Elden Ring - Shadow of the Erdtree Review
Written by James Jensen
9 July 2024
“Pure and radiant, he wields love to shrive clean the hearts of men. There is nothing more terrifying.”
Elden Ring almost needs no introduction. It's been about two years since it launched, and was defined not just by the brutal challenge it presented to you, but also its stunning world, densely laden with secrets, and its story, while a little hard to grasp at first, when given the time and space it needed to unfurl, genuinely broadened into one of the most compelling dark fantasy tales one could hope to experience. Game of the Year 2022, Elden Ring, and by proxy The Lands Between hold a dear place in the hearts of many, so when Shadow of the Erdtree was announced, a lot of questions arose.
So massive in its scope, and with lore so rich and intriguing, how would FromSoft possibly follow up such a universally loved experience? How does one make Elden Ring, something widely regarded as one of the greatest video games of all time, better? It's an interesting question, one with implications that are almost impossible to grasp, yet FromSoft seemed uniquely equipped to handle this task. Would they change things up, or was the core conceit of Elden Ring strong enough to extend itself for another 40+ hours?
Get ready for this one. I didn't love Elden Ring, wait wait, hold your pitchforks, I can explain. Look, I have a lot of respect for FromSoft and for Elden Ring, and I totally understand and appreciate what they were trying to do. Many parts of the game, especially the first maybe 80% it I absolutely adored. There are times in which Elden Ring is firing on all cylinders, discovering Nokron and the Siofra River, riding coffins into the abyss, fighting giant aliens beyond one's own comprehension with nothing but a dinky little sword, honestly, those experiences, and that incomparable sense of wonder rocketed the game up to 10/10 status in my mind, but due to some great frustrations surrounding certain late game encounters, the last few bosses, and the games' difficulty scaling, my experience ended, sitting atop the throne as Elden Lord, immensely dissatisfied with the ordeal. I wanted to love Elden Ring, but its final encounters genuinely soured me to what was otherwise an absolutely unforgettable experience.
I will get to the specifics of these frustrations later, but I think it's this disdain that led me to approach Shadow of the Erdtree a little differently than most. As I said, I really did love parts of Elden Ring, but as the game marched forward, that sense of awe was gradually ground down into nothing. And thus I hoped Shadow of the Erdtree able to recapture that magic I had initially experienced.
And here we are. I've finished Shadow of the Erdtree and I can say with confidence that it's more Elden Ring, more breath-taking environments that will leave you unsure as to just how FromSoft's artists were able to realise them so clearly, more boss fights that will leave you clenching your teeth, ready to smash your head against a wall, more deep and rich lore, and as icing on the cake, about 100 new weapons across 8 weapon types, and in that sense, it is an uncompromising success.
That's not to say it's perfect, there are some issues I have surrounding certain boss encounters, and a few qualms regarding the map's layout, and item economy, but overall, I would say this expansion really is quite fantastic.
Shadow of the Erdtree is packed to the brim with marvel; monolithic castles set against ancient ruins, lands of beasts, and most importantly, poison swamps. There are new encounters, offering a far greater challenge than that of the base game. And its narrative, delivered in a way that not only provides answers to a lot of questions the base game offered for those willing to hunt for them, but also offers an experience that is somewhat more readable and motivating than that of your quest to become Elden Lord. Most importantly however, it rather artfully manages to recapture the essence of when we first ventured into The Lands Between two years ago.
“Shadow of the Erdtree is packed to the brim with marvel; monolithic castles set against ancient ruins…”
Shadow of the Erdtree takes place in a new region, accessible only after you have beaten both Mohg and Radahn in the base game. The decision to lock this DLC behind not one but two skill checks is interesting, but does make sense due to narrative implications involving the two. From the Mohgwyn Palace, you can touch Miquella's coccoon and be transported to The Land of Shadow, overlooked not by the Erdtree of the Lands Between, but its contorted second half, the Scadutree. I've been informed this is one of those weird Gaelic words that FromSoft likes to use like Blaidd, and it's actually pronounced "Shadow Tree," so lets go with that from here on out.
Your quest begins in a way that is somewhat unclear, but you'll soon discover that the characters in this world have been charmed by Miquella the Kind, who has embarked into the Land of Shadow on his lonesome, and thus, your course of action from here on out is to not just find Miquella, but discover the true nature of his journey.
The way the narrative is pieced together here is a fantastic improvement over the base game. Your motivations in Elden Ring were very simple, "Become Elden Lord," and thus your goal was to effectively kill everyone that stood in your way to achieve that goal of sitting atop the throne, and ushering in a new age. Its intrigue and mystery then came from the lore surrounding it, the story of the Two Fingers, Marika and her children and their roles in this unending conflict, a ruling class almost defined by its subjugation of those that would not conform to its ideals, and the very nature of the world itself. Its lore was deep and complex, often confusing, yet incredibly interesting if given the time to be properly explored. There is a reason those VaatiVidya lore breakdown videos do so well on YouTube, because this story is actually really well written, but also obfuscated from the player in a way that might be alienating to some.
