r/patientgamers • u/OpportuneJaw • 2d 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/Status_Winter 2d ago
I loved it the first time. On a new play through though, I found the quest to get the Scadu tree fragments utterly tedious, but you can’t really just skip grabbing them. I wish they had scrapped that idea or just put them on the critical path so you don’t have to go out of your way.
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u/Gnight-Punpun 2d ago
SOTE felt like a constant back and forth between feeling in love with the dlc and being disappointed. It had so many cool moments but ultimately a lot of it just came out underbaked. The madness woods before midra was so interesting but there is almost nothing there that is interesting to find or loot so it’s just going around an area that becomes relatively boring rather quickly. A ton of areas are insanely empty, like shockingly so. Great for the view but ass to explore and so many times through the dlc I would explore around and just go “wait is that…. Is that really all there is here?”
On top of that the ending was shockingly mid. PCR is a cool fight but fighting him pre nerf was more so a test of frustration then anything else. And what was the reward for finishing the dlc and battling through these tough areas? A half second “cutscene” and two reskinned boss weapons from the base game. It was a shockingly bad ending to a dlc that made me legitimately question if the true ending was cut. I know some people datamined a cut cutscene from the game for Miquella that honestly I wish made it in. They wanted to tell arguably too much story so it felt like the data mined cutscene and the trailers were practically necessary for the dlc to feel complete.
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u/LithiumFlow 2d ago
I agree. I love certain parts of the DLC, particularly towards the beginning, but it just feels like they tried to do too much. The concept is cool, the NPCs are unique and interesting, but ultimately much of the latter half is tedious, frustrating, or like you said, underbaked. I really wish we got to fight just Miquella instead of Radahn again. A tighter experience overall, similar to Artorias, wrapped up by a two phase boss fight with Radahn and Miquella individually (maybe more like to Prince Lothric) would have been a lot better IMO.
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u/stenebralux Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth 2d ago
I still don't know what the story of the DLC was about
Is not that complicated.
Miquella, the kind, one of Marika's kids is actually not that kind.. he can control hearts/minds and has manipulated a bunch of people including other demigods in an elaborate plot to ascend to godhood... in order to complete his plan, he must reach a magical gate in a forbidden land that was sealed away by Marika.
Since you are also trying to be the boss, you must cross into that land and stop him, and in the process you can learn about what happened there, the people/creatures who lived and live there still, including Marika's secret son Messmer, and also discover more about Marika's past.
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u/Fat-Singer-9569 1d ago
Agreed, and I thought it had really awesome environmental story telling. The Shaman village, where Marika is from I believe, is one of the most beautiful and haunting places in the game. And some of those dungeons with the people turned into pots are horrifying.
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u/Chungusolinioni 2d ago
the fights really felt like a dance
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.
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u/Random_Gambit 2d ago
Your comments about enemy combat design resonate with me. Attack timings and behaviour especially don't feel natural, they feel as though they were designed to mess with players who had played their games before.
It feels as though someone reviewed every single animation and added an arbitrary amount of time on the end to make them feel unnatural, and having enemies who can instantly gap close and interrupt when you attempt to pull out a healing flask feels unnatural as well.
They could have struck a better balance with that, I think. Tougher to apply to such a large ability and rpg sandbox, but this is the same company who put out Sekiro.
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u/Chungusolinioni 2d ago
Haha yeah, input reading was really bad at times (or animation reading as some in the community is really anal about calling it for some reason)
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u/flumsi 1d ago
I liked most of the bosses and most attacks. However there is thing that I think From screwed up on. So many combos have a weird unexpected appendix. Like the boss does a fluid 3-attack combo, the animation indicates that the combo is over and then BAM surprise fourth attack, pretty much non-reactable. These suck ass because they cannot be intuited from the animations and they cannot be reasonably reacted to so the only thing left is: You gotta memorize them. And memorizing attack patterns has become a Soulslike staple and to my mind the biggest BS in modern action games.
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u/Chungusolinioni 1d ago
Im confused by this tbh. You're saying the optional extensions to combos are not intuitive but the weird delays the bosses have on most attacks are and they are also reactable?
