Shadow of the Erdtree's brutal difficulty spike is what happens when you inject Dark Souls into Elden Ring

Shadow of the Erdtree echoes the original Dark Souls in several ways. For me, that's a boon; it's a huge reason why I liked it so much. Give me a tightly wound map with areas stacked on top of each other and I'm fully in. But as frustration over the DLC's difficulty continues to be the talking point—which prompted FromSoftware to issue a patch this week to ease the challenge a bit—it's clear that not everyone wanted or even expected Elden Ring to go full Dark Souls.

And I think that's the problem...