90%PlayStation 5

9/10

80%PC

The DLC had the best bosses in all of Elden Ring but I wish the map was more dense with content.

Top 5 bosses:
- Bayle the Dread
- Rellana, Twin Moon Knight
- Midra, Lord of the Frenzied Flame
- (1st) Divine Beast Dancing Lion
- Promised Consort Radahn

90%PC

I liked the DLC but defiantly have some complaints. Firstly I believe the Scadu Tree fragment system is quiet flawed by comparison to the rune leveling system. I loved the leveling system in the base game. You are just simply rewarded for taking enemies down by being able to make your character stronger. Even when you get to a spot where you feel like you are under leveled there tons of other routes/options you can do in order to level up and come back with new items. I feel like there is no way for FromSoft to win given the circumstances of adding a DLC to a game that has been out for quiet sometime. If they let people come in who are on new game plus 7 and are level 500 they would just roll through everything but others might come in and be super underpowered if they rushed to come straight to the DLC. I played the DLC with my brother in the seamless co-op mod it was super fun. I think I made a mistake by playing the base game over then going straight to the DLC. We were feeling good and feeling strong and then boom we were getting absolutely humbled again, I don't think this would have bothered me that if I had just came back to the DLC without replaying the base game right before. I really like the area it is very cool and interconnected in interesting ways. The bosses and enemies are dope designs but the are not always fun to fight, some absolutely suck. We organically explored for a little while but when we started hitting some of the harder bosses it just became apparent that we would need to find as many tree fragments as possible just to save ourselves the headache of throwing our heads at a wall hundreds of times over. The bosses themselves are mostly good but my good some are unreal levels of difficulty compared to anything in the base game. Difficult enough that we were needed to re spec our characters to do totally different things to feel like we had a chance. The punish windows are so small the margin for error is minimal the speed is so much faster many bosses felt closer to the Sekiro boss. I am thankful I did not play this solo on my own because I don't think I would have enjoyed memorizing all these bosses patterns. They just added everything that made some bosses so hard in the base game and made sure that everyone had them. Rush down moves, huge AOE shockwaves, moves so fast one mistimed dodge snowballs, and of course really small windows for hitting the boss. On the difficulty scale they cranked a game that some would consider a 10/10 to a 15/10 or higher. Overall I think it was good but my god they did not let off the gas for those who are a glutton for punishment this is great addition to an already hard game.

95%PC

It's more Elden Ring

95%PC

Very solid open world, less dense than the lands between tho. Contains great bosses, but also very shitty ones

100%PC

10/10, a worthy expansion to the greatest game of all time

100%PlayStation 5

What more can I say. From Software is a guarantee of top notch crafted games but everytime I'm still amazed by how good every single one of their releases good are. Challenging bosses and areas. Awesome level design and art direction. DLC better than 95% of games released.

85%PlayStation 5

Shadow of the Erdtree has fantastic legacy dungeons, and a really empty overworld. Theres only 12 Caves/Catacombs/Tunnels in a map thats almost as big as the base games.The Caves and Catacombs are a lot bigger than they were in the base game which is really cool and i liked going through them, but i would have really liked more. The Legacy Dungeons and bosses are really where the DLC shines, although the final boss is so annoying. The difficulty is of course, very hard. It is a fromsoft game after all, but it felt unfairly or artificially hard at times. A normal enemy in the starting area can lock you into 5 hit combo and instantly kill you, while also having a lot of health. Its still a great DLC with lots of content, I just wish there was a little bit more.

100%PlayStation 5

Como siempre, From dando lo mejor de sí en un DLC, es bárbaro la de postales que deja en la galería y la de momentos inolvidables que se quedarán contigo toda la vida, me es muy difícil poner con palabras lo buena que me parece esta expansión

100%PC

Vaya paja mas buena.

Me falta el boss final. Cómo se las ingenian los cabrones estos para sacar tremenda droga.

Update: A tomar por culo el boss. Vaya juegazo padre

90%PC

DLC rules, final boss sucks out loud - I ended up cheesing the final boss and I don't regret it in the slightest, the rest of the DLC was so good I refuse to let one boss fight ruin it.

