Is Elden Ring Shadow Of The Erdtree Difficult For The Sake Of Being Difficult?

The base game of Elden Ring already had a few problems with how its boss fights worked but Shadow of the Erdtree makes it even worse with the addition of artificially difficult bosses. It almost feels like the bosses are playing a different and faster game while the player is stuck with the same Souls formula of dodging and punishing while managing stamina and health.

Attack Combos Go On For Too Long With Strict Punishment Windows

As I’ve already mentioned before, bosses in the base game of Elden Ring were designed with a moveset that consists of long and punishing combos. It almost felt like the bosses were too fast and the player just couldn’t do much with the tried and tested Souls gameplay system. In the DLC, this problem gets even worse and the bosses feel like they are extremely exaggerated.

Shadow of the Erdtree bosses are WAY too difficult (RANT).
byu/TrashManGorbage inEldenring

Not only do they have long combos, but they also follow up pretty quickly with subsequent attacks after a combo ends. This does not give the player enough chances to punish and heal during battle which just decreases the fun of these boss fights. I want to get rewarded with punishes for perfectly dodging a complete combo but instead, I’m met with another chain of attacks and this process goes on forever.

Shadow of the Erdtree demands that you perfect a fight if you want to beat the boss as a single mistake can cost you your entire run. The combos are also designed in a way that if you get hit by the first attack, then it almost becomes impossible to dodge the chain that follows. This means that getting hit by a combo almost always translates to death and actually acts like a one-shot.

The Spirit Summons Mechanic Has A Negative Impact On Boss Design

In my opinion, the addition of Spirit Summons to Elden Ring has changed the boss design for the worse. In FromSoftware’s previous entries like Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne, boss fights were designed as a duel, like a 1v1, which made the difficulty of these bosses feel fair. In Elden Ring, developers need to give bosses huge chunks of health, long combos, short punishment windows, and huge AOE attacks to combat the Spirit Summon Mechanic.

Spirit summons ruin the balance of this game
byu/Kanglesq inEldenring

Even with all these in effect, Spirit Summons can easily trivialize most boss battles in Elden and even in Shadow of the Erdtree. However, using Spirit Summons is just not fun as it feels like you’re not directly engaging with the boss itself. Now comes the problem when you have to fight the bosses in the DLC solo.

Since these bosses are designed to at least combat two separate players with the addition of the Summon, it becomes unforgivably difficult to fight these bosses solo. They will still boast the same attack combos and huge health but now you’re all alone in this battle. This ends up creating a dilemma where using the Spirit Summons makes the game too easy and not fun and not using the Spirit Summons makes the game unfairly hard.

The Final Boss Is Designed With Artificial Difficulty

I won’t spoil the name of the final boss, but let me tell you this, it is the hardest boss that FromSoftware has ever designed. This boss is so unfairly difficult that it is almost impossible to defeat it without the help of spirit summons or cheese builds. The type of difficulty that forces players to use underhanded methods does not make for a good boss design.

The dlc is amazing but the final boss ruins it for me
byu/cool__skeleton__95 ineldenringdiscussion

It isn’t even fun to learn the boss, because you know that the boss has unfair attacks which can end your entire run. Everything comes down to the RNG or using underhanded methods. The fight itself is anything but fun and gets really irritating as it continues. It feels like the problem that plagued the base game of Elden Ring has turned into a disaster in the DLC instead of getting fixed.

I really hope that FromSoftware goes back to its roots for its next game and creates boss fights that are not just challenging for the sake of being challenging. We need bosses that are difficult as well as fair which makes learning the moveset feel so rewarding and that feeling of euphoria that you get after defeating the boss is unmatched. This is exactly why I prefer replaying Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne more than Elden Ring: Boss fights are so much fun, but they are also difficult there.