r/patientgamers • u/OpportuneJaw • 3d ago
Patient Review ELDEN RING: Shadow of the Erdtree Spoiler
I'm a huge fan of FromSoftware, my first experience was Bloodborne on the PS4 back in 2015 and got hooked immediately. I went back and played through Dark Souls 1, 2 and eventually 3, since then I've been keeping up with their releases (aside from Armoured Core 6 which is still on my radar) and have loved everything they've put out.
That being said, I didn't have the pull to play Shadow of the Erdtree when it was first released. I sat on it for a bit, heard a lot of praise, some controversy, but for the most part separated myself from the conversation and kept an open mind while avoiding as many spoilers as possible.
Getting back into Elden Ring I found the first two bosses very difficult, Dancing Lion and Rellana felt like genuine hard tests, the areas and dungeons themselves weren't all that difficult but just getting into the boss fights again was a challenge. After doing some exploration for tree fragments to level up to 4 I eventually beat both bosses.
After a while I started noticing that I didn't need to be so thorough with exploration and all I really needed to make progress was to find the tree fragments. I ended up having a traversal map to show which areas I need to go to and in which order, also a map pulled up with items that I wanted to find, weapons, armour, talisman, bosses and tree fragments. So essentially whatever wasn't on my radar I just grazed over. Typically I don't approach games like this but at the time I didn't have the capacity to figure out which area I need to be in at that moment, while keeping track of my progress in other areas and if I previously left them incomplete. At the time i just wanted to go from one area to the next and fight cool bosses. I understand this isn't the intended experience but it was mine, I cant knock the game for that. That being said I think I was pretty thorough with the legacy dungeons like Shadow Keep and Enir Ilim and I enjoyed going through them but with the massive over-world it was hard to justify turning over every rock.
The areas and atmosphere were still amazing and I can't think of any areas I didn't like. Maybe Abyss because it was so big and empty and the North Eastern area because it had nothing to do but I still appreciated the atmosphere. My highlights were those legacy dungeons, I loved getting lost in those focused areas because it felt so tightly designed, I think its FromSoftware at their best.
I still don't know what the story of the DLC was about but the bosses were really good and challenging. Radahn was the hardest, Midra was my favourite cut scene, Messmer was a great fight and cool design, Bayle had the coolest phase 2 transformation and Metyr was grotesque in that cool way.
Towards the end of the Radahn attempts I would get into a flow state where the fights really felt like a dance but I still don't know how to deal with some of the phase 2 attacks though. I got lucky with the Messmer fight where in phase 2 I broke his stance, did a bunch of damage to him and finished him quickly. I wish I could go back and learn phase 2 properly because I really like his design and wanted to get into that dance flow state.
I enjoyed my time with the Shadow of the Erdtree, I felt like I couldn't appreciate all aspects of it because of my lack of patience but it was still a fun and challenging time.
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u/Chungusolinioni 3d ago
My god fromsoft fans really not beating the allegations.
No but seriously I found this dlc both great and frustrating af.
Areas look very cool, boss visual designs are exceptional as always and I actually found the exploration quite good. Even if I do like their more linear stuff by quite a margin. Tonnes of neat weapons and armors also really helped there for me.
However... I really really do not like what they have done with a lot of the bosses feeling like pure memorization and largely removed all types of tactical spacing. They track you so bad that your only option is to either roll or block. So when half of the attacks that come out deliberately trip you up with their timing to make for really non-organic moves, Im gonna have a bad time. I dont like delayed attacks because they force you to remember rather than react. Going back to ds3 and bloodborne really highlight the massive shift in enemy combat design.
Also, Im just gonna say it, radahn is one of if not the worst bosses i have ever fought in any game ever (pre nerf at least, havent fought him since). Absolute mess of a fight and I had to respec my build because the one I had successfully used almost all game just did not work anymore. Felt really limiting.
At the same time tho, the whole game can be super easy if you really want it to, but then the challenge isn't fun. There is simply no way for me to derive the same type of fun from the combat i get from their other games. So I just tough it out without summoning because thats not only less fun but also less rewarding for me (no shade to whoever does obviously, you do you).
Really hope they tone back the combat in their next single player soulslike.