Shadow of the Erdtree Review - A Poor Followup 

I like how people assume that even the lowest, smallest level of criticism of this DLC is "bait". The brain rot is real.

Ya know what's even sadder? What used to be a game about surviving a harsh world and learning how to keep trying is now a game about dick measuring and laughing at the noobs. You can even see it with how many videos there are of people reading the reviews, pretty much disregarding any criticism as "They are just bad". If this is the future of FS games and specially its community then I'm done with it. I'll keep with the soulslike like Lies of P. At least they know a thing or two about QoL features.

Is is rude to give you advise? If you put a layer of very quite music or even abstract ambience under your voice, qnd do a little bit fade at the end of audio clips, you will get rid of this "popping" effect in the places you merge two voice clips together :)

My main problem is the lack of good loot from exploring.

I love fromsoft games, but ER's biggest problem for me is that it gives you so many fun tools to play, but as soon as you actually want to start using them, the boss makes you shift to a nohit game mode. You are simply not incentivized to play like you are in an rpg, like you have build variety and fun diverse spells to cast, no, the game encourages you to put yourself in the shoes of a nohit runner, especially in the DLC. The amount of time I decided to use a cool incantation just to realize that the boss will punish me severely... The error margins are simply not permissive enough to encourage you to play otherwise. You either summon mimic, wear a shield, cheese him, and therefore trivialize the boss, or you spend hours learning his pattern. There seem to be no in between. I am not fundamentally against this playstyle, Sekiro is an example. But I don't want the game to tease me with all those tools just to revert back to learn how to dance with the boss.

10:00 Or do it like in that indie Soulslike game called Sekiro, where the level up items for attack and defense drop from minibosses. I think FromSoftware and Miyazaki know this game exists, right?

Your criticism of Elden Rings open world makes no sense to me. An open world this vast without a map & a horse? For an open world as vast as Elden Ring that would be the most tedious thing ever. It seems you just want to throw away the open world & just have one big dungeon instead, like in the Souls games.

No, removing Torrent would not improve the experience in the open world. To begin with Torrent making the open world too safe is not simply an issue of Torrent, it's an issue of the world in general. The world is too large, too open and doesn't have enough enemies to make running past them not an effective tactic. You could easily do at least 90% of the pick up item and run parts of the game without Torrent just as effectively, albeit a little slower. Not only are the enemies slower than Torrent they also tend to be slowed than the player character and eventually lose aggro. Besides some elevators and ladders running past enemies indoors where Torrent is not summonable is also very effective and enables the player to avoid the enemies. This is not only the case in Elden Ring's own legacy dungeóns but also fromsoft's earlier games like dark souls 3. Only place where they somewhat succesfully make the player fight all the enemies is dark souls 2 and look what happened with that one. The running past enemies problem aside the world is just too big and would need to be scaled down severely to be at all engaging to explore without Torrent. Even with Torrent's travel speed you encounter large basically empty areas of the map you really wouldn't want to have to run. This is an issue with the open world, yes but removing Torrent would make it far worse. Also if you wanted to make the open world harder you really also should remove the get flasks back when killing an enemy group mechanic. It trivializes exploration far more imo. As for the enemies in the open world and the field bosses the player is "tricked" to fight. Personally I genocide pretty much all enemies I encounter on my first runthrough of the area anyways. It's nice to get some runes and it's nice to not have to think about the enemies when picking up items as they're all dead. The field bosses are also a good excuse to give the player a lot of runes at once. Alternatively they could buff rune drops for all enemies of the area to compensate but that would incentivize farming the enemies instead of killing them once or twice, beating the field boss and being done with it. Also yeah, Promised Consort Radahn is horribly balanced and the moveset in the second phase is generally overtuned. It took me 205 tries to beat him no blocking, no summons, just a good old anchor, dodgeroll and a dream and while I did kind of have fun the fight definitely made me want to jump off a bridge multiple times. However, I do not think this is a good representation of the dlc's main bosses in general. Fromsoft did fumble their final boss pretty bad here but fights like Bayle, Messmer, Rellana were all fun, learnable and not that difficult. Rellana for example took me 15 tries with the rusted anchor and no buffs other than physick, Messmer took 12 tries with the dragonslayer great katana and no buffs. Bayle took 84 but that was me fighting the boss at scadutree blessing lvl 4 and in the end I felt like I had mastered the fight. As a whole I found the dlc's fights to be mostly stepups from both dark souls 3 and elden ring's base game. Granted I might be a convenient audience as a relatively hard but learnable boss fight is what I play these games for. Sekiro is my favourite out of the bunch too so the faster bosses generally feel nice. But still, it would be interesting if you had expanded on the other bosses and not just used the obvious low hanging fruit of Promised Consort Radahn when critiquing the boss design instead of just saying they have flat arenas and feel too similar. Also flat arenas just generally are good, even in the promised consort fight the slight elevation differences instantly create jank with multiple attacks.

