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[Draugoth]

FromSoft games are notoriously hard. The first Elden Ring had loads of very difficult zones and fights. But it appears Shadow of the Erdtree may have broken a significant amount of players, even longtime veterans.

Almost every negative review cites the difficulty, with players complaining their stats or level is not protecting them from getting 2-3 shot by early enemies. Some deem it not fun, others say it’s so bad they’re just quitting outright. Here’s a small sampling of loads of these reviews:

• “The gameplay makes the game hard to recommend - spastic bosses with jerky roll-catch movements and a plethora of physically nonsensical moves make the bosses in this DLC hard to put up with….As someone who beat all the Fromsoft games with gimped Lvl1 characters for fun (the base game included), I'll be calling quits on this one.”
• “While the world design and colors are really beautiful and a lot of enemy designs too, there's a big problem with balancing, right now even with 60 vigor you get bishotted by nearly every enemy that's not pure fodder.”
• “I really want to like this DLC but those enemies and boss fights are the worst parts of the whole game. I'm genuinely surprised whoever play tested this approved the golden hippo boss fight.”
• “Was able to beat it but the bosses were so overtuned and aggressive that even being almost maxed out with the Scadutree fragments didn’t make it any easier.”

"I love running for 20 minutes in an open area with absolutely nothing to pick up random consumables that I'll never use against bosses that are insanely tedious to fight. Very miserable experience," said one unhappy Tarnished.

"Game is literally unplayable," added another. "I've been trying since launch to open the game and I can't no matter what I do. I see many others having the same issue and there are no solid fixes yet just random individual fixes for every different person.Yes I have tried EVERYTHING."

"Kinda just feels like they just put all of the assets from the base game in a blender and hit pulse a few times," opined another disappointed player. "It is still fun overcoming the challenges, but I was hoping for more innovation out of this DLC and it's certainly not worth $40."

Source

 

[Astral Dog]

not surprising, its FROM DLC what they expected? A walk in the park?they just need to try another 100 times raise a few levels and 'get good'

 

[geary]

 

[feynoob]

Performance is also to blame too.
The score will back to normal though. Happened the same with the main game.

 

[Buggy Loop]

 

[Big Baller]

 

[Northeastmonk]

Sounds like an amazing dlc package. Push back on people living on easy street.

 

[Kurotri]

There were previews before the DLC released that warned everyone about this. I guess it's true? Even level 150 characters seem to be struggling. I wonder if this was really intentional or if they just couldn't balance things in time.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

• - spastic bosses with jerky roll-catch movements and a plethora of physically nonsensical moves make the bosses in this DLC hard to put up with….

Yep, sounds like ER, all right.

 

[SJRB]

Git gut you fucking scrubs.

You thought you could steamroll this DLC with your level 300 character, didn't you?

 

[Zuzu]

Yeah the difficulty has been brutal for me so far

 

[FeralEcho]

I also have a review for these users.

"Git fucking gud you scrubs"

 

[Skifi28]

I still have nightmares from a couple of fights from Bloodborne's DLC and I don't believe I ever actually finished the ringed city in DS3. Yeah, their DLC are not for the weak but that's nothing new. Maybe people got too comfortable with how easily you can cheese the main game.

 

[ClanOfNone]

lol, it is pretty freakin hard, but it’s From dlc and they are always tough as nails. Dark Souls 2 dlc was brutal, so was The Ringed City, Old Hunters, all of em.
Curious to see if From sticks to their guns or nerfs a bunch of bosses in the first balance patch.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

Worst metric in gaming.

 

[Skifi28]

Worst metric in gaming.

I feel like we should make a thread when a game is not being review bombed on Steam for petty reasons. Now that'd be news.

 

[Aion002]

I guess that's why they didn't put trophies on the dlc.

Anyway... Arcane seems to be quite weak on bosses, so casuals that depends on smashing L2 with rivers of blood are probably crying.

Playing it with str and int builds the difficulty has been great for me so far.

Sure... Rellana was challenging, but that's the point.

 

[SantaC]

Can we ban steam reviews from this site?

 

[Bigfroth]

lol too hard, what? if you have to hit something more than once it's too difficult Jesus Christ man generations of porcelain dolls hope we will never have to go to war in real life. I can imagine the state of our military these days. get good fuckers! Never give up, never surrender!

 

[Danjin44]

In order access to this DLC you needed to beaten Mohg (end game boss) what exactly these people were expecting here?

Most FROM DLCs were harder than base game and thats no different in Elden Ring.

 

[Tajaz2426]

The more people quit and the amount of finishers is less, makes my 49.99 travel that much further on making me feel like a digital God.

Don’t worry folks, just open the store on the main menu and get the time savers.

 

[tommib]

I don’t know. I’m doing ok with the exact same build I finished the game with. I think Bloodborne’s DLC was much harder from the get go.

But let’s see where this goes.

 

[phant0m]

lol too hard, what? if you have to hit something more than once it's too difficult Jesus Christ man generations of porcelain dolls hope we will never have to go to war in real life. I can imagine the state of our military these days. get good fuckers! Never give up, never surrender!

while this is pure hyperbole for a fucking video game you're 100% right IRL.

if there were ever a real-ass global scale war a la WWII (or even Vietnam) most of western society would not do well.

 

[Stafford]

So hard that some reviewers didn't even finish it. Such as the Eurogamer one. Although I can't really call that a review, it's a pathetic excuse for one and shows what is wrong with some game reviewers nowadays.

 

[R6Rider]

LMAO no way somebody is claiming this is too hard yet also claims they've beaten each previous game with a level 1 character.

