By Critics have swooned for FromSoftware’s “Elden Ring” expansion pack ‘Shadow of the Erdtree’ with its 95/100 Metacritic score dubbing it the best dowloadable content (DLC) of all time.
However, player reviews have been notably more mixed than the critics so far. Though still positive overall, the title has managed only ‘Mixed’ reviews on Steam with around 14,000 of the 37,000 counted as negative.
Complaints appear to be a mix of game design, performance issues, and in almost every case – difficulty. FromSoftware games are famous for their difficulty, and even get a certain amout of leeway because of that, but as Forbes says: “Erdtree may have broken a significant amount of players, even longtime veterans.”
Game publisher Bandai Namco had blunt advice today for those complaints, saying on social media: “This is a suggestion to level up your Scadutree Blessing”. In fact, the game’s director Hidetaka Miyazaki is well aware of the difficulty, telling The Verge:
“Traditionally we’ve always liked the higher difficulty curve type of games and experiences, but I think that nature in and of itself alienates a good portion of the game playing audience… The amount of freedom that we give players helps offset that difficulty curve and makes the game more accessible and engaging.”
The comments seem more diplomatic than the ones he gave The Guardian the other week, saying basically frustration is a part of the game itself:
“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. Turning down difficulty would strip the game of that joy, which, in my eyes, would break the game itself.”
In other words, don’t play the game if you don’t have at least a little bit of a masochistic streak. On the more bug related front, there’s Steam Deck fans have discovered a glitch that makes the game impossible to play – making it unresponsive to any inputs.
That glitch occurs if you leave the game running but leave your Steam Deck inactive for more than five minutes. The game’s official X account says they’re aware and a hotfix is coming.
‘Shadow of the Erdtree’ is now available for purchase.
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