That is not the case in Shadow of the Erdtree. It still has this almost historical and scholarly quality to it, but instead of forcing you to piece absolutely everything together yourself, it gives you just enough breadcrumbs along its main path that will lead you through the plot involving Miquella, his journey into the Land of Shadow, and its deep history that not only stands on its own but actively enriches the lore of the base game, giving motivations some characters that previously were a little unclear, like Mohg, but also expanding on Marika's ascension to Godhood and the nature of her successors. It's really quite incredible how FromSoft were able to not just weave a different tale in this incredible world, but deliver it in a way that, while being a little more accessible than the story of the base game, doesn't detract from their traditional style of storytelling. There is plenty here for lore fiends, just as there is something a little more readable for those that maybe don't have the time or will to engage further.
In typical Elden Ring fashion It plays a lot into the Dark Fantasy tropes that work really well, the high societies of the Golden Order contrasted heavily by their cruel treatment of those they deem unworthy, and if you enjoyed that style of storytelling, you certainly won't be disappointed here. The many NPCs you will come across all have compelling stories to tell, yet many of these plot threads echo back into the base game, meaningfully expanding on ideas that were once left rather ambiguous. It not only highlights different societies and cultures that didn't exist in the lore prior, but also puts a spotlight on their depravity and struggle, a point that Elden Ring has always made sure to showcase front and centre.
The biggest praise I can give the writing here is that I felt consistently engaged with the story it was trying to tell, due to that more straightforward structure I mentioned, and while I still spent a lot of time exploring, I never felt as if I was losing sight of the main plot, something I felt fairly often in the base game. There were almost always some narrative threads linking back to Miquella's pilgrimage, echoed quite neatly by your own venture into this space.
“I never felt as if I was losing sight of the main plot, something I felt fairly often in the base game.”
The Land of Shadow is really magnificent, and let me tell you why. A lot of these spaces evoke a feeling, much like that feeling when stepping out into Limgrave for the first time. FromSoft are absolute masters of visual composition, putting together scenes and showing them to you in just the right way at just the right time that will leave you absolutely stunned. Take stepping out into The Gravesite Plains for the first time.
The real brilliance here is FromSoft's ability to not just evoke this sense of wonder once, but to somehow consistently deliver you these incredible sights. Elden Ring excelled in this regard, but Shadow of the Erdtree really steps it up a notch, and I found myself longing for the time the game would show me one more vista, an incredible cave system, or a magnificent castle.
It makes me laugh every time I think about this, Game Director Miyazaki said in an interview with IGN back in February that the Lands of Shadow were "probably comparable to the size of Limgrave," and man, that could not be more of a fucking lie. Maybe if you took 5 or 6 Limgraves and stacked them on top of each other in some weird, dark fantasy sandwich, you'd have Shadow of the Erdtree. This is the same guy that said that Elden Ring was 30 hours long, so I guess it makes sense, Miyazaki is the GOAT of under promising and overdelivering.
This expansion took me about 50 hours to do what I believe to be *almost* everything, but I'm sure there is plenty that I've missed, which does lead me to a small problem I had with the way this map is pieced together.
A fair bit denser than The Lands Between, the Land of Shadow contains 12 areas, and these spaces are all quite distinct from one and other. Elden Ring had these vast open spaces and was able to do a lot with those areas, cramming secrets and mysteries in places that you oftentimes had to be quite thorough to access. There are still secrets here, and thus plenty a reward for exploring, yet that increased density and less of these sprawling open spaces means that FromSoft only had one place to go: up.
The Land of Shadow has this real sense of verticality, more so than the Lands Between did, and at first, this seems like a real strength, allowing for much more *stuff* to be packed into a tighter space, but as you'll quite quickly discover, this means that a lot of areas you would initially think think quite easy to access actually seem next to impossible to reach at times. Take the Cerulean Coast for example, something that can be quite easily seen from the Southern part of the Gravesite Plane, a steep drop actually means that you must traverse through a pretty unclear route to get there from nearly the very top of the map.
It's not inherently bad design, but the structure of this world ends up feeling rather labyrinthine, as you search for paths forward to get to spaces you think would be quite straightforward given that they are always in your field of view. Almost every "optional" area is like this, visible but almost unreachable by normal means, unless you get very lucky finding a path while exploring.
Finally managing to reach these places does feel quite rewarding however, and a lot of the substories involving these locations are some of the most interesting quests in the game. I won't spoil anything, but one of the regions, Jagged Peak, and your journey to get there culminates in this incredible boss fight that is just exceptionally well designed, with spoils well worth for the hardships you suffered to reach it.