 

[Horatius]

separating the power-gain system from the main game's stat based one is an elegant solution for helping with balance, but seems to have caused a disconnect in a lot of player's heads, like they don't initially realise that in the DLC they're back to square one until they power up with the collectable thingos.

 

[Ulysses 31]

In order access to this DLC you needed to beaten Mohg (end game boss) what exactly these people were expecting here?

Most FROM DLCs were harder than base game and thats no different in Elden Ring.

Perhaps they got carried by co-operators and are now getting a reality check.

 

[gaming_again]

It is fucking rock. I have no idea how challenge runners are going to clear this at zero scudatree fragment level and using kicks only. Can't wait to watch though.

 

[M1987]

FromSoft DLC's are always a lot harder than the base game,so I don't know why the fuck people are complaining

 

[Gaiff]

Most of the reviews seem to complain about performance issues.

Cons:
Awful performance (Severe stutters on a 13600k and 4070 super)

Also, performance is total ass. I have above recommended specs and there's a tremendous amount of framedrops, especially during bossfights. I'm fine with games needing stronger computers, but why lie about recommended specs on the store page? I expect consistent 30 FPS or higher.

Hard to recommend because of performance issues

I had noticeable performance issues at launch too. Now, I'm playing offline without anti-cheat and it's mostly fans.

 

[nemiroff]

lol too hard, what? if you have to hit something more than once it's too difficult Jesus Christ man generations of porcelain dolls hope we will never have to go to war in real life. I can imagine the state of our military these days. get good fuckers! Never give up, never surrender!

I have ~1000 hours in Souls games and ER alone. Beat them all multiple times. I and many others obviously don't have a problem with challenges. But the DLC isn't a "get good" type of hard, it's more like pure relentless frustration for no good reason.

 

[DAHGAMING]

Im sure these soppy cunts will knock up a super easy mode mod soon and all will be well.

 

[Filben]

NOW people complain about the difficulty? Everything they describe fits perfectly to almost every FS game... like

spastic bosses with jerky roll-catch movements and a plethora of physically nonsensical moves make the bosses

or

with absolutely nothing to pick up random consumables that I'll never use

It's pretty weird right now.

 

[Ge Os]

I entered the DLC at lvl 148, 55 vigor and the Divine Beast Dancing Lion was kicking my ass.
Beat it in under 13 minutes and like 6 to 7 attempts. Rellana tho, she made me summon the gang (Greatshield Soldier ashes).

<60 Vigor is hard, but doable.

 

[Lokaum D+]

The dancing Lion was the only one who made me rage, its two enemies at the same time , him and the câmera, othewise every other boss was a fun fight ATM.

 

[The artful mincer]

lol too hard, what? if you have to hit something more than once it's too difficult Jesus Christ man generations of porcelain dolls hope we will never have to go to war in real life. I can imagine the state of our military these days. get good fuckers! Never give up, never surrender!

Beating difficult video games prepares you for war!? Fuck me I've heard everything now!

 

[CherryFalls]

Can we please start admitting souls games difficulty comes from poor game design?

 

[Barakov]

Can we please start admitting souls games difficulty comes from poor game design?

 

[Hrk69]

Can we please start admitting souls games difficulty comes from poor game design?

 

[Gaiff]

Can we please start admitting souls games difficulty comes from poor game design?

I’d say that applies maybe around 10-20% of the time.

 

[Revolutionary]

I just started the DLC but upon touching the first grace, there's a new option that makes it clear that there is a way to reduce the difficulty if needed: get those Scadutree fragments.

I already found one and I'm only 30 minutes in

 

[Danjin44]

Can we please start admitting souls games difficulty comes from poor game design?

Can we admit most people blame the game other themselves when it comes difficulty?

You dont know what cheap difficulty looks like...

Spoiler: Drakengard 3 true final Boss

This thing has 6 phases and you cant make single mistake, not one....if you do, you go back all the way in the beginning.

 

[VanCityGamer]

Yeah I hate the Souls genre - one of the big reasons being difficulty. So I get it.

 

[Buggy Loop]

I just started the DLC but upon touching the first grace, there's a new option that makes it clear that there is a way to reduce the difficulty if needed: get those Scadutree fragments.

I already found one and I'm only 30 minutes in

You can find a ton of them by exploring before touching any "real" boss.

 

[Arachnid]

Just don't get hit

Can we please start admitting souls games difficulty comes from poor game design?

 

[PonyStation4]

First time I face a boss, I try to defeat them on the first try. If I fail, I then use infinite HP to figure out their moveset without killing them. Once I'm comfortable, I challenge them normally. So my intentions are to defeat them either on the 1st or 3rd try. I think people would enjoy these games more if they did this as well.

 

[Roufianos]

All this talk of difficulty is honestly putting me off from buying it. I've beaten Dark Souls 3, Demon's Souls and Elden Ring but I definitely ain't no pro player.

Anyway it seems most of these negative reviews are actually performance related.

 

[Celcius]

It's honestly putting me off from buying it. I've beaten Dark Souls 3, Demon's Souls and Elden Ring but I definitely ain't no pro player.

Yeah, I've never played a Souls game and I think they look really cool but I know that difficulty just isn't for me and I don't want to be frustrated.

 

[Danjin44]

but I definitely ain't no pro player.

I'm not either, I died over 100 times in this expansion, the only difference is I enjoy the struggle and finally get better but some people dont.

To me the "pro" players are who play tournaments and have sponsor and making living out of it.

 

[TheChadOfGaming]

just use summons if its too hard
gg easy