Elden Ring
FromSoftware · RPG, ARPG, Souls-like
Overview
THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED FANTASY ACTION RPG. Rise, Tarnished, and be guided by grace to brandish the power of the Elden Ring and become an Elden Lord in the Lands Between.
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A Breathtaking World Full of Excitement and Mystery
The Lands Between are part of a vast continent where magnificent open fields and huge dungeons with complex and three-dimensional designs are seamlessly connected. As you explore, the joy of discovering unknown and overwhelming threats awaits you.
Mastery of the terrain and knowledge of its secrets can help you overcome enemies and defeat formidable bosses or lead invading players into traps.
Defeat Challenging Foes in Intense Combat
Combat in ELDEN RING is simple to learn yet offers hidden depths of mastery. As you seek to become the Elden Lord, you’ll need to explore the balance between attacking and avoiding damage, use a wide variety of weapons, spells, & summons, and perfect your timing to take advantage of your opponents’ weaknesses.
Create and Build Your Own Character
In addition to customizing the appearance of your character, there are countless ways to combine the weapons, armor, usable items, and magic that you equip. You can develop your character according to your play style.
No matter if you prefer bold physical confrontation, tactical spellcasting, or the subtle art of stealth, you’ll be able to find gear that supports your choices.
An Epic Drama Born from a Myth Created by George R.R. Martin
The founding mythology of Elden Ring was written by George R. R. Martin and adapted into a rich multilayered story. Intersecting goals and desires between the characters create an intense narrative that weaves throughout the Lands Between. The events of the game can unravel in many ways, depending on your interventions.
Play Alongside a Massive Worldwide Community
The Tarnished community is massive and active. Your friends may already be among them. You can play with up to two other Tarnished as your cooperative teammates, either by inviting them using a shared password or by summoning them from a pool of nearby community members.
There are also ample opportunities to face off against other players, either through co-op invasions, invited duels, or the many player battle options available in the three Colosseums.
From the game's Steam store page.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT10,000 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Four and a half years after launch, players still write about Elden Ring as a landmark. They praise the open world and the sense of discovery: riding toward a distant castle, dropping down a lift into a hidden underground city, finding a boss you never knew existed. They praise the boss fights too, and the payoff of finally winning after dozens of deaths, and the range of weapons, spells and builds that keeps replays feeling new. Some reviewers say it was their first Souls game and credit the open world and Spirit Ashes for getting them through. "Masterpiece", "peak", "GOAT", "10/10" or "best game" appears in 20% of all reviews.
The largest single source of anger in this slice is the Tarnished Pack, a roughly $5 add-on released in late August 2026. It is mentioned in 5% of reviews, 85% of those reviews are negative, and it accounts for about a third of all negative reviews (32.5%). Long-time owners felt it should have been a free update. Next come the game's own long-running problems. The PC port is locked to 60fps, has no native ultrawide support, and still stutters and crashes on some hardware. Reviewers also name recycled bosses and copy-pasted dungeons, cryptic quests that send people to the wiki, and a clunky built-in multiplayer that many co-op players replace with the Seamless Co-op mod. Where players disagree is the late-game boss design, and whether the open world helps or hurts the Souls formula.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
A world that rewards curiosityHigh
Exploration and open-world discovery come up in 8% of all reviews, and players describe them with real warmth. The pattern is consistent: you see something on the horizon, you can go there, and something is actually waiting when you arrive. Reviewers name specific moments, like the first view of Siofra River or Nokron and the elevators down into a night sky underground, or a chest that teleports you into a Caelid mine at level 1. Some call these the memories they would erase to experience again. Many like that there are no map markers. The world also works as a pressure valve: if a boss is walling you, you can leave, get stronger somewhere else, and come back. Art direction, scenery and music come up in 6% of reviews, and several reviewers compare the landscapes to a "painting".
Boss fights and the payoff of finally winningHigh
Dying 20, 50 or 300 times to Malenia, Margit, the Tree Sentinel or Consort Radahn, then finally winning, is the experience many reviewers say no other game gives them. Bosses come up in 9% of reviews and difficulty in almost as many (9.5%), and the reviews that talk about difficulty recommend the game at about the same rate as everyone else (86%). The major "remembrance" bosses (Radahn, Malenia, Morgott, Mohg, Maliketh, Godfrey, Messmer) get singled out for their arenas, music and voice lines. Several reviewers write that the game changed how they deal with failure outside games too.
