Steam Users Are Not Happy With Elden Ring's DLC 

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“You may remember Matt” Are you kidding he was half the channel for a long time! Good to see him again , always liked his voice cadence.

Nice to see Matt again - I think you guys made a great pair for commentary on news and reviews!

I had no performance issues. Everything was running smoothly for me. I don't think it was too hard, I do think the new fragment system is not good, I would prefer just "Hey go here at this level and continue leveling up, if you go in above this, you're going to be ruining your experience probably." It just felt a little too much for me, and I ended up pulling up a map and using that to find all the fragments from Fextralife anyway. The DLC is hard, and the final boss will rock your shit no doubt about it. I beat the whole thing after 26ish hours. But it was a really good time. I think some builds are better than others, like the twin blades of Rellana need a buff or something cause 90% of the enemies are resistant to fire. Still 9.8/10 dlc for me.

Who cares about "Best Rated Expansion"? 8 years ago reviews had meaning, for the last few years reviews were for journalists to kiss publisher's asses to get free advance review codes for future games. Review scores do not mean a thing today. Never preorder!! That is a dated thing from over 10 years ago when physical media existed and you had to preorder to reserve a physical copy. Preordering today is silly, you give money to someone selling you a promise and since you gave them the money over 2 weeks ago Steam does not refund you when they change the deal.

Small error in the video guys. The 34% achievement you cited is the wrong Mohg. That's sewer Mohg. Mohg Lord of Blood is the correct boss (achievment being Shardbarer Mohg), which I think pre-DLC was in the 60s.

More than half of the Steam reviews on SoTE are Chinese players complaining about the blue bear AC.

Having to have a disclaimer that Matt exists makes me so sad. I WANT MORE MATT VIDEOS!

The negative steam ratings were already explained to come from China all referencing "Blue bear" - which is the anticheat used by elden ring

Miss Matt's regular apperances....

This DLC has been so strange for me. I'm near the bottom of the pack in my friend group when it comes to skill. I still haven't beat Malenia. But I love exploration, and I love build crafting, and I enjoy the pvp enough in Elden Ring that I didn't want to overlevel the "meta" 150 pvp bracket. So I am stuck not quite completing the base game on playthrough one because I am not good enough. I have been absolutely sashing my way past every boss and roadblock in this DLC that keep stumping my friends because I explore and I play all sorts of varied builds and can quickly swap to another damage type or weapon set-up to take advantage of whatever I can. The only people in my friend group struggling with the DLC are the ones who are supposed to be the better players. They rush to a new boss quickly and miss the scadutree fragments. They go in with moonveil against a mobile boss that clearly has high magic resist and struggle for hours. They take the blasphemous blade time and time against a fire resistant boss. They aren't using the upgraded talismans, just the best base game ones. When they do try a new weapon they suddenly have to go back to base game to get basic talismans that they've skipped on all 3 of their post malenia characters. If anything I think this DLC is easier for the new FromSoft players like myself, who walk into a boss arena, get clapped immediately, and then stop to think "Well damn that ain't happening for a bit. I wonder what else I can do first" instead of figuring a boss that beats me is too strong because my gameplay is the only true benchmark.

"From Software perverts" lol

My problem is the bosses relentless aggression, there is near zero down time. Other hard bosses and enemies would take a moment here and there like they were catching their breath. It's like fighting hackers who've given themselves infinite stamina. Even when I do win, I feel like it was blind luck more than skill, so I don't even get any joy from 'overcoming these hurdles'. I can't help but feel like this a sort of an arms race between FromSoft the 'GITGUD!!!' crowd; top players having spent all their time since release finding ways to break the game inside out, so the DLC gets overtuned in response and all the other players get swept up in it.

we need more matt!!!!

Playing on PC I haven't had any performance issues to speak of. I'm not a godly souls player so I use everything at my disposal to help me win fights like ashes/craftables. I'm having a blast.

From a huuuuge fan that has hated 99% of discourse surrounding this game, this is an amazing analysis of the DLC! good work yet again, very informative video

What's with all the complaint? Elden Ring was my first souls-like and as someone who doesn't want to "get good" I'm enjoying the DLC. And I'm speaking as someone who died to the Black Gaol Knight at least 20 times.

7:08 it is not just a PC port needing more time in the oven, the base game still runs at 45-50fps on PS5 and XBOX SX, the only way to play at a locked 60fps PS5 is by running the PS4 version which looks horrible compared to the rest. Now that FromSoft has the money to publish their own games, I think it is time they invest some of that money on their TECH, Demon's Souls came out on 2009 and it was plagued with the same issues.

