ELDEN RING Shadow of the Erdtree

finished the dlc. the story is intriguing, the landscape is immersive, and as always, your nuts are gonna sweat. unfortunately, this is probably the most evil dlc ever created by anyone, and i am never going to touch it again.

I don't understand the hate for this DLC. I think it's the best DLC FromSoftware has made to date and whenever I replay Elden Ring, this will be what I look forward to the most. The bosses are fantastic and the world design is truly a step above what we saw in the base game. I fell in love with the geography and verticality. Wracking my brain to figure out how to traverse the landscape was a great time. The developers did a great job of teasing you with places you could see but not immediately get to. The environments and color tones were also very cool and different from what we've seen before. The amount of content you get with this DLC is kind of insane. Well worth $40. It feels like another half of the game. I do not think it is too difficult. It is meant to be end-game content. And honestly, I thought they did a way better job of scaling the world than in their other DLCs for previous Souls games. As an example, in the Ringed City for DS3, there were points where I would rather run past the enemies than fight them. I never felt that way with this DLC. Some side notes: The Scadutree fragments were a brilliant idea that not only help to incentive exploration, but also help to maintain SL150 and keep the base game relevant. Much like how if you were met with a wall in Elden Ring, you can explore, find some shards, grow stronger, and come back. It is a customizeable difficulty. Shadow Keep rocks. The Ruins of Rauh were so sick. Lots of cool new weapons, armor, and spells to keep you coming back. Cons: The world isn't the most item-laden. There can be barren stretches at times. But that is easy to overlook because the joy I got from exploration, discovery, and navigation amounted to something greater than a new set of armor. That being said, there are only so many things that the developers can offer you once you've beaten the base game and have the bell bearings for all the smithing stones.

Basically just Elden Ring 2 just harder and more beautiful than before. A magnificent expansion to an already great game. It has a few flaws but nothing too crazy. The good parts make up for everything. Very good.

I'm quite torn on this one. On one hand, the amount of work and content is impressive. It's a HUGE expansion, actually more akin to a full game than a DLC. The artistic value is just as formidable, with gorgeous sceneries and intricate ruins that really gives the feeling of belonging to an ancient civlization, with striking style. The story is a nice touch of new reveals on the ER lore, though the ending is kind of a letdown (obviously, YMMV). A lot of complaints have been made on how the map is huge but often very empty, and how the navigation is unintuitive. It's kinda a double-edged sword, providing a wealth of exploration the first time around, but liable to be annoying for repeated walkthrough. But while I respect the work done, I just can't recommend the DLC itself, due to how obnoxious and annoying it is to play. Fromsoft has always been famous for making hard games, but difficulty has always been supposed to be a mean to an end - the difficulty is here so that you feel achievement in overcoming it. But by constantly trying to one-up itself over previous entries, the company seems to have ended up becoming its own caricature, and made the difficulty an end into itself, that serves no purpose other than to allow the toxic community to brag about it and to throw mindless "git gud" at anyone daring to level any amount of criticism. This DLC is basically the worst aspect of ER pushed to eleven, with absurdly overtuned bosses that can kill you in three hits but can only be slowly chipped away due to humongous health bar, spamming neverending combo and zapping through the battlefield without rest, AoE on every hit, and half of them being so huge and spastic the camera itself goes into a fit. It's hard, yes, but in such an obnoxious and gamey way, it doesn't provide the feeling of overcoming a challenge, but more the tedium of fighting a cheater. I sincerely hope that Fromsoft tries to go back to its original design rather than just constantly up the ante, because this whole DLC is not fun, it's just draining and annoying, and rather than being elated to finish it, I just felt like a chore was finally done.

This is truly an amazing DLC. For those leaving negative reviews, I can only feel sorry for them that they couldn't enjoy this DLC due to various objective and subjective issues. Land of Shadow is vast; you can only truly appreciate its scale by exploring it yourself. Even with its rather high price, the sheer size of the map makes me feel like I'm playing Elden Ring 2. While I see people complaining about the difficulty, if you truly explore and collect enough Scadutree Fragments, the enemies aren't actually that overpowered. I find the boss movesets really well-designed and not too difficult to dodge. If you're still stuck on Rellana, all I can say is it's a skill issue. Lots of new items, new weapons, and new scales—it's definitely worth trying. If you truly love Elden Ring and are looking for tougher challenges, this DLC is absolutely worth opening your wallet for.