Builds, weapons and replayabilityHigh
Build variety comes up in 6% of reviews. Players talk about pure strength "bonk" builds, bleed katanas, sorcery, faith, and Ashes of War that let you mix skills and weapons, and they say this is why their playtime runs into the hundreds or thousands of hours. Challenge runs (level 1, no summons, torch only, bow only), NG+ cycles and randomizers come up often, as does buying the game a second or third time on another platform. A smaller group says a few options (bleed, Bloodhound's Fang, Mimic Tear) outclass the rest, and that limited respecs and scarce max-level upgrade stones make experimenting harder than it should be.
A way into Souls games for newcomersMedium
For 2.3% of reviewers this was their first Souls game, or they recommend it to new players. Their reasons repeat: you can walk away from a wall and level up elsewhere, Spirit Ashes and co-op help with the hardest fights, and there are Sites of Grace outside boss rooms. A number of players say they bounced off Dark Souls or off Elden Ring itself at launch, came back later, and it finally clicked. The usual advice is to explore before fighting main bosses, level Vigor, and ignore people who say you are "playing it wrong". Some veterans disagree and say the same tools make the game too easy.
Lore, atmosphere and charactersMedium
Fans love piecing the world together from item descriptions, environmental details and NPC questlines, and lore videos are often mentioned as part of the fun. Lore and story come up in 6% of reviews. Ranni, Blaidd, Alexander, Millicent and Godfrey are named often, and the George R.R. Martin mythology and the voice acting get specific praise.
Where players are split
Late-game boss design: brilliant or overtuned?High
A vocal group of experienced players thinks the boss design goes too far. Their complaints are specific: delayed attacks built to catch your roll, input reading when you heal, long combos with one-hit punish windows, screen-filling AoE, and enemies that seem to ignore the rules the player follows. Close to half of the reviews that raise these points (46%) are negative. The fights they name include Malenia's Waterfowl Dance, the Fire Giant, the Godskin Duo, the Valiant Gargoyles, the Beast Clergyman and Maliketh, and Consort Radahn in the DLC. A related complaint is a steep damage spike after Leyndell, where late-game basic enemies two-shot you even at 60 Vigor. Spirit Ashes, and the Mimic Tear in particular, divide players too. Newcomers credit them for getting through, while veterans say they make fights trivial and take away the sense of achievement. Some of these critics still recommend the game. Others say the combat pushed them back to Dark Souls 3, Sekiro or Lies of P.
The open world: wonder on the first run, bloat on the nextMedium
The case against the open world comes largely from series veterans. Of the reviews that call the world empty, bloated, filler or too big, 61% are negative. Their argument is that the best content sits in the legacy dungeons and the space between them is travel. Later regions like the Mountaintops of the Giants feel thinner, and pacing breaks when you arrive overleveled or underleveled. Replays turn into a checklist of Torrent, the Spirit Bell, flask upgrades, Golden Seeds and bell bearings before a build even works. Dark Souls 3 comes up in 1.4% of reviews, usually as the more tightly designed game. Some of the same critics say their first blind playthrough was a blast.
Cryptic quests and the wiki questionMedium
Reviews that mention needing guides, the wiki, YouTube or a quest log make up 2.6% of the slice, and 79% of them still recommend the game. Plenty of players enjoy the lack of hand-holding. Many others, including fans, say NPC questlines can't realistically be finished without a guide: NPCs move without explanation, talking to the wrong person or killing the wrong boss locks content, and there is no journal to remind you what someone said weeks ago. Several reviews ask for the same fix, a simple log of NPC dialogue or discovered lore with no quest markers. Players who come back after a break say they can't remember where a questline was going.
Shadow of the ErdtreeMedium
Reviews that talk about the DLC by name or by its bosses recommend the game less often than the slice as a whole (69%). Supporters call it a sequel-sized expansion with the best legacy dungeon in the game (Shadow Keep) and standout bosses like Messmer, Bayle, Midra and Rellana. Critics say its bosses are the most "spammy" in the series, and that Scadutree Fragment progression pushes you to comb a map where many areas feel empty. They also call the ending underwhelming, especially Consort Radahn as the final encounter, and report frame-rate drops in its effect-heavy fights. A recurring tip is to finish the base game first and not jump into the DLC too early.
