Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree DLC: A Double-Edged Sword of Difficulty and Praise
While Shadow of the Erdtree has received critical acclaim, its Steam reception is decidedly mixed. Players are voicing concerns about difficulty and performance issues across PC and console platforms.
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Steam Reviews Reveal a Divided Playerbase
Despite pre-release Metacritic success, the Elden Ring DLC launched to a wave of negative player reviews on Steam (June 21st). While the challenging gameplay is lauded, many find the combat excessively strenuous, the difficulty unbalanced, and performance subpar.
Performance and Difficulty: Major Points of Contention
The expansion's intense battles are a major source of frustration. Many players describe encounters as significantly harder than the base game, with complaints about poorly designed enemy placement and excessively high boss health pools.
Performance problems are also widespread. PC users report frequent crashes, micro-stuttering, and frame rate limitations. Even high-end systems struggle to maintain 30 FPS in crowded areas. Similar frame rate drops during intense moments plague PlayStation console players.
Currently, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree holds a "Mixed" rating on Steam (36% negative reviews). Metacritic shows a more positive "Generally Favorable" rating of 8.3/10 (based on 570 user reviews), while Game8 gives it a 94/100. This disparity highlights the stark contrast between critical and player reception.
