Shadow of the Erdtree! Probably one of my favorite DLC’s of all time. The bosses in Shadow of the Erdtree are my personal favorite – each boss battle feels like a cinematic masterpiece. Outside of some performance issues in the DLC, I think Shadow of the Erdtree is a standout in modern gaming.

NOTE: I’m going to talk about some of the lore, so if you don’t want spoilers or haven’t heard it yet, I’ll add some links at the end of this piece if you just want to scroll down and check it out :).

The Bosses

I’d argue that the best part of Elden Ring, in both the DLC and the base game, are the beautifully designed bosses. Almost every single boss felt like a movie. Plus, each and every boss corresponded to the game’s core narrative, and the artwork created an incredibly solid foundation to support the narrative, and just the entire vibe of the game. Us tarnished broke through the awe-inspiring Belurat settlement to fight the Divine Beast Dancing Lion; a heralded figure as defined by the lore (PS – I’ll add links to the lore that break it down). We infiltrated the dreadful, and conspicuous Shadow Keep to ultimately fight Messmer, the Land of Shadow’s purge-master. We can’t forget Bayle—climbing the wildly turbulent and jagged cliffs, we get a sense of the sins he has committed, both reflected in the environment and on Bayle himself. To praise the boss design even more, it was beautiful to witness how their lore aligned with their abilities. Rellana, with her twin blades of Moon and Fire, and Midra, who, driven to his wit’s end by the Tarnished, ultimately succumbed to the Frenzied Flame as a lesser Lord of Frenzied Flame. It was all woven together so beautifully.

My personal favorite bosses in the DLC were Bayle, Messmer, and Rellana. Personally, I felt like Rellana was the toughest. It felt that every time I tried to callout the end of her Tekken level combo strings, she had another 3-piece and a biscuit to hit me with. Ultimately, Rellana was a Bonafide badass. She had some of the coolest boss animations I have ever seen, like her second phase when she whips out the flame and moon swords. Or, from a narrative perspective, she’s the only Carian royalty known to wield twin moons, a feat not even her sister could achieve. And if you like dramas, learning WHY she came to the Land of Shadows is even crazier.

(Giphy: Magic Sword GIF by Xbox (giphy.com))

Messmer might be my favorite all-around. The opening scene where he admonishes and demeans us tarnished, his opening move in which he uses his massive ball of flame to crash upon us, or the Messmer’s assault ability which feels impossible to dodge – his move set was unforgettable. I won’t spoil it here, but I thought his cutscene was as epic as it was horrifying.

As for Bayle, not too much else I can say that Igon didn’t:

More importantly, I really liked Bayle’s art and narrative. We learn that he is effectively a mortal enemy of Dragonlord Placidusax from the Dragon Priestess. If you look closely, you can see damage both dragons took fighting one another – Bayle in particular has tons of scars, he’s missing a leg, and there’s even two dragon skulls on top of Bayle’s neck that were likely trying to kill him in the past. The attention to detail the artists took in crafting this to fit their narrative really makes a full circle, from concept to the final product.

(Picture: Bayle the Dread weakness and how to beat in Elden Ring DLC | Polygon)

The Combat

While I loved almost everything in Elden Ring, one of my favorite parts was its combat. It felt as if both the bosses and various builds support every combat goal FromSoftware set out to achieve – at least in my humble opinion. Boss fights felt epic, boss fights were a challenge, and more than anything, boss fights felt SO satisfying to finally beat. Elden Ring was my first FromSoft game, so before Elden Ring, I was used to kind of ‘brute forcing my way through a lot of bosses. Outside of maybe WoW raids, or Super Smash Bros tournaments, I rarely need to coordinate my own efforts to beat a player, or boss in this case. But each boss I fought felt like a carefully crafted encounter, each requiring a unique strategy to take down. While this type of strategy and brutality isn’t for everyone, the personal incremental improvements felt great. I loved getting beat by Messmer’s assault, and then getting just a little better each time I fought him. It felt like FromSoft took an incredibly detail oriented approach, and carefully tailored so much to each boss. Everything felt so connected – the art, the design, the narrative, the soundtrack – nothing really felt out of place while traversing the Land of Shadows.

The Performance

Now, for the negative – and again, this is specific to the DLC. It’s a short list, but the biggest issue for me was performance. I played on PC, and when I first stepped into the Land of Shadows, there was tons of frame drops and some pretty significant lag. I couldn’t find it, but during Kai Cenat’s stream, his editor had to come in for the first 20-30 minutes to fix his settings just to make the game playable. During a couple boss fights, my game completely stopped for a second or two. The YouTube video from Iroquois Gaming below shows some pretty drastic performance. Two caveats; this video is relatively old and from what I have read, FromSoft has fixed quite a lot of performance issues, and my performance issues were not this severe, but I encountered some of the intermittent issues referenced in this video:

After absolutely gushing about Shadow of the Erdtree, I’ll still praise Shadow of the Erdtree as a standout DLC and game. FromSoftware’s beautifully woven art, story, and gameplay works so well together to create one of my favorite experiences of all time. And, if you read all of this, thank you so much 🙂

Lore YouTube Links

Shadow of The Erdtree | Story & Ending Explained [Lore] (youtube.com)

Lore Revelations in the Shadow of the Erdtree (youtube.com) – I watched a lot of this guy’s stuff!