85%PC

8.5/10

60%PC

It's like a condensed version of the main game, but the devs took the worst parts of the main game and cranked it up to 11.

You have your Liurnia - Gravesite plains, mountain region, rot region etc. You do the same actions like ascending the great elevator (not so great in this DLC), burning the tree to ashes, climbing on top of city rooftops and so on. But holy shit was everything frustrating. I knew straight from the start after getting my ass handed to me by Blackgaol knight that I was in for a ride, but I didn't know that the tracks for this ride are non existent and you are just freefalling into a pit of despair. It was difficult just for the sake of being difficult. This has been said hundreds of times before, but the fucking non stop auto aiming combos, insane damage from bosses, severe camera issues and bosses gliding and flying around made a lot of fights unbearable, to the point where I just turned godmode on to progress and explore the rest of the game.

Fuck any big monster bosses, like dragons or ulcerated spirits and guess what, FromSoftware decided they're amazing without asking anyone and introduced a whole slew of these dragons and spirit bosses to the DLC, when nobody asked for them because they SUCK to fight. Fuck abyss woods and those booty chasing buck eyed goblins. Rennala was difficult, but still manageable. Honestly that's where the difficulty should have peaked, but it didn't. You have the hog riding hillbilly commander Gayus. Mounted hog that has insane reach, which you can't outmaneuver even on top of a horse, bullshit long combos, where any hit will almost 1 shot you. Any goddamn dragon was a pain the ass, but the Boyle dragon and Sussysnax fight each other for the crown of bullshit (Boily wins). Mesmer needs no introduction into the famed hall of assholes and Radagon with his clingy thot wife are a good (terrible) outro as the end boss of this clown fiesta of a DLC (Don't forget the schizoid Midra).

The fall distance still sucks, and since this game is more vertical than ever now, it amounts to dying constantly to fall damage, until you find some obscure passageway or cave to go down to the river area. I mean one of the waterfall places in ruins of Rauh is only accessible by a portal which you have to activate using an imbued key, which is all the way in the goddamn gravesite plains, the starting area. I missed this portal entirely and only found it after beating Radagon.

The lack of cutscenes is a big disappointment. There's like 2 or 3 cutscenes that I can remember, opposed to the base game, where every major boss was introduced in a badass little cutscene that made the fight that much more epic (Goddamn Godrick, Rycard, Malenia and many other intros were so iconic).

Quests are still as obscure as ever, and you pretty much need to follow a guide to do most of them. There's a lack of any interesting characters or sequences with them. The only real character that I remember is Leda, who was a maniac and tried to kill everyone for some reason and Trina, just because she's a weird deformed (kinda hot) plant, oh and her simp thiollier. Nothing even close to the amazing cast that was in the base game like Rania, Melina, Dung Eater, Alexander, Fia etc.

Now the locations in this DLC is where it's at though. There's a lot of variety and they look gorgeous. Thundering mountain, flower plains, madness forest and some other places looked gorgeous (although I wish the textures and shadow lines were a bit more refined). And again, you have that great dark souls style where bosses look like an eldritch nightmare, so it all comes together and gives you a great world and atmosphere. But that's about the only thing I enjoyed in this DLC.

Call me a filthy casual who needs to git gud, but the difficulty in this DLC was way too frustrating for me and I wish it was along the lines of the base game. So sadly I can't recommend it for the more casual enjoyers of Elden Ring.

80%Mac

Solid DLC, more like an expansion in the old days. plenty of content that I wish they wouldn’t include rehash content at all as it’s not necessary. Some cool new characters and story… didn’t like the lack of choice for the ending nor the final boss (both the character and the difficulty)

95%PlayStation 5

Goated DLC

85%PlayStation 4

New From Software material always gets my senses tingling and for this DLC I started a complete new playthrough. 120 hours later I felt confident enough to dive into the shadow realm..

It starts similiar like the first hours in Limgrave, it is new, exciting and dangerous. The soundtrack is solid and drags you into the mystery of the shadow tree. Enemies are also way tougher than normal and feel more aggressive. I started the first legacy dungeon (Belarut) with a lot of excitement, the Chinese Dragon boss was kicking my ass and I had to step up my game. The challenge was good and things were looking good going onward.

