Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree’s bosses all have the same problem and it’s not their difficulty

Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC punishes players worldwide with its patented FromSoftware difficulty. Still, the game has gone too far with its bosses, and not because they’re too hard, but because they’re too similar to each other. 

Elden Ring and its DLC are marvels of the industry, and FromSoftware deserves all of the praise in the world for creating an incredible open-world game.

That being said, Elden Ring’s brutal difficulty took even the diehard Souls fans by surprise. This was especially true of the boss fights.

All the bosses seemed faster and more responsive than anything seen in the older games, especially compared to what the player can do. Now, Shadow of the Erdtree has upped the ante even further, and the results aren’t pleasant. 

The main bosses in Shadow of the Erdtree have identical fights

FromSoftware

Rellana, Messmer, Romina, and the final boss might look different and have different elemental affinities, but their boss battles are all the same. They represent the pinnacle of FromSoftware difficulty, which has merged all enemies into one. 

Here’s a short list of the similarities between the main bosses of Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC.

They’re each incredibly fast, are super aggressive, and quick to punish any use of potion or summoning item. They have massive AoEs on their attacks that even go around their own backs, can move across the arena, and strike you even if you turn and run full speed away from them. They deal a ton of damage each hit, absorb damage to the point where status effect builds are a necessity, have ranged attacks that can be used an infinite number of times, and can augment their attacks so they still damage you through a shield.

I’m not done yet! Each boss possesses a grabbing move that can take off a massive chunk of your health while putting them in an invincible state that protects them from any allies, can do a punishing opener if you try to use a summon, can leap out of range, and force you to run across the battlefield to hit them, have attacks with almost no startup, and have Phase 2s where they become even stronger… phew.

The base version of Elden Ring is notorious for enemies recovering from your attacks to “reset” the battlefield. There are plenty of times when monsters will sometimes just be yanked back out of your attack range with bizarre-looking jumps just to deny you a few extra hits. This is what led to the Fire Giant and its ridiculous Sonic the Hedgehog escape roll, just so it could reset the current situation when you finally caught up to it. 

Shadow of the Erdtree dials this up to eleven. Bosses give you only minuscule windows to attack them before they start impersonating Devil May Cry’s most frustrating enemies, where they perform lengthy chains of attack and put you on the defensive. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a couple of hits in before they’re yanked back to a safe position to start it all over again. 

This is to say nothing of the camera, which has become the true enemy of Shadow of the Erdtree, like in the battle against Ancient Dragon Senessax. The speed of the bosses is such that the camera struggles to keep up with them when they start jumping around, which is a major problem when you’re trying to dodge or block their attacks.

The problem with this kind of difficulty, even in a Soulslike, is that the bosses are now interchangeable. The bosses are exaggerated anime characters with limitless energy and mobility while we still play the shlubs introduced in Demon’s Souls. Even the giant bosses, like Ancient Dragon Senessax and Bayle the Dread, share the agility and responsiveness of the smaller foes, making the camera issues even worse. 

When every boss is Malenia with a different haircut, then what made her special is watered down. Now, it’s just a killer’s row of bosses who are perfect in so many ways that they’re no longer fun to fight.

Where is started and when it went wrong.

There are a lot of contenders for the best boss in the Souls series and its spin-offs. For me, that boss is one who most likely won’t remember. In fact, I’ll include a picture to refresh your memory.

That boss is The Pursuer from Dark Souls 2, and they hold a special place in my heart. See, Dark Souls 2 was my entry point to the series. It was my first, and I’m still fond of it, warts and all. 

Like most first-time Souls players, I bumbled through the early hours, getting destroyed by the generic soldiers that littered the world of Dark Souls 2. Then, I met The Pursuer and realized how outclassed I was.

The Pursuer was faster, stronger, had a longer reach, and could take more hits than me. He could leap across the battlefield to smite me and even had a magical sword attack that skewered me to death more times than I care to remember. 

But, I had one thing The Pursuer lacked: the ability to change my tactics. Meanwhile, they were stuck using the same patterns over and over again. 

It took me countless tries, but I finally did it. I learned all of The Pursuer’s moves, chipped away at his hit points, and hit him with the killing blow. The elation I felt in that moment has rarely been matched in gaming. I felt like Rocky winning a fight. In fact, I’m pretty sure I shouted “Adrian!” when I beat The Pursuer.

And in that moment, I was hooked. That was the first hit of the drug that FromSoftware had injected into my veins, and from that point on, I was a diehard fan.

Many other bosses have given me that same thrill over the years, with Ludwig from Bloodborne, Lady Butterfly from Sekiro, and the two Princes from Dark Souls 3 being just a few that spring to mind. 

The Shadow of the Erdtree bosses didn’t give me any pleasure at all. I beat them and moved on without any joy. The only satisfaction I got was knowing I’d never have to look at their faces ever again.  

And the reason is that I never truly beat them. I just got lucky each time. 

Bosses like Messmer the Impaler can just kill you whenever they want. His grab attack can OHKO mid-battle, and if you’ve started an animation when he’s initiated the move, he’s got you. It’s the same with Bayle’s downward fire breath: it’s so easy to be caught with it due to its low startup time that you can’t escape it if you’re doing something or are too close to the center of the blast. This is all to say nothing of what the end boss of the DLC can do.  

I did not learn how to beat those bosses, nor Rellana or Romina. If they want to kill you, they can, and often will, and it’s just not fun anymore. I’ve earned victories throughout the Souls series and its spin-offs, but this time, I won because of RNG. The bosses didn’t do their BS for long enough for them to gain an advantage, and that’s how I squeaked by. 

And it’s all the same boss fight each time. If there had been a wide array of exciting boss types, then the punishing difficulty wouldn’t have stung so hard, but the main players in Shadow of the Erdtree feel like copy-pastes of each other. It’s the natural endpoint of FromSoftware’s difficulty arms race against itself. 

And if that’s the franchise’s future, then this is where my love affair with FromSoftware’s games ends. If the next game feels the need to up the ante even further or even keeps up the nonsense seen in Shadow of the Erdtree, then maybe I’ll stick to the Soulslikes made by other developers because what made me love these games so much has slipped away in the Lands Between.