Today, I am offering my definitive review of Shadow of the Erdtree, the Elden Ring DLC from FromSoft. I have played through the whole thing, found every place noted in Eurogamer’s video about 11 hidden areas in the DLC–which I’ve included below. I’m feeling smug because I found all of them. But, it speaks to a debate that is lowkey right now, but that will probably explode at the end of the year. It’s the question of whether a DLC can win Game of the Year (and whether it could have been a standalone game), and, yes, it’s because of Shadow of the Erdtree.
Let’s talk about that first just because I want to. In my first playthrough (and, yes, I’ve started my second), I put in 70 to 80 hours–five on the last boss itself. The running joke is that Miyazaki said it was about the size of Limgrave–the starting area of the game. This is so patently not true, that no one will ever believe him again. Not that they should have, anyway, because when the base game released, a rep for FromSoft said you could finish the main storyline in 30 hours.
I’ve hashed that out before, so I’l just say they are either having a laugh or trying to seriously lower expectations. Which is fine, but it means that they’ll just toss out any number at this point. The size of Limgrave? Ha! As people in the RKG Discord joked, it’s like four Limgraves stacked on top of each other.
Here are my time comparisons. I put roughly 220 hours into the main game. Let’s say I put 80 into the DLC. That’s over a third of the time I put into the base game. People were not happy that the DLC was $40 when it came out, but I think that’s fair considering what you get. I was roaming around with my strength character yesterday, and I found a little fort I had not found in my first playthrough. I went there with my main character and easily cleaned it out. As I said, it was small. But the fact that I had missed it meant that there may be more little things I have missed.
I have basically played Elden Ring since the time it came out. I’ve played other games, too, but I always return to Elden Ring. It’s gotten to the point that even when I have difficulty with a boss, there is nothing that actually scares me. I know the game inside and out–well, not quite.
I don’t know the second half as well as I do the first. But I am not scared of anything in the game any longer. Do I dread certain areas and bosses? Yes. Again, this is why I have not played the second half of the game as much as I have the first.
When I started the DLC, I felt fear again. Not fear as in, “I’m afraid of the scary thing in the corner”, but fear as in, “Oh, god. What grueling experience am I going to encounter over there?”
Side note: I have slowly come to another realization about how I’m weird. Horror movies/TV shows/games don’t scare me. At all. It’s really interesting because I’m susceptible to almost every other emotion that comes out of media, so why not horror? I don’t know why, but someone once commented to me. well, it’s like this. Shadow, my (late) cat was a scaredy cat of people, but he was not afraid of things that other cats didn’t like. Vacuums didn’t bother him, nor did fireworks. When he slept, he would sometimes jump up, race around the room, and then settle back down. Yes, he had nightmares, and I could totally relate to that.
Here’s my point. He knew that things like vacuums and fireworks were not actual dangers, so he ignored them. I think that’s how my brain works with horror stuff. It files away horror in pop culture as not danger because it knows there are tangible scary shit out there. It doesn’t work completely because my brain freaks out over imaginary things, too, but it doesn’t get scared in a horror movie kind of way about almost anything.
It’s funny because in the RKG community, Krupa is known for being stony-faced whilst watching horror movies or watching Rory play a horror game. He has said it’s not that he doesn’t feel fear, but just that he doesn’t express it. With me, I don’t feel fear. I don’t count jumpscares as actual fear because that’s just a physiological response.
How the hell–oh, yeah. Fear.
One of the most impressive things about a From game is how it makes you feel like you’re in danger every step of the way. I remember going through the first legacy dungeon and feeling tense the whole time. I had no idea what was going to happen next–except that it would probably make me cry. Which it did (metaphorically) many, many times.
Side note: I always play the DLC with my first character. This is a foolish, foolish choice. My first character is inevitably a trash character because I’m not trying for any one build. I put points in whatever interests me, which is exactly the wrong way to level up. I know this. I have known this since the first Dark Souls. And still, I efuse to do it. Not just on the first run, but on every run. I just don’t have it in me to do a pure run. I start out strong. I swear. I say to myself, “I’m going to be a pure caster this time.” And then I don’t!
Side note: Let me just say that being a strength character, in general, is easy mode–for me, anyway. Whereas with my first ccharacter, I was dying so much to scrub enemies and this was even after I upped my Vigor to 60. I will say that with the one fast boss so far (who also hits like a tank AND has magicks), I had much more trouble with my strength character than my caster. It’s because I could not register when she was attacking me up close before she hit me twice or more. With my caster, obviously, I could keep a distance, and, more to the point, walk backwards briskly. On the other hand ,I can take a few hits as a thicc character–more than I can with my caster. Not because of how much Vigor I have (it’s equal on both characters), but because of the poise and heavy armor I have with my strength character. I can basically swing through the enemy’s attacks without a care in the world.
There is a downside, of course. It makes it really easy to get greedy and to go for that extra hit. Everything in the DLC hits harder, so even though I can take more hits as a strength character, it’s not infinite–obviously.
Also, I know that part of the reason itt’s easier is because it’s the second time around, but I truly believe it’s more because of my character than because of my knowledge. I breezed through the base game with this character, killing most bosses in a few goes. Again, knowledge is power, but so is, well, power.
This is running long, and I did not even get to the review part. I’ll try to get around to that tomorrow.