SHADOW OF THE ERDTREE --- REFINED TO IMPERFECTION
This is just gonna be a lot of ramblings about what I liked and didn't like.
Like the base game in 2022, Shadow of the Erdtree is a game of highs and lows. SotE tries to fix one of my main complaints of the base game (the bosses) with the introduction of some of the best boss fights in the entire souls series like Messmer, Rellana, and Midra; however, the game also stoops into some of the most baffling boss design choices with the final boss of the dlc and a couple others that will not be named due to spoilers (if you've played it, you'll know who I'm talking about). The new Furnace enemies that give you physick tears also suck. The Land of Shadow is around the size of half of the Lands Between. This sounds amazing at first, but--just like the base game--it runs out of steam and gets more linear in the final act. The side content here is better than the side content in the base game, but it gets repetitive by the time you enter your 10th ("new") copy paste dungeons 15 hours in. The level design in Shadow of the Erdtree is great, but some enemies leaves me puzzled. The robed enemies in Messmer's level are pretty annoying to fight with how spammy they can be, and all the bird enemies in the DLC surpass DS3's dogs as the worst enemies in the series. I feel like the Scadutree Blessings system is also really uninspired and boring. I get that From wants us to explore the world, but giving us a flat damage and defense buff is boring. It worked well in Sekiro because you got them after defeating main bosses and got health upgrades by exploring and defeating side bosses. However, in SotE, you get attack upgrades and spirit ash upgrades by exploring. This makes subsequent runs of the DLC on other characters boring because you'll have to find all of them again if you want to stand a chance against the bosses.
I enjoyed my time with Elden Ring and its expansion, but as we look forward to FromSoftware's next games over the next few years, I hope they scale things back a bit and hone in on something to perfection a la Sekiro.
This is just gonna be a lot of ramblings about what I liked and didn't like.
Like the base game in 2022, Shadow of the Erdtree is a game of highs and lows. SotE tries to fix one of my main complaints of the base game (the bosses) with the introduction of some of the best boss fights in the entire souls series like Messmer, Rellana, and Midra; however, the game also stoops into some of the most baffling boss design choices with the final boss of the dlc and a couple others that will not be named due to spoilers (if you've played it, you'll know who I'm talking about). The new Furnace enemies that give you physick tears also suck. The Land of Shadow is around the size of half of the Lands Between. This sounds amazing at first, but--just like the base game--it runs out of steam and gets more linear in the final act. The side content here is better than the side content in the base game, but it gets repetitive by the time you enter your 10th ("new") copy paste dungeons 15 hours in. The level design in Shadow of the Erdtree is great, but some enemies leaves me puzzled. The robed enemies in Messmer's level are pretty annoying to fight with how spammy they can be, and all the bird enemies in the DLC surpass DS3's dogs as the worst enemies in the series. I feel like the Scadutree Blessings system is also really uninspired and boring. I get that From wants us to explore the world, but giving us a flat damage and defense buff is boring. It worked well in Sekiro because you got them after defeating main bosses and got health upgrades by exploring and defeating side bosses. However, in SotE, you get attack upgrades and spirit ash upgrades by exploring. This makes subsequent runs of the DLC on other characters boring because you'll have to find all of them again if you want to stand a chance against the bosses.
I enjoyed my time with Elden Ring and its expansion, but as we look forward to FromSoftware's next games over the next few years, I hope they scale things back a bit and hone in on something to perfection a la Sekiro.
Angelo42
2 days ago