The Real Reason Why Elden Ring's Reviews Are Plummeting
Fans have been waiting for an "Elden Ring" DLC since pretty much the first week the game was out. Now that "Shadow of the Erdtree" is here, players are finding new ways to die, over and over again. Initial reactions to FromSoftware's latest work were overwhelmingly positive. People were blown away by just how large the "Elden Ring" DLC is and how many new weapons and mechanics it adds to the game. Now, on Steam at least, the game's reviews have started to take a dive.
At the time of this writing, "Shadow of the Erdtree" has slipped to "mixed" reviews on Steam, and the DLC is starting to tear the game's fanbase apart. The negative reviews point to one obvious culprit: the difficulty. Plenty of gamers are charging into the Lands of Shadow and discovering that even though they've mastered the base game, the DLC is an entirely different beast. Not all the negative reviews are from people complaining that FromSoftware has made the game too hard, though. Many are actually about the game's performance, which is turning out to be less than ideal for a ton of PC gamers. The difficulty debate comes up every time FromSoftware releases a new game, but the performance issues are a legitimate problem that the studio will have to deal with.
What's wrong with the DLC's performance?
"Elden Ring" asks players to be incredibly precise with their movements while memorizing the intricate timing windows of enemies' lengthy attack combo. At its best, fighting a tough enemy in the game feels like a careful and deadly dance where one wrong move means death. This challenge has lent "Elden Ring" and other Soulsborne games so beloved, but that part of the game's appeal immediately evaporates when the FPS drops.
Unfortunately, framerate drops are turning out to be a frequent occurrence for a huge swath of PC gamers, among other problems. "First off, the DLC is amazing," writes one reviewer on Steam, "the only problem is that ever since this patch I haven't been able to run it without extremely low fps drops and audio glitches almost every second."
On top of that, players have pointed to several bosses having certain attacks that cause the performance to tank, but the final boss has definitely gotten the most callouts. "Really cool final boss, part of the moveset is lowering your FPS below 30 mid fight and also cast FPS stutters as an attack effect," quipped one reviewer. Another seconded that complaint, writing, "I don't understand how the base game runs at a consistent 60 the whole time and the final boss is putting my game to 20 frames during an attack???" The issues are wildly undercutting the DLC's finale and ruining the experience for some people. The problem is extra grating because we have no idea when it will be fixed.
Some still think the DLC is too hard
Most of the negative reviews for "Shadow of the Erdtree" mention the performance issues, but that's certainly not the only thing players are complaining about. The DLC is hard – arguably much harder than the base game was — and that's causing some players to lose their patience.
"Enemy and boss design are way over the top and I finally gave up at the last boss," wrote one player in a lengthy breakdown of why they didn't enjoy the DLC. Another reviewer wrote, "It's not actually balanced. The DLC stat upgrades don't make a difference when you get two shotted by everything that's ... spamming AOE attacks." The stat upgrades mentioned there are Scadutree Framents, obstensively the DLC's way of making the game easier. However, these upgrades aren't going far enough for some players.
Any longtime FromSoftware fan knows that these kinds of complaints come up every time there's a new title from the dev. There are definitely legitimate criticisms to make about the DLC's various bosses, but the odds are good that sometime in the future everyone will look back and laugh at the idea that "Shadow of the Erdtree" was finally the moment FromSoftware went too far.