Recent reviews by HumanTurtlePede

Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree, the DLC that continues after our sweet prince Mohg, is a nightmare that doesn’t fix the issues and problems I have with base Elden Ring, and I’m honestly disappointed.

I will preface this by saying I explored, basically, the entire map, and killed every boss (but 1) without summons or ashes of war. The general difficulty isn't the problem, it's everything else.

*[x] represents death to the boss, to showcase even the bosses I enjoyed, I died to a lot getting rid of the potential people who think the enjoyable bosses are the ones people can breeze through)

• Completely new weapons with unique movesets.
  
• Completely new and fun to explore catacombs, each with their own gimmick.
  
• Beautifully designed areas.
  
• Five fun bosses: Messmer [72], Rellana [23], Midra [20], Bayle [23] and Gaius [25].
  
• Messmer being the star of the DLC and should be the standard. Each attack can be attacked and his combo's easily punishable. His combo potential (on you) also makes him extremely threatening.
  
• Midra having a limited move set but had many opportunities to attack. His 1st phase is also funny.
  
• Rellana and Bayle suffer from immediate death moves that you won't understand till you die several times. Besides this, they're both fair and fun to attack. Bayle is quite tanky and messy in his 2nd phase, but I enjoyed him after a few attempts.
  
• Gaius is the first boss, in the entire game, that I fought on a horse; and it was fun. It felt very unique and creative with openings. Only issue being some moves were inconsistent. His dash would occasionally catch up and endlessly damage you which was annoying. But when he worked he was fun.
  
  
• Fists - Seriously really fun. I never changed after getting this weapon.
  
• Scadutree fragments. A clever way to fix under and overleveling.

• Terrible Loot and Loot Distribution. (Abyssal forest and Dragon mountain in particular):
  
• Mainly cookbooks, upgrade materials, consumables and trash. Bells made the upgrade materials useless. Cookbook were completely useless to me (maybe others were hyped about getting the 50th cookbook). Consumables and trash and self-explanatory.
  
• Talisman's were either conditional or upgrades of base game (There were a few good ones, just scarce)
  
  Generic enemies:
  
• Got to have the classic 'Behind the corner' moment.
  
• Ganked by fire bombing guys was sick.
  
• Re-used base game enemies, and the worst types (Rot Kindred and Rune bears) with unimaginative placements.
  
• Furnace golems were cool, but useless. Their drops being used for pots to kill other golems was just a sad ouroboros.
  
  17 duplicate bosses:
  
• Senessax has the worst gimmick in any game. The lighting almost insta killing and being the same on a almost non-conductive surface is an oversight and a half. (This will stay a negative review even if everything but this guy is fixed)
  
• Dancing Lion [36] [23], another duplicated remembrance boss. Though even as a boss by himself his move set is RNG based and impossible to tell at times. [Ice and thunder form basically mean a run reset]
  
• Ghost flame dragons [0, 5, 2, 3], a new variant, duplicated 4 times. Basically just re-skinned base-game dragons, but faster. Drops terrible loot and some are placed with a bunch of enemies that take 0 damage.
  
• Tree sentinels duplicated twice. One of my favourite parts cause of how well balanced they are, but they're still duplicates.
  
• Fallingstar beast returns.
  
• Drakes [1] [4], duplicated twice, were just boring and unimaginative dragons. The 2nd one had a glorified cutscene to wait through before you could feasibly kill the other one.
  
  
• 12 generic enemies/NPC bosses: (TLDR: I didn't like NPC fights in any other game, what changes it now?)
  
• Several ghost-NPC bosses that have high aggression and poise, doubling my dislike for PVP in from games.
  
• Generic enemy bosses usually appeared well after their first introduction, making the boss boring and pointless.
  
• All NPC bosses also heal, which is cool.
  
  
• Other bosses:
  
• Golden Hippo stole the delayed attacks from Margit and made them worse. Most of his moves hit you without you realising.
  
• Putrid Knight [12] is a nothing burger. Only noticeable thing he had was a duplicating horse that caught me off guard.

• Frame rate: Game would drop to 20-30 on lowest graphics despite playing the entire game on max settings at 60. Made
  2nd phase unplayable.
  
• Unavoidable attacks :D. This is an Elden Ring classic. These moves are moves you cannot dodge the entire combo of, or dodge at all. Example being Melania's double slash which instantly jumps towards you and is impossible to dodge
  consistently, unless you're in the 0.1%. Radahn's version is his 1, 2, double slash, where you can't feasibly, consistently, dodge this. Meaning in some circumstances (like the 2nd phase) can easily be a run ender. Shields are an option, but I
  play soul-likes for freedom, and I'll stick by that.
  
• Flashbangs: 2nd Phase consists of flashbang moves that you can't comprehend for the first 20 attempts. When you make head or tail of it, it comes down to placement (sometimes difficult) and frame issues. I hope From reduces to lighting and fixes Miquella's glowing hair.
  
• Positive wise is the rest of his moves. Once you've identified openings in the 1st phase, they are replicated in the 2nd phase, basically reinforcing the idea that the flashbangs should be removed as it's just a ruse. However, his "3rd" phase move is another Bayle situation where you just guess how to dodge it on the first try and go on from there.
  
• His design . Honestly, when I first saw him, I was hyped. For once, no massive Radahn who delays his attacks for 40 seconds and breaks my camera. Very cool boss, even if he was basically a duplicate. [/list]
  
  
  TLDR:
  I recommend this game for any% players who skip content they don't like, as they won't see any of the issues I've stated (besides Radahn). However, I don't this to completionists or exploratory players. The world is empty, rewards are useless, and bosses mundance, boring and duplicated. While I presented good bosses, these are a small portion of the huge DLC. In which case, I wish the DLC was more condensed like previous installments, so the bad wouldn't affect my opinion on the good.