The DLC of Elden Ring has a problem with its relationship with the base game though. You have to be an endgame character which is already quite the task (a fun one I might add). But after spending so many hours you expect the DLC to have a different face and vibe. It is really just more of the same, including reskins of known bosses and the same approach to open world exploration.

If I compare it to the brilliant DLC worlds of DS, DS2 and DS3 it is clear that there is not an interesting take on world building and mechanics but just a new layer of the same solid earth. There is not much wrong with that, I still had a great time and some locations and bosses were unforgettable but Elden Ring is now done. Everything got squeezed out of it and its time for some fresh new idea.

A dark, golden layered swan song for the genre!

95%Xbox Series X/S

Radahan the Promised Consort was unbelievably difficult until he wasn’t 😎

85%Xbox Series X/S

More of the same… which is good. Rather cryptic way to access the dlc.
My main issue is with final boss… man that was way way too hard.
All original game and other bosses, no issue (i play offline). I left original final boss to explore (and level) the dlc. When I went back he went down in a couple tries.
Now the final dlc boss… I had to severly grind… look strat online… get specific gears and ashes, change my way of playing (I didn’t respec but seriously considered it). still no luck… tried to cheese him to no avail. Then with a combination of correct buff and gears… and countless tries he finally get down… and my reward for it was a crappy 20s cinematic.. yeah
In short, it is good but final boss is very very poorly designed (or over designed maybe).
HINT : do NOT use summon npc, that just buff his hp

100%PlayStation 5

Wanneer je dacht dat het niet beter kon dan de base game kwam de DLC daar nog eens overheen. Met een overrompelende grote map, vol met geheimen en nieuwe bosses. Grootsheid van de game is ongeëvenaard. De bosses zijn top, van Mesmer tot aan Consort Radahn. En vooral de laatstgenoemde is een pain in the ass, waarbij ik welgeteld meer dan 20 uur aan heb besteed om zijn patronen te leren kennen en mijn build hierop aan te passen. Bloodfiend Arm is your friend

60%PC

The first thing I noticed walking into the DLC was how gorgeous the game is, and those views stick around throughout the entire game. In terms of scale the DLC is very impressive as well, it was significantly larger than I expected. Unfortunately that quality does not stick throughout all aspects of the DLC. Many of the areas of the game feel pretty full, but it feels like half the game is almost empty, like Fromsoft didn't have time to stuff these areas with content before releasing it. The new fighting styles are pretty lackluster, and weapons and gear for a few existing classes are almost nonexistent, like sorcery. The combat system was pushed past its limit, the scadutree upgrades as a leveling system honestly seems pretty lazy. Most of the bossfights capitalize on the worst part of the base game, attack combos. All of the bosses are just damage sponges as well which makes them really annoying to fight. I can understand the appeal to hardcore souls-like enjoyers, but as someone who's just trying to casually enjoy it, it's just not that fun. It just seems like difficulty was added in the worst possible way, by making enemies tanks, letting them hit like tanks, and then just throwing endless attack combos onto them. The only 3 bosses I enjoyed were Romina, Midra, and Rellana. The rest of the bosses just abused the worst game mechanics. The final boss is just pure misery, he is the epitome of everything wrong with the game.

Is Shadow of the Erdtree impressive for a DLC? Very much yes. Is the quality of it nearly as good as the base game? No.

100%PC

Completed DLC during New Game +3.

80%PC

Decent DLC
Radahn Concert was hard passed with Scadutree level 10

85%PC

Очень сложно, но проходимо, в целом только 3 боса были сильными, но радан это ппц, как малению проходил часа 3.

90%PlayStation 5

A victory lap for FromSoftware who once again show that their world and level design is a step above others. I thoroughly enjoyed exploring the lands of shadow, collecting new weapons, spells and talismans to consider for my build. The problems for this expansion comes with its bosses unfortunately, which, similar to the endgame of the base game, are often overtuned. Dodge an 8-hit combo for the chance to hit the boss a single time then rinse and repeat. Not all the bosses in the expansion have this issue and there are some genuinely fun encounters here, but for the most part I found the main required bosses to be very frustrating, even if they were mechanically and visually excellent.
Besides these issues, the expansion is still a great time and I will surely return to the land of shadow again in the future. 9/10.

