How SOTE differs compared to the base game is difficulty. It's hard as hell. Bosses are tough to say the least, and regular enemies are absolute menaces in this expansion. You really have to change your approach to combat and start preparing for fights: hotswapping your armor, weapons, ashes of war, Physick tears, talismans, consumables, and strategies is crucial for surviving the combat encounters in the Realm of Shadow, and makes it feel that much more satisfying to come out on top when its because you fine tuned your character using supplies you collected over your whole playthrough. I'm not exaggerating when I say I literally did not use the crafting system a single time across my 500+ hours pre-SOTE, but certain bosses and enemies kicked my ass so hard in this DLC that I needed to actually craft consumables that granted bonus resistances, just to try and sway odds back towards my favor.

I think this is good game design. Obviously, you can raw-dog everything in Elden Ring, but if the difficulty is cranked so hard that you have to exhaust all available resources and game mechanics, I think that makes for a fun, cohesive experience. I got by in the base game without doing so, but I think I would've enjoyed it even more had I used this approach the entire time. The feeling of being pit against insurmountable odds is potent in this DLC, and I loved every moment of it.

Gameplay was not the only thing that impressed me. The pure spectacle of many different situations and environments blew me away. (gorgeous view ahead) I took a ton of screenshots because there were so many different areas that were beautiful. There were multiple boss fights that I think were designed to be visually memorable rather than flawlessly designed combat encounters, and personally, I appreciate that. There were also multiple times where I had to pause and enjoy the soundtrack (shaman village... plin plon). The quests are familiarly cryptic, but actually more digestible than the base game in my opinion, and that was a welcome change. I enjoyed them, and I think FS succeeded at making me feel certain emotions if that was their goal. Story spoiler: I'm not sure why I didn't see it coming, but yeah, everyone being ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dead at the end in classic FromSoft fashion was still a gut-punch for me. I really liked Thiollier, Moore, and even Ansbach. (lovable sort ahead)

However, I don't think SOTE is flawless. For example, the Furnace Golems are a joke, don't get me started on how bafflingly poorly designed those encounters are when compared to the rest of the field bosses the game has to offer. Some story bosses have questionable gameplay design choices too. Although SOTE holds the highest rating of any DLC ever on Metacritic, I think that has more to do with how good Elden Ring is than how good SOTE is individually.

That said, this expansion is truly fantastic. It's massive, packed with content, and I strongly recommend playing it. It's about as good, if not slightly better than the base game when evaluated as a standalone, cohesive experience, and we're talking about Elden Ring here, so yeah, that's pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amazing.

Elden Ring + Shadow of the Erdtree is probably my second favorite game of all time now. Sorry Skyrim, I still love you. But FromSoft didn't just cook with this; they were on some Gordon Ramsay type ♥♥♥♥, and I'll gladly hope and pray for thirds if the seconds were this good.