I was originally going to give Shadow of the Erdtree a very soft and pensive recommendation, however during the writing of this review I feel there's just far too many serious issues with this DLC that I can't recommend it in good faith. Though I really wish I could give reviews a sideways thumb that says "Maybe", because Shadow of the Erdtree is one of those things that I find myself extremely conflicted on. I will have to give it a not recommended; because I have a huge number of very serious gripes with it, not necessarily a lot of small ones but rather several huge problems that I'll address in this review,

Saying that, I still had plenty of enjoyment and there were plenty of times where I really enjoyed this DLC. It is at least worth a play once or just to simply just in to get to gear you want for future playthroughs, even if you feel like you won't replay it ever again in later playthroughs.

I'll start with the positives, the first one being that this expansion is unfathomably gigantic compared to most games. I think I spent close to 60 hours in this DLC trying to explore everything, fight everything and find everything, and even then I still feel like I've missed a good chunk of what this DLC has to offer. It also has a bunch of new enemies and most of the bosses, while brutal, are absolutely fantastic. It is also filled to the brim with a wealth of new armour, weapons, spells, consumables, crafting materials and so much more. This expansion offers so much content and most of it is such high quality that it's basically its own game that ends up dwarfing a ton of other RPGs out there. This expansion puts almost every other developer to shame and the asking price is absolutely worth it for the vast extra content you're getting.

However Shadow of the Erdtree is also an excruciatingly uneven experience a lot of the time, just getting to the DLC requires to you to find and kill an extremely difficult boss in the tail end of the game, which is hidden in a secret area within another secret area, while also getting you to kill another optional boss that's requires specific conditions for them to spawn. And all of that can take anywhere between 50-100+ hours for most average players. All of that is simply just to start the DLC, meaning any gear you bring over from the DLC back into the base game won't get any proper usage unless you're one of those players who likes to do new game+ in these games, and I'm not one of those people as I find new game+ boring.

The map of the DLC also have some pretty huge problems, though I will say that it's incredibly impressive that From Software managed to craft a new and huge open world that has so many different layers stacked on top of each other. However navigating and getting to those different layers ended up feeling like a huge chore as most of those layers can only be accessed via a single and often really obscure path that requires circling around the map to get to, which often felt really unintuitive and made just baffled and confused me, to the point that I needed help at least 3 times. It got so bad that I explored most of the north-western part of the map without picking up the map fragment because I somehow missed it 30 hours before thanks to somehow missing a cave quite far to the east, several layers below that north-west area, in an area that I swear I thoroughly explored.

The loot and crafting materials is also quite terrible in how they're handled as well. Chances are you've likely beaten the game and got all the important bell bearings and what-not before trying your hand at the DLC and thus you won't need most of the upgrade materials anymore, right? Well the game seems to think otherwise as it's littered with low level smithing stones EVERYWHERE, to the point of ridiculousness and you won't need them whatsoever. And of course smithing stone 7s are even rarer than they ever were before, because lol I guess.

Another huge problem is crafting materials, while having new materials is not an issue in itself, it becomes a huge problem for players who like to use the crafting system and consumables - I am one of those people. One problem is the new craftables don't use any of the base game crafting materials under any circumstances. This crafting issue also further compounds the second issue, which is that there are no base game material whatsoever in the DLC, meaning if you run out of materials to craft base game items then you will have to take yourself out of the DLC to go and farm what you need in the base game.

Another problem is the new DLC crafting items will only ever use materials you find in the DLC, meaning you better have a ton of those materials farmed up before heading into new game+ because otherwise you won't be able to craft anymore hefty pot items and a bunch of other powerful stuff ever again until you reach late/end game in the base game. Not only that but most of the important crafting materials only appear sparsely in very specific areas thus making farming agonisingly tedious and slow. To From Software's credit, they did dot bell bearings around the DLC map that makes attaining these materials easier but that shop will reset the default in new game+ anyway, so it doesn't solve the NG+ issue.