This expansion won't deliver you Elden Ring 2, it promises more of Elden Ring, strengths and weaknesses and all. I think some of the parts which drew a negative reaction are a side effect of the fact that the expansions of their games have never really promised an entirely new round of progression, and outside of a token element of that in this expansion with the Zelda-like flat character upgrades that you find in this expansion, you shouldn't be looking at this like the beginning of a new campaign, but as an extended window to play with your endgame abilities and tools. And this campaign is basically a really long extra quest, which admittedly that structure that they have obeyed up to this point can feel awkward in the way that it is inserted into an already very long game. But I don't think it would be accurate to say that there is no "new content" in this expansion either. Even though your character will already be complete going in, there is still a variety of new tools and weapons which can affect your play experience with options you did not have before. But more importantly, there is the holistic content of these environments and the places you go which go under acknowledged as a form of substance in the bazaar like logics that the steam review system often encourages. While Shadow of the Erdtree might not have as many means to send you video game baubles that says your guy is more cool and strong than he was a few moments ago, there is a great deal in environmental assembly and scenarios which are a reward to itself. This holistic lens I think is what its needed to see what was put in here, because the entire quest leading up to Bayle and the many other interactions with significant NPCs, certain environments and sometimes the boss encounters themselves are still what the real "substance" of this expansion is. I don't think the fact that you are not starting again in this expansion should be viewed as a problem when it also grants the opportunity to play around with so many abilities and features you might not have had the chance to try when spending the majority of the base campaign just assembling those abilities. It really reminds me of some of their earlier expansions like Last Raven which is a game built around asking you to use the tools they built in their previous games from the outset. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3499552419 It would just be such a mistake to say that this game does not have [b] content [/b] because it doesn't have as many means of telling you that your guy leveled up, that's what not what you should be playing Elden Ring for in the first place.

beautiful graphics as well as the atmosphere. I loved playing dlc, it was truly my best experience in gaming. In my opinion its the best fromsoftware dlc created. The boss design, the cutscenes are truly on a whole another level of gaming. The story is wonderful and just peak of fiction. It is truly the best dlc I have played, after finishing the dlc, every game felt boring, thats why I beated the dlc multiple times and all of it was worth it. I really recommend buying and playing this dlc.

10/10 like Elden Ring. It’s harder but you can work around the problem, like you can do with the original game, just by exploring and approaching the easier side quests, leveling up and practicing improving your skills. I’m not good with souls game at all, actually I am pretty bad but with Elden Ring you don’t have to be stock forever with a boss, just improve doing the other quests and come back when you are ready. This DLC together with the base game are one of the best games ever made.

Good overall quality, looks majestic and the new bosses (bar perhaps 2) are great. But the ending is rather dissapointing, the DLC lacks a proper conclusion if you care about story. Gameplay's great, and the new weapons are interesting aswell so it is good if you want more, rather expensive though.

shi feels like im using a plastic fork against a rhinoceros, respectfully, the ghostflame dragons, ancient dragon ballsax, and consort radahn can suck a wet fart out my steaming ass hole it's still peak tho

Everything but the final boss is absolute peak.

It's amazing! Some of the best level designs by Fromsoft coupled with breathtaking art direction especially with the open world! The boss fights are cinematic masterpieces and live up to everything their previous games have led up to. Dunno what's with all the negative reviews so I'm doing my part here. Sure, there are a few things to pick on here and there like every other game, but the heights of the many massive peaks that this dlc lands you at cloud over everything else!

to me the DLC has many problems, the empty open world that you are forced to explore to get some korok seed bullshit to level up, camera issues and not knowing what killed you in certain boss fights is bad game design imo. but overall its a fun DLC its more elden ring you just gotta overlook the issues and you will enjoy it.

I really enjoyed this DLC! I am starting a new play through- been about 5 months and excited to dive back in. This game is absolutely top of my list and will remain in my rotation.

Difficult sure, the spike is sometimes just absurd, but some parts are absolutely breathtaking, extremely well done. You find both the most frustrating, and the best Elden Ring has to offer is in this DLC.

