Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree Review

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree review: When Elden Ring came out in 2022, it managed to attract not only the players who loved the Souls genre, but almost the whole game world, and managed to write its name in history as one of the best games of not only 2022 but also the last 10 years. After a 2-year period, let’s examine whether the DLC package Shadow of the Erdtree was able to maintain this success or whether it was a package that failed to meet the expectations of the players.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree Review and Shadow Realm

Any player who has spent many hours with Malenia will be familiar with the name Miquella, and we got to see her hand in the Mohg fight. Shadow of the Erdtree starts right here, at the point where we fight Mohg. We meet a knight named Leda and step into the Shadow Realm to follow in Miquella’s footsteps.

Throughout the DLC pack, our aim is to follow the signs left behind by Miquella, these signs are actually defined as a part of her, and under almost each of them we meet comrades in arms who follow Miquella like us. Although I am not sure of the exact number, I think I met 10 different NPCs and each of them had their own special tasks and small stories. Moreover, most of them are easy enough to do even without the help of a guide. By completing the tasks of NPC characters, you can influence their fate and make the future challenges more difficult or easier for yourself. In this respect, I liked the fact that they play a more active role than the Roundtable Hold team.

I have a lot of questions about the main story. Although I think there are some deficiencies in the struggles we do, the enemies we encounter and the connection of the events that happen to us, I know that there are some points I missed due to the limited time we have for the review and the huge size of the game, I realised these when I talked to other friends who reviewed the game in the press. In general, although the storytelling is in the style we are used to, I think it is easier to follow. Still, I feel like Shadow of the Erdtree, the first and last DLC expansion pack of the game, does not have an ending that satisfies me. I could not get that “yes, the story is over” feeling I got in Dark Souls 3: The Ringed City. Maybe Elden Ring 2 will come.

New Weapons in the New Realm

For those of you who say “Forget the story, tell us about the gameplay!”, we’ve come to the important part! First of all, I want to mention something, I played and finished this game on the Xbox Series and although I bought it on PC, I hadn’t played it much, except for the randomiser modes. So before the review code arrived, I quickly created a character, leveled him to level 94 and managed to cut Mohg (albeit with some effort) before he even entered Leyndel. Naturally, my character was not equipped with endgame equipment and spells, and I will share my experiences accordingly.

With Shadow of the Erdtree, we step into a brand new realm. This means new spells – incantations, new weapons, new enemies and a renewed character development system. Although the level of your character is important up to a point in Shadow Realm, we have a new development system that is only valid in this realm, blessings. Through items called Scadutree Fragments and Revered Spirit Ashes, you improve yourself just like you improve your flask.

Scadutree Fragments dropped by enemies or found on the ground at important points increase your character’s Scadutree Blessing level. This blessing increases the damage dealt by your character and reduces the damage dealt by the enemy. These are really important and make a serious difference in your progress in the game. If you’re like me and complain that your character is weak after being beaten by bosses for hours, you may notice that the fight has changed significantly after collecting these pieces. Another beauty of this system is that no matter how strong your main character is, the fights are not overly difficult or easy. In other words, it ensures that “I even cut Malenia, they are hisss” and those who enter halfway through the game like me have almost similar difficulties.

Revered Spirit Ashes are improvements that are only valid in this realm and increase the power of the Spirit Ashes you summon. Much like Scadutree Blessing, Revered Spirit Ashes allows you to increase the survivability and damage output of your allies (Mimic Tear for the most part). When I play as a caster, I need Spirit Ashes to keep the enemy’s attention on me, and they usually dissipate quickly, so it’s nice that Spirit Ashes allows me to keep even underdeveloped allies alive longer and finish the fight. I also got a chance to try out new Spirit Ashes, since I couldn’t upgrade them due to lack of materials. A nice feature.

When you add a lot of new items to the game, it becomes a little more difficult to control the inventory. We have new features for this. We can now see an exclamation mark next to the new items in the inventory, so there is no need to think “has it been here before or is it new”. There’s also a “Recent” tab that can be activated from the menu. This is a great thing, if you can’t find the item you grabbed from the ground while the Furnace Golem is chasing after you, you can switch to the “Recent” tab and see the items in the order you last picked them up.

New weapons, new spell-incantation types and attack shields that you can both defend yourself and beat your enemies have also been added to the game. Moreover, you can find a lot of development materials throughout the game so that you don’t have trouble developing them. Among the new weapons, Rellena’s double sword is my favourite because it’s too compatible with my character, but there are also a lot of nice new options such as throwable spears, whips, perfume bottles that you can use constantly. I’m not too happy with the spells, I feel like they paid a little more attention to the incantation side, the new spells look very good visually, but it feels like they have a long cast time and can’t make up for it with damage. On the incantation side, there’s some great stuff from Messmer and another boss.