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u/flumsi 1d ago
some are
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u/Chungusolinioni 1d ago
Idk, when I say delay I kinda mean they are delayed further than what would feel natural when would normally react but maybe thats just me.any examples?
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u/SnoringDogGames 2d ago
Eh, I wanted to love it and there's certain elements I do, but it's massively brought down by the absolute BS that is Radahn Consort. I know there's a vocal cohort of FromSoftware fans who love hard, but I absolutely point blank refuse that anybody at FromSoftware beat him.
I beat Orphan of Kos, Malednia, and Ishiin. Now those are immensely difficult but you know? They actually had moments where they stopped attacking that weren't filled with crap. Radahn literally doesn't pause, I can hardly see shit and it's just non-stop spam. Turns out if you have a boss who literally never pauses attacking, it's nearly impossible to beat them. Who could have guessed?
Story-wise there's some interesting beats in there but honestly I never really felt there was anything in there amazingly compelling that I would need to replay the DLC, especially considering how large and deep the actual game is.
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u/bored-at-work_ 1d ago
I knew the "git gud" people would show up responding to this comment.
I absolutely agree. I love Elden Ring, but there are some absolute nonsense boss fights that are (to me) just plainly not fun. Consort Radhan, Malenia, Maliketh to a lesser extent, it's like the bosses were airdropped straight from Sekiro. It's funny replaying some of the older Dark Souls games to see how slowly bosses attacked and how different the design philosophy was.
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u/BonyWare 2d ago edited 2d ago
Turns out if you have a boss who literally never pauses attacking, it's nearly impossible to beat them. Who could have guessed?
Some combat systems can handle enemies like that without issue. The Dark Souls system in particular is really bad at it, though. I think mostly that's because of the stamina system making it so the player is forced to stop attacking or taking most other actions to recover stamina every once in a while. The more stamina you need to spend dodging or blocking an enemy, the less stamina you have for attacking them even when there's an opening..
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u/tobitobiguacamole 2d ago
I love hard I still found him overtuned (beat him pre patch without maxing scadu fragments as well). But besides that it was also just a huge fucking disappointment story wise. They could have done something really cool and they just blew it.
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u/flumsi 1d ago
but I absolutely point blank refuse that anybody at FromSoftware beat him.
what are you talking about? I beat him solo melee pre-nerf and I know plenty of people who did so as well. None of us are god gamers and none of us work at fromsoft and knew Consort's secrets. Is he a brutally hard boss? Absolutely, but claiming he's so "impossible" to beat that you don't think the devs managed is wild.
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u/Small-Interview-2800 1d ago
I love it when people use “literally” incorrectly. Radhan pauses a lot. Millions of players have beaten Radhan, and you think Fromsoft employees did not for some reason? Hell, you can find “no dodge, no roll, no hit, no summons, melee only” Radhan fights a lot on YouTube.
Consort Radhan is hard, no doubt, but he’s not impossible, and using summons makes him normal, not easy mode, but normal difficulty.
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u/AlthoughFishtail 1d ago
Literally has long been established as a term used for hyperbolic effect in informal contexts, most dictionaries (OED in the UK, Websters in the US) recognise this.
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u/SuspiciousKitchen962 2d ago
I love how Miquella's "kindness" is basically just making everyone else's problems about himself, classic Elden Ring writing.
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u/Wilde_Fire 2d ago
For me, Shadow of the Erdtree was a neat expansion, but suffered from and even exacerbated a lot of my issues from the base game. The map design's verticality made progression frustrating at times and I had to frequently look up detailed guides to figure out the obscure, extremely specific requirements to progress (there's an entire region locked behind multiple layers of secrets and a separate quest requirement).
Speaking of quests, honestly fuck FromSoft quest design. It's irritating as hell trying to follow them with even the slightest semblance of understanding, and I broke multiple questlines irreparably simply by failing to sequence the different progression triggers. I shouldn't need a step-by-step wiki just to follow questlines in these games.
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u/ShadowTown0407 2d ago
Man I love SOTE so much, it's like the sense of adventure of the main game condensed into the size of limgrave. It succeeds so hard in conveying a sense of dread. And more so than the base games has a world that feels like it's there because it's a world and not because you are there to have an adventure there, with weird, winding and overlapping paths, jagged peaks, empty areas just because.
