Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

 Shadow of the Erdtree is more Elden Ring - one of the best games of recent years.

Oh. More?

Okay, I was initially disappointed by the map size. That turned out to be because you initially only see about a quarter of the overall map. So, size-wise, it's respectable. And there is a layered element to it. There are a few tombs and some more complex areas. Overall, I think there's a good amount of terrain, though there are a few areas that are underused and relatively empty:

- The abyssal wood is atmospheric, but really too expansive for what's there with no riding.

- The "finger" areas are fairly large for being important in one quest line with very little more than being littered with annoying enemies.

- The shaman village feels like there should be something, anything, there.

The exploration was still fun, though, and I liked finding ways to get places I could see. There is still at least one truly evil tomb designer out there, though, with that teleporter-filled, mostly-duplicated level design.

The approach to difficulty scaling is... understandable. Fromsoft games are finely tuned as far as difficulty, and that's hard to do when adding to a game that's a couple years old. They could have just tacked it on and accepted that anyone "overpowered" in the main game would faceroll everything, but that isn't satisfying. So they put in collectable items you can spend to reduce damage taken and increase damage dealt to things in the expansion zones. That rewards exploration of the areas, makes normal leveling less important, and gives players the option to "keep things hard." That was as good a solution as any, really.

This is not to say that everything is easy even at the highest bonus levels. I would argue that too many of the bosses are overly aggressive, quick, and just relentless. Several won't even offer a chance to summon upon entering an arena and will just immediately run you over. Maybe I'm just getting older, but I find the "fast" bosses the hardest to deal with (looking at you, Malenia, in the main game), most frustrating, and least interesting. So while I know there's a way to perfectly avoid it all, I can't say I had a lot of "fun" with most of these bosses. Instead, I felt compelled to forsake my own play styles to look up "OP" builds in order to face many of them. And even upon beating the final boss of the DLC, I didn't feel any real accomplishment or even relief, just an anticlimactic acknowledgement of being done with that. So as hard as some bosses were, I found them largely disappointing, to be honest.

I liked the heavy NPC interactions at the beginning, but those all seem to fade out in typical soulsborne fashion where you get a few interactions at different stages, then they die (or you kill them) and you take their stuff. It was interesting to have a melee with the then-remaining enemies and allies near the end. That was a unique and memorable touch.

The story/lore remains largely as it was. Oh, there are plenty of additional details, but it's still all very much the same in feel. I feel a bit offended these days by stories that present things as deep and meaningful, but don't explain any of that meaning. It's like writers feel like throwing enough proper nouns around is enough. 

In this case, we have a land that is some sort of parallel to the previous Lands Between subject to an extermination by Messmer for... reasons. And we have Miquella plotting to... cast off his entire being and use a ritual reliant on death of Radahn and Moghwyn to re-raise Radahn and usher in an age of "kindness." I do find it a bit interesting as a parallel to Ranni's "age of stars" ending, but it's just so convoluted.

The game's (DLC and main) lore is so inundated with unneeded complexity. "Oh, these two main lore figures are the same person!" is used more than once. Death is transient, except when it isn't. I value internal consistency in a story, and this is one of those stories that's mostly consistent in being inconsistent.

And at the end the DLC story is just... done. There's no impact on what was going on in the main game. I get that's the easiest approach for something that happens in parallel to the main story, but it's not terribly satisfying.

That all said, I did enjoy it. The moment-to-moment challenge and exploration is very good and compelling in itself, just as in the main game. I appreciate the finely-tuned design of most of the game and continue to hope for more of its like, even if that is years away.