Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC Review – IGN

Weapons of Choice

While I haven’t had any “holy ****” moments of awe like the first time I took the elevator down to the Siofra River, exploration and discovery throughout the Realm of Shadow is still a delight thanks to its stellar art design, a great variety in the areas you get to explore, and the tantalizing rewards pretty much everywhere you turn. There are eight brand-new weapon types, ranging from throwing knives to beast claws to giant odachi samurai swords. My favorite of the new arsenal, though, is the light greatsword, specifically the Milady. True to its name, the Milady has a very regal-looking moveset with combos that flow nicely into each other and hit hard, but are also relatively fast compared to actual greatswords. For me, it’s a sweet spot. I actually swapped off of my powerful dual Bandit Curved Sword bleed build (albeit, minus the White Mask, which I ruined my chance to get) to instead rock a Strength/Dexterity-focused build using one of these and found great success for the majority of the DLC.

I experimented with a couple of other weapons as well, something that is possible thanks to the ample opportunities to collect a bunch more Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones of both the standard and Somber varieties. However, in all my travels I found that while the new weapon types are fun – there’s certainly an appeal to going hand-to-hand against an army of hands – none of them ultimately measured up to the strength of the weapons that I carried over from the base game. It’s totally possible that there are some talismans I was missing to really make the new ones sing, but I was hoping to go through the entirety of Erdtree with a brand-new build. Instead, I found myself swapping back to my bread-and-butter bleed build to get the kind of damage I needed when the going got tough – but hey, that build did have two years to get optimized through the original endgame.

Besides, variety is the spice of life, and Erdtree is one hot dish. Not only are there a ton of new weapons, there are also plenty of new spells, Ashes of War, Spirit Ash summons, and talismans to cover an enormous range of different playstyles. There’s now a talisman that enhances two-handed attacks; one that decreases spellcasting time dramatically, but causes you to take increased damage; another that increases the damage of abilities that involve stances; and another still that increases your damage every time you defeat an enemy. Yes, there are also plenty that are just better versions of very useful talismans you probably already have, and there’s no shame in sticking to what works. There are so many promising new builds that I couldn’t help but wish Larval Tears were more plentiful so I could respec my character a little more freely, as I started to run out by the time I finished Erdtree’s campaign. I still have a ton of different builds I want to try, and I’m already happily onto my second playthrough to see them.

The Joy of Freedom

The journey through The Realm of Shadow is structured very similarly to The Lands Between, in that the map is split up into a number of different regions. Right from the get-go, you’re able to head anywhere you want to: you could follow the initial Miquella Cross to the first big “legacy dungeon,” called Belurat, and deal with the new horrific scorpion enemies; or head across a bridge to the east and work your way over to the magic filled Castle Ensis where you have to deal with this jerk (where you have go up against one of the most challenging bosses of the DLC right away), or find a way to bypass the need to go through either of those and get straight to the Scadu Altus, which largely serves as the central hub of the Realm of Shadow. Then you could head directly toward the Shadow Keep fighting your way to the top of it in order to take on one of the major bosses, or going through one of its other exits to explore otherwise inaccessible parts of the map. It’s a liberating sense of freedom, and the same masterclass level of open-world design as the base game, just on a scale that isn’t quite so vast.

Of course, whether or not you should make a mad dash towards the Shadow Keep is another question entirely. Even though this is endgame content and you probably won’t be leveling up quite as fast as you did in the original campaign, there’s a separate power-scaling system that only works while you’re within the Realm of Shadow. Scattered throughout the lands are Scadutree Fragments that you can collect and turn in at Sites of Grace to increase your overall damage and resistances. Likewise, you can also find Revered Spirit Ash blessings to increase the damage and survivability of your Spirit Ash Summons. These are two very smart inclusions as they add a much-needed sense of progression, a valuable reward for exploration, and something else to hunt for if you’re getting wrecked by a boss and need to come back when you’re stronger – all while cleverly preserving some of the original endgame’s balance if you’re bravely tackling this DLC before circling back to beat it.