Mixed feelings about this one. It's the longest fromsoft dlc by FAR. There are like over ten new bosses and almost all of them are hard, so you'll be spending a lot of time in it. Final boss (at least when I played this, pre-patch) is by far the hardest fromsoftware fight, could take you hours and hours on its own. If you want more elden ring this is certainly more elden ring. On the other hand every other fromsoft game has dlc that builds upon the base game and vastly improves it as a whole. Ds1's dlc takes the boss fights of the base game to the next level with a style of boss fight that (for better or maybe for worse) every subsequent game has imitated. Ds2's dlcs try their best to redeem the often patchy and amateurish level design of the main game with three really solid and fun areas to explore and three great final bosses. Ds3's two dlcs are a bold and bombastic ending to the series as a whole, far better than the ending of the base game. And bloodborne's dlc, the best of all is basically you going to hell fighting/meeting all the cryptic backstory figures you only read about in the base game. It's tragic and disturbing and beautiful. So the bar is pretty high here. Erdtree on the other hand, has bosses. Some are really good, some are kinda tedious. But what's missing is the story. Every other fromsoft dlc has a very clear story and mood that builds off the themes of the base game. Erdtree's story is kind of a mess. You find and fight a character who is doing something that should be very important to the main game but ultimately none of it matters because its optional dlc so finding and killing this character is given no real narrative weight. Other dlc's got around this optional dlc problem by setting them backward in time, or forward, or a different place altogether, or in hell. What you did in them mattered to the characters in the dlc, but didn't affect the main game because plot-wise they were apart from the main game. This dlc is technically set in a parallel world but really all that means is you go to places that didn't exist in the main game but are supposed to be part of the world of the main game. And these places are also kind of disappointing. You mainly go through two more castles and some fields. Nothing as evocative as the fishing village in Bloodborne, nothing as intricate and historied as the ringed city in Ds3. The only place I was excited to explore was dragon's peak, which is pretty awe-inspiring, but ultimately amounts to just a fraction of this very long dlc. I can't imagine replaying any other fromsoft game without its dlc, but with Erdtree it might actually be skippable. There's nothing here that you can't get enough of of in base elden ring. Wish I could give it a maybe instead of a yes or no react. Giving it a yes because many people will no doubt like it for what it is.

This DLC is amazing. It's absolutely gorgeous; From's art direction continues to be top tier. It's gigantic, an entire game unto itself. You can easily spend 40 hours here. The overworld map design is some of their best, winding into, under, and around itself in a way that makes the whole thing a rewarding puzzle to solve. The legacy dungeons are jaw-dropping in their scale. It has some of the hardest, most memorable, and best bosses FromSoft has ever made (with the final boss arguably being the hardest they've created thus far). However, be warned, the DLC is MUCH more difficult to overpower with sheer level, owing to the Scadu Blessing system. If you come into this content expecting to trounce it with your grinded-out character from the base game, you will doubtless be disappointed or frustrated. Approach it on its terms by seeking out Scadu Fragments to bolster your damage output/damage negation, expect to be challenged, and you will have a much better time overall.

It is more elden ring, with more weapons and great boss fights. Can't ask for more.

Dlc is just like the base game, but with more content.

More Elden Ring. Better catacombs, worse field bosses. One excellent legacy dungeon, one mediocre one, and a few that are a bit short but good. Like 4 excellent new bosses, 5 or so good, and a few bad. World is beautiful, and exploration is engaging.

SOTE is my favorite DLC expansion ever made outside of Shadowbringers, Phantom Liberty and Echoes of the Eye, and I'm not sure why it's still getting Mixed "reviews" after it's been patched to oblivion. It arguably does its world design better than the base game (close to DS1's quality), the OST is outstanding, and the boss designs are exceptional. My only gripe if anything is that the performance still hasn't been patched, and the DLC area is the only place I'm experiencing more frequent frame drops. I'm running this on a 4060 Laptop for reference and the base game runs it flawlessly, even with low-medium RT turned on.

A really good expansion for Elden Ring. Devs said the map was the size of Limgrave but it more than makes up to it by having so much vertical areas. Also gives holy weapons a chance to shine (literally).

For people first experiencing the fast world of Fromsoftware, i advise that you do not take notice of the harsh rating. This rating is usually because the game is extremely difficult and not for the feint heart. This dlc is nothing short of a masterpiece for those who love these types of games. Its like the original game but the challenge is exponential but rewarding at the same time. Its atmospheric, the mechanics are sublime and the boss fights are most importantly epic.