Price and the lack of salesLow
Price comes up in about 1% of reviews and splits both ways. Many say the game is worth full price for the hours it delivers. Others note that the base game and Shadow of the Erdtree rarely go on meaningful sale, which made the paid Tarnished Pack feel worse. A few say they would only recommend buying at a discount.
What frustrates players
The $5 Tarnished PackHigh
This is the largest single complaint in the slice, and it is recent. The pack came out in late August 2026 for about $5/€5. Reviewers describe it as two new starting classes, a few weapons and armour sets, NPC invaders, and cosmetic armour for Torrent, taken from the Switch 2 Tarnished Edition. It appears in 5% of all reviews, and 85% of those are negative. Among players with 200+ hours who left negative reviews, 52% cite it. Many protesting reviews come from people with hundreds or thousands of hours, and some say outright that they changed a positive review to negative while still counting the game among their favourites. Several protesters say the price isn't the issue. What they object to is the precedent: "horse armor", owners of the full game and expansion being asked to pay again, and the worry that more micro-add-ons will follow in this game or the next. A few worry that the new weapons tilt PvP toward players who paid. A few also saw the Twitch-linked community quests that launched around the same time as a step toward live-service design. Positive reviews that mention the pack are divided. Some defend it (it's optional, it's $5, and nobody has to buy it), while others still call it greedy or say it should have been free. Weekly sentiment has since recovered (see section 3).
A PC port still held back by old limitsHigh
Outside the pack, performance is the most common complaint: technical problems come up in 13.8% of all negative reviews (3.6% of all reviews, half of them negative). It is also the reason given most often in the few negative reviews from players who stopped within 2 hours. The complaints are the same across years of reviews. The frame rate is locked at 60fps. There is no native ultrawide, and at 21:9 the game still renders the full frame and then adds black bars. Stutter and frame drops hit powerful machines too, especially in open fields and effect-heavy DLC fights. Reviewers also list crashes, no DLSS or FSR, broken HDR, and issues with 50-series GPUs. Mods are the usual fix, but they require disabling Easy Anti-Cheat and giving up online play, which reviewers see as an unfair choice. A smaller number report EAC falsely flagging unmodded games or blocking launch outright. Some reviewers say performance improved after early patches, while others say it got worse again recently.
Recycled bosses and copy-pasted dungeonsMedium
Even fans who love the game often list recycled content as their main con. It comes up in about 2% of reviews, split evenly between positive and negative ones. The recurring examples are Erdtree Avatars, Ulcerated Tree Spirits, Watchdogs, Crucible Knights, repeated dragons, bosses promoted from regular enemies, duo fights that stitch two solo bosses together, and catacombs and mines that feel assembled from the same parts. Veterans also note animations and enemies carried over from earlier FromSoftware games. Some say the repetition shows more on later runs than on the first.
Vanilla co-op, invasions and cheatersMedium
Players who bought the game to play with friends call vanilla co-op a series of temporary summons. You need an item to summon, your partner goes home after each boss, Torrent is unavailable, and anyone who summons can be invaded by high-level or meta-geared players. Multiplayer comes up in 2.8% of reviews, and most comments about the built-in version are negative. Many co-op reviews recommend the Seamless Co-op mod instead, and some say it is the only reason they finished the game. PvP players describe laggy netcode, gank squads, and cheaters using Cheat Engine, including some who reportedly corrupted victims' save files. Their advice is to back up your saves before playing online. Several reviewers say Easy Anti-Cheat catches honest players more than cheaters.
The late-August update broke mods and Seamless Co-opLow
The patch that shipped the Tarnished Pack caused problems of its own. Reviewers report that it broke Seamless Co-op and overhaul mods like Reforged and Convergence, and one says the game stopped launching on Linux. The update was forced, with no older branch to roll back to, and one player reports Torrent no longer spawning. For players whose main way to play is modded co-op, this made the game unplayable for a while.
Keyboard and mouse controls, and missing PlayStation promptsLow
This is a small but steady complaint, and it turns up among the players who quit early. The issues they list: sprint and dodge share a key, dodge fires on release, some keys like G for the map are hardcoded, menus can't be rebound or clicked, and the mouse changes lock-on targets on the slightest movement. The common advice is to use a controller. Controller players have their own complaint: the PC version shows only Xbox or keyboard prompts, with no native PlayStation glyphs.
