One of the best expansions are unmistakably grounded of their base recreation, however take all of their strongest concepts and distill them down right into a extra refined, self-contained expertise which not solely celebrates all the pieces that made the unique nice, however takes it simply that little bit additional, too.
Shadow of the Erdtree isn’t just the outstanding, lore-drenched, soul-sucking Elden Ring expertise you understand within the current, however an homage to FromSoftware’s previous and glimpse into its future as nicely.
All of it begins in true Souls model, with one among this 12 months’s finest horror moments adopted by a legacy dungeon that might come from wherever in FromSoftware’s storied back-catalogue – packed to the rafters with hidden ambushes, unfair fights and a cataclysmic boss battle to prime all of it off.
However, as you reveal the undiscovered secrets and techniques of the universe in a labyrinthine warren of secret tunnels and passageways that belie the area’s true, unimaginable scale, it’s the gothic ambiance of The Lands of Shadow that steals the present. That is yet one more particular FromSoftware setting, contained inside one other particular FromSoftware setting: Fromception.
Crucially although, that is additionally one among FromSoftware’s most forthright narratives – actually in a Souls recreation – however that does nothing to dampen the thriller and ethereal marvel of the places you go to and characters you meet. It’s this story-telling evolution that makes Shadow of the Erdtree important in its personal proper, in addition to a fully stellar addition to the bottom recreation of Elden Ring (clearly a GOTY contender in its personal proper, too, in fact).
Shadow of the Erdtree is definitely some of the memorable, thrilling, and engrossing issues to drop this 12 months, and may be hewn alongside The Shivering Isles, Phantom Liberty, and Undead Nightmare on the Mount Rushmore of nice online game DLCs.
In actual fact, we have a podcast devoted to this very subject: Which expansions are better than the main game? From The Shivering Isles to Toussaint, some downloadable content material is price each penny. Twice. The truth that Shadow of the Erdtree rapidly and effortlessly provides itself to those iconic names says all of it, actually; in a 12 months of extremely sturdy, memorable video games, it is an enlargement that basically lodges itself in my head as we tiptoe into 2025.