Person who beat DLC day 1 here. Yes the experience gets better after collecting the blessing system but my issue personally with it was is that everything is turbo tanky unless you are doing a min maxed build with bunch of buffs or using status effects like bleed and bosses hit like a truck. They are completely fine and some are even super fun once you learn them but their hp pool combined with the damage they do means you often get 2 tapped even with a tanky build especially early in DLC and the amount of loading screens very artificially extend the learning time of the boss. Last boss took me exactly 31 attempts but I spent 4. 4 hours for 31 pulls. Thats a freaking lot just because of how long one attempt takes when you are getting better and how long it takes to start getting to those 'longer attempts' because of the loading screen shenanigans, Overall 8/10 DLC, should've been 30$ not 40$ but has some issue that could have been done better by just providing more clarity and maaaaybe not infalte numbers that much. Performance issues are inexcusable tho. From is more than capable of optimizing their products, some boss moves have so much particles fps drops from stables 60 to FUCKING 17. 17 CARL. Thats inexcusable and undefendable. I mean it with a 100% with a 1000%

My only issue with this DLC or Elden Ring in general is when a boss or enemy pushes you against walls, or other areas the camera gets behind you, and you can't see your character anymore which could lead to death.

As someone who willingly played the base game as therapy to regain my motor skills on my left hand. I think people just really need to learn to have patience. Even with a physical disability back then (and even a minor probably permanent one now). I killed all the bosses except Malenia without co-op. Was it hard? Of course it bloody was. But getting angry never solves anything. I could have just as easily blamed the world after my accident. Instead I chose to get as much of my bodily functions back as I could. Elden Ring is the same thing. You RAGEEEEEE or you get good. Rant aside, I love this dlc. Its every bit I hoped it would be

The main game bosses felt like they had a certain 'respect' for the player. the DLC feels more like playing dance dance revolution and mortal combat simultaneously. Bosses definitely feel tuned as if your expected to use summons whereas the maingame felt tuned without summons and then summons allowed you to bypass the challenge. But im going into these fights getting so smacked up by how aggressive the boss is i'm not even thinking how can i find time to do dmg im thinking when do i have an opening to eat, and then using summons to get through it just isnt satisfying, lots of poor game design choices imo.

I've seen some valid criticisms but none were worth a negative review. The dlc even performs better than the base game did for me. IT has gravy for so many fans, even DS2 fans! I'm loving it.

I’ve done everything except the final boss and I genuinely think I’ve hit my skill ceiling because right now, I can’t see how I’m ever going to do it. That said, the DLC is genuinely phenomenal and I’ve loved every minute of it.

Disable Chinese reviews on steam and the reviews are mostly positive

i loved this DLC two bosses drove me crazy but overall glad i got to play it

Honestly after beating ER and seeing my 200+ hour timer, thinking back and trying to remember if I had any fun. In the end i could remember any after linegrave. Sooo yea i think I will skip this one. Maybe if more and more mods come out and need it might get it on a discounted. Honestly I heard From soft were hard but fair but honestly i didnt see it.

Very informative, empathetic analysis

The problem with the DLC is the weird damage scaling and Scadutree fragments. Its gets bad with New Game plus replay. The damage scaling is done by flat percentages which gets insane with the huge damage increases of each New Game plus replay. Thats why people are getting annoyed.

When it doesnt matter what your lv is, you still get squashed just as easily, its makes the level pointless and worthless in the Dlc, so those people who are aggreived for that reason, i don't blame them.

I hope the don't nerf it because a bunch of spoiled entitled gamers who can't stand a challenge. Don't ruin for us that love that stuff. Kids are just so used to being able to stampede through things and the first time they actually have to put in the work they kick and scream till the devs nerfs bosses or buff the character some way.

I'd say the problem with the scaling wouldn't be so bad if the ways to find the blessings weren't so boring. Make the Tarnished mausoleum souls drop Greater Blessings instead of clothes. Such blessings shouldn't be on pottery carried by random npcs

this dlc sucks the rpg out of it , i played two characters a mage and a heavy tank both get two shotet by bosses , this makes just no sense . also there are stutters especialy in situations like boss charges where it is hard enough to dodge. this whole scaling is the real problem , i beat all souls games and dlcs and this one is by far the hardest, wich is problematik than the eldenring base game was fairly easy compared to the others.

