Elden Ring DLC Review: Brutal, Beautiful, and Built for the Obsessed
A victory lap for players who finished the base game and wanted more, harder.
The Shadow of the Erdtree expansion is enormous, gorgeous, and unapologetically punishing. If you bounced off Elden Ring, this won’t bring you back. If you loved it, it’s essential.
Score
8.6/ 10
★★★★☆
Verdict
Try
For most people, this is the move.
Published
Who it's for
Players who finished Elden Ring and wanted it to keep going. Not for the curious newcomer.
The good
- +Some of the most striking environments FromSoftware has built
- +New weapon classes open up fresh builds
- +Boss fights are spectacular, multi-phase, and fair once learned
The bad
- −Difficulty is tuned for endgame gear — newcomers will suffer
- −Some late bosses cross from hard into exhausting
- −Navigation is intentionally obscure, even by FromSoft standards
Shadow of the Erdtree isn’t a victory lap for FromSoftware — it’s a victory lap for the player who beat the game. If you didn’t, this expansion is not for you, and it isn’t sorry about it.
The land of shadow
The new map is huge and it’s the best-looking thing From has shipped. The Land of Shadow has a verticality and a density the base game’s open fields sometimes lacked. You peer over a cliff and see three places you’ll want to go. Then you spend two hours trying to get to one of them.
Navigation is deliberately, almost cruelly opaque. Paths are hidden behind illusions, down wells, across ledges you didn’t realize were walkable. This is part of the charm if you’re in the mood. It’s a wall if you’re not.
The fights
The bosses are the headline and they deliver. Multi-phase, cinematic, and — once you’ve learned them — fair. The new weapon classes give you fresh ways to approach them, and a new build will feel like a new game.
The catch: the difficulty is balanced around endgame power. The Scadutree fragment system lets you scale, but it’s easy to walk into a fight under-leveled and get dismantled in ten seconds. Some late bosses tip from “hard and fair” into “hard and I’m tired,” which is a feeling even fans know.
Performance
On PC and PS5 Pro it’s smooth. On base last-gen consoles it hitches in busy areas. If you’re playing on older hardware, expect compromises.
The verdict
It’s essential if you’re the audience. It’s not an on-ramp if you aren’t. FromSoftware made an expansion for the people who finished their game, and they didn’t apologize for it. That’s honest, and the result is one of the best RPG expansions in years — for the maybe 30% of players it’s aimed at.
Specs at a glance
- Genre
- Action RPG (open world)
- Length
- 30–50 hours
- Players
- Single + co-op summon
- Platforms
- PS5, Xbox Series, PC
- Requirement
- Base game + a finished save
- Price
- $39.99
What we like
- +Some of the most striking environments FromSoftware has built
- +New weapon classes open up fresh builds
- +Boss fights are spectacular, multi-phase, and fair once learned
- +30+ hours of content, not a padded mini-expansion
What we don't
- −Difficulty is tuned for endgame gear — newcomers will suffer
- −Some late bosses cross from hard into exhausting
- −Navigation is intentionally obscure, even by FromSoft standards
- −Performance hitches on base consoles
Lytyear
Reviewer
Lytyear plays games on handhelds, controllers, and whatever’s plugged into the TV. The reviews focus on frame pacing, input lag, and whether the thing earns your hours.
