Skooch: I think the review lost me when you said you used a controller while playing. There's a girl who beat this game with her mind so if you can't do that you're not REALLY playing Elden Ring.
nhq4162: shadow of the erdtree is the dark soul of elden ring
razbuten: greatsword
realkingofantarctica: What I really dislike is how any fair, valid criticism of Shadow of the Erdtree is immediately undermined because so many of the people spouting it either ignore the Scadutree Fragments or are mainly a bunch of terminally-online circle-jerkers who feel entitled to destroying everything with their uber-powerful base-game build without learning how to play the game.

The DLC has problems, a myriad of them, however the Day 1 response to it has been mind-numbing and is almost completely the fault of people rushing to their keyboards before rushing to find a solution. Hopefully in a month or so we'll be able to hold hands and discuss it fairly like civilised adults.
eiriksundby: Fromsoft players who tell you to Git Gud when they have to actually Git Gud
roramdin: i think the elden ring dlc is not too easy or too difficult, it's too medium. it exists in a purgatorial state of dharmic perdition, a sea of murky grey. disclosure that before i played the dlc i was thrust from the cycle of samsara into a nightmarish mezzanine between life and death, so that may influence my opinion.
JSKWilson: I think the funniest thing about this difficulty situation is that the exact same thing happened when the game first released, almost beat for beat.
New players were caught off guard by the difficulty, old players were caught off guard by new enemy attack patterns and mechanics, everyone either complained or said "get good."

Give it a month and everyone will be back to calling the game "Peak" again just like the first time.
MCGalaxy30: Difficulty is extremely subjective, and it's true that a lot of reaction to the Elden Ring DLC are mostly heat of the moment anger...

HOWEVER, this difficulty discourse is undermining the actual criticism that people do have against Shadow of the Erdtree. And some of these criticism are extremely valid, especially the ones about problems that From Software has LITERALLY already solved either in the same game or previous game, here are a few:

- A lot, and I mean A LOT, of the exploration is extremely hollow. The DLC is only accessible after beating Mogh, which means that for most people this will be after Consacrated Snowfield, and for that I reason I think it's criminal that a huge chunk of the things you will find are just smithing stones. In a similar way, I don't like how they split cookbook in pretty much singolar item-recipes in order to have more "purple" items all around the map. There are huge chunks of the map, namely the two finger valleys, most of jagged peak and the abyss valley, that have literally 2 to 3 things in them to find while being as big as the initial opening area of the DLC.

- Balance is wack. And I don't mean bosses, I mean items, spells and incantations. There are so, so, *SO MANY*
luketfer: I will point out the ONLY thing they nerfed on the AC6 boss was the missile tracking. Pre-nerf the missiles could literally do a 180 midair to hit you which was a bit much and IIRC was actually a bug. They didn't touch anything else IIRC. Its the same with Radahan in the base game. The didn't nerf him, they fixed his wonky hitboxes on his attacks he had on release, they did then nerf his health but within a month they had reverted that change.
Miaholmes4952: I'm going to be honest, I don't care how difficult the boss fight is. But these bosses are for the most part plainly unfun. The only boss I can say I genuinely enjoyed beating was Messmer.\n\nFighting the last boss for close to ten minutes just to get one shot doesn't feel particulalry exciting. Just annoying. They feel like Sekiro bosses without the parry mechanic that made them fun.
noimageavailable2934: I'm going to be honest, I don't care how difficult the boss fight is. But these bosses are for the most part plainly unfun. The only boss I can say I genuinely enjoyed beating was Messmer.

