Elden Ring DLC Criticized on Steam. Players Complain About Too Difficult Bosses in Shadow of the Erdtree
Despite its fantastic release on Steam, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is getting a lot of unfavorable feedback from players. Among other things, they complain about bosses that are too difficult.
The devs of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree - FromSoftware studio - couldn't have imagined a better debut for the expansion. Soulslike not only won the hearts of industry reviewers, but also met with great popularity among players. Unfortunately, after all this initial enthusiasm, things started to take an unexpected turn. It turns out that the community has a lot to criticize about the expansion.
At the time of writing this text, Shadow of the Erdtree DLC has 21,262 reviews on Steam, with only 63% being positive. As a result, the reception of the soulslike is categorized by the service as "mixed."
Bosses are too difficult
Most comments suggest that the expansion doesn't add anything new to what players are already familiar with from the base game. Boss fights that are too difficult have become a thorn in the side of players. It's surprising because a significant part of Elden Ring's charm comes from the highly challenging battles with enemies.
Below you can read a few example reviews.
The addition is very average. Nothing innovative, just more of what we already know from the base game. Very nice locations and great music. The only thing that has changed compared to the base game is the bosses' HP, which has been blown off the scale, and every boss fight is just spamming rolls. The bosses have overly long attack sequences, which can last up to 40 seconds, and after them we have a window of about 3 seconds to attack. It's better to buy Souls than this expansion -- Misiek.
More Elden in Elden, nothing new or interesting. Empty world and bosses spamming AOE. If someone is looking for a cool soulslike game, let them play DS1 or DS3 -- DragonFly.
Unfortunately, I can't give this DLC a thumbs up. I enjoy playing the game, but they really overdid it with these bosses. In Souls it was always about learning movesets and defeating those difficult opponents. Here everything explodes on the map and sometimes you don't know what's happening, lots of AOE attacks, and after them more AOE... Sometimes one wrong move is enough and you're dead on the spot, because the boss won't let you make a move, he will bombard you with attacks. I already disliked a lot of things in the base game, and here they just did it on a larger scale. After defeating the boss, I don't feel like I've learned how to fight him in any way and the next skirmish would be easier. I rather have the impression that he overwhelmed me less here and I managed to defeat him this time. This might be my last From's game that I play so quickly after the premiere because it's scary to think about what the next title will look like -- Czesti97.
Copied bosses, broken hitboxes, lack of idea for difficulty level. Lords of the Fallen is a better game than this DLC -- Koniuszy.
Optimization is bad
It's worth emphasizing that players also note optimization problems in their complaints. Users are reporting that the frame rate drops to 30-40 at times, despite being a steady 60 fps in the "base" version.
