Elden ring was my first souls game, and will always hold a special place in my heart. Fromsoft deserves the innumerable accolades, glowing reviews, and endless praise that this game got at launch.

And, as expected, when the review embargo for SOTE dropped, 10/10s were given across the board. SOTE was shaping up to be the next old hunters. Unfortunately, it missed the mark for me.

I feel like the echo chamber of praise that SOTE got was detrimental to my experience. It's by no means a bad DLC, but I've never been this disappointed by fromsoft before.

Maybe my thoughts on this game will change as I do repeat playthroughs, but here are my thoughts so far.
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Exploration
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Shadow of the erdtree is big. Really big. The map itself is enormous, easily quashing the early statements that the map would be the size of limgrave. I honestly wish that wasn't the case. The map is massive, sure, but it's somehow even more barren, with content being more spaced out, and incredibly sparce. Dungeons are few and far between, you can ride a horse for five minutes without seeing anything of interest in certain areas (besides a small patrol of fodder enemies every now and then). Honestly, alot of it felt like I was just wasting my time. Exploration in base game felt better because it was new and exciting. Here, it's just more of the same, and that formula has gotten old.

And then there's my biggest gripe. To fill this empty world with something to do, bosses from the base game are copy pasted, again and again. Maybe they'll be a different color! Maybe they'll look exactly the same! But almost every time, the moveset is nearly identical, the only difference being a reskin here and there. From what I've experienced, I have seen four ulcerated tree spirits, one death rite bird, two tree sentinels, one fallingstar beast, seven of the same recycled dragon fight that we already had 20 of in the base game, and a magma wyrm. I've already fought all of these bosses countless times. Why the hell would I want to fight them again? The DLC would be better off without this senseless filler to make for a fresher experience rather than making the player do the same shit that they already did countless times.

The sheer feeling of emptiness and bordom I felt in this open world is made worse with the progression system. Throughout the barren map are scadutree fragments, items you NEED to have in order to not be one shot by every boss in the game. And some of them are hidden in the most ridiculous places imaginable. I don't see how anyone thought this was a good idea, because searching every nook and cranny was just not fun with the lack of new, fresh content to fill this dlc's map.

Another issue I had was how significant chunks of the map are incredibly easy to miss, even if you're going out of your way to find it. There is a large area in the game that you can only reach if you head down a secret ladder, go through a hidden path, then through a false wall, then through an entire area through a small door fighting a minor boss. All of this to find an area with an entire dungeon, map fragment, and a boss. This happens more than once. Even for fromsoft standards, this is a bit ridiculous. An easy fix would be to make multiple different pathways, or maybe a questline that would give hints as to how to reach this area, but so far, there is nothing pointing anybody to this piece of content, except for guides and player messages, so offline players are out of luck. This is a real shame because this secret hidden area is one of my favourite places in the DLC.


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Art
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The one thing I think SOTE does better than all it's predecessors is the art design. It's truly breathtaking, every scenic vista, fresh new area, it's all a sight to behold. The feeling of stumbling upon a new area and seeing the beauty of all of it's architecture is unmatched, and by far the best part of the game. You see all of this majesty, and you look forward to exploring it, just to realise that it's just an empty field with a bunch of fodder enemies and a tent.

It's just a shame that all this effort was put into designing this world, just for it to be so barren, so void of content.

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Story
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Others might disagree with me on this, but the story told in this dlc was far more engaging for me than the base game. The lore (as someone who generally just watches a vaati video to understand what's going on), was surprisingly easy to parse. Sure, characters still speak in their typical Shakespearean manner, but I actually understood what was going on, which was nice, and a pleasant surprise from a fromsoft game, considering how cryptic the lore usually is. Quests are much more straightforward too (generally). While on my first blind playthrough in base game, I missed almost all of the questlines besides ranni because it was so awful to keep track of. Here, there are fewer characters in a much smaller world, and from what I've experienced, it's fairly difficult to lock yourself out of quests. I'm glad they improved on this, as it was one of my biggest gripes with base game.

As per usual, the voice acting and writing is phenomenal. The VAs and writers have truly outdone themselves, every NPC feels bursting with personality, with every character sounding unique and interesting, and some dialogue was surprisingly funny. I'm so glad that the quality of the voice acting has stayed consistent across all their games. They're easily one of the biggest factors in the feeling of immersion you get when you play a fromsoft title.

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Bosses
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I found most of the main bosses to be incredibly enjoyable, with messmer and the second boss being my favourites in the whole game. But I do think some bosses are overtuned, especially the second phase of the final boss. It's not fun watching a boss do their moveset for 20 seconds, while you just watch and dodge and do nothing. It's even less fun when your screen is bombarded with effects and particles making it impossible to see the telegraphed moves without being blinded. The former is the case for almost half of the main bosses, which leads to alot of frustration. it's not fun. It's just boring.

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Performance
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Running the game on a 4070 on a 1080p monitor, I frequently experienced stutters and frame drops. With rtx not even being on, I don't see how a game like elden ring should be making my rig struggle, when games with higher visual fidelity such as cyberpunk run so much smoother. This may just be an issue at launch though, but I do hope they fix this soon.

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I think SOTE is an improvement from the base game. However, the overwhelming presence of filler, empty open world, and a frustrating new upgrade system taints an otherwise stellar experience. The dungeons, story, and bosses are all fantastic, and I only wish that they focused less on scale and size, and more on quality and performance. If SOTE was in a smaller more condensed map with all the fat trimmed off, I think it would rank among the best content fromsoft has ever put out. I'm looking forward to what the team at fromsoft is working on next.

Hopefully a Bloodborne pc port.