★★★★ | Just another demon tree
I enjoyed the hell out of Elden Ring, even if the jump from Dark Souls 3 — my favorite in the franchise — was a major one. In moving the adventure from a linear one to an open world, Elden Ring became both more robust and frustrating in equal measure. After an adjustment period, I finally found my groove in the gameplay mechanics and exploration.
Released two years later, Shadow of the Erdtree mixes up the formula once again. While the world is still expansive, almost the size of Limgrave from the base game, linearity has seeped back into the mix. Also, the well-defined balance — something that took Elden Ring a couple of patches to achieve — is now missing once again. The difficulty spikes are more pronounced, and I’m unsure if Shadow of the Erdtree earns all the frustration it doles out on players.
Firstly, to even get into the expansion, you have to defeat Mohg, an optional and very difficult boss in Elden Ring. That’s already a big ask, since it makes the assumption that anyone wanting more of Elden Ring wants more of the hardest challenges and not the superlative exploration. It sets the tone for what’s to follow.
For me, I had two character saves on my PS5, the platform I reviewed Shadow of the Erdtree on, and neither had defeated Mohg. The first one was in New Game+ at the very beginning, the other somewhere at the midpoint of a first run. Before I could even begin my review, I had to play another 20 hours of Elden Ring just to get into the expansion.
That experience proved two things: Elden Ring still slaps hard, and it’s one of the most rewarding games to come out in recent years. Secondly, Shadow of the Erdtree is good, but it can’t match the base experience.
The things that worked for Elden Ring work for its expansion. The world is gloriously detailed, imaginative, and haunting. It’s a joy to get lost in. Like a darker, more punishing version of The Legend of Zelda, it brings genuine pleasure to scout out the next hill, dungeon, and old ruin. Every piece of Hidetaka Miyazaki’s masterpiece drips with atmosphere and life.
The new characters, of which there are surprisingly many, are equally impressive. Their stories are similarly minimalist as in the base game, yet I found myself deeply captivated by their fates. Everything comes together from clues and half-spoken sentences, yet the smaller world makes for a more impactful narrative this time around.
In the expansion, the Tarnished follows Miquella, kidnapped by Mohg, into The Lands of Shadow. There, they discover a sinister plot to revive Miquella’s new order, complete with zealots and lunatics commanding a new army. With over 70 bosses to contend with, the Tarnished must make their way through burnt out villages, crumbling fortresses, and deep into the heart of darkness to end this new threat once and for all.
Where Shadow of the Erdtree stumbles is in the difficulty and the bosses. The new world is punishing, and it doesn’t always feel like it’s punishing in the same way as the base game. There are fewer resting points and stakes of Marika, and every enemy feels stronger and more aggressive this time around. Where Elden Ring always delivered tough but fair combat scenarios, Shadow of the Erdtree often feels like a step back because of poorly thought out dungeons and overtly nasty surprises that set you back far further than in previous installments.
The bosses are similarly frustrating. Most feature move sets that are unpredictable and heavily emphasize RNG (random number generation), which detracts from planning and learning. Most notably, not all the bosses follow these pitfalls. Some of them, like a fantastic battle with Rellana, the Twin Moon Knight, harken back to Elden Ring as balanced, superbly designed experiences.
The expansion also features a new addition of blessings and fragments of the Erdtree, which increase your combat power in this world. It doesn’t carry into the base game, and your stats from Elden Ring only marginally boost your effectiveness in the new one.
It’s an odd and often pointless inclusion, one which makes you feel underpowered for no reason. Instead of learning and bettering yourself, you end up hunting for arbitrary pieces to power up your character.
Granted, Miyazaki has openly stated that the expansion is brutally tough on purpose. Your job as a player is to find out every cheese method and every broken build to combat that difficulty. But it makes for too much meta-gaming for me to truly enjoy the experience. I love my dexterity-based bleed build. I’d like to figure out how to defeat the bosses without resorting to using broken tools just because that’s the only way forward.
Eventually, Shadow of the Erdtree will receive patches, and its difficulty levels will balance out. By then, I’ll probably be in my second or third run through the dark lands. Because even when it’s frustrating, Shadow of the Erdtree is still more of Elden Ring, and that’s a hard thing to get wrong.
At around 20+ hours to complete, Shadow of the Erdtree feels like a throwback to olden days in value, as well. You’ll rarely find an expansion pack that truly offers this kind of content anymore. Any other company could have released this as a standalone game, and they’d have called it a day. It carries with it the quality we’ve come to expect from developer From Software.
It might stumble with balancing issues, but everything else overshadows any minor complaints I might have. This is a gorgeously rendered dark fantasy, same as its predecessor; a vast and mythic nightmare I love to get lost in. It captures the joy of tabletop role-playing, old-school Nintendo classics, and flights of fantasy in a way that few others ever come close to.