Nerfing everything it can nerf, unbalanced and without any trace of fun. Before this DLC BoI was a hard and challenging game, but it was really fun to play. This DLC changes everything - it feels like japanese bullet hell game and Dark Souls decided to have a child. Played on Steam roughly for 20 hours and dropped (after 600+ hours in all previous DLCs). Cannot recommend it at all.
Well, it has a great potential. This game plays like a little bit oversimplified Doom or Blood on their maze levels with tons of monsters, but unique art style makes everything right. Level design is a bit linear (honestly, I didn't play too much, but this is the first impression you will get), but it's also nice - reminds me of some simple levels in Clive Barker's Undying. Don't expect that you will get Dusk-like game which provides a way mooore of Quake exprerience - now it's just a solid shooter from 90's. I hope developers will polish their game - now it seems like they have everything they need.
Well, it's a great game like a fresh mix of Disco Elysium in cyberpunk setting. Not so short (finished it in 10 hours), great narrative, interesting turning points. But the one thing breaks it all: game design of "level-ups". There is no experience points, so you need to choose carefully that you are saying. It ends up with a very bad roleplay: sometimes you are empathetic, sometimes you are blunt - and this fact breaks all roleplay. Well, in the first part of a game I lost a lot of chances to get more narrative routes just because I played as an irrational detective - neither logical nor empathetic. After first case I've stucked just with one specialization and a lot of unused trait points. And the game considers this situation as normal. So you'll definitely choose a psychopath path to maximize your stats - or won't see a good amount of content.
If you looking for something so close to the classic Fallout titles - here it is, you definitely should try it. Nothing much to say - most bugs are fixed, gameplay is great, narrative is great. A little bit short - but that's ok, there is no games like this in market for some years.
I will be brief. The main core loop in this game is roguelite - you'll start over and over to grind some upgrades, and then you'll pass some heavy enemies, and after that... Ok, this could work if there was true random which randomizes bosses and enemies - at least it could relocate them via different sectors on map to make experience at least DIFFERENT. But as I can see it relocates only resources, not the enemies - and if relocation is somehow wrong and you didn't choose some overpowered heroes in your party from scratch, you're doomed. Because if you didn't save armour repair station and Med Kit before main boss fight... well, it's the matter of time before you loose. So you can spend one hour with half just to find out that the "great random" have distributed all the main stations in impossible combination on next planet - so there is no motivation to play, only to grind. Well, for example, Darkest Dungeon was unfair countless times, but at least it gave us hope, that ugly random could spare our parties sometimes, and every time you wasn't sure about it all. In this game if you took wrong heroes and got wrong random seed, you're doomed - and you can see it from the start. And this balance decision makes the idea of roguelite completely useless. Finally you'll understand that your runs are all the same: it's better to have one exact party, it's better to save resource stations, it's better to attack sectors in one designated chain - and in the end it won't work, because doing the same things isn't fun, And that's the point, there you can understand, that this game could be excellent, but all you can give is three stars out of five because of poor design choices.
It's unfair to give this game less than 4- or 5-stars review, because it's a good roguelite which compiled very good decisions from Enter the Gungeon and Nuclear Throne - and after that added some new tunes. This game is minimalistic (one screen for each level), it has very repetitive core loop (it looks like Nuclear Throne) and not so much content (weapons, monsters, locations). But... but it still plays great because of good random. It plays definitely as Binding of Isaac - one of 20 or even 50 runs will be brilliant, so you have to replay again and again to find which one. So, the main and the absolute plus of this game is replayability. Seed runs will never be the same - and it's very fun.
I'm a big fan of Frostpunk, so this DLC was instabuy. But after of few tries (one was successful) I can tell, that the first and very good concept of original game was completely lost. Here are some troubles: 1. Resource management shrank. You can simply examine your island and find out what exactly do you need all session long. A few moments later you'll understand how to do it (not always optimal - but everything is obvious); 2. Very unbalanced and uninteresting engineers law branch. There is no simple way to raise your workers productivity, so in this case you'll make very linear decisions. Workers line is more variable, so you can find some interesting moves here; 3. Predefined situations. Well, they were in a core game, but their integration wasn't so irritating and they didn't have so many bad consequences. Here all of them either are bad or so stupidly narrated. Bad omens, bad signs, toxic gases, explosions even in totally safe situations etc; 4. Very hard timeline. No right for any kind of mistake. You will loose even after 2-3 hours of play. Sometimes it feels good (challenging is nice), but in most cases it's not because of bad predefined events; 5. Low replayability value. It's all in fourth paragraph: to evade all bad consequences you'll automatically remember main timeline after a few tries - and this fact doesn't contribute any variations to gameplay. You'll simply try to hack resource and production chains like a bad student on exam - and there is nothing fun here. I didn't mention some crashes, bad optimization and few interface bugs (markers on map are overlapped by panels, empty context menus and some more mistakes) - encountered them from time to time. But even without it all I cannot give this DLC anything more than 6 out of 10. Very frustrating experience with no in-game depth.
