First off, yes, Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree is very difficult — nearly as difficult as the Internet at large is claiming it to be.
Still, as recently caught by GamesRadar, we saw the recording of u/Gneurshk_, a player who was giving everything he had against the final boss in the DLC, only to witness the boss vanishing and then dying from a mysterious hit that dealt it over 32,000 damage.
Spoilers for the final boss of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree follow.
FromSoft is known for messing with players, but let me use the experience gained from many hours trying to bring this beast down to assure you that this is not how the fight is supposed to go down.
Did the boss fall out of bounds to meet an outrageous amount of fall damage? Did he attempt to use magic too powerful even for the gods? Did Malenia get to him without us noticing? We might never learn the answer to these questions, but this situation brings about a point that I find worth discussing.
Besides this story itself, which is pretty funny for outsiders to read about when everyone is complaining about the DLC’s difficulty, we should delve into how might actually suck a lot for many players. A large number of players would see this as a total blessing — especially after hours of getting their asses kicked by this evil team-up between an overpowered beast and a literal god. Still, there are those, like the player in question, who’d see this event as but a cruel denial of their most glorious moment.
Many players complain about the lack of an easier difficulty mode in Souls games and, while I feel like that’s a discussion worth having, I believe we should also begin asking for a boss replay mode.
If you’re a hardcore player, the greatest reward in these games isn’t the cool amulets or sets of armor you get by venturing into the most dangerous places and destroying the toughest bosses. It’s the boss fights themselves. Not getting direct access to bosses you’ve already beaten feels like a missed opportunity to many, especially if you never really got to beat them.
As of the time of this writing, there’s no known way of reproducing Radahn’s fatal heart attack glitch, but this is not the first known instance of a similar glitch in a game by FromSoftware. I can attest to that, as I witnessed the exact same pattern of events when I first fought the Blood-Starved Beast in Bloodborne. I was also robbed of a few victories in my first playthrough of Elden Ring, as my main character fell right before I got to kill the boss. More times than I’d like to admit, the last thing my character saw was their mimic avenging their death by dealing the last hit — and effectively stealing my glory.
If you Gneurshk wants to give this boss a rematch, they’ll have to replay a large chunk of the base game, then go through the entirety of the DLC. That’s a lot of effort, an effort that can be nullified to the detriment of no one if From just adds a boss replay option upon completion of the game.
You can now pray that god will cheese your enemies out of existence in Elden Ring: Shadow Of The Erdtree on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
