Elden Ring’s DLC has arrived and the dust it brought is causing players to feel a little out of sorts when trying to cipher its quality.
For a while now, the gaming community has known that the DLC was aimed to be an entirely separate experience from the main game: An “extension” that players should access after getting to the end game of Elden Ring.
Naturally, this meant that the DLC was going to be extremely difficult. After all, why put content in the end-game if it’s easier than content in the mid-game? But players are feeling the sting of the difficulty to a degree that transcends anything FromSoftware has put out in their history of game development.
One Steam user writes:
“Okay, I seriously get it. You can do flashy bosses with neverending combos. But there’s no art or virtue to it. You completely have forgotten the simplistic beauty of your games FromSoft. Shame.”
Another says:
“If I had to summarize this DLC in one word, it would be Underwhelming.”
These opinions extend into the realm of the actual gameplay. The content itself, according to these users, is lackluster or altogether removed from what makes FromSoftware games worth playing.
The negative reviews can be deceiving, though. Upon closer inspection, users might find reviews that are actually positive if not for obvious caveats:
“Don’t listen to everyone complaining about difficulty, just level up vigor and you’ll be fine.
The performance, however…”
Another writes:
“Don’t recommend until performance will be fixed.”
Shadow of the Erdtree has been well received by many, despite the punitive learning curve, due to performance issues. Many players will remember that Elden Ring had performance issues at launch that were since ironed out.
Well, SoTE seems to have reintroduced those performance issues and more, with frame rates dropping significantly or stuttering, even in the base game.
Whether or not the content of the Elden Ring DLC will appeal to you is a matter of taste, but if you’re looking for a clean experience, it’s probably best to wait until FromSoftware has cleaned up the performance issues before diving head-first into trial-and-error-land.