A Full Criticism of Shadow of the Erdtree - Elden Ring

Shadow of the Erdtree is probably the best DLC I've ever played in my life. In terms of the sheer amount of content, pretty much nothing comes close. That being said, now that the honeymoon period is over, its clear there are a number of pretty glaring flaws in the overall package. Again, still one of the best DLCs ever created, but here we're going to talk about things that kept it from being absolutely perfect.

0:00 Intro
0:21 Scadutree Fragments
2:28 Emptiness in World Design
4:08 Furnace Golems
5:22 Ancient Ruins of Rauh
6:16 Final Boss / Ending

[AndJusticeforAll]

Don’t forget about what Scadu Fragments have done to co-op. You are scaled to the hosts fragment level. Since there’s only three mandatory bosses, lots of hosts are way too low for certain areas. Also, loot. Getting basic smithing stones in the LAST area is criminal.

[pandacakes]

Honestly, I don't think it would be a huge issue if the only Scadutree fragments were at Miquella's crosses. Then you wouldn't need to collect as many and their locations would be telegraphed. (A small arbitrary amount of pot enemies dropping them was a horrible decision)

[leonardo]

>oh wow cool area
>walks around
>the size of Weepin'
>3 enemies
>Ghost Glovewort +7
>rides around for 20 more minutes
>encounter another fire dude
>"""Fight""" him for 3 minutes
>drops crafting material and tear that increases poise and holy damage when Golden Crux'ing your urethra at 3:56 am
>wandering for 10 minutes again
>fights boss
>Divine Super Horned Lumen Consort Mungus Jr, The Sorrow
>boss does 45 second projectile combo
>dies
>try again for 30 minutes
>walks around a bit
>found: Super dragon man hunting smegma
>"Liberates the power of the hunting of dragons blah blah blah"
>use it on boss
>the boss literally might as well be afk
>dies in 30 seconds
>mfw

[definitelynotzima]

My biggest issue with SOTE was the when you first finish collecting the map, realizing how big the world is, only to realize two extremely large areas on the map practically have nothing (the two finger areass). Such a disappointment

[eliaslamsa]

The problem with the empty areas is that exploration is heavily encouraged in elden ring. All the other areas have easily missable secrets and items in every corner. In areas like the shaman village and scaduview there are a few important items, but the vast majority of the area is empty. So you are still incentivised to explore since there are things to get, but its mostly just wandering empty areas which is quite boring. For areas like that I just pulled out a item map online because I didn't want to wander for 20 min checking every corner just to get mediocre 2 items

[aidanmcguire]

The ending felt.. super underwhelming. Such a brutal fight and my reward is a two second cutscene of "Boohoo. Be my consort." Like it was a really big that's it? Moment for me

[MildlydepressedLucario]

2:08
Enemy: (throws rock at scott)

Scott: and i took that personally~

[Acusumano]

i just wish they gave us a menu option to disable the in-game "are you sure you wanna drink to resummon the horse" prompt, or at least defaulted the cursor to the "yes" option. kinda the same with summon interactions

also, getting gamepad emote shortcut functionality on pc would be cool. holding x/a and doing motion inputs was actually REALLY fun once you got it down

[OccasionalGoof]

I honestly feel like From either has forgotten how to make fair, polished bosses, or just feel pressured to make them less so to appease people who want ever-increasing difficulty and value difficulty over quality. And people will just point to a video of someone no hitting a boss like that must mean it's well designed while completely discounting how unintuitive or stupid some attacks or mechanics can be. Radahn really is one of the best examples of that though as this video points out, Waterfowl was too.

It was a really unpleasant note to end the DLC on that kinda soured the whole thing for me a bit. It was like the exact opposite feeling Gael gave me in DS3.

[ActiasECHO]

Radahn reminds of bosses from a lot of the mods
Flashy with artificial difficulty

[Gooby-xwuz]

My main issue with the scadutree fragments is that if you explore some places too early to look for them you just ruin some side quests entirely

[Wizzyhatg]

3:55 The problem is there is no expectation setting that areas are just empty, I expect there to be a point to every area in soulsbourne and if I don't find it, that is me missing something rather than nothing being there. I spent a lot of time running around the red flower area before giving up, checking the wiki, and realizing there was basically nothing there

[ryandugan]

Quantity over quality is undoubtedly the largest pitfall of this magnificent game. Midra is right there with Ludwig. I do find it weird that there were so many rng “take damage with basically no startup frames unless you light roll or bloodhound step frame perfectly” attacks across the bosses.

[hellxapo]

Scott, what's wrong with your final boss? In my game Patches was embraced by the God Miyazaki.

[jinsu]

One of my disappointments is how empty the southern half of the map is. Charro's Hidden grave has a gaol and maybe a few items. I was happy to find spectral rings of light on my first playthough as int/faith but all other runs I began to wonder why I even come here outside of a fragment and maybe the ash of war. The place look beautiful but it felt like it was missing something extra.

[stygianskies]

The issue with the empty space in something like Elden Ring relative to other games that tactfully make use of it is that you're getting sent mixed signals. Because other critical items (such as the Scadutree Fragments) are often tucked away in incredibly niche corners or shrines or holes in the ground, you are incentivized to scrutinize every nook and cranny of the landscape. There's no common understanding telling you that you shouldn't, say, explore every square inch of the Finger Ruins of Rhia like you might get in a game with more linear progression and more visual setpieces that exist for their own sake. It's trying to have its cake and eat it, too.

[theamazingdagger]

Sennasax = 8 tries
Bayle = two tries

Make it make sense

[Kurai_]

There should have been like 20-30 more skibidi fragments than you need. Kinda like golden seeds but more varied. Keep the 50 scattered around the world but sprinkle some more around and then just make every boss and miniboss drop one or 2 like the hippo minibosses.

[toberone]

I do want to say too that the ending is super anticlimatic. You get a memory from miquella about something we already know (that he wanted radahn) and thats it.

Was definitely nothing like getting the actual fucking dark soul and implying you make bloodbourne with it, thats for sure.

[purehollow]

9:34 hey that's my video

Another reason why some areas feel empty is the lack of new enemy types, cerulean coast charo hidden grave are the biggest offender, they are full of recycled enemies from the base game, sometimes it feels like I am just playing more of the base game