If there are any enemies you felt were underused in the original campaign, or environmental tricks you wish there were more of, this DLC has you covered. You get 3 new characters: Estel who specializes in delayed-reaction moves. Max who's a heavy focused more with flinging himself at the enemies compared to Floyd who brings the enemies to him. And Shiva who's a teleporting ninja with heavy-commitment moves that are devastating done well or can leave you wide open if you're sloppy. Also Shiva auto-throws any weapon you try to pick up. Survival mode is a roguelite mode that has you fighting a series of brawls in one-and-a-half-screen-wide arenas with random enemy and hazard placement. After each room you can pick one random perk that adds things like elemental bursts to your special moves or spawning an ally punk to fight alongside you, etc. Some of the arena rooms are memorable locations from the 16-bit games populated by 16-bit enemies with their original sprites, including many who didn't make it into vanilla SoR4. The score you get in survival mode fills up an experience bar for the specific character you used that unlocks new moves for them. These are REPLACEMENT moves that you choose in the character selection screen in all game modes. They have different movement and juggle characteristics but don't seem superior to the base game's moveset. I haven't seen Roo as a playable character yet, but there IS a suspicious gap in the SoR3 character list in the survival mode XP unlock screen, and Bruce/Danch the whip clown is an enemy that appears in survival mode. For such a low price I'd say this DLC is must-buy. The new characters are great, survival mode battles get insanely chaotic the further you get, and the new music slaps.
Quick writing this review because the game's on giveaway at the moment. If you like this game and its concept, you'll love its predecessor Shadowhand. Just like Puzzle Quest took RPG combat and replaced abstract RNG dice rolls with a competitive match-3 jewels game, Shadowhand and Ancient Enemy replace RNG with a Solitaire game in the style of Pyramid. Uncover and remove cards from the pyramid structure by matching values one higher or lower than the one in your hand. The more cards you remove in a single move, the more mana you charge for your weapons and spells. Different enemies have different elemental weaknesses that you can see before a fight and re-equip your character accordingly. Everything this game does well, Shadowhand does better. Better gameplay with enemies drawing off the same deck as you instead of AE's timed scripted attacks. Better graphics, better music, better story, MUCH better equipment system. Slightly higher difficulty. So if you enjoyed your free play of Ancient Enemy, by all means snatch up Shadowhand