I feel catharsis over how well you expressed these points. I've loved FromSoft ever since the days of Demon's Souls, and I loved Demon's Souls not just because of its action and aesthetics, but for its unbound creativity. Ironic how the games are now too big to fail, for Demon's Souls took as many chances as it did because it believed failure was certain - so they just made games they liked. There are only two fights in this expansion that I felt captured the spirit of the old From - "Jori, Elder Inquisitor" and "the Lamenter". The Lamenter is in a flat arena, but his gimmick forces you to be creative - if your build was defensive and patient like mine, it will die instantly and be overwhelmed. So without any respeccing or changing gear, I changed my style with the tools I had on hand, and recklessly attacked without concern for defence. I took hits but I managed my resources well and I won. Jori, Elder Inquisitor does not test your reflexes but your resourcefulness. He teleports away so you can't cling to him. Him and his summoned backup can threaten you with many projectiles, so you should use the trees and gravestones as cover while you wait them out or get in close. You need to prioritise targets, and you are rewarded for having options that can control multiple enemies at once (but you do not strictly need them). Are either of these bosses 'hard'? Not insufferably, I imagine many prepared veterans beat them first try. But they are different from the norm of their game. They are not just another "Memorise the patterns, wait out the attack and do a quick counterhit". They are not "Hide behind a greatshield and poke them with a rapier or spear". You can play them this way, but they're far from the only way. And that felt great. I need more bosses like that, bosses that play to From's strengths as action RPG devs, and don't just feel like a poor man's character-action game

Fighting enemies in the open world is a very low priority point of the game which is why you have the option to bypass them. Theres really no reason or incentive to fight them other than boredom, rune farming or testing weapons.

You nailed it. I've tried to explain to people my issues with the DLC and to some extent Elden Ring. And the Scadutree Blessings are just terrible. I started playing the DLC with a 2nd character that had finished the base game and my God does hunting Fragments suck. So many map areas are just near empty zones you have to traverse for the sake of traversing them. It's to where you just pull up a wiki and go "is there anything here worth bothering with?" And the answer is almost always "no". Except there will almost always be a Fragment or two there, so you're going there anyway.

I agree with you on everything else tho esp the scadutree fragment issue. I’ve been saying this since day 1. Is the boss too hard or do I need more shards ? Can’t really focus on beating the boss when you’re clouded with not even knowing if you’re intended to fight it at that particular time

So much damage done by enemies I just sent for a good shield, great shield talisman, high endurance and dagger talisman to just block and counter enemies to death. No point in risking rolling through delayed attacks with weird hit boxes

Very well put. I was hoping the DLC would make up for mistakes in the base game, but it sometimes just intensifies them. Most maps are TERRIBLY shallow and the smithing stone loot is borderline offensive. So many cheap ambushes that it might have more than all Dark Souls combined. I was looking forward to FS' future up to this DLC, now I'm just hesitant. It's a bit sad, but as you said, there was a pattern leading up to this.

Keep on cooking, my guy. While I have some disagreements, you've echoed many of my own issues with Elden Ring and the DLC, especially on map design, fast travel, and boss design. I hope FromSoft (or at least other Souls-likes) take some cues from your critiques.

Scadutree fragments are less comparable to rune level, and more comparable to smithing stones, which in the base game are very much something players have to explore the world to acquire and depending on how far a player is in the game different tiers of smithing stone will be in limited supply, restricting how many different weapons can be fully upgraded. If anything, the Scadutree fragments are a better implementation of weapon progression because it applies becuase you no longer have to upgrade each different weapon you might want to use or just experiment with individually. This sense of progression continuing on from where the base game left off is something no previous FromSoft game has been able to replicate. They were always just new end game zones with a flat difficulty curve, but that was more or less okay for those more linear games. Scrapping the blessing system and just scaling everything the same, wouldn't really work for Elden Ring anymore. Without a system for progression there would be no more ability to when finding one particular challenge to difficult, to instead go off and explore in a different direction so that the player can come back stronger. Overall, Shadow of the Erdtree has been like getting to play the base game for the first time all over again. Really, whether or not someone enjoys the DLC is going to be very much dependent ant on how much they enjoyed the base game in the first place, and that's how it should be. DLC's aren't the place to "fix" things, that's what sequels are for. DLCs are for people that already enjoy the base game and want more of it. The simple fact of the matter is that despite its shared DNA, Elden Ring isn't Dark Souls. It's Elden Ring, and an open world games just functions differently in ways that can't be directly corelated to games with more restrictive world design. That doesn't make one genre better than the other, just different. If the only thing a person likes about Elden Ring is the legacy dungeons because of how those portions of the game are most like Dark Souls, that doesn't mean the rest of Elden Ring is bloated or uninspired, it just means that person has different preferences in the type of gameplay they are looking for. ... Also, saying that the two Great Red Bears are just reskinned runebears is massively underrepresenting just how much their move sets have been expanded.

