Image: FromSoftware
Some players are criticising Elden Ring’s new expansion for its performance issues and difficulty.
FromSoftware has released its first and final expansion for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. The expansion has received almost unanimous praise since its launch, even going so far as to surpass The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine to become the best-reviewed expansion for an RPG on Metacritic. However, reviews on Steam are a little less positive, with many users criticising the DLC for its performance issues and high difficulty curve.
In fact, online discourse over the difficulty of Shadow of the Erdtree’s new bosses has become so widespread that even publisher Bandai Namco had to chime in:
Shadow of the Erdtree gets Mixed reviews on Steam
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree has dropped to ‘Mixed’ reviews on Steam, with 64% of over 30,000 user reviews for the game currently being positive. Reading through the negative reviews, two specific issues seem to keep cropping up for players: PC performance woes and high boss difficulty. Performance-wise, people are calling the game out for framerate drops and stuttering, which happens even during chaotic boss fights.
However, most of these negative reviews are specifically centered around the game’s difficulty, rather than its performance issues. It seems that most of Shadow of the Erdtree’s bosses are a cut above the base game’s bosses, much to the frustration of the player base. One lengthy review by The Letter Zed reads, “Words cannot describe to you how difficult this expansion is. Black Gaol Knight is a meme for a reason. He is the boss that slapped everyone in the face. He was the cornerstone to how hard the rest of the DLC is going to be. I've seen my buddies with max poise, max strength and high Vigor builds for the full unga bunga experience get COMPLETELY one shot by him.”
The rest of the negative reviews decry the expansion’s wild damage scaling over the base game, and the random nature of enemy attack patterns during boss fights. Most players report being killed in one or two hits during these bossfights, but that bit might not actually be the game’s fault. Shadow of the Erdtree includes a new progression system that involves players collecting Scadutree Fragments to increase their damage and resistance against DLC enemies.
If players don’t take the time to explore the world and find these fragments, the bosses they face will be significantly harder to beat than they need to be. As Bandai Namco itself put it: “This is a suggestion to level up your Scadutree Blessing."