80%PC

June 22, 2024 – Started Playing

100%Xbox Series X/S

Ok, en pocas palabras 10/10 si te gusto Elden Ring, el DLC te va a encantar muy muy bueno! Los bosses increíbles, y el mundo es un 10, lo recomiendo 100%

90%PC

More amazing Elden Ring adding tons of new bosses, enemies, weapons, spells, areas, etc.

Only negative is some areas towards the end feel empty/unfinished and having to collect tree fragments for your characters stats to not feel bad kills replay value.

80%PC

Shadow of the Erdtree is a game-sized DLC that adds a surprising amount of depth to the already immense world of Elden Ring. The DLC took me around 40 hours to complete, during which I scoured for secrets, tried to decipher the lore surrounding the game, and perfected my build and strategy for each boss.

However, all is not well in the Lands Between and the Realm of Shadow. FromSoftware has been looking into making the games more accessible and finding a good balance for people who want to experience the game in co-op or with spirits. Unfortunately, even though this design philosophy is a great way of having a more granular approach to difficulty, the reality is that solo gameplay has suffered, and the disparity between fighting the bosses solo and with one summon or one co-op partner is too big.

This is a difficult fix, and you can see it in their latest boss designs. A lot of them already present very few gaps for you to attack and retaliate, making the difficulty feel less rewarding or fair. My main example of this is Radahn. His second phase obscures his movements, makes his moveset difficult to understand, and overall presents certain attacks that feel incredibly difficult and even impossible to dodge.

Finally, I have to mention that even though the map is incredibly big, there is an astounding level of detail and tons of secrets to find, hidden and tucked away. However, this DLC does remind me of the first Dark Souls, where we could find certain areas that haven't been constructed with the same level of care and craftsmanship. A good example is Abyssal Woods, which houses a short legacy dungeon. Other than that landmark, there is very little to do here, and the whole sneak section feels a bit underwhelming. FromSoftware had even done it better in their Bloodborne DLC. I do think that at times FromSoftware has too much ambition and does have a hard time reigning that back.

Despite this, we can see that FromSoftware is evolving, trying to find a way to balance the gameplay and move away from simple mechanics. Many of the new weapons offer ranged options, guard points, and different ways to engage the bosses. However, this becomes somewhat moot in the face of Radahn and his AOE attacks. I personally have completed the base game and DLC on my own and ended up looking online to see most players funneled into the same mechanics and weapons to fight the last boss. This is a similar problem that Elden Ring had with the final portions of the game.

Balance is difficult, and I personally think we are seeing FromSoftware experiment and try to move away from some of the mechanics that are staples in their games. I think this might be a good thing, but we need to let them cook. It might be that the level of difficulty of some of these bosses is just a publicity stunt to keep the discourse on the company, but I have to say that as a solo player, I feel like I've been left on the sidelines watching as one of my favorite gaming companies has brought a mixed experience for a devoted solo player.

100%PC

TGA deveria abrir uma exceção e permitir essa DLC concorrer a GOTY. O nível de qualidade e a quantidade de conteúdo novo é muito grande, praticamente um jogo novo, com bosses mais marcantes que o jogo base e um nível de dificuldade elevado. Level design impecável, trazendo uma verticalidade maior ao mapa, trazendo aquela sensação boa de ansiedade em encontrar novos inimigos, armas, armaduras e bosses. Infelizmente pecou um pouco em desempenho com quedas bruscas de FPS em algumas partes atrapalhando muito algumas batalhas, algo que deve ser consertado com o passar do tempo.

"CURSE YOU BAYLE!"
- Igon

100%PlayStation 5

Fantastic expansion to an already fantastic base game. This game will go down as one of best of all time, and I can't wait to see what's next from Fromsoftware in this vein.

90%PlayStation 5

Great DLC marred by an unfortunate final boss. In the words of someone I read: "the last boss is one of from software's hardest, and I'm bot sure that's a good thing".

