Shadow of the Erdtree is Mixed on Steam but not for the reason you think

Elden Ring‘s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC has almost 26,000 reviews on Steam at the time of writing. Most players report that the expansion is phenomenal, but it’s clearly not without flaws because its rating currently sits at Mixed on the digital marketplace. But it’s not all down to poor performance.

When it was initially released, some players reported errors and glitches when trying to play Shadow of the Erdtree. I can completely understand a user posting a negative review based on a game or DLC’s poor performance, but when it comes to this expansion, many players are publicly marking it down because of its world and boss design and their inability to cope with the system changes it makes.

You’d be surprised why Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree really has a Mixed rating on Steam

Reading negative reviews on Steam is always a minefield because you’ve got a fifty percent chance of reading either a serious critique or a terrible joke. With Shadow of the Erdtree‘s negative reviews, though, I’ve noticed a pattern of players complaining about two main points: the new leveling system and the new bosses.

Shadow of the Erdtree changes the way you level up in Elden Ring, but only in the new region, the Realm of Shadow. Instead of collecting Runes from every enemy you kill, you must now collect a specific item to level up your character and make them more powerful. User Quodavis went as far as to say, “The Scadutree leveling system is trash,” in their review. It means you can no longer grind to make your character powerful enough to steamroll the boss you’re currently stuck on.

The criticisms of the bosses vary a little, but almost every negative review for the DLC complains about them in some way. Some players like HeikkiMeister point to the boss fights being too grueling. “These bosses are probably a blast if you learn how to fight them, but I personally don’t consider learning their patterns to be fun. This kind of boss design is just not good, in my opinion, and plenty of other reviews express a similar opinion.”

The general consensus among these mixed reviews is that Shadow of the Erdtree‘s bosses all feel like their difficulty was cranked up to 11. Without learning their 10+ attack strings and enduring the battles, only taking potshots at the bosses every 5 minutes or so, they feel unfair.

Of course, not every negative review is about the gameplay. Some are specifically about the DLC’s performance, which must be incredibly frustrating for players with these issues. But the more you read into the negative reviews, the more it becomes apparent that most of them are gripes with the differences between Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree‘s progression systems.

A section from user Crimson’s review summarizes the heart of what most of these negative reviews are getting at. “The player combat in Elden Ring is not adequate for the enemies you face. It does not offer a compelling; skill based experience like Sekiro and Bloodborne did. You are being frustrated into trying to get damage in after watching the boss do a series of acrobatics for 15 seconds only to get slammed by a combo extension that is intentionally designed to catch you out when you get sick of waiting around. This is not fun! This is the main point I am making with this review, it’s not that it’s “too hard for me”, The INTENDED way to fight these bosses in this game IS NOT FUN!”

For some players, the new mechanics in Shadow of the Erdtree take away from the overall experience soulslike fans are after from their games. However, FromSoftware intentionally designed the DLC to be played this way. These negative reviews somewhat muddy the waters by making the DLC look more broken than it is when the real issue is that many players simply aren’t enjoying the changes forced upon the game they love.