The highly anticipated Shadow of the Erdtree DLC for Elden Ring has garnered a “mixed” user rating on Steam, as players express their disappointment with the game’s difficulty and performance issues on the PC platform.

With nearly 15,000 player reviews contributing to the aggregate score, the critically acclaimed DLC has faced criticism on PC. While many players praise the game’s breathtaking visuals and immersive world, others raise concerns about the capped FPS, stuttering gameplay, and challenging boss mechanics.

One disgruntled player stated, “I love running for 20 minutes in an open area with absolutely nothing to pick up random consumables that I’ll never use against bosses that are insanely tedious to fight. Very miserable experience.”

Another player added, “Game is literally unplayable. I’ve been trying since launch to open the game and I can’t no matter what I do. I see many others having the same issue and there are no solid fixes yet just random individual fixes for every different person. Yes, I have tried EVERYTHING.”

Expressing disappointment, another player mentioned, “Kinda just feels like they just put all of the assets from the base game in a blender and hit pulse a few times. It is still fun overcoming the challenges, but I was hoping for more innovation out of this DLC and it’s certainly not worth $40.”

Another Steam user, who has extensive experience with FromSoft games, commented, “In the current state of the DLC, I can’t really recommend it. While the world design and colors are really beautiful and a lot of enemy designs too, there’s a big problem with balancing.”

Despite the challenges faced by players, Elden Ring experts are stepping in to assist fellow Tarnished in defeating two key bosses – Starscourge Radahn and Mohg, Lord of Blood – to grant access to Shadow of the Erdtree.

In a recent statement, Hidetaka Miyazaki, the creator of FromSoftware’s Soulsborne games, emphasized the importance of maintaining the game’s difficulty level. He mentioned, “If we really wanted the whole world to play the game, we could just crank the difficulty down more and more. But that wasn’t the right approach.”

Reflecting on the experience, a contributor from Eurogamer wrote, “I am still impossibly fond of Elden Ring and my time spent in its grasp, but I’m just not sure if I can share the same fullness of warmth with Shadow of the Erdtree.”