And now the big issue; the bosses. Personally I found most of the bosses to be really great, some of them were tried and tested Souls bosses which were fun if a bit samey but some of them were really interesting, creative and so much fun that they ended up being my favourite bosses in the game as a whole. However the bosses that were problematic were EXTREMELY problematic, they're so wrought with some really horrible design issues that they were clearly designed purely for the sake of difficulty to frustrate and piss players off without any regard to being enjoyable.

I won't name any bosses in particular, but there are some bosses that are so big and flail around so wildly that the camera just can't keep up at all, meaning target lock will throw my view all over the place, which in turn makes me feel sick but also makes it incredibly hard to tell what a boss is doing. And that's if I'm lucky hoping those bosses didn't sit on the camera with the fat bums and obscures any and all vision that I very clearly need.

There are other bosses that are so fast and so mobile that I literally can't keep up with what they're doing. One boss in particular has such speedy attacks that the telegraphing was either deceptive, terrible or there simply wasn't any to begin with. On top of those speedy attacks, pretty much every one of them hits like a truck. And to make this boss even worse, they have so many different combo extenders in so many different attacks that they can chain into several different strings, special attacks or even dodge in a circle behind you where they can instantly restart into a new massive multi-hit combo, all of which is incredibly hard to avoid thanks to the insane tracking and stepping towards you in each attack.

And that's not even the end of it! This boss also has varied wind up animations on multiple attacks to constantly mess your timings up and has so much poise that I never once stance broke them unless I had a summon. Also their attacks are in such wide arcs that the hitbox got behind my shield half the time, making the only defense I felt truly safe with in these fights feel meaningless half of the time. I know bosses are meant to be tests of skill, knowledge and memory but a boss that has all of the advantages and seemingly no weaknesses is just pure BS.

I can think of more problems with this DLC, like how stilted the scadutree and revered ash upgrades felt, how sites of grace are so common to the point of comedy as they hurt the level design in dungeons, how awful and unfair the final boss of the DLC is and more but this review is so long that I can't even fit all my complaints in. I cherished what I did love in SotE but it's so wrought with too many issues.