Imagine someone trying to use the bear claws on fucking Messmer There are two load outs 1) your fodder enemy build 2) your boss build But in reality you can use the boss build the entire game making every other weapon and build obsolete

Very good video.... i was surprised to find out you have almost no subscribers....quality stuff :)

I was so disappointed to see so many recycled bosses in the DLC... How did they think anyone wanted to refight those shit dragons fights again? Or those seed beasts or whatever they're called. I ended up running past 80% of the open world bosses... just no interest there at all.

basically all boss fights are the same now due to the hyper agressive, spammy behaviour combined with tracking, input reading etc. - poor design choices. you got all the flashy new weapons and ashes of war and yet almost none are viable because you have zero hyperarmor for most. all of that makes the combat repeptitve and boring

This is absolutely the best video critique I've seen on this game. I think you brought up many points that aren't being discussed as much as the boss designs but which are equally as detrimental to Elden Ring's drop in quality from their other titles. I feel crazy that I find the game to be overall a mess when even the most critical essays start with, "I really love this game but..." There are moments that are really fun. And there is a staggering amount to appreciate from an artistic design perspective. But overall, I just kept seeing the seams and the cracks and just wanted it to be over with the first time I played it.

Great analysis dude, I've always felt weird about elden ring, been a fan of fromsoft games and soullikes in general ever since dark souls 1 but for whatever reason i just couldn't get the praise everyone was giving to elden ring, there was something off with the game for me since the beginning and seeing everyone loving it so much and claiming it's the best fromsoft game ever in the history of forever made me feel like I was crazy or something, I just couldn't put into words all my problems with the game but you just did it for me in the most amazing way possible, you really deserve way more recognition. Keep up the good work

Honestly, as a new player, the Fromsoft community's mindset towards Elden Ring is honestly a turn off. I've only ever played and finished Elden Ring, so I'm clearly a newb, but you're not allowed to have any critiques regardless of if you're new or not. The default response is always "get good" no matter how bullshit a boss is. And the constant discourse over what's the "true" way to play and what makes a boss kill honest and blah blah blah is so tiresome and annoying. I have my complaints, but I still did enjoy Elden Ring for the most part, so I plan on trying older games(Dark Souls especially), but the Fromsoft community has definitely solidified itself as one of those fandoms that you're better off not interacting with and should just enjoy the material instead.

It improved on basically everything from the base game except progression, which is hard to balance for post-game content.

This is a DLC not a sequel did you expect them to rework the entire game of the year?

Oh WOW! I thought I recognized your voice, your OG Elden Ring critique was the only one I actually respected, it didnt feel like the complaints of a salty entitled scrub, or a sweaty Fromsoft brand fanboy, but someone who had a keen eye for the overlooked little details that foretell the downfall of this subgenre. I just want to say, you absolutely nailed it, Fromsoft games have become ALL spectacle and no substance. While I did enjoy the DLC to an extent, as it does stand above the quality of the *current* industry standard, I don't think that warrants turning a blind eye to the blatant drop in quality from previous games and the almost completely homogenized and uninspired gameplay formula. I never felt my eyes be more molested by total screen pollution in one of these games before this DLC, the overly embellished particle effects and jerky camera movements litter EVERY action that every boss takes. Making the boss movesets more "cinematic" which becomes jarringly disproportionate to the players list of viable actions, yes we have flashy moves of our own, but the amount of commitment time these moves require while having little to no survivability beyond the occassional I-Frame or Hyper Armor properties(of which will quickly get overtaxed by the bosses breakneck aggressive attack pacing) means we wind up incentivized into doing the same safe repetitive action again and again and again. This contradicts the attempts at making fights more of a spectacle because these "immersive and dynamic" boss move sets are put into immediate contrast with the transparently artificial video game character that they're pitted against. This ironically makes bosses LESS cinematic than previous titles because of the ludonarrative dissonance, where as before Souls games actually had quite abit of narrative and gameplay harmony. (Sorry for the text wall, I just want to say thanks for being 100% genuine with your review)

I 100% agree with the Scadu fragments. It's ENTIRELY artificial, and no one wants to admit it. Which is what the From fans have always said was why they like Souls games, 'Tough but fair.' like OG Mega Man or Ghosts 'n Goblins. "Oh, boss too tough? I know you have his moveset down mostly, but you still die to two hits due to silly mistakes we all make? Oh well, go get a McGuffin and now it's okay, you don't die and your skills will carry you now!" I mean, even RL1 challenge runs through SoTE use Skibidibop upgrades. Seems kind of stupid that a challenge run in where you don't upgrade your power...You upgrade your power. Artificial. Even challenge runners are admitting it's unfun and tedious. Which is cool, just admit that the game can't challenge you within the confines of it's own rules anymore. And people will say it's so the DLC doesn't get smoked and rolled over as easy. SO. FUCKING. WHAT? This was NEVER an issue in DS1, DS2, BB, DS3, but now it is? Why? So Miyazaki doesn't get his fee fees hurt? So me rolling into the Ringed City at level 500 and stomping the bosses makes the community mad? Why? They should laugh and say I overleveled and IGNORE MY STUPID WRONG OPINION. Also they say 'It let's me feel progression on my 100% base game complete character!', my brother in christ, just start over with a new character to experience the DLC at the intended level, like I fucking did with every Souls game so far. Why would I ever roll into DLC with a God-Tier character, and demand the game try and challenge me? I specifically powered myself up to be this way. If I want to collect useless shit all over again like in Limgrave I'd start over, and get that progression feeling again. Not expect it from an end game story DLC.

