Summary
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, not unlike FromSoftware’s whole catalog of Soulslike-related titles, spins a ton of plates on its myriad grafted hands. Between the base game and the DLC there are enemy designs that are literally identical and then some that couldn’t be more peculiar and novel, which is a tall order given how many enemies and bosses FromSoftware has populated the Lands Between and the Land of Shadow with alone. Enemy and boss design is typically what’s pedestaled highest in all FromSoftware games, andElden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtreehas received the most divisive takes on bosses in quite some time.
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is a Turning Point for FromSoftware’s Design Ethos
Elden Ring’s gamut of over a hundred hours of content boasts a catalog of bosses ranging from insignificantly trivial to unfathomably epic and doggedly telegraphable to absurdly hyper-aggressive. TheGrafted Scion isElden Ring’s Asylum Demon, for example, and immeasurably more challenging thanDark Souls’ tutorial boss, giving players a near-impossible foe to fell at the beginning.
Tutorial bosses haven’t always been insurmountable withDemon’s Souls’ Vanguardcertainly being beatable on a cold playthrough, but Grafted Scion leans more towardSekiro: Shadows Die Twice’s premise of a scripted tutorial death in terms of how difficult it is when players have barely had a chance to learn basic controls for their custom Tarnished avatar.
This establishes a tone forElden Ringthat is consistent inLimgrave’s Tree Sentinel, who players meet soon thereafter, and while both of them are tough to beat when players first encounter them they can be beaten fairly easily later on. Players can exploit the fact that the Tree Sentinel is fairly slow, for instance, and decently timed guard counters can deal with Grafted Scions quickly. Learning an enemy’s moves is always paramount in a Soulslike, and yetElden Ringmakes this even more crucial with so many enemies having uniquely telegraphable attacks—or not.
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree’s Bosses Present a Genuinely New Type of Soulslike Threat
Shadow of the Erdtree introduced an abundance of enemies whose attack patterns include countless consecutive strikes that players have no choice but to endlessly dodge lest they have a greatshield and can sustain their poise throughout the comically long flurry their opponent hurls forth. Shadow of the Erdtree features more than a few polarizing boss designs, namely in foes such as theWestern Nameless Mausoleum’s Blackgaol Knight, Scaduview’s Commander Gaius, and Enir-Ilim’s Promised Consort Radahn, and each makesElden Ring’s base game seem egregiously slow-paced in comparison.
Promised Consort Radahn was recently nerfed in 1.14, leaving him far less severe in his onslaught and more fair from a design standpoint.
Indeed, comparingElden Ring’s Malenia, Blade of Miquellato Messmer the Impaler, Putrescent Knight, or Rellana, Twin Moon Knight illustrates how dogged the Goddess of Rot truly is, even if her health-sapping ability and Waterfowl Dance skill are still imposing. There are a couple of different camps regarding how favorable Shadow of the Erdtree’s bosses are: one corner of the community adores this hyper-aggression while the other is more apprehensive toward it due to how alarming the shift is fromElden Ringto Shadow of the Erdtree.
The DLC changes a lot from the base game, most noticeably its approach to progression via Scadutree Fragments and not rune allocation with stats. But, as a macrocosmic whole,Elden Ringand its Shadow of the Erdtree expansion complete one another as a complementary package that balances itself well.
