Elden Ring's DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, made its debut last Thursday. Excitement for the launch was quite impressive, with over half a million players returning to the original game right before the DLC was launched. Initially, the DLC received overwhelmingly positive feedback, garnering a 95% approval rating from roughly 2,600 players by the time we reported last Friday. However, the tides turned over the weekend, and the review on Steam dropped to a mixed rating, with only about 63% of the 30,000+ reviews being positive.

A closer look at the negative reviews reveals a common complaint: excessive difficulty. One player commented and was agreed by over 600 other players:

“Ornstein and Smough, Fume Knight, and Nameless King were peak Souls bosses imo. Dodging endless combos gets old and isn't fun for me any more. It's a gauntlet of dodge, dodge, dodge, hollllllld, dodge, dodge, dodge, run away, dodge again, dodge, hit once, repeat... I'm bored.” 

FromSoftware's president, Hidetaka Miyazaki, addressed the issue of difficulty in an interview with Keza MacDonald from The Guardian during the Summer Game Fest earlier this month. This discussion provides some insight into why the DLC presents such a challenge. Miyazaki stated:

“If we really wanted the whole world to play the game, we could just crank the difficulty down more and more. But that wasn’t the right approach. Had we taken that approach, I don’t think the game would have done what it did, because the sense of achievement that players gain from overcoming these hurdles is such a fundamental part of the experience. Turning down difficulty would strip the game of that joy – which, in my eyes, would break the game itself.”