I hope Fromsoftware makes smaller, more focused and tightly designed games in the future like Sekiro, Bloodborne and the Dark Souls series. A lot of the problems in ER and SotE stem from it's size. The visuals and level design are amazing but the open world is empty and the repetitive, reused enemies and bosses is just terrible. I honestly feel ER and SotE would be so much better if they were about half the size or just branching paths of small areas and Legacy Dungeons. I don't feel the size and expanse of the game is worth the diminished quality and lack of polish.

Fromsoft is loosing it‘s way, the good don‘t outweigh the ever piling bad. Reminder that chainsaw glitch is still in the game, among a plethera of others.

Im waiting to play the dlc on a different build but i think my overall criticism that bugs me the most is fashion and aesthetic and viability. Purple is my favorite color. We got a purple sword that glows deep purple. Sounds cool, but i already know it's not anywhere near viable as a normal weapon in the game. On top of it, no purple armor. This games excels in like only 4ish colors. Gold, Silver grayscales, red and maybe blue. Lacks greens, lacks purples, orange, pinks as primary colors for armor. Too many weapons have designs that can't be matched through armor and it's crazy to me. Armor in the base game was already hard to mix match and i think the dlc fixes that but it also failed to provide variety in colors. I feel like for every boss or enemy that doesn't have armor drops like romina, should have at least armor designed in their image/influence or theme. Idk

As much as I love elden Ring, I'll admit it does have a balancing issue. Most bosses really only had a couple of ways to win. The player doesn't have the capability to keep up with the burst attacks of the bosses. I've been going for cheese kills at this point, I feel the dance is just too much for one misstep, and you're dead, but again I love this game and is still my favorite at this time, but yes it can be a better game with proper balance, that's the evolution process of gaming I suppose.

i really expected to just not like this video bc i enjoyed the dlc myself but this is honestly really well made and thought out so I respect calling out the flaws and overall was a good video i love it

great video! i really disliked the quest design. Alot of them have way too many steps and the fact you can progress so far you lock yourself out of any quests was a big issue for me. I didnt like feeling like i should google things to get through the game.

I comepletely agree with almost all of the points you brought up. Back when I started ER, I was really excited, but that hype quickly dissipated as I realized just how stale the game felt. I had gotten my hopes up for the DLC but, alas, despite delivering what I think is the best boss encounter in the whole game (Messmer the Impaler), overall I was left unsatisfied by the expansion. In my opinion, FROM should stop trying to continously evolve what was the core gameplay loop in DeS. SOTE, and in general elden ring, feels like it wants to evolve into something else, into a more action based game, but it can't because the player is still stuck playing with the same core loop they had in 2011 while the rest of the game is out here playing Sekiro. Even if they want to keep making souls-likes, just changing what the core gameplay loop is based on (and they have done it, just look at BB or Sekiro, as much as it pains me to call it a souls-like) would do wonders for their future games. Mostly because it also wouldn't trick players into thinking that they can still play with the same understanding of the game that they had with DeS.

Im so excited seeing that first giant furnace thing i immediately tried to fight him lost 12m runes and after i beat him i got 9k runes im so livid at that time lmao didnt even give any good items just one crafting material

I agree with a lot of stuff said here but at least some of the field bosses have important variations in moveset. The recyle is still a problem but I've felt it less in sote.

I disagree with a few things you said, like not having a map or respecs, but overall this was a great duology of videos. You hit basically all of the nails right on the head for why I can't love Elden Ring and can't be part of the fanbase turned cult. From and the fans have lost the plot with these games. It was never about difficulty, and this insane pursuit of even greater challenge and more difficult bosses who are now playing an entirely different game than the PC has driven the formula to the brink. I don't think this formula can be stretched any further, and any attempts to do so will fail. Whatever From does next needs to be a complete reinvention, because I will not be buying Elden Ring 2.

3:35 um.. some people like to avoid enemies to get to places.. You do realise that you have the option not to use torrent.. right? If you think it "trivialises all open world enemies" cos "players can always run away on torrent to heal", then um don't use torrent..? If you want more tension and not to be able to run away on horseback to heal then don't use torrent. But complaining about it because other players can do that is just moronic. Let people play how they want. Simple. 26:09 Uhh yeah I think you're just projecting here. I've never heard or seen anyone "pretend" Elden Ring isn't mainstream.. whatever that means.. every fan knows how many copies it's sold and every fan knows how popular and mainstream it is. Defo just projecting here.

For the fragments I think it would be better if they were boss fight related.

He’s back

The exploration is worse but everything else is definitely a step up, legacy dungeons and bosses are some of the best they've ever made

That’s the whole point ! To learn the attack patterns .

