Mixed Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree Reviews Criticize Difficulty, Performance

Elden Ring players are divided over some of Shadow of the Erdtree's perceived issues.

By Tanner Dedmon

Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC emerged to rave reviews from early players who loved the expansion so much that it was elevated to the title of best DLC of all time (according to Metacritic scores). Now that it's in the hands of players on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation, many players are echoing some of the positives and negatives shared in those initial reviews from critics. Plenty of players have called out the difficulty of Shadow of the Erdtree, some in a joking way and others more seriously, but for those on the PC in particular, the performance issues some are having with Shadow of the Erdtree have been enough to drop the DLC down to "Mixed" ratings on Steam.

To see those ratings, you'll have to look at the Shadow of the Erdtree Steam page specifically, not the Elden Ring Steam page where reviews are still holding strong a little over two years later. One of the more levelheaded reviews which gave the DLC a negative rating was from a user who said they wished there "a neutral option" while laying out some of the issues that included stuttering, but not to the point that it made the game unplayable. Enemy healthbars and poise, however, were a different story.

"As far as the combat, a LOT of poise-monsters," the player said. "If anyone remembers the dragon shrine knights from Dark Souls 2 before they were patched, think that. Crazy HP pool enemies with infinite stamina, and infinite poise. It's like they took Haligtree and cranked it to 15/10."

Shadow of the Erdtree is indeed very, very difficult, but like any FromSoftware game, much of the player experience comes down to what build you're running. It's true that many enemies in the DLC have quite a bit of health and poise, but as someone who was using Colossal Weapons for the majority of the run, poise was never really much of an issue when you're fighting something that's at least of a similar size. Conversely, much larger and more agile enemies may be easier for those using ranged builds filled with Sorceries, so while the difficulty complaints are valid, they'll definitely vary from person to person.

Other reviews share similar sentiments about health pools and bosses, but many also come from players who can only laugh by now at the way FromSoftware sets up its worlds and the situations those setups lead to.

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"Jumped off a cliff to escape an enemy, landed in a boss arena instead – best plot twist ever 10/10," another user said.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is now available on all platforms. If you're ready to get started with it, here's how you kick things off.

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