The camera and lock-on against large bossesLow
The camera comes up in under 1% of reviews but gets strong language. Against large or fast bosses, players say, you often see only feet or a wall, and lock-on shares a button with camera reset, which can snap your view away from the boss. They also mention lock-on breaking mid-fight. Some call it a problem the series has never fixed.
Save corruption with no way to roll backLow
A small number of players lost saves worth anywhere from 50 hours to several hundred after a crash, a power cut, a game that wasn't quit properly, or a cheating invader. They recommend making manual backups because the game has no recovery option of its own.
3. The player conversation
Most reviews are short and effusive ("peak", "absolute cinema", "try finger, but hole"), and many others are memes, Malenia quotes and jokes about being maidenless. The longer reviews are where players disagree: among reviews of 200 characters or more, 73% are positive. Newcomers write about finally understanding the hype and becoming better players. Series veterans argue that the open world and late-game boss design took something from the Dark Souls formula, though some of them still call their first playthrough special.
The timeline shows one clear event. Reviews written between late June and 23 August 2026 were 93% positive. In the week of 24 August, when the Tarnished Pack came out, the weekly ratio fell to 79%, with the protests peaking on 28 to 30 August. It then recovered week by week, to 86%, 90% and 91%, and reached 92.5% by the week of 21 September 2026. Many older reviews in the slice also flipped: of the 254 negative reviews originally written in 2022, half cite the pack in later edits. Outside the pack, the negative side is steady and familiar: the PC port, repetition, boss design and cryptic quests. The few players who gave up within 2 hours and left a negative review most often point to performance or keyboard controls, and only a handful blame the difficulty.
4. What the developers could do
- Make the Tarnished Pack free for existing owners, or fold it into Shadow of the Erdtree ownership. It drives about a third of all negative reviews, and many long-time fans flipped to negative because they see paid classes and horse armour as the start of a bad precedent.
- Modernize the PC port: uncap the frame rate, add native ultrawide, and fix stutter. Performance is the most common complaint outside the pack and the reason given most often by players who quit within 2 hours. Players ask for uncapped fps, 21:9 without black bars, shader precompilation, DLSS/FSR and working HDR.
- Keep mods and Seamless Co-op working across updates, and offer a rollback branch. The late-August patch broke the mods that many players rely on for co-op and replays, and with no older branch on Steam they had no way back to the version that worked.
- Add persistent co-op with an option to turn off invasions. The most common co-op advice in these reviews is to install a mod. Players want to play through the game with a friend without constant resummoning or forced invasions.
- Strengthen protection against cheaters and add save recovery. PvP and co-op players report cheaters corrupting saves and Easy Anti-Cheat flagging honest players, and some lost hundreds of hours with no way to restore a save.
- Add an NPC dialogue and lore journal. Even players who love the cryptic storytelling ask for a simple record of what NPCs said, so questlines can be finished without a wiki, especially by players returning after a break.
- Make keyboard and mouse controls fully rebindable and auto-detect PlayStation prompts. New PC players cite hardcoded keys, shared sprint and dodge, and mouse-nudge target switching, and controller users want native PlayStation button icons.
- Separate lock-on from camera reset, and pull the camera back for large bosses. Some players say they fight the camera as much as the boss in large fights, and they ask for lock-on and camera reset to be separate actions.
Open the Shadow of the Erdtree page
1. Summary
Most reviews (73%) recommend Shadow of the Erdtree. Players describe an expansion big enough to pass for a sequel, a Land of Shadow that even some negative reviews call beautiful, a large set of new weapon types, and boss fights (Messmer, Bayle, Rellana, Midra) that some players rank among FromSoftware's best. Difficulty comes up in 26% of reviews and divides them: one side calls the jump in difficulty the point of endgame content, the other says the bosses are hard in ways that stopped being fun.
The final boss comes up in 17% of reviews, more than any other boss, area or system, and recommending reviews often name him as the part they disliked. Four other subjects draw complaints, each in 10 to 11% of reviews: boss fights built on long combos, arena-wide area attacks and one-shots; a Scadutree fragment system that makes players comb the map for power; large regions with little to find; and PC stutter that reviews kept reporting into 2026. Long reviews are much less positive than short ones, with only 53% of reviews over 1,000 characters recommending the expansion.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
Standout boss fights like Messmer and BayleHigh
Among the bosses players praise, Messmer is named most often (5.5% of reviews), followed by Bayle (3%) and Rellana (2.6%), with Midra, the Divine Beast Dancing Lion and Romina behind them. One player wrote that "Messmer the Impaler is probably one of my favourite bosses out of the entire franchise", and another kept it short: "Bayle was my highlight fight". Reviewers credit these fights with spectacle, music and memorable designs. Negative reviews regularly spare one or two of them, usually Messmer or Midra, as the fair fights in a roster they otherwise dislike.