I’m ngl as a fanboy for Elden ring you have very solid points

No torrent and no map? That would take so long to finish…

90% of the problems this game has results from it being open world. I hope FS never make another open world game as it completely breaks the design philosophy that they have learnt and evolved over the last 15 years. Torrent is there because the game is open world. The bosses are severly overtuned because you have the ability to go and overlevel yourself and have access to a million tools that trivialises them. People who don't get this and defend every aspect of this game are the reason why franchises bite the dust.

I could not disagree more about the map design. The idea that there are areas only flowing into eachother if you go down the most random holes in the wall is stupid and pointlessly unclear. Especially when 99% of those exact same scenarios lead to either nothing at all or pointless upgrade materials or cookbooks...

very good video

The base game was incredibly disappointing to me so I chose to skip the DLC. Watching this review makes me glad I did. Same old shit from base game is back..

I've been writing as a hobby for the better part of 8 years and I still cant find the words to adequately convey how trash your takes are. EDIT: And your gameplay.

Thanks for presenting your opinion in a clear way. I'm sad you didn't connect with the experience like I did. I feel like a lot of people really do not vibe with what the open world added to the Souls formula. I find that it really elevates the rest of the traditional gameplay like the legacy dungeons. Having time to chill on your horse, exploring the map, going to several points of interest and then escalate the tension progressively when you find a dungeon and a road to a boss. This contrast between the two, makes both stronger in my opinion. But for a lot of people, this is a waste of time like you pointed at. I've seen countless players run past all the enemies and open world to go get their teeth kicked in by the boss and blame it on bad design (witch are not perfect, but still some awe inspiring battles). My experience while exploring fully was very rewarding. The world is such a beauty and Fromsoft has the strongest art direction in the industry. Figuring out the map lay out and how to reach certain zone is a real brain tease and it's something you almost never see in open worlds game applied like that. You find countless point of interest giving you loot and the levelling scadu tree. While doing this method, I never felt that I had to go back and find more because I was too weak when I reach one of the challenging bosses. And for other play through it only takes a few minutes to gather some and game design decision shouldn't lean too hard on catering to the repeated play through if it takes away from the first one witch should always be the priority. But once again, that importance can really vary from player to player so I understand that it can tarnished your opinion on the game. The one point in your video were I feel there is a bit of a contradiction, is about build diversity and how to approach the very difficult encounters in the game. You say that the Boss design doesn't encourage creativity or experimentation. And also that you can only use the meta build to defeat them. But you forget how those meta build are created : through creativity and experimentation. If most people will just look and copy the solution online, doesn't mean you have to do it too. It's like a puzzle. It's your choice if you want to solve it or look the solution. And solving it, will bring you joy and satisfaction while not so much if you just copy the solution from someone else. And if the solutions were the same as the base game, witch as been trivialised after being out for two years, that wouldn't really be a challenge. On my last point, I would say that keep your hopes up for Fromsoft future. Elden Ring was Elden Ring. It was huge and grandiose. It leaned more on the spectacle and an overpower fantasy. It had its own identity like the other franchise that made all of them special. Now that page has been closed and we probably gonna start fresh with a new project that will also have its own identity. It is bound to be different while keeping a lot of the ideas we cherished over the years. DarkSouls, Sekiro, Bloodborne and now EldenRing, everyone has a different favourite. They have different strengths and flaws but they all come from the same place of passion and respect for the player. Let's keep encouraging them to experiment and push the boundaries for a brighter future in gaming. Peace

Idk why you really expected they would not just make more Elden Ring considering how well received Elden Ring is.

i actually see and agree with a lot you say and i personally really enjoyed the dlc and found it fun, the only thing i would really argue is the build switching thing I dont think it is harmful to the game to be able to switch builds and this be some kind of excuse for bad boss design as these bosses are all managable I played the base game and the dlc for the first time recently and havent rebirth at rennala a single time mostly focusing on faith and holy damage some fights have been harder than others and radahn took way longer than any other boss so yes it is hard but i think anyone who cares enough to put in the time to learn a fight better will eventually overcome it and if they choose that they dont want to and switch to a cheese build then so be it i guess as long as the player is satisfied and had fun

I feel the real issue here is that the open world design is simply incompatible with the souls formula. An open world is mainly about getting to interact with the world and its inhabitants, to learn about them and to immerse yourself in the setting. Normally the world would be used to get space for quests and NPCs. The reward for exploring would be a cool little village with a sidequest or a interesting story beat. But that fundamentally goes against the basic idea of the Souls formula where the world is supposed to be dead or dying with the player just sort not even really saving it. You cannot really have little villages and story beats when the game is barely allowed to have any NPCs or story(real story, not obscure one sentence references on items you may or may not find). As a result the game designers are sort of pushed into hyper focusing on combat in a game that never had that much of a complex combat system to begin with. Thus we get Scadutree fragments and overtuned bosses as there is very little that can be done with this combat system besides inflating and deflating numbers.