I was originally going to give Shadow of the Erdtree a very soft and pensive recommendation, however during the writing of this review I feel there's just far too many serious issues with this DLC that I can't recommend it in good faith. Though I really wish I could give reviews a sideways thumb that says "Maybe", because Shadow of the Erdtree is one of those things that I find myself extremely conflicted on. I will have to give it a not recommended; because I have a huge number of very serious gripes with it, not necessarily a lot of small ones but rather several huge problems that I'll address in this review, Saying that, I still had plenty of enjoyment and there were plenty of times where I really enjoyed this DLC. It is at least worth a play once or just to simply just in to get to gear you want for future playthroughs, even if you feel like you won't replay it ever again in later playthroughs. I'll start with the positives, the first one being that this expansion is unfathomably gigantic compared to most games. I think I spent close to 60 hours in this DLC trying to explore everything, fight everything and find everything, and even then I still feel like I've missed a good chunk of what this DLC has to offer. It also has a bunch of new enemies and most of the bosses, while brutal, are absolutely fantastic. It is also filled to the brim with a wealth of new armour, weapons, spells, consumables, crafting materials and so much more. This expansion offers so much content and most of it is such high quality that it's basically its own game that ends up dwarfing a ton of other RPGs out there. This expansion puts almost every other developer to shame and the asking price is absolutely worth it for the vast extra content you're getting. However Shadow of the Erdtree is also an excruciatingly uneven experience a lot of the time, just getting to the DLC requires to you to find and kill an extremely difficult boss in the tail end of the game, which is hidden in a secret area within another secret area, while also getting you to kill another optional boss that's requires specific conditions for them to spawn. And all of that can take anywhere between 50-100+ hours for most average players. All of that is simply just to start the DLC, meaning any gear you bring over from the DLC back into the base game won't get any proper usage unless you're one of those players who likes to do new game+ in these games, and I'm not one of those people as I find new game+ boring. The map of the DLC also have some pretty huge problems, though I will say that it's incredibly impressive that From Software managed to craft a new and huge open world that has so many different layers stacked on top of each other. However navigating and getting to those different layers ended up feeling like a huge chore as most of those layers can only be accessed via a single and often really obscure path that requires circling around the map to get to, which often felt really unintuitive and made just baffled and confused me, to the point that I needed help at least 3 times. It got so bad that I explored most of the north-western part of the map without picking up the map fragment because I somehow missed it 30 hours before thanks to somehow missing a cave quite far to the east, several layers below that north-west area, in an area that I swear I thoroughly explored. The loot and crafting materials is also quite terrible in how they're handled as well. Chances are you've likely beaten the game and got all the important bell bearings and what-not before trying your hand at the DLC and thus you won't need most of the upgrade materials anymore, right? Well the game seems to think otherwise as it's littered with low level smithing stones EVERYWHERE, to the point of ridiculousness and you won't need them whatsoever. And of course smithing stone 7s are even rarer than they ever were before, because lol I guess. Another huge problem is crafting materials, while having new materials is not an issue in itself, it becomes a huge problem for players who like to use the crafting system and consumables - I am one of those people. One problem is the new craftables don't use any of the base game crafting materials under any circumstances. This crafting issue also further compounds the second issue, which is that there are no base game material whatsoever in the DLC, meaning if you run out of materials to craft base game items then you will have to take yourself out of the DLC to go and farm what you need in the base game. Another problem is the new DLC crafting items will only ever use materials you find in the DLC, meaning you better have a ton of those materials farmed up before heading into new game+ because otherwise you won't be able to craft anymore hefty pot items and a bunch of other powerful stuff ever again until you reach late/end game in the base game. Not only that but most of the important crafting materials only appear sparsely in very specific areas thus making farming agonisingly tedious and slow. To From Software's credit, they did dot bell bearings around the DLC map that makes attaining these materials easier but that shop will reset the default in new game+ anyway, so it doesn't solve the NG+ issue. And now the big issue; the bosses. Personally I found most of the bosses to be really great, some of them were tried and tested Souls bosses which were fun if a bit samey but some of them were really interesting, creative and so much fun that they ended up being my favourite bosses in the game as a whole. However the bosses that were problematic were EXTREMELY problematic, they're so wrought with some really horrible design issues that they were clearly designed purely for the sake of difficulty to frustrate and piss players off without any regard to being enjoyable. I won't name any bosses in particular, but there are some bosses that are so big and flail around so wildly that the camera just can't keep up at all, meaning target lock will throw my view all over the place, which in turn makes me feel sick but also makes it incredibly hard to tell what a boss is doing. And that's if I'm lucky hoping those bosses didn't sit on the camera with the fat bums and obscures any and all vision that I very clearly need. There are other bosses that are so fast and so mobile that I literally can't keep up with what they're doing. One boss in particular has such speedy attacks that the telegraphing was either deceptive, terrible or there simply wasn't any to begin with. On top of those speedy attacks, pretty much every one of them hits like a truck. And to make this boss even worse, they have so many different combo extenders in so many different attacks that they can chain into several different strings, special attacks or even dodge in a circle behind you where they can instantly restart into a new massive multi-hit combo, all of which is incredibly hard to avoid thanks to the insane tracking and stepping towards you in each attack. And that's not even the end of it! This boss also has varied wind up animations on multiple attacks to constantly mess your timings up and has so much poise that I never once stance broke them unless I had a summon. Also their attacks are in such wide arcs that the hitbox got behind my shield half the time, making the only defense I felt truly safe with in these fights feel meaningless half of the time. I know bosses are meant to be tests of skill, knowledge and memory but a boss that has all of the advantages and seemingly no weaknesses is just pure BS. I can think of more problems with this DLC, like how stilted the scadutree and revered ash upgrades felt, how sites of grace are so common to the point of comedy as they hurt the level design in dungeons, how awful and unfair the final boss of the DLC is and more but this review is so long that I can't even fit all my complaints in. I cherished what I did love in SotE but it's so wrought with too many issues.