A gorgeous, strange new worldHigh
12% of reviews comment on the visuals, art direction or atmosphere. A third of those (406 of 1,212) are negative reviews, and most of them still praise how the expansion looks, usually right next to their complaints. One of them: "Walking through this DLC is like trekking through a painting." Reviews single out the Cerulean Coast, the Jagged Peak and Enir-Ilim, and several say the art outdoes the base game. A few find the color filter tiring or some areas too dark to see in.
Big enough to pass for a sequelHigh
The expansion's size comes up in 12% of reviews, and 4% call it a sequel, a standalone game or "Elden Ring 2". Players put it alongside Blood and Wine, Phantom Liberty and other large expansions, and several say it is far bigger than the "size of Limgrave" comparison they had heard before launch. As one review put it: "An expansion so big it might as well be a sequel." Some reviewers think the map would have been better smaller, with the same content packed closer together.
New weapon types and spellsHigh
The new arsenal comes up in 9% of reviews. Light greatswords, backhand blades, great katanas, perfume bottles, throwing daggers, hand-to-hand arts and beast claws all get named, and several players single out the Deflecting Hardtear as the item that changed how they fight. "The new weapon types are all insane, as I'd hoped they'd be," one player wrote. Some reviewers say the new gear arrives when their build is already finished, and others find too few weapons in each type; one counts only 21 weapons across the 8 new types.
Boss musicMedium
The boss themes get most of the attention in the 4% of reviews that mention music. One player listed favorites: "Messmer, Bayle, Midra, and the Divine Beast Dancing-Lion have some of the best OSTs in any Fromsoft game ever made." Rellana's theme also comes up by name. The ambient tracks get mixed notices: one reviewer finds them thin, mostly solo cello, while another thinks they improved on the base game's.
Side dungeons that beat the base game'sLow
About 1% of reviews say the catacombs, gaols and forges are more varied than the base game's repeated layouts, and the Shadow Keep and Belurat get praise as legacy dungeons. A negative review agreed: "Caves and catacombs are fantastic, didn't expect that considering the base game ones are really dull". A few critics say there are too few of these dungeons, and some call the final areas, Enir-Ilim among them, a chore.
Where players are split
How hard it isHigh
Of the 26% of reviews that raise difficulty, two thirds still recommend the expansion. One camp treats the jump as the point of endgame content: "It's hard. Harder than Bloodborne's DLC, or even Ringed City. But despite this, it never felt impossibly hard or unfair." These players tell others to collect Scadutree fragments, use spirit ashes or change builds, and 3% of all reviews are positive ones that answer critics with "git gud" or "skill issue" style language.
The other camp, including some self-described series veterans, objects to the kind of difficulty more than the amount: "I think the devs were so concerned about making it challenging that they forgot to make it fun." About 3% of reviews bring up Ringed City, The Old Hunters, Artorias of the Abyss or Dark Souls 3, some to say the expansion falls short of those DLCs and others to rank it above them. Summons come up in 6.5% of reviews. Defenders call spirit ashes and NPC help the intended way through the hardest fights, while a few critics say the bosses seem designed around summons. Some players on later New Game+ cycles say the scaling makes fights brutal, and others dread playing through the expansion again on a new cycle.
A vertical, layered mapMedium
How the Land of Shadow fits together comes up in 8.5% of reviews. Fans of the layout compare its verticality to Dark Souls 1 and enjoy working out routes: "Wracking my brain to figure out how to traverse the landscape was a great time." Others found it exhausting: "It felt like navigating an aircraft carrier… you had to go up to go down." Reviewers describe entrances hidden behind illusory walls or gestures, map fragments that are hard to reach, and a map screen with no underground view, and a few hundred reviews say they needed a guide, wiki or YouTube video to find their way.