Especially the difficulty topic. I feel like with all the new people getting into these games, the false selling point of their key feature being absurd diffculty is pushed in even further - resulting in elitism, lack of empathy & understanding for people that struggle. Dark Souls never touched me because of the difficulty. Yeah, the rough and hostile world is one of its features for me, however the selling point is a learning curve, not regarding single enemies, but the whole game. That it didnt give you an op tool with which you now can defeat previously tough enemies (as it does in ER), but it made you the tool itself. The map also defeats much of the underlying mystery for me. I really liked Ds2 world, because it was so absurd, so seemingly impossible but still there. And every Ds game carried that kind of mystery for me.

There no difficulty setting in elden ring that’s the point of different builds .

Most of all these are just, you know, your opinion. You seem to not like Open World games and that's fine, but this is still your opinion.I am vastly annoyed when people so pompously call aspects of games as "a mess" or "bad" or whatever as if it is objective truth. This guy who is probably in his 20s (maybe even early 20s), keeps talking about the degradation of games, and how the old ones were good etc. I am approaching 40 and i was there to play Morrowind, Baldur's Gate 2 and Diablo 2 at the time of release. Since then i have played every RPG under the sun. Let me tell you something. GAMES ARE GETTING BETTER. No degradation whatsoever. Elden Ring, and especially Shadow of the Erdtree does the Open World design better than any other Open World Fantasy RPG has ever done in my opinion, and i have several hundred hours in all Bethesda games, The Witcher 3 and several other games. Side dungeons. Same thing. Sure there is repetition but there is FAR LESS repetition than other open world RPGs. The bosses in terms of difficulty are in line with all the other bosses in all Souls DLCs GIVEN THE TOOLS YOU HAVE. Maybe even easier. Sure MECHANICALLY Messmer is harder than the Fume Knight. But when fighting the Fume Knight your movement is much slower, you can't summon a spirit ash, there are not a million of buffs that you can stack on you, your damage is not nearly as high etc. Still, the original Dark Souls is unsurpassed for me, and personally i don't like the Spirit Summon system and the design choices around it. I would prefer if it didn't exist and we, the players, had extra tools (like Sekiro or Bloodborne) to tackle with the Bosses crazy moveset, but that's what we got and the game is still incredible. Still, i fought all the bosses without summons at NG+ RL 150, but with maxed out Scadutree Fragments (they carry over), and besides Radahn, i think the difficulty is vastly exaggerated at this point.

I really want to get the expac just to see this review

The DLC is still Elden Ring, so while yes they improved the map design, weapons exc. people are acting like it’s a full on sequel and as such should have been remarkably different and improved… it’s still Elden Ring, it’s staying true to its base game, while giving us this gigantic expansion to explore…

you can just tell these channels wanting to break out were readying this kinda of viewpoint months before release, lol

There's a lore reason for why Torrent can't be summoned in the Abyssal Forest, read the item's description. That being said, I don't agree with the opinion on Torrent. The world is gigantic, Torrent is a horse, most enemies are on foot. I dunno what you expect lmao. The DLC absolutely entirely became a collectathon for me and it's just... not fun. The entire game was spent following a youtube video collecting fragments, all the way to the end. It sucks. IMO the DLC sucks. I'd rather run a NG+ 10 through the base game naked and talismanless than play through the DLC again on NG+1 even if NG+ retains the blessing from Scadutree fragments. Bosses have too much HP, too much damage output/combos. The base game bosses are far more balanced . You can use mostly whatever build you want in the base game. But in the DLC, it's bleed or fingerprint shield + rapier for most players to beat bosses. If I make a new character I'm just gonna save edit in the damn fragments, all 50 of em lmao

In the last 4 years I've played eldein ring , lies of p, hogwarts legacy, armor core 6, sekiro, god of war , jedi survivor, witcher 3 to name a few. Elden ring is my favorite game ! I also enjoyed the DLC/ Expansion. My favorite combat is sekiro then followed up by lies of p. Good video and I agree with a good amount of your points.

This game would be a nightmare without a map. Thank god you don’t call the shots.

I am finlly trying lords of the fallen and like it more than this dlc

I love elden ring and I understand that it has major issues, this dlc clearly has them, the only issue i Have with the dlc is that of the final boss, a long ass endurance fight can be fun, bayle and midir are good examples of this: lots of hp, high damage but slow telegraphed movesets that are easy to learn while giving plenty of openings and having a weakspot to increase damage encouraging you to take some risk reward stuff that is actually rewarding the final boss on the other hand suffers the issue of being an endurance fight with too much dmg and hp while also being overly agressive and fast, if they simply reduced their health and damage down a fair amount it would be a much more balanced fight overall because you wouldnt be punished for it, everything else that the dlc is alright, messmer is fair and gives you plenty of good openings, rellenna while being agressive isnt too tanky and offers ample chances, Bayle is perfect and is a step up from midir, an absolute tank but has well telegraphed moves along with a really interesting movese, Midra is just fucking perfection even with madness buildup, putrescence is a weird boss but its nice to have a boss that actually is weak to holy for once, divine dancing beast lion only suffers camera issues apart from that its pretty much wonderful too, the sunflower was strange but great with its movesets and its gimmic was fun, metyr was alright probably the least interesting in terms of movset but lore its some of the most shocking stuff AND DONT YOU DISS MY DEMI HUMAN BOI MASTER YODA HIS MOVESET IS 100% ORIGINAL but moving to my point, there isnt really anything wrong with the dlcs difficulty, its clear that consort radahn is just the peak of their difficulty, and they know now not to enter that kind of bullshit territory in the future, elden ring feels more akin to an experiment because miazaki plans on making one last game using all the experience he had gained from elden ring and past games, hopefully he will one day create a new unique experience because i can agree I wouldnt want to just play another game with the exact dark souls mechanics

