Shadow of the Erdtree: Difficulty Strikes A New Audience

difficulty? more like get me some cold tea, this expansion is refreshing
0:00 Introduction (SPOILERS THROUGHOUT)
1:44 Difficulty in Four Parts
3:24 Expectations
5:07 Fairness
8:45 Outside Knowledge
10:19 Time Spent
11:38 Assessing Shadow of the Erdtree
13:33 Video is over! Just some final thoughts
14:52 MY FAVORITE LITTLE GUY
15:17 The Shinobu Chronicles
If you want to support me before I have more to offer: ko-fi.com/valentine_estate

[@penitentdoot8132]

A bunch of people are just forgetting that the game is supposed to be hard

[@realNoMee]

Compare the final boss of the DLC to literally any FromSoft boss. Visually, mechanically, everything. It's like an entirely different genre. Compare the player character of Elden Ring to any other "Souls" main character. Very little difference. The two games that have drastic differences, are standalone in their changes and did not carry into following games. Their boss design been taking a very clear step in a specific, different, direction while the player has had very few changes. These are objective observations. Observations that have literally been commented on by Miyazaki himself who agreed that changes to how the games play need to be made in the future. Just because something is _physically_ beatable by _some means_ , does not mean it is well designed or appropriate.

[@victoria_valentine]

I keep hearing so much about this final boss that I can’t wait to see what my own experience is. I think I included it in the video but I kept the door open that there may be some bullshit down the road

[@armandaneshjoo]

The low steam rating is not about difficulty. Chinese players hate Easy Anti-Cheat.

[@brubels7905]

For now everyone is struggling give it a few weeks and the 1 shot every dlc boss video's will drop😂

[@victoria_valentine]

Let Me Solo Him is already becoming a thing, ABSOLUTELY this is coming.

[@brubels7905]

@@victoria_valentine exactly atoroias, fume knight ,midir frieda melania they all felt impossible until some dude figured they aint shiiii

[@glb1993]

I use the spirit summons because miyazaki himself used them and said to use them in the game. I think the big man of souls knows a bit or two about his games lol.

[@garethcf1016]

The dlc is honestly great. Just use everything u have at ur disposal, explore to level up ur scadutree and ash stuff, if u want, play with some friends, and you'll have plenty of fun, the bosses honestly arent even that hard considering all the tools at your disposal

[@0FOCUSS]

i think the baseline difficulty has moved up for sure. small generic soldiers have more moves, do more damage, harder to avoid, etc. but all in all, its still absolutely in range for what i would expect from a late- to end-game dlc. im having a lot of fun with it so far, even though its MUCH more intense, but thats partly what i really like about it. great video!

[@victoria_valentine]

I just got to the end of Shadow Keep, and I’ll admit that I’m only now truly feeling a JUMP in difficulty compared to base game. Even with summons that punk is HARD. Very engaging though

[@liamkennedy2278]

It also split me in two my upper body and my lower body

[@victoria_valentine]

FromSoft sends their regards

[@jasperfox6821]

Now I'm hyped to play this dlc. Base game was easy once you know what to do, a fair challenge, but I'm a souls veteran, og demon souls, dark souls, dark souls 3, this dlc seems to be a challenge worthy of my skill 😊

[@victoria_valentine]

I think the DLC properly sits you back down as a player vs like a Ringed City where, if you got a build that crushes, it will be hard to feel real stakes. This is NOT like that. Plus in my view, the exploration is so much more fun because it’s more compact than base game. Excited to revisit the DLC in future runs or whenever Reforged updates to include it

[@skeleton599]

malenia is the only actual boss that feels like a challenge to me

[@Pomho1812]

Just a heads up for anyone who has a known history of epileptic seizures , turn your brightness down a bit for the final boss

[@Zomgbtd]

I mean its almost agreed at this point elden ring (base game) is the easiest soul... Miyazaki just decided it would make the dlc the hardest one, to compensate. (Because lets be real, all the bosses have at least a oneshot if you dont get scadutree fragments) But apart from that, the only boss i consider unfair is radhan, because it reaches a point were you fight him over and over and over and when you finally defeat you dont feel the "get gud expirience" you dont feel an improvement, i just felt like i had luck and spammed enough shit.