Great to see some of Matt again

I still don’t understand why the blessing upgrades needs to be reminded to players, it seems so obvious as a brand new option to upgrade something in the site of grace…never hurt to try to upgrade it when struggling

You showed Mohg the Omen achievement but its Shardbearer Mohg achievement that you need for the DLC which is slightly higher

Matt!. I dont know why he stopped being in the reports, the back and forth felt more natural then just one person speaking on his own kinda. ^^

I think Matt spoke on the topic perfectly. Yes, the DLC is hard and challenges the traditional way to approach boss fights and dodge mechanics, but it is doable. Is it fun having to farm before some bosses? Ehhh mileage may vary.

There is a difference between a game being difficult and a game being frustrating, Elden Ring is very frustrating a lot of the time, much more so than it is difficult. Dark Souls 1 was a near perfect game in my opinion, and it was because it was difficult, and the only real frustrating part of the game, Miyazaki had the good sense of apologizing for (bed of chaos fight). In Elden Ring, the game is honestly easier than the earlier games, but what it does wrong is that it is so top loaded with the most annoying and frustrating game design elements from the previous games, that I'd honestly rank it as the second worst game in the series, just above Dark Souls 2 which is garbage through and through compared to the rest of the games. Just look at the base design of Elden Ring: In Dark Souls 2, the most frustrating element of the design was how enemies kept auto-tracking the player all the way through their attack animations, making avoiding damage inconsistent and frustrating, in Elden Ring, this is applied to the vast majority of the enemies in the game. In Dark Souls 3, one of the most annoying features of the combat was the horrible stuttercombat enemies did where they held attack animations for random periods of time just to make avoiding damage inconsistent and frustrating, and the flow of the combat honestly suffered because of it, and in Elden Ring this ALSO applies to nearly every enemy in the game. Elden Ring is a good game, but I can't call it a great game, because the game honestly doesn't live up to what the series used to be about. And yes, I love difficult games, but I can honestly only stand to play Elden Ring for like an hour at a time tops, not because of the difficulty, but because every time I play, I am reminded that FromSoft has forgotten their very core design philosophy.

Incredibly well summed up, super impressed at how well you understood the details and were able to eloquently explain why it might upset people

Nice to see Matt again. I beat the DLC a few days ago and it was definitely a big leap in difficulty. I feel shame for having to use a shield on the final fight.

Hey Matt! Been too long!

I enjoyed the early to early mid portions of Elden Ring. I somehow made it to the end (don't ask me how, I don't know), but I don't find the design Miyazaki champions and uses to be the least bit satisfying. There's a line where it stops being a fist pumping great feeling to just a sigh of "finally" and a sense of relief, feeling like you're a beaten down employee after dealing with too many demanding Karens. Honestly, I started watching someone else do a playthrough and realized VERY quickly that this DLC would be so far over my head it'd feel like I was drowning, so I've avoided it thus far.

Ah iv missed Matt and there being some back and forth discussion on the show. 😊

there are some legit complaints about PC performance. i actually had to re-do all my settings after the patch and I don't even have the DLC yet. kind of sucked to have to figure out how to stop the freezing and stuttering all over again after 2 years. :(

I don't mind exploring areas in Elden Ring but, when all I'm looking for is scadutree blessings so that bosses don't one-hit me and random mobs don't two-hit me, it sucks. I don't know why they tuned it to be like this but, you have to have a +20 blessing for it to feel fair. you're not overpowered, you're not tanking hits, it just allows you to take 3-4 hits from bosses. Bosses that have unlimited stamina and constantly spam attacks. waiting 5 minutes to be able to hit an enemy one time, sucks.

Yo Matt is back

I really don’t understand it😂 took a Friday off had a Monday off within the span of four days doing other daily activities I got to radahn and explore enough to get level 16 for the tree I’m painfully average at souls games and even then it shouldn’t be that devastating to play and cry over. Little paying attention and tweaking your builds for each boss over how many deaths and some point you’ll beat the boss unless you have no thumbs imo. Just in case I’m on NG6

I hate the scadutree fragment system. It is the single only thing that is really just putting me off finishing the DLC. I just... cant be bothered to collect all of them.