Your arguments have some fundamental flaws the scattered tree fragment system is to prevent over level players from Rolling the system they are a percentage boost on top of whatever you can already do so 100% of nothing is still nothing, your gameplay shows a level 130 character which is not high by any means spamming with a dark moon Greatsword... not ideal to say the least. build diversities have fundamentally changed with the addition of new equipment

how do i block a youtube channel

Agreed on all points and wanted to say that I love how you highlight wasted time instead of the money. Tired of seeing people whine over $40

"Pretending like these are different boss encounters is an insult to my intelligence and time?" *proceeds to show footage of the red bear using attacks that Rune bears never did.* You did that to yourself dude.

16:37 criticizes game for lot of reused shit from main game then proceeds to praise same old level design that he already played countless times in demon's souls/ darks souls 1,2,3/ bloodborne years ago. so do you want new shit or old shit? make your mind please!

People expect the people at fromsoft to make a massive open world game have a unique enemy around every corner or say it should be more like there older titles without realizing the amount of work it takes to design ever single part of the world this is a limit to the amount of resources and creativity one can have this dlc is fun the bosses are pretty cool this dlc has actively made me a better player by getting me use to finding openings where I can get hits in each boss has their weakness to exploit the game gives you tons of tools spells and weapons to use in the end what you are looking for is another dark souls not elden ring

The open world is exhausting and boring. Hopefully fromsoft returns to form in delivering intricate "linear" levels.

9:40 HOW DARE YOU

I feel the roamers In dungeons killed me more then the bosses

Spot on man . Everything about Elden ring scares me about the future of fromsoftware .

Very bad take - the whole point and joy of elden ring is picking up the items regardless if they're useful or not. It's the process of exploring a big and mysterious world with the chance of finding something cool. The general thesis of this video "my time is being wasted" is a clear indication that these games (souls-like and specifically elden ring) aren't for you. And that's fine, but it's foolish to claim that its a bad follow up to a universally loved video game simply because you don't like elden ring in the first place.

Their best games have been bloodborne, sekiro and ac6. The souls games are fully founded on level design and that can only be manufactured uniquely so many times. Elden Ring is mostly a open world spectacle machine once you reach a certain power level. And most bosses seem almost incompatible to a trivial move set until you watch an ongbal video. But that should not be the case. The game and its mechanics design itself should inspire us to try to best the boss in different ways. That imo is the dlc’s greatest failure. Overcoming a boss never felt like an accomplishment. Always felt like either random wins because boss ai brain farting or cheese fests. Wholly unsatisfying.

25:03 DESTINY :3

Map is big but either empty empty or full of reused enemies. Many of them are from the main game. Finding path is the most frustrating thing in the game. Shadow keep is the best part of game. If you exclude the boss fights, this game is a disappointment.. It took them 2 years to develop this dlc. It's clear that they spent most of the time in creating a huge map.

I'm still shocked people applaud Elden Ring's open world when that's clearly the worst part of the game and DLC. They slapped an open world onto their finely crafted dungeon game just for marketing to the broadest audience. Their open world is a chore just like the Ubisoft ones that players compare it to.

it SOUNDS like you are trying to say fromsoft developers are lazy and the time u spent/wasted playing the game is somehow more valuable then the time they took making the game. your points are unrealiatic. whatever u want elden ring to be is a dream. the perfect game you speak of doesnt exist and NEVER HAS.

You don't HAVE to use torrent! Sometimes you have to use him (example spirit springs). Disabling him makes zero sense. Come on man.

I disagree. Saying the games became more conventional than the last is just pure wrong. Sekiro was literally anything BUT that, same with ac6.

Fromsoft fell off

Most of your opinions outside of Scadutree Fragments, and build optimization are extremely nit picky. Compling about torrent is pointless, show me another game the size of Elden Ring that doesnt have cars or mounts? Or Fast Traveling, bro this isnt Dark Souls 1 where you can complete the entier game in like 4 hours. A full playthough of Elden Ring doing every boss, and quest line is like 30-40 hours. Thats with previous playthough knowledge in mind. Re-using bosses has been a thing since DS1, the first 4 bosses of the game are reused. If anything its a way to cut corners while also keeping a since of consistency to your world. You shouldn't get mad when a intersection has a stop sign. Or how grocery store aisles have similar layouts. Things like that are done on purpose. Tbh it just sounds like you dont like Elden Ring because its open world, and gives the player freedom to do whatever. Thats a shame because the open world is the major thing that sets it apart from the rest of the franchise. Also if you think that Fast Traveling, Re-spec, and Torrent is the reason the game sold millions then you have no real understanding what people want. Fact is the souls formula is great. It doesn't need a complete redesign for every new title. There's plenty of things that separates this game from its predecessors Elden Ring is in a league of its own. There are so many single player games that come out with an item shop to nickel, and dime you every step of the way even though older games would have those things as challenges for you to complete, and earn. Or the game comes out, and you have to wait for month's for the game to be in complete or playable state. The game also dosent bend over backwards for casuals or Reddit users.

