As grand and majestic as I anticipated, maybe even more so. This retains the strongest parts of Elden Ring: the sense of exploration, the awe and scale, and the audacious designs. Exploring this extension of The Lands Between feels nearly as fresh as the base game, although it is hard to capture that feeling of the new that Elden Ring first presented. It is impossible not to be impressed by From's unparalleled sense of scale as you approach one of the wicker Furnace Golems that tower over everything around them. And you will topple them beneath the immense Scadutree. You will notice evocative sights in the distance and at some point you will arrive there and look down to where you first saw it and your personal adventure comes full circle. There are of course all the new weapons, sorceries, and incantations. They've added legit support incantations that focus on your allies which is really neat. I'm glad that there are so many more tools thrown in to create even more insane builds now. The legacy dungeons are all dense and beautiful, and all maintain the vertical upward movement of the land itself. You are always climbing to unfathomable heights or diving deeper and deeper into unknown voids. Every color will cascade over and before you.

My biggest complaint with Shadow of the Erdtree has to be the bosses, which was my only real pitfall with the base game as well. I think in a lot of ways this stems from the sheer vastness of build potential. I feel that while the visual design and presentation of these bosses is typically awe-inspiring and makes for great spectacle, many of them have now become reflex-based. Too many long-string, hard-hitting combos, AOEs, and delays. I only struggled with a couple of the bosses in Erdtree, specifically Commander Gaius and the final boss, but overall I was not impressed by the variation of the fights. They all begin to feel very similar in a way From's bosses in previous games did not. Other than this, Shadow of the Erdtree is a welcomed, gorgeous expansion and I loved diving in and exploring all it had to offer.