Lore wise, exploration and gameplay though are all good

95%PlayStation 5

So much fun, only knock I had was the final boss being such a slog to beat. All other bosses were doable with whatever build I was enjoying, but this one required setting my build to a specific meta just to get across the finish line

100%PlayStation 5

This DLC is bigger than most games, and is at the same level if not higher than the base game

100%PC

the main final bossfight kinda sucks

85%PC

F Radahn

80%PlayStation 5

It is absolutely astonishing how they managed to put this much content and world building and story all into one DLC, however I find that where they absolutely knocked the world building out of the park the combat and enemies even with all the fragments just made the game unfun.

100%PC

Incredible DLC, size of a whole new game.

70%PC

Beautiful scenery.
Performance issues
(low framerates, big frame drops etc)

85%PlayStation 5

8.5/10

100%PC

Voy a ser breve con esta review. Si Elden Ring ya era una obra maestra, con Shadow of the Erdtree han conseguido hacer algo incluso mejor. Mejor dirección de arte, con unos paisajes y escenarios que quitan el sentido. Mejor diseño de niveles tanto en el mundo, con un diseño magistral de las elevaciones y distintos niveles de altura, como en los castillos y fortalezas, repletas de atajos y estancias para explorar. A todo esto hay que añadir un buen número de hechizos, armas e invocaciones nuevas, bosses con mecánicas nuevas, un buen puñado de NPCs y misiones secundarias elavoradas. Esta expansión (es un insulto llamarlo DLC) te va a dar 40-50 horas extra del mejor Elden Ring que puedas imaginar. Simplemente imprescindible.

95%PC

With incredible world and level design, challenging boss encounters, beautiful art style und a unforgettable soundtrack, Shadow of the Erdtree surpasses the already masterful main game in almost every way. A must-play for soulslike and open world fans alike.

65%PC

6.5/10:
1) Performance issues: my frame rates drop to 21 or even 12 in several portions of the DLC. BTW, they still haven't fixed this issue.
2) A lot of enemies were reused from the base game, which is quite disappointing. I anticipated much more from FromSoftware.
3) They also recycled several of the bosses, which is rather disappointing.
4) Many areas and regions are also empty; for example, the regions are beautiful, but all you can do there is run. Like there's nothing to do there. Especially within the Finger Region and the Corrupted one. And, by the way, I completed those questlines, and no new stuff was added to those exact places. Because you have to keep returning to the chapel and going underground.
5) I'm not sure why so many dungeons were copied and pasted. It literally takes the joy out of the game.
6) The conclusion disappointed me; I was expecting a fresh ending or a sequence that explained everything. But all we received was Miquella's history, and then the cutscene stopped. Like, what? It feels like somebody smoked crack while creating the narrative.

95%PlayStation 5

Really great, except maybe some areas that look a bit empty and re-used ennemies such as dragons that we fought countless times in the base game. But other than that it was amazing

100%PC

Elden Ring Shadow of The Erdtree in my opinion vastly improves on the level design of the original and manages to have as many unique locations as the original in a much tighter map with more secret routes and connections that make the level design feel much more akin to Dark Souls as opposed to the base game. The bosses are intense and feature some of the best spectacles (and performances) in from software history. This dlc dwarfs the size of many AAA games and is well worth playing through every minute of it. This is the easiest to follow story in a from software title and it is to it’s benefit, even some characters only referenced in the original are featured here. I cannot recommend Shadow of the Erdtree enough. Can DLC be GOTY?

95%PC

A bit anticlimactic but this is one of the best DLC I've ever played. The journey is extraordinary and there's so much to explore. The only things I can ding it for are the anticlimax, seemingly significant places (like the Scadutree Chalice) having no purpose (except having multiple Scadutree Fragments— unless an update is coming), and other areas being mostly empty (the Finger Ruins of Rhia being the most significant offender). The bosses are top-notch, Rellana and Consort Radahn being the two hardest I've faced in all of From's Soulslikes (yes, both were harder for me than Malenia). Messmer was a bit of a pushover, but still a satisfying fight. All in all, excellent.