There's a weird buzzing whenever you speak... Good vid tho 👍

I really hope the next From Soft game is not open world. I'm so tired of open world in general

**finishes DLC, liking it magnitudes more than all other DLC's** Let's see what RU-vid thinks, "yikes"

Wrong opinion

I agree with the copy and paste boss opinion you have but have you ever played other fromsoft dlc this is the biggest one not just map size but most souls dlc only has 3 bosses and 10 weapons while this one has over 10 unique bosses and over 32 new weapons

How anyone can be disappointed in Shadow of the Erdtree just boggles my mind. It's a masterpiece.

I’m not a fan of the story either.

To your point, field bosses are like as if in Dark Souls III they gave that random optional wandering wyvern at Archdragon Peak a boss health bar even though you just killed the huge Ancient Wyvern boss (which was admitted a lazy setpiece of a boss itself but at least they tried to make an experience out of it). I didn't need a boss health bar to have me motivated enough to go out of my way to kill that wyvern, though I don't blame the majority of people who simply found its health pool to be overwhelming and ran past, as the disappointing reward of a collection of smithing stones made clear.

Bro missed the whole point of the game💀

Here's the thing. If you want to critique something, you should have some baseline/comparison. There is a lot wrong with this """"critique"""" which is really poorly wailed attempt to be click-baity and should not be taken seriously. Here are some moronic things in it. 1. Reusing bosses/enemies. Please provide ONE example of ANY game with this number of different enemies or bosses, including other From titles. I'll wait. If you think about it for ONE SECOND, you would realize that making games includes funding, deadlines and manhours. And while it is not ideal to reuse assets, it is necessary and From does it less egregious than ANY other studio. 2. Scadutree fragments. Again, turn your brain on for one moment. From Soft DLCs were and should always be harder than the main game. So, how are you going to do this AND retain player progression? I'll wait again. Because, if you think a little, you will realize that standard leveling has a drop off point, soft caps exist since DeS, so leveling past soft caps doesn't feel like progress. And "scouring" the open world for fragments is not genuine, because even if you take the critical path, you will find A LOT of them. If you still feel weak, you COULD go and find the rest. 3. Radahn complaint was nothing burger. It plays NOTHING like the base game one, it is not even the same model. It is nothing more than From listening to fanbase and prime Radahn talk and giving it to us. It is a boss that could function with any other model. 4. Torrent trivializing enemy encounters. Again, stupid assumption. Here is how I play EVERY single From game and have been doing it since Des release - clear the areas at least once. That way I learn the enemies and get some of their drops. And I did the same in ER. Torrent is there when I want to traverse something fast. That's it. So, the idea that Abyssal woods is great because it forces you to walk means absolutely nothing. I would do that anyway in the first place. And I know I'm not the only one that does this. Acting like you have to ride past everything is stupid. 5. Build thing. Again, acting like everyone is meta slave and HAVE to use builds found on the internet. I loathe meta builds and will never use them, for one. And guess what, if somebody needs to look up optimized build for whatever thing they are stuck at, I have zero problems with it. So, if you plan to bait the views with the stupid title, you should think about what should you do when you gather views/subs. You have to offer something of value. Which you didn't.

- Improved minor dungeons - Improved bosses - Improved open world design

Respect the developers' vision. Maybe? Possibly? No game is perfect.

Bro is about to end up on a bunch of reaction videos called "bad Shadow of the Erd tree hot takes."

I loved this dlc, but this was a wonderful critique, in fact the best ive seen so far. Thank you.

Great video. I agree with most points except your respec one. You’re stating people ONLY respec in order to use the most meta and broken gear but thats incorrect. A large reason people respect is simply to try out new fun things and experience the same game in a different way. Having access to new weapons and spells adds to the longevity and replayability of the game. I play PVP and love trying out everything the game has to offer. If respecing was no longer an option, I would have to wade through the mountains of useless filler content to obtain the gear I want for another character which is time consuming and sucks and highlights that issue of an open world

you are being unrealistically harsh on a dlc. this is why you only have 100 subscribers. just be realistic. it seems you are expecting a dlc to fix a game. no game is perfect. if you say the dlc is not fun then idk what to tell you. what is a fun game to you then????? it seems u hate open worlds in general. that or you just play too much games. how about you become a game developer THEN critisize the game. have u ever designed a dungeon? have you ever designed a boss?? have you ever designed a open world?? okay then. how do you know how much effort it takes. foolsih take in my OPINION.