Elden Ring DLC ​​Shadow of the Erdtree goes ‘mixed’ on Steam as players complain about difficulty and performance

It was a trying weekend for many Shadow of the Erdtree players. The extreme – and intentional – difficulty of the DLC has sparked a debate over the rights and wrongs of developer FromSoftware’s approach with this Elden Ring expansion. But now that debate has spilled over to Steam user reviews, which currently have a “mixed” rating after a flood of complaints about rock-hard bosses as well as PC performance issues.

Before Shadow of the Erdtree’s release, director Hidetaka Miyazaki reported that the DLC would significantly test players’ abilities. “The new challenges for the player will be the boss encounters as well as the different types of threats that the world will impose on people,” Miyazaki told CNET. Some of these bosses are aimed at players who have completed most of the Elden Ring base, meaning that FromSoftware has “kind of really pushed the boundaries in terms of what we think the player can handle,” he said. he added.

And so it turned out. Over the weekend, players began complaining about the extreme boss difficulty and performance issues. “As a huge fan of all soulgames, I would love to love the DLC, but the enemy damage is completely excessive, especially for some bosses,” read one negative review. “Some have a completely irregular set of movements, making the whole experience simply painful without any pleasure.”

“Good DLC, but performance has declined since the last update,” reads another negative review, this time focusing on PC performance issues. “Constant micro-stutters, frame drops, freezes and increased loading times make it difficult to enjoy and play the game. One of the first boss fights takes place around a puddle of water, which causes the images to drop considerably. Wait for performance improvements before purchasing.

Perhaps aware of the growing negative feedback about difficulty, publisher Bandai Namco tweeted some advice for Shadow of the Erdtree players who are struggling: “This is a suggestion for increasing your Scadutree blessing. » This matches advice offered by IGN itself. Indeed, we believe that Shadow of the Erdtree’s Scadutree Blessings are the answer to the difficulty of the Elden Ring DLC ​​(the Scadutree Blessing strengthens the recipient’s abilities to deal and negate damage). You can consult our guide for find every last fragment of Scadutree.

This is a suggestion to improve your Scadutree blessing.

– Bandai Namco USA (@BandaiNamcoUS) June 22, 2024

Meanwhile, Shadow of the Erdtree’s review bombardment continues, but it’s worth pointing out that at the time of publishing this article, 65% of the DLC’s 32,722 user reviews are positive on Valve’s platform .

FromSoftware game difficulty has been a hot topic for years, with titles like Dark Souls, Sekiro, and Bloodborne all labeled too hard by some. But the extreme difficulties did not hinder their commercial success. Indeed, Elden Ring has sold an incredible 25 million copies and is by far the biggest FromSoftware game ever made.

Speaking to the Guardian, Miyazaki explained why FromSoftware seeks to continually push players, rather than offering easier difficulties that would theoretically open its games to a wider audience.

“If we really wanted the whole world to play the game, we could just lower the difficulty further and further, but that was the wrong approach,” Miyazaki said. “If we had taken this approach, I don’t think the game would have done what it did, because the sense of accomplishment players feel in overcoming these obstacles is a fundamental part of the experience. Lowering the difficulty would deprive the game of all its richness which, in my eyes, would break the game itself.

An amusing result of the debate around Shadow of the Erdtree’s difficulty is a renewed nostalgia for the base game and its bosses, now seen as relatively easy to get along with in retrospect.

Shadow of the Erdtree certainly received critical acclaim and became the highest-rated video game expansion of all time surpassing Witcher 3 DLC Blood and Wine on Metacritic. IGN’s Shadow of the Erdtree review gave it a 10/10. We said: “Like the base game before it, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree raises the bar for single-player DLC expansions. It takes everything that made the base game such an impactful RPG, condenses it into a relatively compact 20-25 hour campaign, and offers fantastic new challenges for highly invested fans.