Fighting the last boss for close to ten minutes just to get one shot doesn't feel particulalry exciting. Just annoying.
smoothregular6918: know what i learned to do to combat the dlc difficulty? picked up all the skibidi fragments. and then proceeded to use the bloodfiend's arm for the majority of my time in the dlc, spamming charged heavy attacks and sometimes summoning myself(mimic) to double up on the bonk
rasengdori13: I’m so tired of people pretending that Elden Ring doesn’t have an entire shield system that has a block, counter, and parry mechanic that the game ACTIVELY encourages you to use. They ONLY use the dodge roll and it’s beyond ridiculous to think it’ll work perfectly 100% of the time unless you’re a god gamer.
RealSkelzore: The only thing that has me tilted is the tarnished bosses having infinite poise
ThymeSplitter: My favorite part of any souls games is having to adapt my playstyle if I'm getting wrecked by a boss!
Changing my build up is fun, but I still tend to play a build within my stats (because I think respec is a pain)
furyrageguy5728: I have to admit, every time a boss fight is a little bit more challenging I’m cursing every developer involved in the game alongside their families, yet after finally beating the boss I’m like “yeah, good job guys, that was cool”
Jikuri: "Brute force is no longer... " You underestimate my unga bunga brother. Now I have BLOOD UNGA BUNGA
morgana_vr7802: Review bombing a game’s dlc for being hard in an already difficult game is like that image of that swimmer pouring water in himself while being in a pool
oceandragoon3099: I dunno if I can agree with changing your build being the recommended strategy when stuck when it’s restricted to an item you only have so many of. I feel like Armored core 6 did that far better with changing your build being free and a direct option on the death screen
Milkythesquid: I think a big thing that gets lost in the sauce of people going through hell and highwater with this DLC is that of the 50 Scadutree fragments you need all 50 to max out your blessing. Sure you might not ever need to get a maxed blessing to beat the DLC but even in base Elden Ring there are more Golden Seeds around the map than you'll need to max out your flask, OR if they were so insistent on doing a Sekiro style "item to upgrade" system for the DLC then having major bosses give you a full blessing upgrade would have gone a long way to ease this rough patch people have.

People liked exploring in Elden Ring base because it was a fun thing to do and you were usually rewarded with new items and spells or weapons it was a choice they made and they felt good for making that choice, but in the DLC you're being FORCED to explore or be locked out of seeing the rest of the DLC which I think is something that is really getting to a lot of people.
matheusmterra: I would change one thing only, or either of two:
1) The cracked tear that gives you Deflects lasting until death/rest, like the Crimson Cracked Tear.
2) The Flask replenishment also refreshing your Physik.

Every single fight I engaged with was way more enjoyable with Deflecting.
supermariolover20: Thanks for the music list in the description!
zetsubanned4308: The camera continues to be Elden Ring's worst boss design and hey guess what you get to fight it throughout the entire DLC! Seriously I don't understand how a game can be such a masterpiece in so many ways, but utterly fumble something as basic and fundamental as the damn camera.

Otherwise, I just hate the amount of waiting you have to do. No longer are the days of satisfying pushing and pulling and dancing, trading blows. Now you just have to wait 30 seconds for an 8000 combo to end and hope that it doesn't immediately chain into the next 8000 hit combo.
Sarge23: This game is nowhere near a turn base. it's an RPG, and you roleplay as the Victim
leglaaah: i dont mind much for the damage scaling or the difficult moves, but they seriously shouldnt be overly tanky.
zalzus1118: I'm not a particular fan of -final boss-, I dislike that his attacks make my xbox lag a bit, and it irks me that I can barely tell what he is doing half the time due to white background bright attacks spoiler's hair.

