New spooky setting, same great Elden Ring taste.

DLCs of this size generally work one of two ways:
- a more focused experience that explores an opportunity left untouched by the base game making the whole package more robust
- more of the base game's original formula but in a new setting or with new content

Shadow of the Erdtree is the "more of the same, new place" one.

Elden Ring's first (and only?) DLC does very little to change the outline of the base game here. Don't get me wrong; that's largely a good thing. Elden Ring is one of the greatest games ever made so why mess with that, right?

The Land of Shadow is a beautiful setting that has a surprising variety of visual depth packed into a small space (relative to the base game's map), you're continually rewarded for poking around for secrets in the form of new paths to travel and the occasional new weapon or armor piece, and this is the most connected I've been to a crew of NPCs in a FromSoft game. But man, liking all that aside, I was really ready to be done by the end.

The more linear format of From's other games allowed pacing to be so deliberate. There's a definite cadence to playing Dark Souls, Sekiro, or Bloodborne that is attempted in Elden Ring but is markedly less successful given the freedom a player is given. It's objectively more difficult to manage player experience when they can wander down a dozen different paths at any given time. That freedom of play limits the effectiveness of that attempted cadence and Shadow of the Erdtree particularly suffers because it meets that misstep with roadblocks in the form of sudden difficulty spike bosses.

Let's take a moment to be accurate, though. Most of the "unfair" bosses in this DLC are actually just sort of progression catch-up points. It's basically Miyazaki appearing on your screen and saying "level up or get better at playing my game or you're done here." That's frustrating at first and then eventually rewarding. That's Souls, baby. Love it or hate it. It's nothing new. More gradual progression is certainly less abrasive to play through but these "unfair" bosses are nothing new. The leap to that final boss, though. It’s hard to see this DLC’s final boss as much more than an attempt to pad out playtime for most players. Maybe for the best of the best, it’s an opportunity to test wild builds and really show off your #progamerskills. But as the final hurdle before the end of this DLC, that difficulty spike falls flat.

All in all, great stuff but we’ve done all this before (and arguably better). I’m ready for something different.

Yeah I think I get it.

Very, very pretty game with a solid vibe but its gacha hooks are weak and the gameplay itself is extremely barebones.

Why did Hoyoverse start with a concept as neat as "Breath of the Wild open-world gacha" and then fart out "boring space train turn-based RPG" and "loli Dislyte x shovelware Kingdom Hearts"? Just seems like they started at "barely above mid" and have gone down ever sense.