Polygon's entire Erdtree review: 'it's hard, you die, it's great.' That's it.
The Original Review
“Everything in the expansion is stronger and more deadly than anything you've met in Elden Ring.”
Michael McWhertor spent 40 hours getting his teeth kicked in by Shadow of the Erdtree and came out the other side going 'yeah that was great actually.' This is the games journalism equivalent of paying someone to punch you in the face and then leaving a five-star Yelp review for the experience.
The review can be summarized as: it's hard, you'll die, the bosses are tough, and if you persevere you'll feel good. Congratulations, Michael, you've just described every FromSoftware game since Demon's Souls in 2009. This is fifteen years of the exact same pitch and reviewers keep falling for it like it's the first time. 'Everything is stronger and more deadly' — so it's the same game but the numbers are bigger? Revolutionary. Truly the Citizen Kane of number inflation.
Polygon doesn't use review scores, which is convenient when your entire review can be distilled into 'hard game hard, me like.' Without a score, there's no accountability. There's no number to point to when the DLC's balance patches completely change the experience three weeks later. It's criticism with an escape hatch. McWhertor wrote a 40-hour love letter to masochism and called it a review. I've read fortune cookies with more critical insight.