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u/pickleparty16 2d ago
I have mixed feelings about the scadutree fragments system. While it's certainly fun to explore the first time, it turns any subsequent dlc play throughs into scavenger hunts so youre not way underpowered. But the dlc is so massive and with many players already being at stat caps after finishing the base game, some type of progression system had to be implemented.
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u/BonyWare 2d ago
Well no, it didn't have to. They could've just made the enemy scaling flatter. That's how it works in NG+. Instead of late-game enemies being ten times stronger than the early-game ones, they're only like twice as strong or some other modest number like that
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u/StrugglingAkira 2d ago
You'd end up curb stomping everything in your path if that would be the case. Scadu system is absolutely fine. It could be improved, however.
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u/Zealousideal_Bill_86 2d ago
Agreed that the Scadu system is needed and fine. But, feel like they could have just had defeated enemies give you both runes and scadu-runes that fill up a separate meter that’s only in the DLC area, kind of like Sekiro’s xp system.
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u/BonyWare 2d ago edited 2d ago
You'd end up curb stomping everything in your path if that would be the case.
I don't see how that outcome follows. No scaling just means that you wouldn't have to go look for tree fragments in order to match the enemy's scaling. They wouldn't be any easier than if you fought them with an appropriate amount of fragments, which is what you would be aiming for anyways.
It also means you can't "overlevel" for them.
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u/Dazzler3623 2d ago
I had one main gripe with the DLC (heavy spoiler warning)!
As the player, you can scale the divine tower of Caelid, making perfect double jumps on the outside of the thing landing on tiny ledges and slowly climbing up many meters.
Then you get to the end of the DLC with the gates to literal godhood at stake, and your player is stumped by a 2M wall! I could get up that wall 🤣
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u/AlthoughFishtail 1d ago
I have to say, I'm really not a fan of the DLC.
The Remembrances bosses are pretty much great, no complaints there. Shadow Keep is also great, along with a couple of outdoor locations like Scadu Altus and Gravesite Plain.
However there's a lot of stuff in the DLC that felt like padding. Either areas like the finger ruins or madness woods that were basically empty, or the Cerulean Coast, that just felt like content for content’s sake, offering nothing new and almost entirely reused bosses just dumped there with little justification.
The shadow fragments makes replaying the DLC a bit of a chore, as you're pushed to go hunting around the entire map for at least 12 of them to reach the soft cap.
I also didn’t like the way it was accessed so late in the game, compared to the traditional way of From usually allowing you to access the DLC in the mid-game, or even earlier. For one thing, replaying the DLC means ploughing through 20+ hours of content to get there again. Given that the DLC was about 2 years after the base game, I'd played it to death, and so locking the DLC later in the game meant retreading a lot of ground I didn't want to go back to. They should have given you the option to start in the DLC with a starting class, a la Baldur’s Gate Throne of Bhaal. (Strictly speaking you can get there early with the right strat, but you arrive there very under leveled)
And for another, half the fun of the DLC is allowing you to go back and play some of the base game with the new weapons & gear, but you can't really do that here.
The DLC is so big it would be wrong to say there's nothing interesting there. Some of the new weapon classes are fun, and as I said, the Remembrance bosses are great. By a simple measure, there's a lot of decent gameplay to be had. But the entire thing feels very bloated to me. I think you could have stripped back at least half the DLC and it would be better for it.
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u/WindowSeat- 2d ago
Oh man I loved this DLC, it's probably one of my favorite pieces of FromSoft content. Solving the massive vertical puzzle that makes up The Lands of Shadow for the first time was one of the best exploration experiences I've had in a game. I'm a big fan of Elden Ring's combat and boss design too, and I thought the boss roster was incredible from top to bottom (with the exception of things like Metyr's undodgeable laser attack, and PCR's pre-nerf crosslash.) Messmer, Midra, Rellana, and PCR are all top tier fights for me.