This is a very fun DLC. There's a lot of exploration and half the time I just ended up finding random holes in the ground that led to some big secret area. I love finding areas rather than just having them pointed to me on a map; it's so much more rewarding and exciting. Making the exploration more vertical was a nice choice as well. There are so many new weapons, spells, and armor sets to use that I'm sad you have to come to the DLC to get. Most of the bosses were well designed and a lot of fun. The shadowlands honestly have some of the most beautiful areas in the whole game. There's this one meadow that just has bright blue flowers everywhere, and at night, the whole area just lights up. Very good smoke spot to chill at. The only major issue I had with this game is that some of the bosses are just walking nukes. The final boss for example has what feels like a 20 piece spicy combo attack that lets you get 1 poke hit in per "turn". It made it less enjoyable than it should have been cause it was actually a very fun fight when you aren't either running away or rolling every .5 secs. Imo, Gael from DS3 was the perfect final boss for a souls game. Difficult but still fair considering he was also unleashing attacks constantly, but you still had time to actually attack. I'm not sure why they tuned the DLC bosses to be like this other than one-upping their former games in difficulty. Even Malenia gave you chances to combo after a dodge. Overall, it's still an amazing expansion. Would I say pay $40 for it.....maybe. If you really loved the base game and just need more, then it's a 100% buy. I did a thorough playthrough and it took me around 28 hours to do everything. 8/10.

Essentially more Elden Ring. New map, dungeons, enemies, bosses, and gear to find and collect. If you already enjoyed the base game and wanted more, Shadow of the Erdtree will probably satisfy that need. I do have a few nitpicks about the DLC though... The performance in the new area generally seems worse than the base game, and I often found my Steam Deck struggling to stay above 30 FPS. The game would often dynamically downscale the resolution into a blurry mess to compensate, which never happened in the base game areas. I had to resort to playing exclusively on my main PC partway through, to deal with the poor performance. Navigating the new map also seemed a little confusing, requiring you to go through some unorthodox paths to reach certain areas of the map. Finding the last map fragment for the upper left part of the map required me to look up a guide, as it requires you to navigate through a cave that is easily missable. The difficulty of the new enemies and bosses can also be really brutal. They often have very lengthy attack combos that they cannot be staggered out of, leaving little opportunity to counter-attack until they finish their attacks completely. Some of the bosses also have attacks that are almost impossible to avoid, particularly the final boss. Ultimately this didn't end up being a huge issue, since the game offers so many different tools to approach each fight with. (Even if the final boss did end up taking nearly 3 hours to beat...) Regardless, I still found myself enjoying the DLC from start to finish. Even after finishing all of the base game, I still wanted more to explore, enemies to fight and things to loot, and the DLC delivers on just that.

I enjoyed the dlc the only issue is their is the final boss is unfair I will never go through that boss again. What a nightmare

Elden ring but better. Absolutely loved this DLC. There were some moments I didnt enjoy. But I cant name a single souls game with an aera I didnt hat. Also Mesmer is my all time favorite boss now.

The bosses feel like they were designed by 2 different teams because i can't think of any other reason for why there is such a massive gap between them with one half being arguably the best bosses in the game (Messmer, Midra, Promised Consort, Bayle), and the other half being complete ASS (Gaius, Scadutree Avatar, Golden Hippo) with basically 0 in between. The exploration is really good if you only follow the path to the final boss and don't wander into the cerulean coast or the abyssal woods, but even then it starts lacking by the end in the ruins of Ruah. Even then, i'm still recommending it purely because of Messmer, the absolute peak of Elden Ring boss design, i get giddy whenever i'm replaying and I get to fight him again.

[h2]Fantastic but slightly flawed DLC for Elden Ring.[/h2] Calling it a DLC doesn't quite do it justice--Shadows of the Erdtree rivals a lot of fully fledged AAA games in both content and size (Took me around 20-25 hours to just do the main stuff, and will take me around 30 hours to do everything else). If you enjoyed Elden Ring then there is literally no reason for you to not get this DLC, its definitely worth the price. [h3]What you're getting:[/h3] [list][*]More stunning environments to explore--The art and visuals are just as ambitious as the base game[*]A step up in combat difficulty--A lot of enemies are lethal and a really fun challenge but still surmountable[*]More of that immersive atmosphere that Elden Ring did so well--you can spend hours and hours getting lost in it[*]Some Incredible and memorable bosses--A mixed bag. Some are crap and some are amazing, just like in the base game.[/list] [h3]The criticism this DLC gets has been [i][b]vastly[/b][/i] blown out of proportion but there are a couple things that dampened the experience:[/h3] [list][*]The leveling system--Your base game stats are cut down until you regain them bit by bit by finding 'Scadutree Fragments'. This is a great system in theory but a lot of the fragments are unnecessarily hard to find. It's almost a certainty that you won't find quite a few of them unless your're looking at a guide. This is always in the back of your mind, "Is this boss just ridiculously hard, or have I missed some fragments somewhere?". With a map this large, they really should have been handed to the player on the key main story path.[*]Some bosses/enemies are just hard for the sake of being hard--You can tell me to get good or whatever but artificial difficulty has a certain feeling to it and it cropped up a lot in this DLC (despite there being a lot of really good fights too)[*]There is no reason whatsoever that you should be rewarded for exploration with a Smithing Stone 1 [/list] Lets be real--Elden Ring did what Elden Ring did and no game has done so since. If you want a similar experience to your first playthrough then this is your answer