But y'know such is life, can't love everything.
theives6817: I think the whole difficulty argument misses the point. The bosses are frustrating because it isn't clear where you need to improve, or when you should attack, at the start of the DLC I too was frustrated by this, but I kind of got used to it. As I see it the bosses in the DLC were designed according to a different philosophy than the base game bosses were. That's mostly just a suspicion than a known fact :^)
FuryOnIce: Video good. I gotta say, the spectacle in this dlc was top notch, the amount of times a boss attack made me speak out loud to myself in reaction was insane. Phase 2 final boss was like “woah-woah-woAH-WOAH SLOW DOWN”. The “too hard” discussion misses out the effort that was clearly lovingly put into this dlc and it is sad.
wurtknurte7283: As someone who hasn't played a Souls-like game for more than 30 minutes, I gotta say the idea of buying DLC for a difficult game, then being annoyed at its difficulty is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.
thefailus4550: i hate having to ignore every boss i find and collecting these tree fragments until they stop one-shotting me
Duardo_hey: Only 7 views but this is such a great video, you are truly underrated!
brinsk7151: I think the reason people would call the new bosses poorly designed is due to the fact that in past souls games, nearly every boss on some level felt like something you COULD beat on the first try, if you were good enough. The toughest fights were hard, but fair, and all their moves felt quite intuitive to dodge. The hardest fights in Elden Ring no longer feel like this. Nearly all the DLC bosses, and ESPECIALLY the final boss, all have moves that are so unintuitive to dodge that you actively have to either die to or get hit by them in order to eventually learn how to dodge them through trial and error. To me (I say me but the only bosses that have ever truly frustrated me are Malenia and the DLC Final Boss), and I suppose to others, this is not very fun. The game starts to feel less like a test of my abilities, and more like Geometry Dash, where I make a mistake and that's it, you get a do-over.

It is worth mentioning however, that this opinion is heavily build dependant, and additionally, heavily dependent on how you choose to approach Elden Ring. In past souls games, going at it all on your own felt like an entirely acceptable thing to do, whereas now, it feels like the game is balanced around Spirit Summons. This is not bad game design, however it is DIFFERENT to what the community is used to. The bosses are relentless now, but the spirit summons will create those openings for you that you got from older games in the series. It's just a different type of boss design.

I think the problem here is that for many, including myself, spirit summons trivialise fights a bit too much. The fights go from too hard, to suddenly, too easy, and the challenge you are looking for is now gone. One could argue that the challenge is perhaps in showing up to a fight well prepared rather than learning the fight itself, but I don't agree. Either way, if you wanted to do a solo playthrough like in the older games, i don't believe it to be as fun or to be as satisfying. Whilst playing the final boss of the DLC, I eventually changed my build to something that was a lot more effective in order to beat it solo. The build was borderline cheesy, but I had gotten to a point where I realised that if I had the time, I could beat it normally, but that I didn't want to invest the time into learning the fight because it just felt like a waste, which is a feeling no other souls game has given me. I have beat every boss in every souls game ( except DS2 which I haven't played) solo, and Elden Ring was the only one where I felt the experience of learning a fight to no longer be enjoyable.
travisbewley7084: I think my main issue with difficulty is that it doesn't play out evenly. Using my normal playstyle i would have never beaten the final boss, heck I barly got to phase 2 with near max scedu spirit summons and a ton of defence buffing.

Then I swapped to a greatshield build and then won my 3rd attempt and only loss the first two tries to insta death grabs.

The bosses used to be weak to patience but now it's a brude force memorization of your reflexes, especially with the camera doing what it does.