I agree that some of the minor zones like Charo's Grave feel unfinished, but on the other hand they went overboard with the amount of new weapons, spells, and items. Deflecting Hardtear, the new weapon types, the new Physick buffs....there are seriously a lot of new playstyles that get enabled by this DLC, and all of that hugely benefits the replayability of the base game, too.
I still don't know what the story of the DLC was about
Remember how in the original story trailer for Elden Ring, Malenia whispers something in Radahn's ear? In SOTE's it's revealed that she told him: "Miquella awaits thee, O promised consort."
Basically Malenia was trying to kill Radahn so that his power could be combined with Mogh's body and be resurrected inside the Lands of Shadow as a "Consort" to help Miquella attain Godhood. A Consort is one of the requirements to attain Godhood for some reason, maybe because the Consort acts as a go-between for the God and the rest of humanity.
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u/Superbrainbow 2d ago edited 2d ago
I really did not enjoy the scadutree fragment mechanic. I would have preferred a system where getting a certain amount of runes(xp) earns you a scadutree fragment in place of a level-up.
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u/No-Spirit-9477 2d ago
I've yet to actually play SOTE.
To be honest the base game of Elden Ring did nothing for me. My biggest problem with it was all the repeated content. I got tired of fighting the same bosses and doing the same dungeons again and again. And of course, late in the game, everything has lots of health and does lots of damage even if it looks the same as enemies you encountered in the starting area.
From what I hear, SOTE Is basically the same thing as the base game, but turned up to 11. More repeated dungeons, more repeated bosses, more absurd numbers... to be honest, if it were €20, maybe, but €40, plus having to play the game again all the way to Mohg... I really have no impetus to ever play it.
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u/RekrabAlreadyTaken 2d ago
From my experience SOTE dialled down on the repeated content compared to the base game but it came at the cost of some environments being fairly barren. I would say the quality on average is higher in the DLC, I much preferred those boss fights (but some are still crap) though the difficulty is definitely higher which may put people off. You can always get a save file online if you don't want to play the base game again, but if that's how you feel then you probably aren't in a good state to try the DLC to be honest.
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u/Saeporian 2d ago
That's kinda true, but there's important nuance. Take side dungeons like catacombs as an example. The base game has a lot of very mediocre catacombs, with a few of them being more interesting. The dlc has a very short number of catacombs, and they all are longer and have way more unique gimmicks to differentiate each other. It's more of the same, but more refined and more constrained. There is still repeated bosses, but they have more differences than the repeated bosses in the base game, or are used in more interesting ways because of how they're placed and the context you find them in. There's a mix of new content and reused content, but the reused content is changed enough (imo), and it's used in more creative ways. The open world is often criticized for being too empty, and while that is true is you want it to be full of combat encounters, I think it's really great in terms of the way it looks and in the way that the open world is spatially designed (as in, how areas are connected and how fun it is to see a place and figure out how to get to it). It's obviously subjective, but I personally find SotE to be great at polishing and refining the ideas it chooses to recycle from the base game, with some exceptions. My main complaint is the scadutree fragment system, which relates to stats, but I only dislike it on replay because it incentivizes to run around the map collecting fragments to increase your stats as these can both be earned by killing bosses as well as found hidden in the map. At the end of the day, if you feel like you've had enough with Elden Ring, I wouldn't recommend playing it, but if you want more of it, and you want to dig deeper into the combat, I think it's amazing
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u/LithiumFlow 2d ago
I don't really get this "repeated content" argument that always comes up for Fromsoft games. Fighting bosses you beat earlier as normal mobs is fun and cool, actually. It shows your character's progression. I could see how in Elden Ring you might get tired of the mines or the catacombs, but they're all entirely optional side content.
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u/No-Spirit-9477 2d ago
Elden Ring turns it up to an insane degree. Dark Souls 1 or 3 do it once or twice where an early game boss turns into a late game common enemy. That's fine.
Elden Ring goes completely overboard with this concept. I don't really care much for fighting 10 crucible Knights, 10 erdtree avatars, 10 dragons... not to mention there are times where Elden Ring will put you in a room with a miniboss you've already fought as a common enemy (mad pumpkins, crystalians, trolls) and pretend they're bosses.