Great visuals and world design. A few bosses have mediocre game play, but most are very good.

This DLC is so beautiful and so fun to explore. Amazing addition to amazing game.

Take this as a fair warning: This DLC is tough as nails every enemy + boss in this DLC hits you like a truck I'm sure it's like 85% of the enemies are capable of doing that but unless you leveled that vigor high enough you can withstand at least a few more hits like 3,4 or possibly 5. Very unforgiving if you ask me. The difficulty can be batshit insane forcing you to give em hell and everything you got. Majority of the bosses are crazy with their attacks mfs be doing Devil May Cry combos on you it feels like! Besides the gameplay of this DLC the scenery on this DLC is so fucking awesome to look at it's extremely immersive and there are a lot of places you can just enjoy the views on here before you get yourself into a hell of a fight. Other than that the $40 I spent on this DLC was very much worth it! At first I thought it was insane for the price tag given but damn at least it's not $70 AI slop like *cough* Black Ops 6 lol common Activision L :) Now you should thank me that I did not end up leaving a negative review on this DLC complaining that I have a skill issue and instead my arse got good and didn't sleep on my full arsenal when I had a skill issue in certain points of this DLC ;)

There were many expectations of what this expansion's lore, story, and gameplay would be like leading up to release. Over two years of waiting left many with theories and desires that were unshakable and they left their first playthrough of the DLC with many of those things being unfulfilled. I could spend hours talking about my own personal feelings of this expansion - both the disappointments and gripes, and the things I love. But there were so many incredible moments during my first playthrough of Shadow of the Erdtree I would never have experienced if I had based my decision to buy it on just the (initially) mixed reviews. So many incredible boss fights, character questlines, and lore revelations I would have missed out on. I explored every inch of the map. I spent somewhere around 50-60 hours fighting enemies, admiring the world and dungeon design, dissecting item descriptions, and felling bosses. I paid less than $1 USD for every hour I spent on that first playthrough, and now that per hour cost is even lower with how many subsequent journeys I've taken in the Land of Shadow. Your experience and final opinion will likely be very different to mine. But you won't know what it is until you have actually played. If you loved or even somewhat liked Elden Ring, you'll likely find something special in the Realm of Shadow waiting for you. So make the purchase, touch the withered arm, and enjoy your time. You only get that first playthrough experience once...

Quite a late review but i absolutely loved this DLC. It has plenty of content with many new weapons and weapon types. The bosses are a mix of amazing spectacle and difficult move sets that feel very rewarding to adapt to and overcome. If you enjoy the lore the DLC answers quite a few questions that we had from the base game but also raises some new ones. The soundtracks for the boss fights are outstanding and some of Fromsoft's best work in that department especially the final bosses. The only complaint i have is some of the bosses have so many effects on screen that the frame-rates often drop quite a bit. It may be better now compared to release but that was the only complaint i personally have with it. Highly recommend if you enjoyed Elden ring.

SOTE improves upon almost every aspect of the base game that I found frustrating. The DLC offers a lengthy expansion to the gameplay and story with new legacy dungeons and map areas that (with some exceptions), make the experience feel less repetitive and more exiting. There are far fewer copy/paste tombs and catacombs, and locations are generally much more diverse. The new weapons and ashes create fun play-styles that I wish were included at launch (i.e., light greatswords, backhand blades, throwing weapons, etc...) Others have complained that the difficulty is too hard, and to an extent I do agree, however, I blame this on how difficult it is to find every DLC exclusive leveling items without help. Most bosses are tolerable with enough levels and scadu fragments, although I still believe the input reading of several bosses is still excessive, especially with Rellana.

forgot to write a review for it but yeah this is just more elden ring. Obviously amazing! The bosses themes go really hard in this dlc. (I stole this from my friend because I'm too lazy to come up with something original) BUY IT, IT'S MORE ELDEN RING!!!!!!!