Missed watching Matt in videos since i fell off the Warcraft show, he's great

My problem is that half the boss are just tedious, large health long combos short punish windows. It sucks the fun out of the rest of the world. Boss are now more of a roadblock then the main attraction

Damn I felt like Matt was fired 💀

I enjoy when Matt is on here!

Matt nailed my complaints with Shadow of the Erdtree. I understand what I have to do, but it is so unnatural to scavenge for these stupid seeds before some builds have a lick of a chance in the ring with these over-tuned bosses. I don't want to use summons or mimic tear and I've never needed to in these games. The Scadu Tree fragments were a terrible idea.

Eh. I'm into it.

I think a lot of reviewers were honestly hesitant to speak on the difficulty, since doing so usually ends up getting you flamed and trashed online. And I think the sort of culture that’s revolved around the game’s difficulty, while not a bad thing at all, has kinda given FromSoft some bad feedback on *what* we want as far as a more challenging game. They’ve done a lot right in the past, but I think some of the bosses are comical in how the fights revolve around wading through very long links of combos for a small window of damage. Can you do it? Totally. Is it fun? I dunno this time around. I beat the DLC, but it didn’t feel as satisfying to me as a casual souls player who wants to try cool stuff and won’t ever get to the no-hit / wild challenges aspect of mastery.

Nice to see Matt again.

Hard agree that this DLC is a treat for lore fans. I've been feeling like a kid in a candy shop all week!

the performance is why my review is negative... no DLSS, no fps unlock, no ultrawide support - i have to play offline and mod these in my PC is a 4080 with 5800X3D and FPS will still drop

I've played Fromsoft games since 2004 starting with Armored Core 3 and this elden ring DLC probably the first time I've felt stat-checked rather than skill-checked. The scadutree blessing is just too much bloat stat for Fromsoft game design. I like Fromsoft experimental nature so I don't really mind giving negative feedback to fromsoft as their major title Armored Core always average score until AC6 came out therefore I believe Fromsoft will learn when things maybe "too much". Also major performance issue especially with that flashbang last boss moveset.

Being one of the "older" gamers (51), and having played difficult games my whole life, I'm kinda worn out on too challenging games. Don't get me wrong, I have completed all the From Software games (except Sekiro, which I haven't played) and have found the difficulty to be within reason. But somehow I got bored with Elden Ring after only 150 hrs. I think it's because 1: I like my From Software games to be more "linear" and not open world and 2: there are simply too many games to choose from these days, so I don't wanna spend my time banging my head against a wall that not only fights back, but also does unlearnable combos. And then laughs at my smoldering corpse, while p*ssing on the remains.

The reports of the Performance issues are weird. I play it on the Steam Deck and on a Mini-PC (AMD, onboard graphics) and have absolutely no problems. On the PC at 1440p and maximum settings, 40-60fps. This thing doesn't even have a dedicated GPU...

Cynic take: The seeds are also a game extending mechanic. If the game is hard it takes more time to beat meaning the game stays longer in the minds of gamers. BUT, like you said, Elden Ring expanded the player base beyond the DS/BB devotees and this harder version of the game in DLC form WILL run those people off. I am loving the return of turning a corner and seeing an enemy waiting for a fight and knowing IT IS going to be a fight. Band-wagon-tourist? They just want the dopahit-candycrush that can retweet and yell "LETS GO!" .

Haven't completed it yet. I've beaten almost every boss you can access before Messmer including the Abyss one, the one where you get his leg armor in the area after him, the dark Undertale boss that drops the broken *thing* , the pink one, and the thing at the bottom of *The Hole*™so I would avoid breaking quests. I've yet to have any BS issues with any of the bosses excluding the lion. He likes to drop me below 30 frames/stuttering sporadically and the camera in that one is just obnoxiously bad. Other than the lion, I've enjoyed the bosses. They're proper endgame bosses with pretty good movesets and aggressive as Hell. What I'm not a fan of is that I have yet to find a faith weapon in the DLC that has a scaling above B (please correct me in replies if they exist). Or that many of the weapons with a high faith requirement (I'm looking at YOU 20FTH Sword of Light/Darkness) that only have a D scaling because reasons. My main concerns with the Scad blessings is subsequent playthroughs: I currently have 6 more characters that I am going to run through this DLC that I am not looking forward to spending a few hours on each of them just running around to pick up blessings in areas that have no real loot they need. It's not so bad on the first playthrough since there's an intrinsic fun to discovering/exploring the unknown (and scouting out where stuff is for other characters), but that is lost on subsequent playthroughs. Also it's not like the seeds in the basegame where there's more than enough to get max charges of flasks without having to pick all of them up in a single playthrough so you can miss a fair few instead of scouring every inch of the map. You do have to do it for the sacred tears, but the churches are (mostly) in/around a path you have to take to progress normally.

