First things first, I am a returning player who hasn't played since they added a 5th stage, and I only enjoy playing the melee characters, soFirst things first, I am a returning player who hasn't played since they added a 5th stage, and I only enjoy playing the melee characters, so this review will be from the viewpoint of someone playing melee only. The reason this even got a 5 instead of a 3 is because you can play the DLC content without owning the DLC itself as long as a friend does (as was my case playing through it). As for the actual content of the DLC? Well there's a lot of misses and very few hits...
First of all, let's talk about the meat and potatoes of the DLC: the items. The new items are pretty damn fun to use, but that's not saying much since it would be hard to make an item that's not fun or game altering in a rogue-like. A lot of the new items are also pretty overtuned compared to base game which contributes to the fun factor, but if you're looking into setting PBs for highest stage completion then you might wanna consider buying this DLC. There are a few notable items like the regenerating scrap which straight up gives you 1 free green item per stage with a green 3D printer, and the shipping request form that can give you free items of any quality (1 item per form), even reds. The new corrupted items are a very cool idea too, giving old items brand new uses like the Lost Seer's Lenses that gives you a 0.5% chance to instakill non-boss enemies and transforms all Lens-Maker's you acquire into that item. There's also a void item called the Weeping Fungus that makes all Bustling Fungi you collect have the inverse effect of now healing while you're moving instead.
As for the enemies... this is where I was truly let down. The new enemies and bosses are absolutely just not fun to fight or deal with. There's a new enemy type that heals enemies and bosses around it and can be a pain to deal with in the early levels if you play a character with limited mobility. There's also these new flying mantaray-esque enemies that are basically Wisps, but WAY overtuned. They have the same hitscan attack, but with 4x the attack speed and gargantuan amounts of damage to boot. There's also a new boss called XI Construct that is absolutely just the worst designed boss in the game. Imagine the Solus Control Unit, but it does twice the damage, moves twice as much, and has a hitscan laser that you can accidentally teleport inside of when trying to damage the boss as melee characters (Oops! Shouldn't have played the most unloved and neglected archetype by Hopoo!). Not to mention that at a certain point it can put up a barrier that nullifies ranged based attacks, forcing you to try to maneuver up to it way in the sky to damage it, if it wasn't already impossible to reach.
As for some of the changes and new stages/mechanics? I'm not a fan of those either. The new mechanics are all extremely tedious to deal with. One of the major new mechanics are these void bubbles that deal way too much damage over time to you and have these needle-looking things you need to interact with that spawn enemies randomly throughout the level you have to kill to dispel the bubble. Which on its own isn't hard to deal with, you can simply ignore it, but IT CAN SPAWN ON THE TELEPORT PRACTICALLY ENDING YOUR RUN! I have NO CLUE what they were thinking with this! Me and my friend who owns the DLC just could not keep up with the difficulty since we had to scavenge the whole map for these void enemies (which also do way too much damage) at below half health on floor 3 because we spent 5 seconds in the bubble finding these interactables! And the best part, by the time we clear the bubble and finish the teleporter event everything is way too overleveled for us to deal with now! And this didn't happen just once in the 3 hours I spent playing this DLC, no, this happened 3 SEPERATE TIMES and everytime killed our run and will to continue playing. The void fields also received unnecessary changes as well practically making it never worth going for under any circumstances now. So now the difficulty timer no longer pauses while in the Void Fields and items that previously mitigated the damage over time of the air no longer work against it, forcing you to just sit and watch your friends kill everything if you were unfortunate enough to only like the melee archetype characters (Gasp! Another nerf to melee?!). Sure it can be worth it to hop in there and clear maybe 2 waves of void cells, but why do that when you can continue to the next level and get double the items in half the time and for half the effort?
Also you STILL need mods just to see the exact percentage the items buff you by still, which is INEXCUSABLE for a rogue-like which the whole purpose of is to collect items to power up and progress...
I can hardly recommend picking up this DLC, especially if you already dreaded tedious mechanics in the base game, and DO NOT BUY if you only like the melee based characters in the game. If it wasn't for the items being interesting and fun this review would've net a 3 score...… Expand
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