[@victoria_valentine]

I haven’t finished the DLC to experience this yet but I am not surprised FromSoft got one bullshit battle in there haha

[@Losttank09]

I find it odd people say elden ring is the easiest souls. In my opinion it is the hardest, with the caveat that it's the easiest to make easy. Player power scales a lot faster and quicker than in other games, then you add in all the powerful ashes of war or auxiliary effects like bleed/frost and yeah it becomes the easiest souls game. Also something I don't see brought up a lot, if at all, is about the fairness of enemy attacks. By that I mean are the attacks intuitive to learn how to dodge. Example of this is waterfowl, sure there are ways to dodge it, but they aren't really that intuitive. Personally I didn't have a problem with the DLC's damage or health of enemies, but some of the attacks are pretty hard to figure out what you did wrong. The last boss had an un dogeable attack but there's not a lot of feedback that it isn't. Also all the screen clutter that a lot of the DLC bosses have gotten.. is honestly just a bit to much, makes it frustrating when you can't see the boss attacking.

[@Zomgbtd]

@@Losttank09 yeah i mean the base game is the easiest due to the options you have, but if you play it "normally" ( i mean go boss from boss directly and without getting things just exploring main areas) i consider it harder than DS1 and DS2 and probably harder than sekiro too

[@Zomgbtd]

responding to anyone that is strugling against bayle, you can cheese him with assasin tactic and posion cloud

[@pushman2172]

well i mean of course they do insane damage without scadutree fragments they are the dlcs type of leveling, if you dont level in that way its like playing a rl1 run or something of similar nature. some also dont like that a lot of them you need to find in somewhat random places in the overworld but i mean its an open world game so i think its perfectly fine

[@lukaerd6258]

who the fuck uses comet azur in the DLC? i have to find this gigachad of a caster.

[@Lyonatan]

Elden Ring players learned what Fromsoft is known for aside from storytelling.

[@victoria_valentine]

That really is a contributing factor--the amount of people who solely played Elden Ring and hadn't played prior FromSoft games? They've got a lot to tackle. If you've played past FromSoft games? You know this is in line with expectations or higher.

[@bubbajoe117]

The difficulty deserves to be called into question but on the hierarchy of it all it’s the last thing that needs to be acknowledged or addressed, my BIGGEST complaint and question is why after 2 and a half years and a 40$ plus entry fee are we still being treated to so many of the same enemies and bosses of the base game, with the same ulcerated tree spirits, wyverns, dragons, rune bears etc that we’ve been fighting since our first romp through LIMGRAVE making up a sizable portion of the DLC’s content, between that and the performance issues those are the two things everyone needs to be complaining about, not the difficulty. Though I can understand the complaints there as well, the bosses and DLC unique enemies make sense but it’s actually rather immersion breaking that the same hollow foot soldiers and animal monsters of the base game can now two/three shot a character who’s killed and absorbed the power of Legends, Demi-Gods and even gods themselves depending on if this DLC is supposed to take place after the fact. It’s all just a mess and it feels like Fromsofts design philosophies are starting to come apart at the seams due to Elden Rings own weight.

[@victoria_valentine]

Obviously I'm not FromSoft but I'd say, to answer your biggest complaint IS that they wanted to prioritize other elements. I think Open World design is a VERY difficult thing to get right (may even make a video about that) and that was the core of Elden Ring. I think new enemies were on the list but very LOW on that list. Because yknow, they exist but I'd agree that there isn't a huge variety. Even in base game, I think one of the forms of repetition that really underwhelmed me was the caves/catacombs for the most part but in the DLC I've loved every cave I've been in. I'm sure there are a few duds but I've not had any issue there. VALID criticism btw, I guess to me, I just saw the team probably wanting not to focus on that. I think if we had a DS4, BB2, or otherwise that's more fixed and limited in world design, that they would probably have more focus on making smaller areas be really punched up.