New Enemies to Give a Good Beating

From Software can’t resist giving us new weapons to try out and enemies to beat the crap out of. As soon as you step into the realm, the wonderful landscape welcomes you and allows you to see many things you will see in the game from afar. One of them is the Furnace Golem, the Fel Reaver of Elden Ring. WoW: Burning Crusade first came out, it brought me back to the times when I was crushed under the feet of Fel Reaver. Aside from its long-range attacks, it has a very large area to detect you. When you’re travelling around on a horse, you may not realise he’s attacking until burning rocks start falling on your head.

Even though Furnace Golem looks like a boss, it is light compared to the actual boss battles. From Software will have taken into account the complaint of players throughout Elden Ring that “mages are too relaxed, they swing from a distance”, this time your job is a little more difficult if you use spells or incantations. Almost all bosses have the ability to close distance extremely quickly. Sometimes I found myself on the ground even before I entered the door, let alone swinging two spells in a row. Especially if you follow the main story, Rellana, the first boss you will encounter, used the right to be both a mage and a warrior and spent a whole night (about 7 hours). At the end of the battle, where I entered at level 95 and left at level 126 by improving my character, I experienced a really enjoyable fight.

Boss battles have become a little more difficult, and in some of them it is almost impossible to pass unless you increase your Scadutree Blessing level. Moreover, they are extremely fast and fast, some of them may even be too fast. For example, the Rellana fight I mentioned made me feel like a second Malenia, even if I died, I was coming back with the same gas. Again, the different enormous bosses that we will encounter towards the end of the game (I will not mention for the sake of avoiding spoilers) manage to offer a full-fledged fight. We also experience one of the best dragon fights of the series here. My only complaint is that it gives more advantage to melee combat in almost all challenges, leaving no room for the player who wants to attack from a distance. Fighting on horseback is just as bad as before, if you think it’s good, it’s still good, but I found it more useful to dismount and meet the enemy most of the time.

Finding Miquella

The placement of the enemies in the game is generally very good, you will encounter plenty of lurking opponents, they will make ranged attacks from the other side of the road, you will enter unexpected traps. Sometimes even when you think that you have travelled all over a region, you will see that there is actually another entrance from the bottom, so you can go to the parts of the same region that you see from afar. I’m not sure if this ambush and the fact that some enemies are scarier than bosses are good or bad. We were saying that Crucible Knights were scary, and here I said “oh, if only 2 of them would come and not be the ones holding the ring in their hands”. I went through various places reminiscent of Dark Souls 2 before the Sir Alonne fight, fortunately, there is always Grace or Statue of Marika before boss fights here.

Shadow Realm’s level designs and sense of exploration are also presented to us in a very successful way. We find our way by detecting Miquella’s traces in the areas we visit, we fight and discover new enemies in places completely independent from the main story. When I first entered the closed beta of Elden Ring, I experienced that “they say this place is small, but it’s quite big” thought in the DLC. It’s not as big as the main map, but you reach more things as you travel. For example, you can go to a completely different and horrible realm from where you entered to take care of this dungeon. So much so that in this realm, even Torrent does not come to you out of fear, so you run and hide.

Although Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree has a smaller area, it successfully offers the “unlimited space” feeling of the main game. Again, depending on the player’s preference, there are situations such as reaching various places through different paths and encountering different enemies. When I talked to a few people I know who reviewed it, we also learned that we went completely different ways, saying things that each other didn’t realise.

Get Ready!

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree has almost the same system requirements as the main game, with the DLC content, the area it covers has increased slightly. The main game and DLC together require an average of 67 GB of space. I had some graphical errors and clipping problems in the game, when I killed the enemy, there were problems such as falling loot staying in the air and entering the wall. I also experienced a few times that the RTX lighting was distorted and the image was distorted when I turned it on. I was told that there will be a day one patch for the DLC, but it’s still worth mentioning.

One of the most important updates that came with Shadow of the Erdtree was the splash screen, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it. The screen that allows you to open the game in your dark room at night and pretend to have a flashbang with the white Banda Namco screen has changed! It now comes out with a red logo on black and it’s a great change. At first I felt strange when I didn’t eat that flash, it was a change I couldn’t understand, but it was very good.

I don’t have much to add about the sounds and music, the music is again pleasing to our ears, the attack effects are great and the atmosphere envelops you, especially in the area of the dragons.

Conclusion

When Monster Hunter World: Iceborne came out, I thought “If a DLC – Expansion Pack could win the game of the year award, this pack deserves to compete in that category”. I have exactly the same thought for Elden Ring: The Shadow of the Erdtree. With a tonne of great new features, extra features, an alternate character development system, a massive open world, and fun boss battles, Shadow of the Erdtree is a fantastic package. They asked “What can we do to make Elden Ring better?” and came up with one of the best answers possible.

If you have played Elden Ring and want to continue the adventure with more content, and if you have 20 – 50 hours of free time in front of you, go ahead and buy it now. The best game of recent years is back with the best expansion pack of recent years!

You can buy DLC on Steam.