A sad rain poured over me as I first set foot in the Shadowlands, the setting of Elden Ring'small Shadow of the Erdtree extension, an ominous moment that heralded an equally uninspiring start time. Linear exploration with clear signage, plenty of ambush encounters and a lack of secrets in a barren landscape was not the kind of welcome I was expecting. The grudge soon faded into memory as developer FromSoftware's intent finally came into focus, but it took a few dungeons, a giant dog, and a ragtag group of misfits before I finally saw it.
Shadow of the Erdtree it plays like something FromSoftware has ripped out of its heart Elden Ring appropriate, with rough edges that are hastily turned to make it a standalone experience. It's a stew of clunky systems and clunky boss fights mixed with some of the studio's best design, most satisfying combat, and strongest storytelling. Messy and patchy as it is occasionally, especially in the early hours of the morning, Shadow of the Erdtree it's a brilliant and meaningful extension.
War is a memory Elden Ring. You pick your way through a tattered land and the mad warriors who have torn it apart for their own gain, on your way to establish yourself as the ruler of what's left of this land until you're done with it, and there's little personal connection with anything you see along the way. The core game is a loose collection of tales and themed areas that you stumble across without much emotional commitment, but Shadow of the Erdtree it is immediately different.
You enter the Shadowland with a tarnished reputation. People like you in The Lands Between were novices aiming for a chance at glory, and most people just hoped that someone, anyone, could restore order to the realm. In Shadow of the Erdtree, you are a threat, a supposed ally of the brutal oppressor Messmer and another invader intent on plundering the land. It's a notable contrast to the base game's setting, and gives FromSoftware room to experiment with a new and better kind of storytelling.
A small group of pilgrims from all corners of The Lands Between who left their lives behind to follow Mikaela – Elden Ringthe missing demigod — they're the only ones who trust you, sometimes grudgingly. They appear at different points in your journey as their stories intertwine with yours and the country's history, and you can even call upon these allies in some of the expansion's tougher boss battles — a feature that's underutilized from the base game. Shadow of the Erdtree creates a sense of connection with these characters that is largely absent from FromSoftware's other games, and uses your outsider perspective to shed new light not only on what happened in the Shadowland, but also on what really happens in Elden Ring wider.
The result is a more personal narrative that forges stronger bonds between you, its characters, and the setting, and it helps that the story itself has more substance. One of my biggest complaints with Elden Ring it's how opposed to himself he often seemed. FromSoftware had a more complex story to tell, but spread across an open world, descriptions of objects that couldn't be overlooked, and other information that was overlooked, it was easy to end up with an incomplete idea of what was going on. Shadow of the Erdtree complements several of Elden RingNarrative gaps and encourages you to think about events from a different angle, and ultimately lives up to the game's themes of war, loyalty, and broken families.
Shadow of the Erdtree it may write its larger points more clearly, but there's still a lot to piece together on your own. Even the architecture and design of the dungeon plays a part in this. Nothing says brutal occupation like a military checkpoint built in the style of an invading army, just a few hundred meters from a desiccated ancient city, where only rotting insects and the shadows of the dead roam the halls (and an angry old lady who shouts, but that's beside the point).
Speaking of visual design, FromSoftware crammed an entire game's worth of environment design into a relatively small area and made Land of Shadow the most visually interesting of Elden Ring's regions and a strong contender for one of the studio's best worlds. You wouldn't know it at first, as the Gravesite Plain – literally just a huge plain full of spectral graves – is dull and mostly featureless. Once you're finally freed from it, though, the Shadowland opens up in ways far more ambitious than what we saw in Elden Ring.
An early area allows you to observe most of the Shadowlands from above. I thought it looked like a world from one of Nintendo's 3Ds Super Mario games — and was later surprised to realize that it's actually structured like one as well. The Shadowland teems with secrets, hidden in tunnels and behind waterfalls, hidden along riverbanks only accessible via tombstone steps, floating in the sky — there's so much to discover. Shadow of the Erdtree it expects you to engage with the landscape to a much greater degree than the base game, and navigating the world is a puzzle in itself.