Whether $40 is fairMedium
Among the 7% of reviews that bring up price or value, more defend the price than attack it: phrases like "worth every penny" or "well worth" appear in 2.7% of reviews, against 1.4% that call it overpriced or tell people to wait for a sale. "Well worth $40. It feels like another half of the game." Critics of the price say empty regions and reused content do not justify paying close to what a full game costs, and a review from August 2026 notes that no discount has come yet: "I would suggest waiting for the sales, but there have been none."
Story, lore and the endingMedium
About 2% of reviews praise the lore of the Miquella storyline, which fills in Marika's history, the Hornsent and the Crucible, "giving us a more coherent vision of Marika's past" in one player's words. Complaints about the ending call it abrupt, and the final boss's identity disappoints players who wanted a new character. "What person thought an empty chair in a void would be a satisfying ending?" Several remembrance bosses, among them Rellana, Romina and Bayle, get no introductory cutscene, which some reviewers say takes weight away from those fights.
What frustrates players
The final bossHigh
The final boss, Promised Consort Radahn, comes up in 17% of reviews. Two thirds of the reviews that mention him still recommend the expansion, often naming him as the exception: "Everything but the final boss is absolute peak." The complaints center on his second phase: near-constant attacks with little time to heal, light effects that hide his moves, and frame drops on PC while those effects fill the screen. A review from launch week asked: "Just nerf the final bosses' second phase, please." Patches did tone him down, and 2.5% of reviews mention the fight together with a nerf or patch. Some of them say the change made him fair, and others that he is still badly designed. A small number of reviews call him their favorite boss.
Long combos, area attacks and one-shotsHigh
Only 39% of the reviews that describe boss mechanics they dislike (11% of all reviews) recommend the expansion, against 73% overall. They describe combos of six to twelve hits with delayed swings, area attacks that cover the arena, little or no opening to heal, and damage that kills in two or three hits even with high Vigor. Combos alone come up in 5% of reviews, area effects and particle clutter in 4%, and one-shots in 2.5%. "It often feels like landing one hit and then dodging fifty attacks before getting another chance." Players with slow weapons or spellcasting builds say they were pushed toward faster or meta builds. Outside the main bosses, reviewers name Commander Gaius, the Furnace Golems and Rakshasa, and lingering or oversized hitboxes come up in 2% of reviews.
Hunting for Scadutree fragmentsHigh
The Scadutree blessing, the expansion's separate power system, comes up in 11% of reviews. Players raise it by finding up to 50 fragments spread across a large and often sparse map, and its critics, recommending reviews among them, say this turned exploration into a checklist they had to finish to keep up with enemy damage. Several say they had to look up fragment locations in a guide, and others say having to find them all again makes replays and New Game+ a chore. One negative review: "Scadutree Fragments genuinely are the worst mechanic i have ever encountered in a video game." A smaller group defends the system as a sensible way to stop over-leveled characters from walking through the content: "Scadu fragments also make for a neat layer of progression that encourages exploration". Positive reviews also often bring the fragments up as advice, telling others to collect them before taking on the bosses. One review written days after launch notes that a patch had already buffed the fragments.
Stutter and frame drops on PCHigh
More of the performance complaints come from recommending reviews than from negative ones (578 against 479, together 11% of reviews). Players describe the base game running at a steady 60 fps on their machine while the Land of Shadow drops to between 30 and 45 fps in open areas and during effect-heavy boss attacks, with hitches mid-fight. Performance came up in 18% of reviews written in the first weeks after launch (20 June to 14 July 2024) and in 6% of those written in 2025, and several reviewers note that patches helped. Reviews from 2026 still describe the same drops. One player, writing in December 2025, said "I can't recommend it with the fps drops and stutters that are still there after a year and half after release". Some suggest turning off ray tracing, and under 1% of reviews report crashes.
Large empty areas and thin lootHigh
10% of reviews call parts of the map empty, barren or lifeless, and only 43% of those reviews recommend the expansion. The Abyssal Woods, the Cerulean Coast, the Finger Ruins, the Jagged Peak and the Gravesite Plain are named as regions that are beautiful to ride through and hold little. Loot draws its own complaint: players expected weapons or spells at the end of a long detour and found low-tier smithing stones, gloveworts or a cookbook (2.5% of reviews name these items). "Every. Single. Loot. is Smithing Stones/Gloveworts." A few reviewers say the map does not feel any emptier to them than the base game's.