100%PC

this feels like a sequel

90%PC

To start things off with what I like, world design and level design within dungeons are just as good as I thought. There are plenty of areas to explore with their own distinct identity like Jagged Peak's thunderous storms and corpses of drakes, Rauh Base's ancient feeling with its stonework and temples, the eerie dark forest of Abyssal Woods, and a few others. I love that there can be an alternate way to reach one path without having to kill a boss like taking a jump boost up a mountain takes you to a fort, and past it leads you to Scadu Atlus. When it comes to dungeons, they all have the usual Souls-like exploration stuff such as sites of graces, shortcuts, alternate pathways, and hidden walls, but one area that I would say stands out with this would have to be Midra's Manse. It's not huge, but it does well with the stuff listed above, like hitting the giant painting, switching levers to open up entrances & creating your platform, and to top it all off, it has a very creepy/horror atmosphere to it just like its area. The smaller dungeons like caves feel more refreshing than the base game especially the ones with the giant jars, and don't rely too much on the same "find the lever to open heavy door", as it feels more straightforward. The only area I wasn't so keen on was Scaduview where it was just two Tree Sentinels and a Fallingstar Beast again, but Marika's village was a small but pleasant relaxing spot.

Onto the bosses no surprise that they're quite difficult or manageable at the very least. Messmer, Midra, and Putruscent Knight are my absolute favorites of them all. Tough at first, but eventually once you learn the moveset, you get an understanding of his consistent attack patterns, they flow so well and are surprisingly not that hard to dodge once you get it, especially with PK's horse attacks. Bayle is a good dragon fight, but summoning Igon to hear his over-the-top dialogue made it so worth it. I did run into some trouble with Gaius for that one charge attack and his hitbox but was manageable in the end. Rellana was quite troublesome as she takes no stun and her moveset can feel hard to tell with the way she mixes up her attacks, so I had to summon Latenna at least. The Dancing Lion had a nice OST but is the one with camera issues. Promised-Consort Radahn was without a doubt the hardest of them all, and I dare say harder than Malenia. He's very tanky, but his 1st phase is manageable with mixes of gravity and one blood flame attack along with swords. His 2nd phase felt like a nightmare, where there were so many fast attacks mixed with AOE, especially with his one move that drops your frames like hell, it made it unenjoyable that I killed him with just an OP build.

DLC introduces new weapon types along with ashes of wars like great-katanas, light-greatswords, martial arts, and my favorite (before it got nerfed), the perfume bottles. I will say, that I don't know what they're like now, but before it's nerf, the lightning ones along with a certain ash of war made it DISGUSTINLY OP, that I took no pride in using, but admittedly had some fun just spraying as opposed to usual swords. I haven't dabbled too much into the spells but are there plenty of solid ones to for to expand upon a certain build you'll go for, along with certain armor with nice stats and boosts.

One neat thing they did to solve the over-leveling problem was scadurtree and revered spirit fragments, which are scattered across the world and act as a way to level up your stats. It encourages a lot of exploration and once you collect enough of them, you may do a good amount of damage to the boss if you are struggling.

NPCs are the best here with their interactions. Sir Ansbach and his loyalty to Mohg but friendliness to you, Hornsent and his vengeance against Marika and Messmer, Igon's hatred against Bayle, Freyja and her love for battle, or obsessed and loyal knight of Miquella, Leda. Depending on certain quests you finish, it leads to one of my favorite NPC battles where you fight against those loyal to Miquella, and it is recommended you complete some quests to gain allies or else you'll have a difficult time.

Overall despite some flaws, I enjoyed a lot of the new additions to this DLC that helped me on my journey during the base game, and are what boosted my likeness for the game even more. I'd put this DLC up there with Old Hunters for SoulsBorne DLCs. Bosses may have had some rough spots but I still enjoyed it nonetheless.

100%PlayStation 5

From oughta calm down a bit with their bosses, but otherwise: exactly what I want from one of their DLCs.

100%PlayStation 5

Exceptional expansion, one of the best expansions ever!

90%PlayStation 5

Basically Elden Ring 1.5. Loved how dense the world is, leading to all sorts of discovery. Generally well made bosses, let down a bit by the final fight.