From what I’ve seen so far, the expansion is worth the price of admission (if you have to buy it separately) from a quality perspective – but it’s even less fun to play than the base game.
It took me 208 hours to complete the base game on the Switch 2 and I cannot say that any of it was fun; it triggered my defiance and ambition and the only reason why I kept playing was that the game somehow fit into my life situation: The stress produced by Elden Ring became a counterweight to my real life stress and distracted me, kept me occupied and I knew that the challenges, while hard and unfair, could be overcome.
But that is actually a sick reason to play a game. Games should be an escape, relaxing, entertaining and fun. Not more stress.
While the environments look intriguing in the expansion, the problem is that the developers increased the difficulty level to pure unfair lunacy.
It doesn’t do anything good or worthwhile for you – like make you feel good. You won’t feel good, even if you win a difficult battle. So there simply isn’t anything worthwhile to be found in the expansion.
If you have already played the base game, I recommend that you rather replay the base game from scratch and explore those regions that you left out in the previous run. That way you can take advantage of what you’ve already learned about the game.
Also: Keep in mind that even the high-profile (gaming) streamer Asmongold gave up on the expansion because he thought that “it is too hard to be fun”. If you don’t trust my assessment, maybe trust him – after all, that guy makes a living playing games on live streams.