Recycled enemies and bossesMedium
Reuse draws complaints in 4% of reviews. Ulcerated Tree Spirits, the Death Rite Bird, dragons and other base-game field bosses return, and new enemies such as the Furnace Golems repeat across the map. "I lost count of how many bosses I have defeated once again in this DLC." Some reviewers count the final boss, a returning character, as part of the same problem.
The camera against giant bossesMedium
Only 36% of the reviews that complain about the camera (3.5% of all reviews) recommend the expansion. The trouble concentrates on huge enemies such as Bayle, the Divine Beast Dancing Lion and the dragons, where locking on fills the screen or swings wildly, and 1.3% of reviews tie the camera to those fights directly. "Bayle is just you vs the camera instead of you vs the boss."
Questlines that break without warningLow
NPC questlines come up in 2.6% of reviews. Several call them easier to follow than the base game's, but the complaint that keeps returning is how easily they fail. Reaching the Shadow Keep's later areas or Enir-Ilim too early can lock players out of quests and even out of NPC summons for the final fight, with no quest log to track any of it. One player's warning: "Do NOT explore Enir-Ilim until you have explored EVERYWHERE ELSE unless you wanna be locked out of a ton of questlines!"
Missing PC optionsLow
A small set of PC players (under 1% of reviews each) asks for native ultrawide support, an unlocked frame rate in place of the 60 fps cap, and new Steam achievements for the expansion. One wrote that "there's no excuse for not having native support for ultra-wide resolution in Elden Ring".
A paid horse-armor add-onLow
Between 28 August and 10 September 2026, 13 reviews (11 of them negative) protested a separate paid add-on that reviewers describe as horse armor tied to the Tarnished Edition. These reviews target monetization, and some say outright that they enjoyed the expansion itself. "Charging 5 dollars for an update that should be free, scummy move."
3. The player conversation
Nearly half the reviews (45%) are under 100 characters, and 85% of those are positive. Many are one-line verdicts calling it the best DLC ever made, jokes, or the battle cry of Igon, the NPC who helps fight Bayle, pasted in full (2% of reviews). Among the 15% of reviews over 1,000 characters, only 53% are positive, and most of the detailed complaints about combos, the fragment system and the empty map are made there.
In negative reviews, the most frequent subjects are boss mechanics (25% of negative reviews), the final boss (22%), the empty map (22%), performance (18%) and the fragments (17%). Positive reviews that get specific mention the final boss (15%), the visuals (11%) and the size (10%) most often. The two sides also answer each other: recommending reviews tell critics to "git gud", and some critics, citing their record with earlier FromSoftware games, insist up front that their complaint is not a skill issue.
Approval has slipped slowly. Reviews written in the launch weeks (20 June to 14 July 2024) were 74% positive, the rest of 2024 75%, 2025 72%, and 2026 up to 23 August 68%. The 169 reviews written between 24 August and 30 September 2026 were 54% positive, partly because of the horse-armor protest; without those 13 reviews the figure is 57%. The fragments also came up more often over time, in 10% of 2025 reviews and 14% of 2026 reviews, while performance complaints faded after launch.
4. What the developers could do
- Rework the final boss's second phase. He comes up in 17% of reviews, and the complaints center on light effects that hide his attacks, near-constant pressure and frame drops during that phase.
- Give bosses longer recovery after long combos and fewer screen-filling effects. 11% of reviews describe combos, arena-wide area attacks and one-shots, and only 39% of those reviews recommend the expansion.
- Fill the emptiest regions or put better loot in them. 10% of reviews call areas like the Abyssal Woods and the Finger Ruins empty, and players want rewards worth the detour in place of low-tier smithing stones and gloveworts.
- Fix the stutter and frame drops in the Land of Shadow. Performance comes up in 11% of reviews, including reviews from 2026 describing drops to between 30 and 45 fps in areas where the base game holds 60.
- Make Scadutree fragments easier to earn. 11% of reviews discuss the fragments, and their critics describe a scavenger hunt that sends players to guides. Some suggest having bosses drop them or placing more fragments than the cap needs.
- Fix the camera against giant bosses. The 3.5% of reviews that complain about the camera concentrate on Bayle, the Dancing Lion and the dragons.
- Warn players before an area or story step fails NPC questlines. 2.6% of reviews raise questlines, and the complaints among them describe quests failing without notice after reaching Enir-Ilim or the Shadow Keep too early.
- Add ultrawide support, an unlocked frame rate and achievements for the expansion. Each of these requests appears in under 1% of reviews.