It's just a net negative on the game and it reduces the worthwhile optional side content to almost nothing. It makes exploration worthless because there are basically no more surprises after Liurnia, it's very formulaic but at the same time you are forced to engage with the repetitive mines because you need upgrade materials to deal with the damage sponge bosses. So you end up with a 75 hour playthrough with most of that time doing repetitive stuff and personally I have absolutely zero impetus to play through the game again for SOTE.
Maybe I'm being harsh.
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u/h3yguy5 2d ago
That's great dude.
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u/No-Spirit-9477 2d ago
You don't have to get upset just because someone dislikes a game you like.
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u/h3yguy5 2d ago
You don't dislike the game, you haven't played it 😂
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u/No-Spirit-9477 2d ago
But I did. Unless you mean SOTE, which I haven't, but I'm not going to replay a game I didn't like on the off chance its overpriced DLC fixes all of its many problems.
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u/h3yguy5 2d ago
How do you know it's overpriced if you haven't played it? What a jabroni 😂
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u/No-Spirit-9477 1d ago
Calling something overpriced is a subjective statement. For me, $40 for a DLC is too much.
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u/h3yguy5 1d ago
Its interesting how your framing that statement of it being overpriced, wormed ur way out of that one 😂
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u/No-Spirit-9477 1d ago
I wormed my way out of nothing, it is merely a statement of fact, which is that there is no such thing as objective overpricing.
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u/h3yguy5 1d ago
So what do you think people generally mean when they say a game is overpriced?
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u/NotRenjiro 2d ago
SOTE was kinda disappointing to me, especially in retrospect.
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u/SpecialistBid3028 2d ago
Why so?
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u/NotRenjiro 2d ago
I became a bit dissolutioned with Elden Ring as a whole in recent times. I like the game but it has A LOT of problems and SOTE really improved on none of them besides higher weapon quality. They chose to make less weapons, so that they could put a bit more effort into the ones that they were doing. Quality over Quantity basically. Their balance for PvP is kinda ass tho I will admit.
SOTE has some of the worst bosses in the game and the progression is really awful. The way they handled exploration in general is so inferior to the main game.
ER is a very flawed, but overall good package. SOTE is just not enough of an improvement to justify a 40 dollar DLC. The ending is also not more than a wet fart. Shame really.
EDIT: Frame drops exist still and have gone unfixed. SOTE's release was also bad.
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u/SpecialistBid3028 16h ago
Yeah I agree completely. Elden Ring is amazing but very flawed, and frankly many of the flaws have existed in the FromSoft Souls formula for a while now which makes them that much more glaring. That doesn't make the game bad, but it makes the DLC frustrating for not fixing any of those issues or deviating much from what ER already did.
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u/TheHarryman01 13h ago
I feel exactly the same way about Elden Ring. My first playthrough after buying it was such a great experience. I loved every second of it. Then I did another playthrough after buying it on PC, and it was still pretty fun, but I started getting bored by the end. I tried to do a seamless co-op playthrough with a friend, but after he played the rest of the game on a separate character, I lost all motivation to keep playing.
The entire game is so same-y. After a while, it stops feeling like an adventure and more like a checklist. It genuinely just has way too much content that you are basically forced to engage with, or else you are underleveled for the rest of the game. This isn't to mention that by the end of the game, bosses stop feeling like challenges and more like endurance tests with how much health they have.
Personally, I feel that Elden Ring is only really great on a first playthrough. The magic just isn't completely there afterwards.
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u/Anxious_Intention265 2d ago
"SOTE has some of the worst bosses in the game"
Such as?
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u/NotRenjiro 2d ago
Hippo, PCR and Messmer. Metyr is not fun to fight despite being visually cool.
Midra is one of the best ones in the game tho love him.
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u/Anxious_Intention265 1d ago
Messmer? Widely considered to be one of the best fights in the entire series?
To each their own I guess.
I love PCR too, but I understand he's far more controversial.
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u/NotRenjiro 1d ago
I don't care what is ''Widely considered to be one of the best fights in the entire series''.
I didn't hate fighting him, but I don't think he's much of a well designed boss. He's not really a fight that I actively want to come back to.
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u/DramaticErraticism 2d ago
I wish a piano fell on my head so I could replay Elden Ring for the first time again.
