Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC: A Double-Edged Sword of Difficulty and Praise

While lauded by critics, Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC has sparked a divided player response on Steam, primarily due to its demanding difficulty and performance inconsistencies across PC and consoles.

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Despite pre-release critical acclaim and a high Metacritic score, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree launched to a wave of negative player reviews on Steam on June 21st. While the challenging gameplay was praised, many players voiced frustration over excessively difficult combat encounters, questionable difficulty balancing, and performance problems.

Performance Woes and Exaggerated Difficulty: Player Concerns

A significant complaint revolves around the intensity of battles, described as far more challenging and disproportionately difficult than the base game. Reviews highlighted poorly designed enemy placement and excessively high boss health pools.

Performance issues further exacerbated the negative feedback. Numerous PC users reported crashes, micro-stuttering, and frame rate limitations. Even high-end systems experienced frame rate drops below 30 FPS in crowded areas, rendering gameplay difficult. Similar frame rate drops during intense moments were reported on PlayStation consoles.

As of Monday, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree holds a "Mixed" rating on Steam, with 36% negative reviews. Metacritic shows a more positive "Generally Favorable" rating of 8.3/10 based on 570 user reviews. Game8 offers a contrasting perspective, awarding the DLC a 94/100 rating.