I'm glad I could play more Elden Ring, but the DLC is difficult to recommend. I just finished it and feel happy. But the world design in large parts is really boring. There's big stretches of land where all you can do is walk through. There's nothing else. It's a stark contrast to the base game where you kind of have to look at every little tiny corner to not miss anything. The DLC rather punishes you for exploring by having you backtrack from many many boring dead ends with nothing to discover while running into them.

i am the shadow of erdtree the bosses are so hard i dont want to play it again but the visuals and designs are a lot more interesting than base elden ring so it has that going for it looking back on this dlc almost a year later and these bosses feel like they would fit well in nightreign and not elden ring buy this dlc if you want to play more elden ring and have a good time

Absolute peak, bayle is the best dragon boss fromsoft has ever made and messmer and midra are my all time favorite Elden ring bosses. The balancing can be a little weird with the scadutree blessings and revered spirit ashes, but if you take the dlc at a reasonable pace it’ll be your favorite part of Elden ring with some really fun challenges to overcome,

Sometimes the boss combo goes long and hard and you fall asleep while waiting for an opportunity to attack. Sometimes the boss too fat or has too many effects so you can't see jack ♥♥♥♥, might as well play with a blindfold on, would make no difference. Overall great experience makes me wanna punch my screen 10/10 soulslike game

As a person who has done multiple playthroughs of base game, i thoroughly enjoyed this dlc. This dlc builds up much on the lore it sheds light on many things from the base game. The exploration like base game is rewarding here and there are also side quests for npcs. One expect that is different is how tough the enemies are. Even an overpowered build in the base game can get their shit wrecked in dlc. Players are encouraged to find fragments called Scadutree Fragments that boost their offence and defense. As such exploration is crucial to have somewhat of an easier time. The bosses are phenomenal, but their combos can be exhausting. The map design and the areas in the game are fantastic with many hidden places. There are lot of new weapons with cool movesets, different spells and incantations, armor sets etc. I feel the money I paid was absolutely worth it. Looking forward to their next game.

stop being an elitist and just enjoy the game with all the mechanics provided for you :)

Got to Hippo. Do better next time. I'm not having fun. First Gaol Knight also is bs, I can't summon there. P.S.: changing from downvote to upvote ... cause ye ... better if this thing exists

This DLC was created by the devil himself, I hated playing through this entire thing. Truly a nightmare I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. The map is abysmal and I am constantly getting lost and the bosses are actually the hardest and most painful experiences I have ever put myself through. 10/10 would do it again.

This dlc is absolutely peak gaming imo. It has almost the same amount of content as an entire sequel, including some of the best bosses in any souls game (messmer, bayle, rellana). Only consort of Radahn i'd agree has some pretty unfair mechanics, which are during the 2nd phase and limit you to either getting some rng luck for dodge spacing depending on the moves he does or cheesing him by using a shield to just ignore the mechanics almost entirely. That said i've still managed to beat him on multiple ng's without any cheese tactics (though admittedly not without getting insanely frustrated each attempt). But other than this boss, almost everything else about this DLC is incredible. I really don't get people complaining about unfair difficulty overall as I don't think the remainder is any more difficult than the last several bosses in the base game.

Trash, base game better...triple health bars and dmg doesnt make it good....C- DLC

insanely well made dlc lots of fun and hard bosses i did struggle on the last boss a bit but it was still pretty fun you should buy it it's worth every penny

If you haven't played this yet, do not buy the new game. This is the equivalent of a steak dinner where as Night Reign is a bucket of popcorn.

The bosses are great, the dungeons are fun, overall I mostly like the content ... however, the world exploration is honestly really terrible compared to the original game. There is too much vertical traversing, half of the time spent "playing" is just riding around looking up or down cliff edges to try and find the path. It's a world that doesn't make any sense, and ends up just feeling very tedious with an open world / exploration fun factor of literally 0. I'm glad that I played the base content first, if SotE was my first Elden Ring experience I wouldn't have played it. Fortunately the terrible travel and world layout is made up for with really fun boss fights.

We've consulted the guy under the waterfall and it was proposed that this was fire