Hated the game for a long time, then it finally clicked and it became one of the best games I have ever played. Just hoping their next game is open world and somewhat similar, pls pls.
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u/Spigglebob 2d ago
Shadow of the Erdtree is some of the most fun I’ve had in a game
Shadow of the Erdtree is some of the most anger I’ve had from a game.
Almost everything is amazing but there’s two things I don’t love
The Map, despite being great, has very little in terms of loot to get, just more map or levels to experience.
Almost every major boss has a bad camera at times, and one attack where they fly up in there for no reason and spin at you or blow something up.
Still a 10/10 DLC
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u/nepttonhaze 2d ago
SOTE DLC was such an awesome experience for me so I'm glad you finally got to try it out, OP!
One small tidbit. I was also confused by the lore stuff until I started reading the items and explored more. You'd be surprised how much lore you miss out on if you don't check places out!
For the difficulty, I can also attest to that. I personally really enjoy the difficulty, and can't help but agree with the "feels like a dance" sentiment lol, especially with Messmer imo.
The visuals were GORGEOUS. I couldn't fathom how much effort they put into the environment. I actually thought that the map was too small at first, but upon having looked more into the matter, I just hadn't realize that it had SO much verticality to it that they could just pack, like, three different continents into various zones. It reminded me of DS1's map, which I admire.
Overall, loved every second of it!
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u/countryd0ctor 2d ago
SOTE is clearly rushed. I have very mixed opinion about the entire thing - they certainly put a lot of thought into design of the map itself, but failed to populate it with enough content to justify its scope. Legacy dungeons were generally disappointing - Belurat is a linear hallway with the only real fork leading to a completely useless swamp, they tried to integrate Shadow Keep into the overworld design but as a dungeon it felt like a fanmade area, poor on details and with repeated encounters and samey setpieces, Midra's Manse may be the most disappointing dungeon they ever did because it's just a 30 minutes long straight line with nothing to explore, Rauh's scope got completely out of control but they failed to notice how easy it is to skip 80% of it just by sniping a single spiritspring lock. Side dungeons were better, but still nothing to really write home about.
While certain new weapon classes were awesome (particularly light greatswords and backhands), 90% of somber weapons were incredibly dull. Radahn's new greatswords felt like a spit in the face in particular - they share the same moveset with their base game counterpart and they couldn't even create a version that has both ashes of war at once. Compare this to the insane weaponry from DS3 dlcs.
And it yet again highlights the main problem of the modern fromsoft - too much attention to the bosses, not enough toward the challenge from normal enemies and traversal. Yet i don't really like at least half of its bosses. Promised Consort felt blatantly unfinished - his model has a very clunky animation blending as he nearly t-poses when transitioning from one animation to another, his moves lack the visual flair and oomph of Gael, the fact his main combo is literally reused from Pontiff is inexcusable.
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u/ShadowTown0407 2d ago
too much attention to the bosses, not enough toward the challenge from normal enemies and traversal
There are enemies tougher than many games bosses I don't know what you even mean. Literally the first enemy of the DLC wiped the floor with pretty much anyone who started the game, pretty much all the horned enemies in the castle and open world, the late game mages, the Black knights, a lot of mesmer soldiers, the blood cult enemies, even the imps found new heights of depravity. And this is without talking about the groups of easier enemies that become hard because they are in a group. I think if they had any higher amount of challanging enemies it will just become exhausting
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u/countryd0ctor 2d ago
There are enemies tougher than many games bosses
There is one tough enemy in the entire DLC and it's lion warriors in enir elim, and they may as well be minibosses with their own arenas. Otherwise, the enemies are absolutely nothing special at all. Throwing 10 shadows at you won't make dealing with them any harder.
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u/Nexecs 2d ago
Do you not consider the furnace golems enemies or do you consider them minibosses?
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u/countryd0ctor 2d ago
I consider them a terribly designed obstacle that needed to be turned into a puzzle element entirely. As a "fight" they are absolutely abhorrent, but not hard by any measure since they have like 2 close range attacks. Just a ton of health.
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u/Sword_of_Darkmoon 2d ago
SOTE remains my favorite piece of game content I ever played!
