When Elden Ring launched back in 2022, I let it utterly consume my life. FromSoftware developed the holy grail of open-world design, serving up a perfect cocktail of soul crushing difficulty and dynamic world building. Naturally, when they announced the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, my hype levels were dangerously high, mixed with a healthy dose of dread. Could a mere expansion live up to the high bar the base game set and match its lightning-in-a-bottle magic? Well, after spending an ungodly amount of hours dying in many embarrassing ways, I can safely report that it doesn’t just meet the hype but in many ways exceeds it.
I enter the Land of Shadow thinking I was an absolute god, only for a giant walking furnace to set my ego on fire. The moment you cross the threshold, the atmosphere turns into something far darker and more suffocating. The sheer verticality of the map is mind-bending; I spent half my time staring up at the decaying Erdtree in awe, and the other half tumbling off hidden cliffs because I wasn’t looking at my feet.
To keep cocky veterans like me from steamrolling everything with over-leveled builds, FromSoftware introduced Scadutree Fragments and Revered Spirit Ashes. Basically, your shiny End-Game armor means jack squat here unless you hunt down these region-specific upgrades. It’s a brilliant way to force you back into the desperate, scraping-by mindset of a fresh playthrough.
FromSoftware took my tried-and-true combat strategies, laughed in my face, and offered me a ticket back to the respawn screen.
The enemy design is magnificently unhinged. The Blackgaol Knight greeted me by immediately unloading an auto-crossbow into my chest, a truly heartwarming welcome. Then came the Divine Beast Dancing Lion in Belurat, a chaotic whirlwind of lightning and hyper-aggressive moves that turned my dodge roll key into a panic button for three straight hours.
The Land of Shadow is denser, meaner, and undeniably brilliant. It condenses everything that made the original game a masterpiece and cranks the amp up to eleven, proving once again that nobody hurts me quite as exquisitely as Hidetaka Miyazaki.
Experimenting with gear in Shadow of the Erdtree is no different than undergoing a mid-life crisis. I walked in fully intent on wielding Moonveil Katana and a Glintstone magic build all the way to the finish line. Then the DLC handed me weapons like the Milady light greatsword, which glides with the elegance of a deadly ballet, and the Dryleaf Arts, which let me throw hands and kick demigods in the face. Naturally, my intellectual intelligence-build melted away, and I was back at Rennala respecing my stats like an addict.
I came in expecting to casually slice through gods, though spent half my playthrough throwing explosive pots into the giant fiery heads of walking incinerators.
The Land of Shadow regularly punishes you for being cozy in your comfort zone. Take the Furnace Golems: you can’t just strike their ankles and call it a day. The game practically forces you to visit your underutilized crafting menu, whip up Hefty Volcano Pots, and execute some high-altitude pyrotechnics to make a dent.
Miquella’s trail of breadcrumbs is a slow-burn horror story that strips away any remaining illusion that you’re the good guy.
What surprised me most was how much more accessible the narrative is this time around. Instead of requiring a Ph.D. in item-description reading, the story around Miquella is front and center, and it is deeply unsettling. Learning the grotesque, body horror origins of the Living Jars gave me chills. At one point, an NPC offhandedly mentioned how Miquella turned love into a weapon to “shrive clean the hearts of men,” and I had to pause the game only to sit with how deeply unnerving that was.
The new cast of characters carries that same brilliant, tragic complexity. There’s Freyja, a battle hardened warrior who loves a good scrap almost as much as she respects your terrifying ascension, paired against a delightfully treacherous snake of an NPC who double crossed me so many times I almost admired the sheer commitment to the hustle.
At the end of the day, the DLC delivers a brilliant twist: while the base game was about your glorious climb to the throne, Shadow of the Erdtree drags you through a stomach churning tour of the bodies buried beneath it.
FromSoftware’s world design is operating on another plane in Shadow of the Erdtree. The Land of Shadow is a dense, layered maze that uses sightlines to pull you off the main road. You might move from narrow castle walls straight into a cave system that leads to a hidden location you never saw coming. There’s always something good to find, and the environmental puzzles are a blast to figure out.
You must watch your surroundings because there are no objective markers to hold your hand. I figured out very quickly that you have to use specific gestures at certain spots to unlock secret paths. The map’s verticality is wild, too—climbing to a high peak often reveals new areas, while heading deep into a canyon can lead you to secret regions you never would have seen otherwise. The game starts off brutal. Still, fighting through that early difficulty to reach mastery is the best loop in the action RPG genre.
Shadow of the Erdtree kicked my teeth in during the first ten hours. I spent most of my time lost in a geographical labyrinth, getting turnip-twaddled by basic mobs and staring at the “YOU DIED” screen until it burned into my retinas. I died a lot. Like, a lot. But somewhere between the deaths, the frustration, and the occasional “oh, come on” moment, I started to figure things out.
Yet, every single beatdown was a masterclass in what I was doing wrong. This DLC didn’t only ask me to be better; it stripped away my comfortable end-game crutches, laughed in my face, and forced me to learn my build. The turning point came late at night after a ridiculously tough boss had spent three straight hours using my tarnished body as a mop. When I finally parried that last attack and landed the killing blow, I screamed loud enough to wake my neighbors. That chest-pumping high is the exact drug FromSoftware has been dealing us for over a decade.
Erdtree proved that even when you think you’ve mastered a world, Miyazaki still has a thousand ways to surprise, punish, and ultimately validate you.
Shadow of the Erdtree is a masterwork, but let’s stop pretending it’s immune to criticism. A few side quests I ran into seemed to forget what their resolution was supposed to be or made the next step less clear than it should have been. Although this complexity is more often than not a bow in the game’s arrow, it occasionally made even navigation a pain. There is no underground map toggle to only focus on the layers and paths.
Then there are the technical rough edges. I had bosses randomly freeze mid-combo to ponder their life choices, clip into terrain, and drop frame rates when the particle effects got out of hand. Worse, the enemy recycled asset machine was working overtime. Nostalgia is fine, but running into another Finger Creeper or Troll Knight felt lazy for a studio operating at this level. Give me fresh nightmares, not re-skinned reruns.
Final Verdict
Flaws aside, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is a fantastic piece of DLC. It distills everything terrifying and sublime about Elden Ring into a denser, more aggressive package that completely re-sparks the joy of discovery. The world design remains unmatched, the combat demands total mastery, and the narrative additions have depth. FromSoftware proves yet again why they carry the action-RPG throne.
