you've got like I don't know 100 new weapons, dozens of new ashes of War dozens of new armor sets dozens of new weapon classes, but the basically just the same as the stuff you've already experienced in the base game just with like a different skin or different movement or like a different variation of fire, lighting, cold frost, poison, whatever kind of magical element there is it's just different variants mixed and matched to create this new Ash of war or new spells or new skills or new weapons that are just like a combination of the old stuff and then rehashed into something that's supposed to be new.
And the same can be said about the bosses really, so there's new bosses but they basically are just like the old bosses in the previous base game but they act and move in different ways they've got cool new art designs but it's really just the same kind of mechanics, where they'll do a bunch of attacks, they'll just obliterate you in the beginning because you won't really know what's coming. But once you've memorized the attack patterns you can just easily dodge and roll out.
The next I have to talk about the new map, so in Shadow of the ErdTree you enter this Shadow realm and as you can imagine it's a very dark land full of Shadows and it just looks kind of drab and dreary and ugly. It doesn't look anywhere near as good as the base game’s map where it was all whimsical, cool and glowing cool yellow golden lights and there's like a big tree in the background. The shadow realm is just really boring to go around and there's lots of little hidden paths and ways to get around bosses and stuff like that and little secret areas and that's cool and everything to explore but I didn't really feel like there was this incentive or this massive burning urge to want to explore all these boring caves and boring dungeons that all kind of look the same.
If you didn't like the gameplay in the base game you won't like the gameplay in the new DLC game and that's just kind of like a personal preference, I guess if you like fast action highly responsive combat then you're not going to find it in Elden ring, you're not really going to find that in any of these Souls games, because Souls games are traditionally very clunky, very slow, you kind of just aim the camera at the enemy and you pace around it looking for openings and weaknesses to attack them with and then dodging and rolling or blocking the attacks and trying to predict the telegraphed slow charged up wind up attacks so you don't get hit in the face by them.
Now if you don't like that kind of gameplay, then unfortunately they haven't really added new ways to play the game, as for the graphics of the game they're still not quite up to my standards if you're expecting a boost in the graphical fidelity. You'll be sorely disappointed because the game engine and graphics look exactly as the base game, they haven't improved the graphics at all. In fact all of the bad negative aspects of the base game have all made their way into the DLC. For example, the frustratingly long loading screens: every time you die, sure it only takes like five or 6 seconds, but every time you die it builds up cause you're going to die a lot and it takes like 6 seconds for the dying animation for your character to fall over turn into dust. Then the “YOU DIED” text to pop up and then the black screen and then loading screen and then waking up at the grace of sight again and then exiting the grace of site menu, all of that takes like 15 seconds.
Every time you die you got to wait like 15 seconds and it might not sound like a lot, it might sound trivial, but when you're just trying to get on in the game and make progress and and you're frustratingly dying all the time to some stupid boss, you don't really want to be waiting 15 seconds every time to get back in and have and have another crack at it.
I found the DLC shadow of the Erdtree to be very disappointing, it’s basically just a rehash of the base game. I want to move on to new games, not go back to what was really popular back in 2022. I don't really like to stay in the past or live in the past. I like to have my eyes move forward onto new things. Enjoy things in the moment and then when it's done it's done. I don't really want like second helpings or second iterations, so those are my thoughts about the new Elden Ring DLC.
