If you’ve been on the internet over the last week, you will know that a new Elden Ring DLC dropped last Friday.
PC gamers have ‘review bombed’ the DLC on the gaming site Steam, giving it negative reviews for its difficulty level which is receiving a lot of traction online. ‘Review bombing’ is the action of spamming a site with negative or positive (but mostly negative) reviews in order to initiate action.
The reviews have mainly been negative, mainly highlighting performance issues and difficulty levels. One Steam user, Wyserion wrote “There’s some performance issues that needs fixing because I’m stuck on loading screens and constant fps drops in critical boss fight moments.”
One reviewer, named Pasta_Man, complained about how the effects made him feel, stating “My main complaint however is the overabundance of effects, mainly in boss fights. I’ve turned my effects setting to low and there is still so much. Enough that it starts to hurt my eyes after a while, then I get headaches that turn into migraines.”
The DLC named Shadow of Erdtree was highly anticipated amongst fans, however PC gamers are having a much different experience to that of other platforms.
Due to the volume of negative reviews, the game’s rating is now ‘mixed’ despite the parent game being positive.
FromSoftware Games are known to be notoriously difficult. They are made for the next generation of gamers who enjoy a challenge alongside the escapism the game has to offer. Elden Ring isn’t the most difficult game to play on the difficulty scale, but it certainly does have its challenges and tedious moments as fans would know.
The DLC, having already claimed the same players from the parent game, would be assumed to be more challenging to add more to the Elden Ring world and gamer experience.
Despite these facts, performance issues with the PC version have been logged, alienating the PC experience away from the console players with little to no issue. ‘Stuttering’ allegedly makes the battles impossible and takes the entertainment factor away from the challenge.
Shadow of Erdtree has received an 8.2 user score on Xbox Series X/S and 8.3 on PlayStation 5, suggesting that the issue may be related to how it runs on PC in comparison to these two popular platforms. FromSoftware has not, at present, made any comments or statements about the complaints, but with the DLC only being released less than a week ago, there’s time for this to be commented on.
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is now available to play on PC and Consoles as a stand-alone DLC or as a collective bundle with the base game.
Words by Maisie Hancox
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