I spent part of my lunch break just trying to get a foothold on Shadow, and so far, if I'm being honest, what a PITA. I posted here looking for help finding the entry point, but finally got as far as the Consecrated Snowfield, and thought, "Oh maybe it will be fun to try and find my own way from here." LOL.
My main takeaway is that the people who decided on this point of entry had no respect for the fact that a lot of people would be coming back to the game after having shelved it for a year or more. It's like "Game of Thrones-itis" where you're expected to remember dozens of fantasy-foreign names as if they'd been on your mind in the year+ since the last season. In the case of Elden/Shadow it's, "Let's have the player spontaneously go to this super obscure place he's forgotten ever existed. When he gets there, let's make it a place where he can barely see because there's an impenetrable snow/fog filter. Yeah! A place with lots of godlike bosses wandering around the open world. That'll be the perfect backdrop while he tries to remember how to organize his inventory!"
Speaking of inventory, I'd forgotten how ridiculously outsized everything about this game is. It kind of creeps up on you, but even by the end of the main game it was all kind of eyeroll-worthy. The map(s, all of them), the inventory screen(s, all of them), the spells, the buffs, the item buffs, and so on. After some time away, just looking at all of it can make you cross-eyed.
I'm sure I'll love the game (intermittently, at least) in a week's time. But man, From isn't making it easy.
