I really like Shadow of the Erdtree. I like the varied, spectacular environments. I like how the dungeons are more convincingly integrated into the world design, the map as a whole is a puzzle to solve. I like the visual style, how the emergence into each area is framed like a Renaissance painting of an autumnal dreamscape after a battle.
But I have to admit that the Elden Ring DLC has a problem with progression. And that’s a problem that some inspiration from Nintendo could solve. After all, Elden Ring is just Breath of the Wild – Dark Souls, right?
I kid you not. Since its release, Shadow of the Erdtree’s discourse has focused primarily on difficulty. And that’s to be expected from a Souls game. But the perceived challenge is further amplified by the DLC’s new Shadow Realm Blessing progression system, which limits player choice in favor of a single mission.
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That’s a bit of a contrast to the Elden Ring experience, the beauty of which lies in the options it offers players. Struggling with a boss? Go explore elsewhere, find some new gear, or just grind for runes to boost your stats. It’s this built-in accessibility that has, in part, led to the game’s meteoric success.
But this is lost in Shadow of the Erdtree. At this late point in the game, it takes hundreds of thousands of runes to level up stats for even a minimal improvement. And since all scavenged gear must be returned to the base game, it rarely offers defensive improvements over what’s already been acquired. That’s not to say there aren’t options – I’m a big fan of the Dryleaf Arts kung fu moves for cathartically punching dragons in the face, for example – but they’re not statistically betterjust now differentShadow of the Erdtree is a playground for different types of gear, but it’s all too easy to get stuck on a boss based on numbers rather than skills.
FromSoftware’s dilemma, however, is that pitching difficulty levels is a seemingly impossible task. Some players, like me, will have opened the DLC with an endgame build, others will have conquered a fair few bosses or completed multiple levels of NG+. We’re not all on the same level, starting at the same point. How do you satisfy all these players and provide a reasonable amount of challenge?
In this case, the studio’s answer is Scadutree Blessings. In short, players find fragments scattered throughout the world that can be traded in for a boost to overall stats. This hunting for fragments provides a kind of meta-game focus beyond the story, but is also—unlike the base game—the only reasonable method of character development. The boosts provided are also minimal, meaning that progression in Shadow of the Erdtree is a slow burn where players are mostly unable to brute force through bosses without fully exploring the world.
Exploration is at the heart of Elden Ring , and discovery is often its own reward. Yet leveling up your Scadutree Blessing feels almost entirely necessary (for novice players, at least) to progress through the DLC, particularly the final boss. While I personally enjoyed that particular challenge (for a while), it quickly became apparent that I simply didn’t have a high enough Blessing level to stand a chance. And with no in-game help finding fragments, this ultimate challenge feels less like a test of skill and more like a random macguffin hunt. And that’s not very Elden Ring – it’s very Zelda.
Take, for example, the finale of Wind Waker, which requires you to collect the Triforce pieces before you can enter the final area. Or, in the recent open world Zeldas, how your chances of survival are vastly improved by discovering all the shrines. Shadow of the Erdtree’s fragments feel similar to me, but it’s a dull quest – one of aimless wandering with the vague hope of stumbling upon a precious item.
What I was really craving was Breath of the Wild’s Hero’s Path feature. I wanted to see where I’d been and draw a line across the Land of Shadow to spot the gaps. The Sheikah Slate’s radar system would also have come in handy, allowing me to zero in on fragments without having to rely on guides. Instead, hunting for fragments felt like hunting shrines through Hyrule blindfolded. Both Shadow of the Erdtree and Breath of the Wild offer a similar method of character development through exploration, but frustratingly, only one provides you with the tools necessary for discovery.
An alternative would be the Metroid treatment. I love how every Metroid game finds a new way to strip Samus of her abilities. We all know she gets morph ball and double jump eventually, but it wouldn’t be a Metroid game if we didn’t have to discover those for ourselves. Our Tarnisheds could have received a similar treatment in Shadow of the Erdtree . After all, this is an alternate realm entered via Miquella’s egg-shaped version of rebirth – couldn’t we have done that too? Leveling would be faster, scavenged gear would be useful again, and the difficulty could have been scaled more evenly.
It’s not like FromSoftware hasn’t been inspired by Nintendo before. I recently played Dark Souls Remastered , and its own DLC similarly transports players to an alternate realm where a princess is abducted by a dark force after talking mushrooms – that certainly sounds familiar. Elden Ring ‘s contrasting open fields and claustrophobic dungeons echoes Breath of the Wild , and Shadow of the Erdtree reminds me a bit of Skyward Sword in the way its dungeons sprawl out across the world. Perhaps Zelda’s breakable weapons are a step too far for Elden Ring – or are they? It would certainly encourage players to experiment with their builds more often – and not just to get through the final boss.
It’s as if the Zelda and Souls games have some kind of ongoing dialogue. Despite its grotesque edge, Souls is clearly rooted in Zelda, from its sword-and-shield combat to its holistic focus on exploration and discovery. Plenty of other action-adventure games have followed suit, though none have been quite as successful, arguably. Every element of Nintendo’s open-world Zelda games leads players back to that sense of exploration, and Elden Ring does the same. It’s just that in Shadow of the Erdtree, the need to twist the progression system has thrown the balance off, and the lack of exploration tools is the missing link (pun intended).
That’s partly why it feels like Shadow of the Erdtree would have worked best as a standalone game (though it certainly has me excited for whatever FromSoftware produces next). Instead, for all its improvements, it’s a typical Souls DLC: a creative, fairy-tale-like spin on a familiar world filled with even more insane bosses, but with an occasionally unbearable difficulty curve – and as a result one that struggles to integrate its more linear grind with the structure of the base game. At least in Elden Ring, there are summons to help you out – it’s dangerous to go it alone, after all.