It wouldn’t be unfair to say that pretty much everyone expected Shadow of the Erdtree to be good. I don’t think there’s a single person out there who’s going to be surprised if you tell them the Elden Ring DLC is really good. When the base game launched in 2022, it set new standards for, well, just pretty much everything to do with games as a whole, so when someone tells you that the massive new chunk of content that FromSoftware has added to that masterpiece is also really damn good- yeah, that’s not a massive surprise.
You know what is a surprise, though? That somehow, in spite of the ridiculously high expectations everyone had heading into Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, the expansion is still better than you thought it would be. Yes, on paper, it would be accurate to say that Shadow of the Erdtree is more of the same. That’s also incredibly reductive though, because it fails to capture just how much more of if there is, how unbelievably good all of it is, and how effectively it’s able to stand toe-to-toe with the seminal experience that was the base game itself.
Shadow of the Erdtree is much larger than you think it is. It’s roughly half as large as the base game itself, which is far larger than what FromSoftware said pre-launch it would be, which means even after pouring over 40 hours iDaily Lotto Resultsnto the expansion, it can still have plenty of juice left in it to squeeze out. It’s essentially Elden Ring 1.5, which means it’s far larger and meatier than most games you’re going to find.
Of course, this being a FromSoftware joint, what makes Shadow of the Erdtree stand out is not just how much content it has on offer, but how good all of it is. The Land of Shadow, the new map that you explore in the expansion, isn’t huge so much as it is dense, with FromSoftware choosing to focus on vertical and intricately layered design in the open world rather than something that stretches out over large expanses. Mastermind Hidetaka Miyazaki said in the lead-up to the DLC’s launch that From’s goal during development was to blur the lines between open world and legacy dungeons in terms of how the two are designed, and Shadow of the Erdtree does that masterfully.
Exploration in the expansion is, as such, immensely satisfying, to the extent that words truly cannot do it justice. There’s a bevy of shortcuts, secrets, hidden branches, and what have you in every nook and cranny of the map, and you never know where a winding path might lead you. There’s daunting and formidable dungeons to find, vastly varied biomes and locations to discover, secret areas to stumble upon, and so, so much more. Just as the base game did, Shadow of the Erdtree keeps finding ways to boggle the mind with its sense of scale, the ingenuity of its design, and how cohesively and neatly all of it ends up getting tied together. It’s the sort of thing that you just can’t find in anything not made by FromSoftware, with maybe a few, rare exceptions.
Something else that stands out with Shadow of the Erdtree is how well it manages to raise the stakes on the base game in every way imaginable. FromSoftware could have taken the easy way out and made the expansion geared towards mid-game builds and no one would have batted an eye, but Shadow of the Erdtree is specifically built for high level, late-game players, which means the vast majority of the challenges that the base game will throw at you are no longer going to phase you. What, then, could Shadow of the Erdtree possibly have up its sleeve to make you take pause, right?
As it turns out, a whole damn lot. Shadow of the Erdtree is crawling with enemies that are going to stalk your nightmares for weeks to come. Even some of the regular, trash mob grunts you’re going to run into are surprisingly formidable foes, while the roster of multiple dozens of minibosses and bosses that you’re going to take on across the length of the new campaign are going to put up the kind of challenge that is going to make your blood boil. It is, however, also tuned to absolute perfection, in a way that only FromSoftware can manage- difficulty that will push your patience to its absolute limits, but will never quite feel like it’s unfair, all of which makes the satisfaction of eventually overcoming those challenges that much more gratifying. Bosses and enemies in Shadow of the Erdtree are the perfect blend of perfect game design and bizarre, utterly creative, and strikingly gorgeous visual design. It’s FromSoftware it its absolute best, which is really saying something.
Adding to the added sense of challenge and renewed wonder of exploration is how mechanically rewarding progression continues to feel, in spite of the fact that anyone playing this expansion will very likely already have clocked close to a hundred hours into the base game at the very least. That’s down to the introduction of Scadutree Fragments and Revered Spirit Ashes, items that you can find and turn it at Sites of Graces to increase attack and resistance stats for yourself and your Spirit Ash summons respectively, and these upgrades work only in the Land of Shadow. It’s a brilliant way of not only making progression still feel rewarding and necessary in the expansion, but also ensuring that it doesn’t break the late-game or endgame challenges of the base game itself.
It’s not often that an expansion is both good and expansive enough to be considered not just as good as a full-fledged game, but even better than the overwhelming majority of them out there. In fact, that has almost never happened. Maybe you could argue that CD Projekt RED has done it a couple of times – once with The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine and once with Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty – but that’s pretty much it- and Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is a far, far more monumental achievement than even either of those two. Maybe it lacks the majesty and novelty of Elden Ring, given that, at the end of the day, it technically is just more of the same, but there’s an argument to be made that the epic dark fantasy adventure it offers is as unforgettably spectacular as the one FromSoftware served up in the base game, if not even more so.
Yes, we’re saying that Shadow of the Erdtree is at least as good as one of the greatest games of all time. That’s how good it is. It may not technically be an actual, standalone game, but it’s better than the overwhelming majority of “full” games you’re going to find out there. And no, that’s not an indictment on the quality of any of those games. Shadow of the Erdtree is just that damn good. FromSoftware is a studio that has grown into the habit of setting new standards for the medium as a whole over the last decade and a half or so, and typically enough, that’s what the studio has done with Shadow of the Erdtree again. Obviously, it’s unreasonable to expect that every expansion for every game is going to be like this- and nor should it be. The point, however, is that we now know that expansions can be this unbelievably good. Not that long ago, even that thought would have been deemed unreasonable.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
