Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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!"

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".

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."