The poison swamp shown quite prominently in the marketing material actually is so out of the way that I would think it near impossible to reach without some sort of guide to get you there, yet its story implications, and some unique gameplay systems that I won't spoil are so interesting and compelling that it seems almost sacrilege to seal them away in an area that you might miss on a first playthrough, but hey, that's FromSoft for you. These games revel on the community discovering new things over time, and I'm plenty sure the Land of Shadows is a gift that will keep on giving for a long time to come.
This fundamental design principle, the spectacle, the abundant variety in its visual design, and the distinctness of its regions was itself enough of a motivator for me to move through them and discover their secrets, but I feel like one piece of design that was inherent to Elden Ring itself gets a little muddled in this quest for more.
“…it seems almost sacrilege to seal them away in an area that you might miss on a first playthrough, but hey, that's FromSoft for you.”
One of the biggest strengths of Elden Ring was its ability to use necessity as a motivator to get you out into the world. The game is really hard, and part of the beauty of it was that if you were facing a challenge that you weren't quite ready for, there was really nothing stopping you from leaving it, traversing the world to become stronger, and returning to face it when you felt ready. There were many of these points where you probably felt like you needed better gear, to level up or just to get better at the combat system, so how did you do that? You explored. You scoured the Lands Between for any and everything that would give you an edge on these impossible foes, and eventually you overcame.
Tapping into that incredible sense of discovery, you would tackle dungeons, caves, mausoleums with incredibly challenging enemies inside with the hope that you would find a piece of gear that fit your playstyle, and that was part of the magic of Elden Ring. Your progression was directly tied to your exploration, and it was paramount that you searched every nook and cranny because, crucially, you didn't know what *wasn't* worth your time.
As I said earlier, entering the Land of Shadow is contingent on you beating not just Mohg, but Radahn as well, both considered to be some of the more challenging boss encounters in Elden Ring. And if you're at the point where you're able to take down these foes, you're likely pretty high level, and you probably have end-game equipment or something close to it. Thus your motivations to get out and explore might be significantly lessened, as you're unlikely to get much stronger by doing so. This didn't really bother me as the narrative and visual splendour were enough to motivate me to scour the world for its secrets, but if these things fail to grab you like they did me, I would imagine that Shadow of the Erdtree might not work for you in the same way.
FromSoft do make an effort at alleviating this by introducing "Scadutree Fragments," pickups scattered throughout the world that just blanket make you stronger, increasing your damage dealt and reducing the damage you take, but I can't help but feel the reduced impact of this exploration system due to your inherent power level at this stage of the game. Finding a million smithing stones to upgrade your main weapon doesn't feel very satisfying if it's already max level.
Look, there has been a lot of discourse surrounding the game's difficulty, and while there is not doubt that the DLC is brutal, with incredibly high damage scaling and lengthy boss combos, I think for the most part, I wanna say that most of these bosses are actually better designed than some of the pain points from the base game.
My struggles initially stemmed from the way that it approached its difficulty, and let me talk a little more about that. To me, Elden Ring had one major problem, and it was so fundamental to its design, and it's what ended up sullying my experience as a whole. You see, Dark Souls, and practically every FromSoft game well known and loved for their brutal difficulty, however boss encounters almost always played out in a similar way. They had big, telegraphed movements, and would always leave you a clear window to counter attack. Dodge through your enemy's attacks, wait for an opportunity, attack, roll out, rinse, repeat.
Elden Ring followed a similar philosophy, most of the time. These bosses would have these big telegraphed combos with clear endpoints, and as you went in for your counter, about 50% of the time they would continue the combo even further. This was meant to act as a "risk-reward" interaction, but due to the nature of the game's damage scaling, a lot of the later bosses had the ability to one or two shot you, meaning that if there was any risk of you getting hit by a coin-toss mechanic, you often just couldn't take the chance. To me this felt quite unfair and frustrating, and it honestly bothered me so much, that for the past 2 years I was convinced that I just didn't like Elden Ring despite its obvious strengths.
So it feels weird for me to say, Shadow of the Erdtree still has some of these mechanics, and the bosses do way more damage, but the way these attacks are telegraphed is so much less egregious that it actually didn't really bother me at all. Many of these random combo finishers leave an opening to roll out even if you did go for a light attack, leaving them feeling a lot more fair in my opinion.
Quite notably, the level of aggression of the bosses is also ramped up quite significantly, you oftentimes don't have the leisure of casting a summon pre fight, whereas in the base game you almost always could. From the second you enter the boss arena, they will be on top of you almost immediately, meaning you need to time your use of summons in a more intelligent and often riskier way, and it feels like a purposeful decision on FromSoft to nerf those cheesy Mimic Tear builds, you know who you are.
“it feels like a purposeful decision on FromSoft to nerf those cheesy Mimic Tear builds, you know who you are.”