[@stevemichael652]

Shadow of the Erdtree is definitely “too hard” by FSWs own standards. It shouldn’t take a large percentage of the player base days at a time to beat a boss. It simply shouldn’t. It’s not like it’s just a few people who really struggled and couldn’t “git gud”, it’s happening to almost everyone. If you have no issue with this, you’re either not a real souls fan or you’re missing the point. If I have to use ash summons or broken meta builds to swing the odds back to center , I’m severing myself from the studio. The reason why these games were so successful and special, is because of the vision of FSW in that they want everyone to overcome challenges. Using summons or the meta, trivializes the game and makes it easy, so it contradicts that vision. And now, going solo contradicts that vision also because no one is going to want to spend days at a time fighting a single boss. FSW has lost their way

[@kao123456654]

The expansion, just like base Elden Ring is good, but with very glaring flaws. I find the issue is that you cannot point out and discuss these flaws because of how cultlike and obsessive the Fromsoft fanbase is.

[@victoria_valentine]

And I think that's an entirely valid take! That's why I made sure to try to explain why my opinion is the way it is to hopefully convey that I'm not just shouting, "GET GOOD ASSHOLE"

[@ballzsack1640]

Issue is that all souls games are VERY flawed. But the fandoms clash because they just don't like eachother s succes for some reason. You say something about elden ring, you're either bad or s ds3, fanboy, you say something bad about ds 3 you only played elden ring and used spirit summons and so on

[@armandaneshjoo]

The low steam rating is not about difficulty. Chinese players hate Easy Anti-Cheat.

[@shadowlycan3970]

I chose not to buy it, while I enjoyed ER the more I played it the more nonsense I saw. Its probably due to the game being balanced with spirit ashes in mind and whats essentially a arms race between the player and the game. As for the bosses in base ER i'll just state my thoughts on the most notorious boss in terms of artifical difficulty. The optional endgame boss malenia. Two (technically three) issues that make me hate her. Health recovery, can be demoralizing. Waterfowl dance, can go off at any moment and has almost no punishment. Same for the clone attack. Im fine with the on thier own but togther they work to make the fight far longer than it has any right to as it forces you to keep your distance and master dodges rather than having a shield to aid beyond the dance. It doesnt help her "normal" attacks are easy and boring. I knew the dlc bosses were going to be more nonsensical than her and chose to pass on it. Also the fragment hunting wouldve pissed me off, I am not a fan of fetch quests.

[@victoria_valentine]

Yes a conversation about BASE difficulty is something I’m a lot more willing to engage with. Malenia is one of my biggest issues too, fortunately compared to DLC difficulty it’s not even comparable anymore. Perfectly put, “I chose not to buy the DLC because it’s more of the nonsense I already saw.” And hey, sometimes that’s why DLC can be divisive. But I guess as a separate comment, the fragment collection is more collectathon than fetch quests. The way it’s structured is more a reward for exploration than a static meaningless task. And with them rebalancing it in a recent patch, it’ll REALLY affect your experience. I think it’s a fun little experiment, comparable to the upgradable unlocks you can get to Andre in DS1. It only opens up better opportunities/isn’t so bad to find.

[@shadowlycan3970]

@@victoria_valentine I can see what you mean, I suppose I had a knee jerk reaction to it. I have seen a complaint where there is an exact amount of fragments to find instead of having a surplus like golden seeds and sacred tears. ER was my first From game and I knew they had a reputation for being hard so I believed that my concerns where unfounded until I was on my 4th run (I prefer new character runs over ng) that I started seeing the cracks more and more. ER definitely made me a From fan though and got me to get AC6 day one. Love that game to death but it's got its issue like ER does. Recently got Blood Bourn very excited to play.

[@victoria_valentine]

@@shadowlycan3970 oooooh you’ll love it! Have a blast with it!

