Recent reviews by Vector Calculus

Expansion is an awesome addition to the game. Yes it is hard but you have the tools to make it easier, use them unless it hurts your pride.

The issues I have with the expansion are:

- Shadow runes that give you runes. Why are there ones that give you 500 runes? What am I doing with that?

- The smithing stones... Why do I need to upgrade every new weapon I get in the DLC. It is rather annoying needing to go back to the table. I feel like weapons should've either come maxed or they should've increased the upgrade cap or something.

- Why can't we upgrade at graces?

- Some camera moments during bosses are very close.

- Reusing some of the base game enemies. I get that the game is huge but really. Golems and Dragons?

- Bosses do hit like a truck but that is not the issue. The level of autism that these bosses have do not make the fight that entertaining. Attack of opportunity window against these bosses is rather small. You get like max 2 hits in before another 34 hit combo. Half the time during these windows you spend time to heal. They could balance either the damage taken here so you don't need to heal every time you get hit. This is a problem to build diversity. Talismans need to be defensive, almost all build would need damage reduction talismans I think. Kiss Curse items like scorpion charms become uninteresting because of how fast you die when those are equipped. Regardless of this issue, bosses are very challenging even with the Scadutree stuff but this is because how little of times you can hit the boss. Half my boss experience was dying very fast before I am able to deal respectable damage.

- Scadutree addition is not good. This is an annoying feature for second playthroughs.

- Second playthroughs are headaches. Essentially you need to spend a chunk of your time in base Elden Ring first before you jump in. This is a missed opportunity with being able to use DLC weapons and skills in base game.

- Massive FPS drops in last boss 2nd phase AOE blast attack

However, the expansion is excellent and you should play it. Worth it's money for sure.

This game is good

5/7 performance