Hidetaka Miyazaki has never met you, but I can only assume he hates you. Why else would his studio, FromSoftware, develop games with the sole intention of making you suffer?
I’m delighted to report that after three hours withElden Ring’s upcomingShadow Of The Erdteeexpansion, Miyazaki andFromSoftwarehate you more than ever. This is a brutal new adventure that builds on everything that made the base game great, and is absolutely filled with the very best kinds of rotten tricks.
Shadow Of The Erdreebrings players to a brand-new area that you can only access after beating Mohg in the base game, though believe me when I say you’ll probably want to make sure you’re as levelled up and well-equipped as possible.
Advert
Advert
FromSoftware DLC is not known for its kindness, as you’ll probably know if you’ve ever tried to beatBloodborne’s hard-as-nails expansion. The Land Of Shadow, whereShadow Of The Erdtreetakes place, is not for the faint of heart.
As soon as I arrived in this new realm, my eye was drawn to a large flaming golem roaming the fields. With the unearned confidence of a man who actually hasn’t playedElden Ringin over a year, I hopped on my spectral steed and galloped full-pelt towards the beast.
I slashed at its leg with my katana (one of the new weapons added in this expansion) and strained to see if it’d actually doneanythingto make a dent in the monster’s health bar. Whether or not it had I still don’t really know; it stomped me into oblivion less than one second later.Shadow Of The Erdtreevery quickly and violently reminds you who’s boss. Spoiler: it’s not you.
Shadow Of The Erdtreeis full of tricks like this, as if Miyazaki is deliberately trolling us. While exploring a ruined old castle, I saw a waterfall. Video game law dictates we must check behind every waterfall we see for treasure, of course, but what I wasnotexpecting was for a giant axe-wielding knight to leap out from the murk and grind me into a sticky paste.
Advert
Advert
Elsewhere I found myself fighting agile gargoyles on averynarrow bit of roof, and on more than one occasion had the floor fall out from under me as I plummeted deeper into an actual nightmare.
If this all sounds like your idea of hell then I would imagine you either didn’t playElden Ringor decidedElden Ringwasn’t for you. As someone who fell in love withElden Ringinstantly,Shadow Of The Erdtreeis shaping up to be everything I wanted it to be.
There are also over 100 new weapons and armour sets to play around with, and brand-new classes to experiment with. A definite highlight was the martial arts class, which brings fast and intense close-combat to the fore. It’ll be fascinating to see what new builds the community come up with, and how quickly they can completely break some of the weapons once the DLC launches.
Advert
Advert
Then there are the bosses. Oh good lord, the bosses. I don’t want to get too deep into spoiler territory here, but there’s one particularly nasty piece of work in the game’s first area that I genuinely believe will go down as one of the most reviled FromSoftware bosses ever made. But, you know, in a good way. Kind of. After one hour trying to whittle its health down to zero I’m not sure how I feel about the POS.
But that’s the beauty ofElden Ring! If a certain boss is really tripping you up, you can go somewhere else and look for better gear while you level up and upgrade equipment.Shadow Of The Erdtreecertainly isn’t anything like as expansive as the base game, but that open-world design philosophy and unparalleled sense of pure undiluted discovery remain in abundance.
Hidetaka Miyazaki might hate you, then, but I’m not sure I ever want him to treat us any other way.
Topics:Elden Ring,Fromsoftware,Bandai Namco
