I haven’t played Shadow of the Erdtree (FromSoft, Elden Ring DLC) in a hot sec, so it’s been great to be able to revisit it. The more I write about it, the more I remember how truly breathtaking it was. Watching Krupa (of RKG) go through it in Lore Masterclass (additional show to their Elden Ring Retry series) makes me want to get back to it. Even though–I’ll get to that later. And, of course,
*SPOILERS*
I think we take for granted somewhat how consistently excellent FromSoft is. I’m not calling out anyone because that’s just the way it goes. It’s human nature to become used to whatever the current situation is.
Side note: This is what happened with my medical crisis, for example. It was so shocking and it was such a miracle that I survived, and I thought about it every day for a year. Every fucking day. It was that big a deal, and I think I can be excused for thinking that. Then, slowly, over time, it became less and less of a big deal. And this is fine! It should be that way because it’s not good for the brain to go around thinking that any one event is A Big Deal all the time. It’s still something that is important to me, obviously, because I would not be here if I had died permanently. But, and I don’t know how to put this delicately, there’s no way to feel it every minute of the day. I’m still going to be angry, upset, or pissed off. Hell, I’m going to be bored or even just waste hours playing Balatro (LocalThunk). Ahem.
Side note redux: I think I’m going to quit Balatro. I just can’t quit playing it, and it’s detrimental to–well, my life. Plus, I’m in the grinding time in which I have to play tons of meaningless games in order to unlock two legendary jokers I don’t yet have. There is only one way to get them, and that’s to open packs of cards. Arcana packs or Spectral packs. At least that’s what the internet has deemed to be the one true way, and there is not a consensus about it.
Here is the deal. You need The Soul card in order to get a Legendary Joker. I did not know this as I was originally playing, and I came across three The Souls cards naturally. Just because it was so different (and immediately special), I chose it. I got three different Legendary Jokers, and now I can’t find the other two for love nor money. I have come across The Soul two or three more times, but it’s only had a dupe.
I looked up for the quickest way to get the Legendary Jokers, and it’s tedious farming. Basically opening up pack upon pack upo,n pack in the vain hope of hitting the .3% chance of getting The Soul. It makes it more irritating when I get a dupe, obviously.
This is not fun. I hate playing the game this way. I don’t have to get these jokers, obviously, but they are suposed to be really good. There’s also one other joker I have not unlocked. It’s a Rare Joker, and you have to get 100,000,000 chips in one hand to unlock it. The only way to do that is to use the Plasma Deck (for reasons I’m not going to get into here). I haven’t been able to do that, either, because I’m shaky on making the most of that deck.
I’m not as annoyed by that, however, because at least you can math it (if you can math properly). With the Legendary Jokers, it’s all a matter of luck. It’s enraging, honestly, and it’s sucked the fun out of the game for me. As well as having to do the increasingly more difficult stakes with the different decks.
Anyway. Back to Shadow of the Erdtree. The thing I liked best about it was how much there was to explore and how different every environment was. This is really the strong point of FromSoft–just how incredible their level design is. It’s truly a workk of art, and I gasped in amazement time and time again. It’s clear that they did not rest on their laurels when it came to the DLC. They weren’t content to just phone it in. They really went all-out with providing a completely new and meaty experience.
There are negatives to it, of course, but that’s true of any game. A big one was that while the exploration was elaborate and exquisite, there rarely was a material reward from doing so. Yes, there were the Scadutree Fragments and the Revered Spirit Ashes, but besides those, there was a whole hell of a lot of smithing stones. SO. MANY.
I get why. It’s for the people who only played the game once (if that) and wanted to try the shiny new weapons. They’ve always done this in their DLCs. And, yes, they did have nev weapons, armors, sorceries, and incantations, but those felt very sparse.
Here’s the thing. For those of us who have never stopped playing the game, we have no shortage of smithing stones. I had several of every magnitude, and even if I didn’t, I had the ability to buy any smithing stone I needed. And, because it took so many runes for me to level up, I was always walking around with enough pocket money tho buy as many smithing stones as I needed. Any time I found a weapon I wanted to try, I just went back to the Roundtable Hold and leveled it up to one less than the max. I had enough consumable souls that I could crush in order to shell out any amount of runes needed to level up.
I don’t hold it too much against them, though, because I don’t know what else they could have done. The DLC is so vast and intricate, and they did provide plenty of cool shit. Honestly, though, I would have preferred nothing instead of the copious amounts of smithing stones. I would have appreciated it if they had made the exploration itself the ma;in focus.
Still. That’s such a minor complaint in comparison to how much they gave us in the DLC. Again, I think people took it for granted that it would be stellar because FromSoft is known for their amazing DLCs. In other words, they weren’t given the props they deserved for it because it was expected that it would be brilliant.
I didn’t think they should be penalized for that, but I’m not in the business, am I? I also know that I don’t play the breadth of games that games journalists play. I can’t be too mad at the choice for GOTY, but it’s just not for me. Even if I had played it (Astro Bot, Team ASOBI), there’s no way I would have enjoyed it nearly as much as I did SotE. It’s a platformer, which is so not my thing. And it’s a PlayStation exclusive, which is really not my thing.
That’s it for today. I’ll probably write one more post on this subject before calling it a day.