The expansion Shadow of the Erdtree for Elden Ring was released on June 21, and within 24 hours, users had left over ten thousand reviews. At the time of the article's publication, the expansion had a "mixed" rating of 65%.

Notably, the highest number of negative reviews came from Chinese players. Users from other countries tend to leave more positive than negative reviews.

Analyst Daniel Ahmad attempted to explain the reaction on X. He specializes in analyzing gaming markets in Asia but notes that his opinion may not fully align with reality.

Ahmad observed that Chinese players primarily complain about the difficulty of Shadow of the Erdtree, whereas Western players also cite it as an issue but alongside problems such as optimization.

According to the analyst, if Chinese players find a title "too unfair", it typically leads to negative reviews. One reason for such a strong reaction could be the lack of guides in Chinese to assist with the game.

However, players have two main complaints about the expansion regardless of their country: optimization and difficulty. Authors of negative reviews acknowledge that the expansion is indeed large, interesting, and visually appealing, but they state that the technical issues cannot be ignored. It is worth noting that Elden Ring also faced criticism for optimization upon its release.

Despite the performance issues and difficulty, many players continue to explore the expansion. Elden Ring's concurrent player count on Steam surpassed 700,000 due to the expansion's release.

The original Elden Ring also launched on Steam with "mixed" reviews, but over time, its rating surpassed 90%. It is possible that the same could happen with the expansion once developers start releasing patches.

Main image: alphacoders.com

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