Honestly, I don't understand why people are having issues with the boss design. Compared to the base game, I think SotE is a huge upgrade. I managed to fully learn and master Rellana's moveset, and I'm getting close with Messmer. I cannot say I have done that with any of the base game bosses, because of various crap that some of them pull. I find Malenia, for example, to be atrocious because of waterfowl and the healing on landing a hit. However, this game managed to learn that Malenia wasn't fun because she has a "fuck you, you're dead" attack that is nearly impossible to dodge. No DLC boss so far has had an attack like that. I've been able to read and learn the movesets for the major bosses, and I've loved every single one so far. So I'm genuinely confused why so many people are complaining about difficulty unless they're coming in below level 120 (and/or with less than 50 vigor.)

Some of these reviews I see I agree with where adding the dlc messed with some of the coding and make some performance issues. Especially starting up the game. Takes about 10 minutes on a Samsung stick SSD 7700 (speed can't remember how its measured) when it used to boot immediately. Most are apparently complaining about anticheat (which you can still cheat, you just can't play online or you get banned). Easy Anticheat is lazy af for a major company like this, but it's better than nothing when playing online.

I imagine if someone haven't played a minute of souls games comes in would be frustrated about the difficulty. I started the DLC with a level 140 character on NG+ and having so much fun. I fought 3 main bosses so far and none of them took more than 10 tries. The game gives you so much stuff that can make any boss relatively easy. If You're not trained enough just use those. Shadow of the Erdtree is everything I hoped it would be.

Just completed my first run of the DLC on NG+ and I’ve gotta say, it was a mixed bag. For me personally, I felt as if I saw both the high and low-water marks for FromSoftware in one expansion.

I've heard nothing but praise for the DLC and I'm having a blast so far That being said: I like Dark Souls' leveling system. I love putting points into stats and feeling my character getting stronger compared to the world arround it in different ways depending on how I allocate my points. I don't like Sekiro's leveling system of "grab this item and now you deal and take more damage" very much. I feel like it takes the RPG out of the formula. They put the anti-RPG system from Sekiro in my RPG DLC. Even though I don't think it hurts the experience that much, I'd prefer they don't do that next time. Sekiro is Sekiro, Soulsborne games are Soulsborne games. Let's keep it like that

also a 'fromsoft pervert' here. i already was really disappointed in elden ring, this DLC just makes me wary for all future fromsoft titles.... ive been playing these games since demon souls and this is just awful. far worse than dark souls 2 and lacking almost ALL the things i love in a 'souls' game..... the commercial and popular success just makes me more crestfallen for the future of the series/genre. this game is honestly LAZY in many ways on a basic art and technical level... almost like an MMO.

I honestly think it's their traditional lack of explaining things (or doing it badly) that got does bad reviews in terms of difficulty. It's muuuuuuuuuuuch more about defensive stats than offensive ones, once I understood and changed my character to that, it became "normal" in terms of difficulty. Also The Scadurtree system was added poorly in my opinion. Finding the replacement to leveling, randomly just isn't as intertwined with the other systems like "leveling" was in the base game.

If you can read Chinese, you would understand these claims that Chinese only left negative reviews for the blue bear anticheat is just ridiculous. All the 'helpful' reviews are about how the numbers are not right, and the hyper agreesive bosses making defeating them without 'wheelchairs' not rewarding. Yes, Chinese players like to call the metas such as summons 'wheelchairs' as if they are tools for disabled people. And it's not Chinese, if you check, the Korean and Japanese reviews are also very very bad. East Asian players are very segregated. We have the largest mobile player base, but our PC and console gamers are very hardcore. They tend to be extremely orthodox and consider any kind of cheese illegal.

I feel like they should've also given you something extra for the scaduthingies, as like you said they're kinda underwhelming. My main idea would be four extra talisman slots, one at the first blessing and one more every 5th (like 1, 5, 10, 15) so you feel a bigger powerboost and have some extra motivation to collect them outside of some numbers going up, also rewarding you with being able to use the new big boy defensive talismans without giving up all the other ones. Needless to say, these would be PVE only, would be in like an extra golden tab you can switch when you hover over the talisman slots and the ones in there go away when you invade/are summoned.

