I played more than 3 hours of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree and still don’t understand how it’s possible that the authors of Dark Souls made such a big DLC ​​- Elden Ring

The role-playing game of Hidetaka Miyazaki and company was a social phenomenon in 2022, but it will soon strengthen in every way.

I played three hours of expansion Elden Ring: Shadow of Airdtree and I can tell you, without fear of being wrong, that it’s great. But being there doesn’t say much, does it? We all trust Hidetaka Miyazaki completely. There’s a whole subculture of ‘Berserk’ fans from the ’90s who worship him as a father figure, and legend even has it that there’s someone among us who carries a photo of him in the glove compartment of his car, along with another photo of Pellegrini. At this point you’re buying it not because the press tells you it’s good, but because everything that comes from FromSoftware is mandatory visit. I can respect that.

So I didn’t come here today with the intention of reviewing anything I played in the tournament. preview about the DLC – I also tell you, it can still be downloaded; bigger and better – but tell you what awaits you (without spoilers) during the tour. However, one of the things that stood out to me most about the first explorable area of ​​Airdtree Shadows was that I naturally did a lot of things in a relatively short period of time; and this is because the Japanese have gone to great lengths to make sure that experience is variable to the extreme. I’ll explain.

Discovery of the Land of Shadows

According to Bandai Namco, to access Shadow of the Erdtree content, all you need to do is complete a couple of tasks Key point in the main Elden Ring campaign: defeating Radan, which shouldn’t cost you too much after let loose what he had at the time; and also take Mog for a walk, as the new campaign begins by touching the womb-shaped nest that is located right in the room where you fight him. On a strictly mechanical level, this is a teleport that will take you to the initial area of ​​the Shadowlands, which I happened to explore.

Before going into detail, let me summarize how the scaling that Miyazaki himself mentioned back then works in the DLC. As those who have studied the behavior of stats and damage in Elden Ring know, your character level doesn’t really matter when determining whether you should enter a new expansion or not; so if you could defeat Mog, you will probably find the complexity of the downloaded file appropriate. But like I said, the Shadowlands has its own progression unrelated to the Middle Lands, and it has a system similar to the crimson tears and golden seeds of the base game.

The idea is that as you explore, you find objects at certain points on the map (in English). Blessing of Skadutri And Venerable Spiritual Ash), which respectively improve the incoming and outgoing damage of your character and your Ashen Summons, including Torrenter. These items are consumed anywhere in the grace period, although it makes sense that the upgrade cost becomes exponentially higher. But if I could improve two or three times each Go completely blind in the first region, I’m sure you’ll be able to do this even more often. In other words, don’t be afraid of new content because you have ways to deal with it.

You don’t need to know much more than this to get started, but there is a small new convenience that I think is important to completing the adventure: inventory A new tab will appear at the top that filters all your items in the order you received them: newest at the top, oldest at the bottom. While this may not seem like a big deal in the first few minutes, over time it will be helpful for you to keep this in mind because you will find certain annotations, maps, or transcripts of the type that you will have to carefully analyze to figure out where you are. you need to go further to follow the story. What makes us talk about…

Hidetaka Miyazaki is free

Let’s face it: we all love the man dearly, and over time, his pet peeves and creative stereotypes have become so palpable in the games he helms that they have morphed into popular culture as memes. There could be no shortage of swamps and doors opening out to the other side, no surprises in that sense; but you’re not even remotely ready for that amount What the kind of things you find in first open area from The Shadow of Airdtree. I come back from playing the game feeling like I saw FromSoftware with its batteries charged, willing to sacrifice a bit of countryside exploration in favor of more traditional level design.

In this sense, Michella’s biography can make a great contribution because His followers They are almost omnipresent and through (as I said above) comments and notes they leave for us, mission chains and even large dungeons They are clearly related. If you pay attention to them, you can easily recognize what is happening in the story, who they are, and what they recommend you do. It helps, of course, that in the first open area you can reach two of these castles in a matter of minutes; it’s as if the designers are naturally leading you towards “fun” faster than ever.

If you want to explore thoroughly before entering the main dungeons, you can certainly do so; but the map of the region was made in order to draw your attention to some key points. One of them is a small dungeon, one of those that they were criticized so much in the basic version of Elden Ring because there were a lot of them and they gave enough, but in this case it was easy to find and led directly to the boss.

I imagine there will be more, but I’m glad to see that either they’re on the back burner of the priority chart, or those in charge have taken it upon themselves to make the funniest ones available to everyone so we can all have a good time. experience.

Like I said, I think the Shadow of Airdtree tighter and straighter than the original campaign; It’s pretty clear – at least by FromSoftware standards – that you know what you should do next, and there’s plenty of incentive to keep exploring things after you’re done. For example, while talking to a journalist from another media outlet, I discovered that I was missing half of the main dungeon to explore because the path to the bottom was blocked by an enemy with his back turned. And if you return to the same place, you will see that there are many closed doors. hiding secrets For later.

When it comes to combat, Bandai Namco guarantees that we will have at least ten unique bosses; although I only encountered two of them. Without wanting to spoil you with unnecessary details, I will say that the “dog” in the trailer will be high on the list for many of us, and that as we fight it, it will become more and more tangible than what it is inspired by. Chinese dragon. Both of the ones I found have hidden mechanics that show how their life bar is running low, and of course are accompanied by great musical songs. If you are one of those who think so Elden Ring didn’t have the right sound Given his legacy, I recommend you give him a second chance with DLC.

Take advantage of the days until June 21st.

Here’s an unusual comment on the 3DJuegos trailer: If you have the opportunity, take advantage of the days before the launch of Shadow of the Erdtree and stock up larval tears. Get the mixtures you need for a bottle of miracle medicine. I’m telling you this because you’ll probably want to rethink your character structure one or more times as you unlock the DLC: there are plenty of exotic weapons and War Ashes to unlock, some of which challenge what you typically understand as each specialization.

For example, in my case I started the game with build strength at level 150, and although I assumed that I would go the entire route with an ultra sword, in the end I ended up with fists. Did you see them appearing now in the trailer? Martial arts? Don’t sleep on such ashes of war and weapons, because in my experience, they were the absolute key to breaking any enemy’s stance with a shield, and I can tell you that there are several of these among the legions. Messmer’s flame. But if that doesn’t interest you, there are also semi-automatic canteens, crossbows, and many other alternatives to choose from.

Of course this all fits demo for the press, in which we all had an inventory full of parts chosen by the developers to tinker with to our liking, but it was for this reason that I found so many fun features and hidden mechanics that I was encouraged to completely change the character. I spent more than 200 hours in your Steam account. And I suspect that you, if you go in with enough level to choose between different types of weapons (I think we often get stuck with the same swords at the beginning of an adventure), will be tempted too try every new piece to appear.

In 3D games | I returned to Elden Ring to prepare my game for the DLC and ended up defeating the fearsome Malenia on my first try.

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