So only a few weapons and playstyles really make it past end game bosses.
anitaremenarova6662: To be fair, getting assblasted by the gank fight and then the final bullshit of a boss leads me to believe the reviews aren't entirely fabricated on lack of skill.
MrBubbabolly: My main complaint about Elden Ring in general is that it often feels like the boss fights were meant for a faster game like Bloodborne, or especially Sekiro. I always thought that I'd actually like fighting a lot of the bosses if I could deflect. And then the DLC comes out and drops the deflecting hardtear. I didn't really understand what the game meant, no way its anywhere near as good as Sekiro. I suffered through Rellana, stubbornly parrying her to death with a rickety shield and a 10 deadly poison bottle, which took me 5 hours. Then my friend showed me a video of the new tear. I beat almost every other remembrance boss in 1 try.
Idontevenknowman779: The Problem with Elden Ring’s DLC isn’t that the bosses are “HARD” persay. But they are hard to the point where LEARNING them isnt FUN. People had fun learning bosses in Dark Souls. People don’t have fun learning bosses in the DLC because they can’t because they are dying in 2-3 hits even WITH their scadutree blessings that people keep bringing up. Me personally I don’t mind i just put on god mode to learn and have my fun. But most players cant or dont lol
asiwir2084: You make some good and I mostly agree. All of the major bossfights are very flashy and intense but that's kinda the problem, isn't it? You bring up Malenia as an example of an intense and incredibly hard fight that is praised. But that's exactly it, just one fight like that.
If every boss has long attack strings, roll catches, anti-healing attacks with no breathing room bar the extremely brief phase transitions (that often end with an explosion anyways) then that can get tiring. Dancing Lion, Rellana, Messmer and final boss are exactly the same type of fight. In a vacuum all of the are well-made but because of how same-y they feel it exhausts the player that much faster.
CAlonghair: The one streamer who rage quit the game had beaten the original game using exploitative methods, so it makes sense that they wouldn't be able to hold up to a real challenge.
singed54: The issues the DLC has (Which are valid complaints) is that the bosses are fought in a unfun way, when i only get to have 2 hits in while the boss does their 50 hit combo for the 10th time, it becomes frustrating, its the reason why sekiro's combat is generally seen as the best souls combat ever made. I cleared the DLC and done all its side content as well, its a enjoyable experience and the bosses can be fun, but a lot of the time arent due to the lack of defensive options on the players side, the deflect mechanic i see as a required thing to be added to base game, as honestly as the bosses get more and more offensive options and mixups while the players is stuck with a total of 3 defensive mechanics (Dodge/Jump/Block) just feels unfun
knighttiger7236: One time when I staggered the hippo boss fight his head went through the wall and I couldn't crit him, and then he killed me. One of the funniest things that happened to me in Elden Ring 10/10,
LabRatz-Ivor: damn, what an insightful review, if only i could support this underated creator.
tbnwontpop8857: I don't think any of the phase 2 attacks for the final boss should be nerfed because you can safely avoid or dodge all of them if you learn how to, just like with every attack in the game, save for one singular attack within this same fight. My problem is with the attack that he can use in both phases where he can double slash into cross slash (the 3 hit combo) which comes out instantly and you can't roll it without getting roll-caught by the 2nd hit, no matter what you try. Sometimes the terrain will make you lucky but it's far from consistent.

Today I learned that there is
vege4920: The problem is not that it's hard, the problem is the way that it is hard.

Since the mechanics are limited, the only way they can make the bosses harder are with long combos and awkward attack timings. Then every hard boss is the same as Morgott. You fight them all in the same way, dodge 1-5 times, attack 1-2 times, then repeat.

Spirit Summons are a bad mechanic to make the game easier. You just get an NPC to play the game for you.

If you have to change your build for a boss, then the game is not balanced well for different builds.

In DS1, Bloodborne and Sekiro you learn the game. That is what makes the difficulty arc so rewarding. You learn some skill from one boss, that you can use for another etc.

But in Elden Ring, since you played DS3 you are already good at the game. Now you just learn a boss, defeat that boss and unlearn it. Then learn the next boss, the long combos the awkwardly timed moves, and unlearn the moves.

Shadow of the Edtree and Elden Ring in general is just hard for hardness sake, and you defeat a boss to defeat the boss. It does not add to some feeling of triumph of learning the game, you already know the game. So it's just boring. Every boss is hard in the same way, long combos and delayed attacks. It's boring, you just dodge a bunch of times and then get an attack or two in and repeat.

The limited mechanics were getting a bit stale at DS3. Since there are so many weapon options and spells and whatnot. They cannot add anything to make the gameplay interesting, they just give the bosses more long combos and awkward timings. They need to add something to the combat next time so it is a bit more interesting than just dodging a bunch of times and hitting a few times.
rarecandy1886: I think that ubisoft fetch quest for being able to do damage and receive defence is the bad part.
carterdahl9654: It doesn't matter what negatives you lay against a souls game. The community will say either Get Gud or Skill Issue regardless of whether your criticism is valid or not

Jul 03 2024

Buy Elden Ring Runes