I tried Dank Souls way back in the day. Wasn’t for me. I’ve seen a few different streamers play different games in the series in a couple of similar ways over the years. I thought the point was to have your cheeks clapped until you finally “get gud” or overcome the obstacle. Seems like what has been accomplished with this DLC, but I’m just a pleb.

I just think it was a bad idea to force people to engage with the awful exploration. If you don't travel through countless empty fields and samey ruins to get specific Scadu items, you're going to be so severely underpowered it's just unfair. Bosses can 2 hit you while you deal a fraction of the damage you normally would. I'm glad I had the foresight to not but the premium edition because I put down ER after beating it in about 100 hours. I believe it's the souls game I've put the least amount of time into because it just does not hold up over time.

"It's not just because it's a hard game." Breh, putting PC players aside because theres millions of configurations, and granted their new hardware are always unoptomized regardless of the game, the majority of people play on consoles don't have these issues and they can agree that the game is ass with the difficulty in mind. Now that the patch is out CopeSoftware fanboys are in shambles.

From what I've played it still suffers from the "open world" problem, I personally can't rank elden ring higher than prior souls games when it comes to level design. If we ever get another souls like I really hope it's not open world ^^" Dark souls 1 had probably one of my favorite level designs. With Elden ring a lot of areas could use more attention but because it's open world usually extra attention it lost for more locations.

I just wish it wasn't yet another checklist map. I had plat'd so I needed to do a new char for the DLC or go into it in NG+3 and it just running to get just what you need and the DLC felt like more of that with the blessings which really bummed me out. I managed without much issue thru the DLC, but am currently slamming head against final boss over and over because the thought of farming the last 4 levels of the tree sound truly boring and awful.

Yeah, this is what I hate about Elden Ring. The delayed attacks. So friggin unnatural and messes with my reflexes. Combine it with less back and forth since you really have to wait until the boss allows you to attack. So yeah, Elden Ring is no fun for me. I'll stick to the other FromSoftware titles xD

I know exactly what the issue is. Its what i always praised Elden Ring for as one of the greatest games of all time. It was their way of making the difficulty adjustable to each player. Some people were ok with entering the world and fighting tree sentinel for 3 hours until they won. Some people died twice and had enough, so they went off elsewhere to level up and could come back at a time when they were ready. And leveling up early game scaled really well with that. This DLC isnt like that AT ALL, and its more along the lines of a standard souls game which i never cared for. Youre stuck at a wall until you overcome it because the soft caps in leveling are so punishing and the runes required for late game leveling are so punishing.

I think shadows of the erdtree is easier the only time I had a trouble was at the very start when i fought the guy that gives you bear claws. The rest of the bosses and enemies were cake just use ashes or mimic hell if need be use a golden summons to and boom the boss dies for you almost even without much fragments or anything. Idk maybe im just to over levelled but it is by no means to hard for me I have beatin most of the dlc in like 17 hours. Btw Sekiero was WAYYYY HARDER!

The discussion about difficulty actually *isn't real* this time. The bulk of the negative reviews are Chinese reviews complaining about the anti-cheat. An English-speaking user will look at the 'mixed' rating, and then determine by user reviews that there is a massive backlash against the difficulty - but that is because we are not seeing the bulk of the negative reviews, and most of us couldn't understand them even if we could see them. I'm not saying that game's difficulty is faultless by any means. I think it would have been far better to just raise the level cap instead of having your power scale up by finding trees. This sounds like less fun than traditional levelling - but the fact remains that this is not what the bulk of negative reviews are about.

I think the bosses are overtuned. People are forgetting that base Elden Ring and AC6 had a much higher skill curve the first month or two before the bosses got some nerfs. Overturning the bosses is an occupational hazard as Fromsoft's design and QA team is probably very good at the game.

Souls has been an easily exploitable and not very difficult game since… forever. It was hard when Demon’s Souls released, before we knew what to expect, and DS rocked. But admit it, most this audience was still a child and they’ve never played a game without help.

All DLC for souls likes are end game and extra hard, with best encounters and best zones. They tried to stop the one shot builds for a bit with the shadow tree blessings. All i see in this situation are people who never saw any end game (because base game maybe up to fire giant or there about is turbo easy compared to the rest series) trying to actually play the end game. Is it good? I don't know, they definitely got a lot of sales of of low skill players which is great all types of players got to experience what they wanted. Although in my pinion if they released the DLC for low skill players PR back lash would have been way worse, a lot of the current one is easy anticheat not working great in Asia..

