5/5 ★ – AllieN7's review of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree.

So many thoughts in my head, so many words I can’t express, so many things I can’t describe. I’m so happy. Really doubles down on a lot of the base game of Elden Ring’s design decisions when it comes to boss fights, which I definitely think will/already has caused a lot of contention in the game’s community, as Elden Ring’s boss fights in general have just always been a bit of a divisive subject among fans of FromSoft, Especially their older games. Lot’s of HP, fast and complicated combos, huge damage, etc. In a lot of ways I think this is the best part of Elden Ring’s base game, but with a lot more issues and weight holding it back from being truly as special as that original game. The exploration and build/weapon variety is even better, the soundtrack is absolutely incredible, and the art direction is still probably my favorite in any game ever, and I love how scadutree fragments work as a permanent universal reward, no matter what your build is (something I think the base game struggled with a lot, as a lot of the times rewards you would receive would never be relevant or useful to your current play style.) but I definitely think the upgrade system will hurt the experience a lot on replays especially considering how many of them there are. They aren’t just some bonus that will give you a slight edge in battle, something high level players can have to become even more OP, they can very much be the deciding factor on whether or not you can even attempt certain bosses, of course taking into consideration your skill level in general. Yeah, the bosses. So I really really enjoy the lineup here, they all have great designs, I love the boss areas, soundtrack, it’s all great BUT! I really think the move sets/damage output is a bit too over the top to the point that it can just, not be as intuitive as I would’ve hoped/wanted. I know From’s expansions have a reputation of increasing the difficulty tenfold, and I usually fall completely in love with these difficulty spikes, but man, a lot of these fights just bordered on kinda annoying at times and it definitely plays into that issue I think the base game’s endgame had where some moves just felt so whack, just so many clear balancing issues, I definitely see some nerfing going on here in the future, a lot of the fights here just felt a bit unintuitive and not super polished. (Though also not gonna lie, I think a lot of my issues mainly came from performance issues, which is strange as I don’t think I’ve ever had this many technical issues and bumps from a Fromsoft game before and from what I can gather it’s even worse on PC.) I definitely think the bosses will be the main thing I come back to and revisit my opinion on because this has some of my absolute favorites from the entire series, but also some I’m not super big on. Will definitely have to get in a few replays. Either way, I waited 2 years and this dic is essentially everything I dreamed of it to be, even with its occasional flaws and performance hiccups. It’s so unbelievably massive, it’s actually mind-boggling. The fact From, even for a shorter time span and a lesser extent, managed to recapture my feelings and emotions of my first ever Elden Ring play through is just magical and I am forever grateful for this game, it was already an extremely detailed and deep experience and adding what’s essentially a mini sequel on top it is just, wow. There’s nothing quite like Elden Ring and I’m so glad I managed to live in a time where I got to play this wonderful wonderful game, thank you Fromsoft, thank you Hidetaka Miyazaki.