FromSoft games are notoriously hard. The first Elden Ring had loads of very difficult zones and fights. But it appears Shadow of the Erdtree may have broken a significant amount of players, even longtime veterans.
I was actually pretty surprised to see this, given that most players given FromSoft a certain amount of leeway, but Shadow of the Ertree reviews currently put the game at “Mixed” on Steam, a far cry form Elden Ring’s “Very Positive,” the reason being it’s…too hard.
Almost every negative review cites the difficulty, with players complaining their stats or level is not protecting them from getting 2-3 shot by early enemies. Some deem it not fun, others say it’s so bad they’re just quitting outright. Here’s a small sampling of loads of these reviews:
- “The gameplay makes the game hard to recommend - spastic bosses with jerky roll-catch movements and a plethora of physically nonsensical moves make the bosses in this DLC hard to put up with….As someone who beat all the Fromsoft games with gimped Lvl1 characters for fun (the base game included), I'll be calling quits on this one.”
- “While the world design and colors are really beautiful and a lot of enemy designs too, there's a big problem with balancing, right now even with 60 vigor you get bishotted by nearly every enemy that's not pure fodder.”
- “I really want to like this DLC but those enemies and boss fights are the worst parts of the whole game. I'm genuinely surprised whoever play tested this approved the golden hippo boss fight.”
- “Was able to beat it but the bosses were so overtuned and aggressive that even being almost maxed out with the Scadutree fragments didn’t make it any easier.”
With that last one, I absolutely do not believe someone is “maxed out” with Scadutree Fragments 24 hours after release, but the overall sentiment is extremely similar across almost all of these negative reviews (though some complain about performance).
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I just…sorry, I can’t agree with this. I am not a hardcore Souls player, and I too was getting 2-3 shotted when I started Erdtree, as are level 700 people. That’s just how it starts, and after 45+ hours, I’ve beaten every boss I previously thought was impossible. There are many, many things that go into beating these tough fights, and I just think people are not putting in the time to do so as again, it is barely a day since official launch. My recommendations:
- I absolutely do not believe that people have found all the Scadutree Fragments and Spirit Ashes in the available zones within this short period of time. It’s day two. Overwhelmingly this is what will make the difference even if yes, you will still take significant damage.
- Matching Talismans to damage type is incredibly important here, and can be the single thing that makes a fight tolerable, even more than before.
- You may have to change your build. Just because you relied on certain go-to moves or strategies in the base game, that doesn’t mean you can just brute force your way through things now. The same goes for Spirit Ashes, as some may be more valuable than others now, and you will have to power them up significantly to be useful. Also make sure to take advantage of sometimes-hard-to-spot NPC ally summons during bosses.
- Some bosses you should not be fighting now. At all. There is no reason to kill the infamous Blackgaol Knight now, no matter how close to start he is. There’s no reason to take on the giant fire guy as he will 100% kill 99.99% of players for a long while. Come. Back. Later.
If you’re quitting Shadow of the Erdtree now, that’s your right, but I just don’t think most of these people are being patient enough. I too wondered if I would be able to progress during the review period at all by embargo because of how hard it was, but slowly, over time, I figured it out, I got stronger, I changed my tactics, I did it. And if I can, you can too, I believe in you.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