Miss ya matt

As a player that liked Elden Ring but who is not very good at it, I am just fine with Fromsoftt doing things the way they did. I did not buy the expansion because Fromsoft has a reputation for hard DLCs, so I think this should have been a surprise to no one familiar with them. While I would love to be able to experience the new content, I respect their right to keep the game exactly as they want it to be.

Definitely feels experimental, but each game they put out is always trying new things to see what will improve their game. I'm personally having a blast, but I do understand that difficulty is hard to scale because it is such a subjective measurement. The scooby fragments are okay. I agree with Matt that it does feel like game dev magic of handing over buffs. I understand why they implemented it since the leveling can be all over the place even just in ng, but I hope they can find another way to equal the playing field in future games.

Scrubs coming across actual challenge that their self-limited playstyle can't accomodate and having meltdowns to protect their fragile egos. Nothing new, but especially amusing in this context given the same scrubs act like elitists when it comes to crapping down on how other people play the game. Now they can't cope with being humbled themselves, very funny.

I love the DLC so far, only complaint would be that the bosses have attack chains that never seem to stop. That sucks. But the difficulty overall feels nice. I feel that now it matters way more what build you have and if your build is flexible with damage types, weapons, etc.

I guess Sony was right back in 2009 when they refused to publish Demon Souls on PS3 in the west because westerners complain about high difficulty. They just let Atlus handle it.

Honestly for me the biggest issue of the whole game is the bloat, they made such a big world to a point where the enemies would get old even for new souls players, for a person that played alot of Souls games the fact that most enemies have animations, AI ect. from their previous games and the fact most enemies and even bosses tend to repeat it just feels not worth it. I hoped dor the DLC to right this with it's smaller scale, but even from the trailers, reviews and boss lists I can see so much that is straight up recycled again and alot of bosses that just take a vibe and attack paterns from base game bosses that this DLC shrinks in value tremendously for me. Honestly since DS3 souls games feel uninspired, it's still the same old, they should try to use a completely different setting or do another bloodborne. Anything but another dark medieval fantasy.

Honestly I haven't cared about steam reviews since overwatch. I still play overwatch every day and thats a great game, even in its current format. Gamers are just the worst and I cannot care about their whining about literally everything. I would hate to be a game developer in the current meta, for real. Legitimate complaints for this are performance and the blue bear thing - but other than that I think the game being difficult is its charm. The camera is super annoying though.

It pleases me that the Elden Ring DLC is being downvoted. It’s almost like people should be free to play a game at whatever difficulty setting they want given it’s entertainment they buy. From Soft deserved the down votes for being so obtuse in refusing to do the one basic thing almost every game does - have a difficulty setting selection option.

To be honest, Elden Ring is my first Souls game and I think the DLC is very good. All this whining about the game being too difficult comes from people who looked at some guide immediately after installing it instead of just playing the game naturally.

Thank you. Thank you for pointing out that the blessing system feels terrible. The bosses are hypre aggressive and have tiny windows to punish them To the point of some of them being overtuned. However on the bosses that At least in my opinion they didn't mess up they nailed it. Honestly loved both Mesemer and the Rhella knight fights. and the Dragon boss fight is one of if not the coolest one they have done. And all the new weapons are fun and quirky in neat ways. Its not a 10/10 game for me but its still a solid 8 or higher.

Is everyone afraid to summon or what? Sheesh. Play the game with all the tools the game gives you. If it's too hard because you refuse to use the game mechanics (including exploring and getting fragments), that's on you.

Yeah, this is exactly what it is. The dlc was created for a different audience than the base game of the Elden Ring which got so popular since it gave you so many tools to customize your difficulty setting to make it feel right for you but the dlc just made it part bustlingly difficult no matter what you did. The fragment scaling change helped immensely though it at least gives you a chance to grab your footing and play the game.

bruh, whats with the game journalism lately on this channel the vast amount of negative reviews ARENT from "game is too difficult" they are from chinese people complaining about the anticheat i thought this channel was about doing its research

my biggest disappointment with the DLC is because of how bosses are designed, so many weapons are pretty eliminated from the game. Yea you could use whatever weapon you want, but that is just shooting yourself in the foot. Bosses simply are too fast, too aggressive, too dodgy to make your as an example, greathammer feel good to use.