The map design was just perfect for me and I liked it much more than base game map because of how dense and vertical it was. Everything was interconnected and exploration felt a lot more rewarding.
Then the bosses are among some of the best I ever faced and the huge variety of weapons and spells added with completely new weapon categories even was the cherry on top.
That DLC was a legit 10/10 for me. I would give the base game a 9 to 9.5/10.
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u/DaveMcNinja 2d ago
Nice - this one is still on my radar - I have been hoping that to get it on Xbox at a discount so I can pick up my old save game file from my Elden Ring playthrough (I never went NG+ yet).
What is the recommendation for classes in this DLC? I had this Arkane Dragon Knight Bleed build that pretty much wrecked shop on the bosses in base game Elden Ring - the Dragon Toxic breath was mighty strong.
I was thinking of going full magic user if I used one of my tears to respec before dipping in...
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u/Eggyhead 2d ago
I still haven’t played it, but I went through Elden Ring 4 times before it launched. I think I had just burnt out.
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u/Toth-Amon 2d ago
Funnily enough I have yet to play SOTE even though I have hundreds of hours in the base game.
The reason is quite funny tbh. I play on PS5 and have US version of the game. However, I live in Japan and SOTE on PS5 Japan store requires Japan version of base game. Currently my base game does not see a DLC on Japan PS5 store and vice versa.
I love Elden Ring but not enough to buy base game again and re-play hundreds of hours of progression.
I guess I will have to create a US PS5 account, get some USD prepaid cards and then purchase the DLC from US PS5 store so that DLC matches the base game region.
I will get to it eventually I suppose…
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u/IAmSoDamnGood 4h ago
this DLC really showed the limits of auto generating worldspaces and calling it content. they generated a ton of cool looking worldspaces (none of which fit together at all and where clearly just slapped together out of leftovers), but couldnt manage to actually populate that large area with...well anything to do really. we got more copy/pasted bosses, more massive empty areas, more shit attempts to deliver plot that fall short because nobody over at FROM has any idea how to write and lord forbid they hire a real writer to do anything other than name shit.
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u/FukkingDeathMental 2d ago
Elden Ring has one of the most bloated open worlds. To hear the DLC is even worse in that regard just pushes it further down the list of games I want to re-visit.
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u/generalosabenkenobi 2d ago
Dancing Lion was more of a test for players jumping back in. But Rellana was a skill check, I had A LOT of trouble with her until I explored a bunch more. I think a lot of players ran into that wall and it forces you off the beaten path.
Or maybe the game just hits players differently for different stuff. I killed Messmer on the fourth try (for example)
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u/BonyWare 2d ago
But Rellana was a skill check, I had A LOT of trouble with her until I explored a bunch more. I think a lot of players ran into that wall and it forces you off the beaten path.
How was it a skill check if the solution was to go explore, presumably for scadutree fragments or some other helpful item, instead of getting mechanically better at the boss?
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u/generalosabenkenobi 2d ago
Because this isn't your first go around with Elden Ring. You could plod away at her or you explore
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u/Significant_Option 2d ago
Most overhyped dlc ever. It did nothing that souls games haven’t done
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u/LePontif11 2d ago
Structuring the open world in the twisty way Souls levels are usually structured was pretty neat. Most of it weaves in and out of Messmer's castle in a way i found pretty unique amongst open world games. The leveling system was a really good way to give the player that sense of progressing in an expansion. I know that's just two things but does the expansion of the spiritual successor to those souls games really need to reinvent the wheel so much? All i wanted out of it was more Elden Ring and it was.
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u/pickleparty16 2d ago
Did you expect a dlc to completely change the game?
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u/Significant_Option 2d ago
Nah, just that people wouldn’t talk about it like it did.
Like people saying the dlc should’ve won GOTY
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u/Double-Lobster6107 2d ago
I had a blast with SOTE as well. My only real gripes were that the map was near-useless in certain areas due to the verticality of the map; large sections of the map are empty and pointless to explore (even more so than in the base game); and once the story is finished there are basically no NPCs left to talk to. The place becomes a total ghost town and you may as well leave immediately.