Some have described boss health as being too high, "artificially inflating difficulty" but to be honest I don't really agree. While it's true that these bosses, especially the last few do have these massive health pools, it doesn't feel too far removed from how the base game operated. I think this perception of inflated difficulty comes from the longer strings of combos these enemies have, another effort to counter bleed builds from the original. Whereas bosses in the base game often would perform 3 or 4 attacks before giving you an opportunity to strike, a lot of bosses here will perform 6 or 7 attacks and give you an incredibly small window to get a hit in, and to some, this feels like the difficulty is being artificially ramped up, but to me I think it actually felt quite well tuned as an increased challenge from the base game.
Don't get me wrong, this expansion is a brutally difficult, but it seldom veers into the realm of unfairness, and that is no small feat. I'm embarrassed to admit that I actually spent about 8 straight hours on the final encounter, which saying it back feels almost unbelievable, but as with all of these games before it, that sense of cathartic release you experience when overcoming such intense hardship is beyond compare. And while it's nigh impossible for a reward to be worth such a massive undertaking, I feel like From have done a *pretty* good job at making it seem worth it.
If I had to point to a problem, some of Shadow of the Erdtree's bosses have relatively high mobility, meaning that especially if you're close to them, their attacks can be a bit challenging to read, which is more of an issue with the camera than anything, but this happened so infrequently that I wasn't bothered all too much.
All in all, little can compare to the immense spectacle of these encounters, these clashes you have with champions, beasts and abominations alike, just like the base game before it much of the allure of these bosses rests in their visual design and just how memorable these encounters are, and all I can say is FromSoft has done a really spectacular job at making these bosses not only distinct from those of the base game, but also at weaving them into a difficulty structure that feels like a real improvement.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Finding a way to follow something like Elden Ring is no simple task. Shadow of the Erdtree is an absolutely massive expansion, almost inconceivably so. It's no exaggeration to say that there is as much content here as multiple full games, and despite its massive scope, it still exhibits the same expansiveness and mystical sense of discovery that the base game revelled in, leading to its victory at The Game Awards back in 2022, and its reverence in culture today.
Its narrative may seem a little straightforward in comparison to that of the base game, but that initial direction peels away to reveal a layered, lore rich world that not only tells a compelling story in its own right, but meaningfully enriches the already twisting and complex story of the Lands Between, giving some much needed answers to some questions long pondered by the community, but perhaps most importantly, leaving us with just as many new questions to speculate over for years to come.
Its world is incredible, not just caked with visual splendour and art direction, but meaningfully changing the way that you interact with the space as a player, not just offering vast landscapes but also more verticality, allowing for a more compressed experience. While at times this tight world structure may leave it feeling a little labyrinthine and confusing, overall I feel as if The Land of Shadow is a space that well and truly earns your attention, packed to the brim with secrets, and mysteries that are practically begging to be uncovered.
And its difficulty, oh man the difficulty. FromSoft managed to meaningfully increase the challenge that the game offers without ever feeling like it's trying to cheat you. Elden Ring had some really tough boss encounters (looking at you Melania), yet Shadow of the Erdtree manages to not just surpass the teeth clenching, white knuckled brawls in difficulty, but also in visual design, leading to not just some of the most memorable encounters in Elden Ring, but in any game in the genre.
If you loved Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erdtree is definitely more of that, I promise you won't be disappointed. But if, like me, perhaps you had some trouble with some of the more frustrating aspects of Elden Ring and walked away feeling a little dissatisfied, I implore you to give this a chance. While it isn't perfect by any means, and is often frustrating, brutally difficult, and has a little trouble with the camera in some encounters, it more than makes up for it with its incredible and varied world, deep and rich lore, and all the parts that made Elden Ring great in the first place.
The biggest praise I can give to Shadow of the Erdtree, is that it actually changed my mind about Elden Ring, and for the first time in two years, I feel like I can love it the way I so desperately wanted to.
Elden Ring - Shadow of the Erdtree
THE GOOD
Staggering discovery and world
Deep and rich lore, well delivered story
Stunning boss encounters
THE BAD
Labyrinthine map structure
Reduced incentive for exploration
Camera is a bit finicky
THIS GAME IS REALLY HARD
Shadow of the Erdtree is unequivocally more Elden Ring. That's to say, a somber, yet varied world full of secrets to be unearthed, rich and textured lore that will be picked apart for years to come, and brutally challenging boss encounters. Perhaps its crowning achievement however, is that it rather artfully manages to recapture the very essence of when we stepped out into The Lands Between, two years ago.
9
DEVELOPER | FromSoftware
PUBLISHER | Bandai Namco Entertainment
PLATORM | Playstation 5, Playstation 4, XBox Series, XBox One, PC
INITIAL RELEASE DATE | 21 June 2024