[@Royal_Assassins]

Maybe it's just me but personally I think the design of some of these bosses are just stupid. A boss with three phases, multiple bosses that never stop moving and are so tall my camera can't stay on track, incredibly long combos that have very wide hit range, some bosses have terrible hitboxes, every boss is super aggressiveand never stops attacking, ect. I just think personally the bosses aren't too hard, I just think they were poorly designed(not all). There hasn't been a boss I finally defeated and I thought "omg I finally did it, I'm proud of myself and I wanna do that again." Instead ny forst thought is "wow I finally did it, now I won't have to ever do that again. Why did I play this at all?" It just doesn't feel satisfying to me.

[@victoria_valentine]

Will admit, kind of agree. Just finished the Shadow Keep and the final boss there (and it could be because I'm in NG+2) annnnnd I'm glad some people love it, personally I'm just glad I could move on. I think I'll have more fun joining others in fighting the boss than needing to clear it myself.

[@ballzsack1640]

Midra Romina Gaius(When hit hitboxes get patched) Dancing Lion Beast Scadutree Avatar Mythra Messmer They all have really punishable moves. You can punish messmer 3 times with a greatsword during some of his combos, and any time he throws his spear or makes it disappear and reappear you can hit him twice. The only boss who was cancer to punish was Radahn, but the others were actually pretty easy, but you have to punish in between combos, not like dark souls

[@ixiahj]

Only took a week but people are already no hit running the bosses. People forgot to use mechanics like parrying, stance breaking, s from AoWs like Vow of Indominable or that perfume bottle that nulifies 1 hit of damage you take. Can't go in there and just bonk things ignoring many of those mechanics and call it hard.

[@JimboCruntz]

I agree with most points but Gaius is broken. That starting charge cannot be working as intended. I understand some things being more difficult and Messmer is one of my favourite fights but Gaius is broken. The charge is definitely glitched and also has input reading tracking that CAN one shot you (part of the reason I think it may be broken). Sometimes he randomly gets 2 ticks of damage on hits that are usually single and his hit boxes don't seem to match what's happening. I seriously think we'll see a patch to him. The initial charge cannot be working as intended, you barely have chance to get on to Torrent he starts that early.

[@floginfoo]

Gaius is totally fine other than that single charge move, i tested him out with +20 fragments bullgoat set, shield talisman, golden order and boiled crab and the charge 3/10 would one shot me as it would tick many times mid roll. 5/10 times it would tick twice and do half my health and 2/10 it would tick once and do normal damage. his fight is perfectly fine other than that one jank ass move

[@victoria_valentine]

That sounds like a ‘release version Radahn’ sort of fix that I’m sure will come after a week or two.

[@imnotcreat1ve588]

I found Gaius annoying at first, especially the dash move. Dashing towards it to the side of it seemed to lessen the chance of being hit. Eventually once i beat it, i found that i actually enjoyed the boss.

[@PS_Artorias]

I beat the entire dlc in 18 hours, I'm just better

[@victoria_valentine]

Props where props is due, I'm getting my ass beat sometimes lmao

[@PS_Artorias]

@@victoria_valentine what do you play on

[@victoria_valentine]

PC!

[@PS_Artorias]

@@victoria_valentine same, lemme know if you need any help

[@Banbro88]

It did a bunch of things wrong. Difficulty is not one of them.

[@whattmang]

Its biggest issue is that it wasn't longer :(

[@Banbro88]

@whattmang .. I think the lack of personality with the bosses, the fact that after 2 years were still facing some of the same enemies from the base game, performance and optimization issues and the lore being a mess will probably need to be addressed more than it being " longer "

[@victoria_valentine]

Deeply valid take. The title more pulls from a specific joke expression, by zero means do I think it was flawless lol Or else I’d have made THAT video, just praising every element

[@whattmang]

@@Banbro88 Not sure what you mean by "lack of personality" since its a subjective issue. What aspects do you find boring? More enemy variety would always be better. I definitely did run into performance issues due to playing on steam deck.

[@armandaneshjoo]

The low steam rating is not about difficulty. Chinese players hate Easy Anti-Cheat.