Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

Like the base game did before it, Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree raises the bar for single-player DLC expansions. It takes everything that made the base game such a landmark RPG, condenses it into a relatively compact 20-25 hour campaign, and provides fantastic new challenges for heavily invested fans to chew on.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is my favorite expansion ever. Supplanting the twins of The Witcher 3: Blood & Wine, and Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, there is more to do here than most games twice over. Outside of an over-tuned final boss, I have zero major gripes and dozens of things I adore. It’s not easy, it’s not meant to be, but it is amazing.

With all that Shadow of the Erdtree offers to accompany what exists in the Lands Between, the story of Elden Ring now feels complete and its world whole, and it's a staggering achievement. It's dark fantasy done masterfully; rich in detail and intricate in its construction; a place that feels dangerous and cruel, filled with memorable characters, fascinating rules, mind-bending concepts, and competing ideologies.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is yet another masterpiece by FROMSOFTWARE. It doubles down on all of the best parts of Elden Ring and bolsters them through an inviting new world, an engaging story, and a ridiculously moreish gameplay loop. It won't change your mind on Elden Ring if it never clicked for you, but will undoubtedly wow you if it did.

From Software didn’t drop the ball and make Elden Ring worse, nor do I believe it wholly topped what it had achieved before. Shadow of the Erdtree maintains a sky-high status quo, even if it loses a little magic from being a known quantity this time instead of a complete surprise. Still, Shadow of the Erdtree is one hell of a mic drop that further cements this adventure as one of the finest ever crafted.

Despite its strange dispersion of "active" areas, and uncharacteristically infantilising hand-holding for encounters that should be learned through repeated failure, Shadow still has its share of Elden Ring's brilliance – weird little dudes and obscure secrets and goofy cheesing and all. But perhaps trying to combine the inherent focus of a largely self-contained DLC, with the narrative flexibility and open-world freedom of Elden Ring – the concept that set it apart from its Souls brethren – was always going to make for an incongruous match.

Shadow of the Erdree is an excellent expansion to Elden Ring. Even when I was frustrated trying to find the hidden paths toward new zones, I was still exploring and discovering completely new things instead — there is almost no wasted space, and the game never feels like it was wasting my time. It's the perfect ending for a nearly perfect game.

You’ll find myriad callbacks to past From games I won’t spoil here, but it’s clear that the team looked back at everything that brought them to this point, a Game of the Year winner more successful than any of their past work, eager to celebrate the journey. This is their linking the flame moment, a chance to be reborn and usher in a new age, capped off by what can only be described as their magnum opus.