Granted, the earth and most things on it want to hurt you as much as possible, and almost everything is bleak and miserable. However, there is a level of creativity and, occasionally, beauty and whimsy in its design that elevates it Shadow of the Erdtree over the original game and makes exploration more enjoyable and less like a predictable routine where you can easily guess what's around the next imaginary corner.
This series of inspiration carries over Shadow of the Erdtreeand its dungeons. The large, old-school dungeons have much more personality than the base game's castles and volcanic prisons, and even the mini-dungeons tended to have little variety in Elden Ring they feel exciting and dangerous. Maybe it's because you have more time and fewer areas to work with, but each location has some new twist, whether it's a leap of faith into the abyss or a unique set-up designed specifically to combat a certain type of enemy.
These enemies are more demanding than ever. Shadow of the ErdtreeHis new enemies are brutally efficient at taking you down, and that's even true of the standard, nameless encounters you'll have in dungeons and throughout the open world. The standard knights and other recognizable enemies are also a new threat, thanks to the way FromSoftware develops them, and there are even a few moments where you feel like FromSoft is deliberately playing with your expectations. On one memorable occasion, I smugly remarked to myself how easy an NPC invasion challenge was, before facing that enemy's corporeal form and smearing myself against the wall.
However, boss encounters can be uneven, and the first two set a pattern that applies to the rest of the expansion. Divine Dancing Beast from Belurat Settlement is a sight to behold, an example of FromSoft at its best with a fight that forces you to adapt and create new strategies on the fly. The next boss plays like an early encounter from the base game. It still tests your timing and requires good planning, but it's hard not to see it as a disappointment after the first experience. The same goes for the rest of the expansion, as the big encounters oscillate between outstanding and comparatively mundane, even forgettable, battles.
Shadow of the Erdtree uses a new and slightly frustrating progression system that hides stat scaling and damage potential behind obscure labels. Scadutree Fragments are hidden throughout the area, usually in locations with some connection to Miquella, and you can level up your Scadutree once you've collected enough, which, rather uselessly the game says, increases the damage you deal and decreases the amount you you receive . Spirit Ashes has a similarly blunt new progression system, only you use Revered Spirit Ashes to boost the effectiveness of your summons.
I guess FromSoftware wants players to focus on strategy instead of stats, but if I'm having problems in battle, I'd rather be able to look at my build and make a plan on how to fix it. It's an uncharacteristically messy system, all the more surprising given how well tuned the base game is.
However, a good weapon and better armor is more likely to help in tough situations than bumping up your stats with a few extra numbers and Shadow of the Erdtree gives you many exciting new games to play. The variety is fantastic, even just in the first two hours. I found a hammer that scales with faith and burns enemies, a small greatsword with a style more similar to a xifon, and a larger sword with an ability so powerful that it knocks most enemies down if they don't kill you before you pull it off. Even better, Shadow of the Erdtree it practically throws upgrade items at you so you actually have the means to make weapons and make new builds.
The expansion includes eight new weapon classes, which sounds fancy, but these new weapon types are more about small, thoughtful ways to change your fighting style — not dramatically change the meta. Many of the classes are as simple as the “light greatsword”, a weapon with the versatility of a regular sword and about three-quarters the power of a regular sword, but if you're like me and struggle to wrap your head around the time if it hits a bigger gun, it's a really big deal.
Shadow of the Erdtree it stumbles at first, and its runtime seems anticlimactic after the events leading up to it. There is an extraordinary story at its heart, however, wrapped in a new setting, whose small size belies the number of secrets it holds and the art involved in its life. FromSoft smoothed out almost everything Elden RingHis pain marked and built one of his smartest and most interesting worlds yet, even if he added some new rough edges in the process.
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