As Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree continues to pound players into the dirt, Bandai Namco calls them out in the most devastatingly polite way possible

Messmer from Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree looks at his hand, pained, garbed in a flowing red robe.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree is hard—real hard, in fact. Having just wrapped up my ashes-free playthrough myself, I definitely feel like everything in it is a major step up when compared to the base game. Nothing insurmountable, but the exact opposite of a cakewalk, as FromSoftware DLCs tend to be.

This controversial difficulty spike—in a genre known for being a series of controversial difficulty spikes—has led to "Mixed" reviews on Steam for the time being.