Below and Beyond does bring a lot of new content to the game. There is now and underground tunnelsystem to explore, including a few quests, as well as sending rockets to drill out the occasional meteor. The meteor mechanic is to send a specially designed rocket to mine a new mineral of asteriod. The rocket flight, and mining must take place within a timeframe that varies from meteor to meteor. I found no bugs in the mechanics but ther eare some arbitrary restrictions, such as solar cells being the only allowed power producing building, that might have been implemented as a balance feature, but does not make much sense within the setting of the game. The undergrund tunnels, is a dark network that requires sending roveres to clear out and explore. The darkness is a bit wonky and sometimes rubble blocking a tunnel can only be removed from one side. You need the minerals from asteroids in order to build underground (for some arbitrary reason), and the underground suffers from the occasional tunnel collapse unless you build stabilizing pillars. Rubble, just like waste from toxic rain, will only be cleared automaticly if a rover or drones is already within range. There is no way to automate long distance cleaning. At the end of the day I was left asking *why*? The meteors adds special minerals at the cost of more micromanaging, and the minerals are only useful undergorund, where even more micromanaging is added. And all we get out of it, is more rubble. There is no sense of accomplishment or no joy in finally automating a big chain like in vanilla. It's just more hassle, with no noteworthy benefit. Also once meteors/underground have been started, there will be periodic events that cannot be disabled and quickly becomes annoying. (A new meteor or undergorund earthquake you say? 400 and counting!) I cannot recommend this. Note: I adopted the expansion late, and I was not overwhelmed by the bugs other review mention. I had no gamebreaking experiences.
TLDR: If you are looking for a turn based D&D 5e game, set in the Baldur's Gate setting (Forgotten Realms), you will likely not be disappointed. ==================== As a long time fan of the Baldur's Gate series, the Divinity: Original Sin series and tabletop D&D, I was hyped for this game. I was disappointed. I found it bland, to the point where I am losing interest at level 3. It's not a bad game per se. Graphics are really good. D&D 5th implementation is mostly true to tabletop. It's just not what I wanted, so I am writing this review to shed some light on the gameplay experience. Therefore, bias included. Reader beware. The games basics run smooth an the game seems to accomplish what it sets out to do. That is, to serve the D&D 5th tabletop experience. Compared to Baldur's Gate the gameplay, due to being turnbased combat, is much slower. And because the actions in combat reflect the tabletop D&D choices, rather than the much more decisive Divinity Original Sin choices, the game ends up being technically true to tabletop, while also being bland to the point of boring in combat. Outside combat, Larian has crafted a beautiful world to explore, which is unfortunately hampered by character control. The new jump ability is great. There is no way to tell the entire party to jump (or stealth). Having to manually tell each and evey character to make a single jump at a time is not great. Add to that the slightly wonky mechanic that selecting a new character makes the previous selected character cancel movement (or jumping) means dragging a party across the map is a tedious experience. The tone and story is very vanilla. Little to no tongue-in-cheek humor. Companions are your run-of-the-mill BioWare snowflakes. No option for DoS-style Lone Wolves, as expected. Unlike BG party size does not affect how much experience each individual character gains. To sum up: The combat is not fullfilling. Exploration is frustratingly wonky. Story and tone is meh.
