This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
Leviathan came close to Dragon Age II's Mark of the Assassin DLC for how much it annoyed me. I can at least say the gameplay is solid if only because it's the same stuff from the main game. There's an escort mission, yes, but the actual escorting is peripheral at best. What annoyed me most about this DLC was that it actually contradicted itself, Mass Effect lore, scientific fact and even common sense. In no specific order follows a list of points where this DLC failed regarding the above:
- Dr Bryson's lab has a piece of Sovereign there. But it's okay because apparently you can shield against indoctrination now, which up until Leviathian has never been mentioned as being possible. That would have come in real handy in ME 2 onboard the Derelict Reaper and plenty of other times but I guess Cerberus didn't have the necessary hand waving technology at the time.
- Visiting the mining base, Shepard and his/her team don't immediately recognise all of the staff are under Leviathan's control given how they're not only acting odd, they're acting almost exactly like Bryson's assistant did when he was under control. Guess they left all their savvy back on the Normandy.
- Leviathan's artifacts can quantum entangle with people's brains on the fly. Relativistic effects not affecting quantum communication I'm fine with, but this is just scientific nonsense. - Leviathan and his fellows can mentally manipulate people at a close distance. How exactly? We got a full fledged explanation with the Thorian in ME 1 and psychic ability has never been in the series before, but I guess the writers decided to hell with it and gave Leviathan psychic powers just because.
- Leviathan can control Reaper forces. Nevermind that it didn't control all of the Reapers on the wrecked ship (instead only controlling one Brute because cutscenes can't be exciting if they don't have action), it can also control actual Reapers. Yet somehow he and his species lost the war with the Reapers? Guess they were asleep. Or just plain stupid.
- Leviathan's lengthy exposition dumps of how the Reapers came about, after having seen the Extended Cut, come across as Bioware saying "Oh, you didn't get our ending first time round? Well here, we're going to explain it again even after the Extended Cut in case you didn't get it." That it was all delivered by Leviathan masquerading in Shepard's mind as people from his/her memories and yet they only used characters introduced in the DLC itself was rather disappointing. They should have had it switch to members of the crew as well.
- The Reapers followed Shepard and the Normandy to Leviathan's planet. Did Joker forget to turn the stealth drive on when he was travelling there?
- Ann Bryson tells us a lot about her complicated relationship with her father. Too bad it was never shown to us in great detail. - The depth meter in the mech is broken, at least as far as I noticed. The numeric gauge will be 1000m lower than the dial indicates. Cute.
- There are only two Paragon/Renegade interrupts, and no Paragon/Renegade dialogue options in the entire DLC. So much for the role playing aspect.
- The DLC itself clocked in at around 2 and a half hours, which I felt was disappointing, although this is a minor complaint for me compared to the points I noted above.
This is all I can think of at the moment, but to sum up Leviathan's gameplay was fine, and I liked the underwater sequence, brief as it was. But I could not believe how poor the writing of this story was, especially given the immense potential behind the revelation that a few of the makers of the Reapers are still alive. A similar story arc was done for DLC for this very same game in From Ashes, and done much better there, which perplexes me even more. All in all, very disappointing.… Expand