Πρόσφατες κριτικές από τον flame from Halo

The setting/atmosphere is stellar, the upgrade/unlock systems are rewarding, and the core-gameplay is fantastic. With some pretty healthy content given out with sporadic updates I can see why everyone was raving about it on release, even a year later the community is as strong as ever no matter the time of day. There is so much to love about the game it is hard to pick a proper place to start.

• Weapons and stratagems: the gear setups for the game are phenomenal and offer insane customizability. I was going to describe them as 'builds' but each stratagem can be taken with any other combination(outside of 4 support weapons) to allow you to take whatever you feel is necessary. Due to this free-form system it is VERY rare to see anyone even take 2 stratagems that are the same as yours(outside of defense missions) and in 100 hours I have never seen someone chastised for taking a certain stratagem in game. Just about every weapon/stratagem is useful in most circumstances and that is phenomenal!
  
• The unlock/upgrade systems are exceptional! The three different unlock systems are Stratagems(heavy weapons/ordinance/vehicles)/Ship Modules(passive upgrades)/Warbonds(battle passes), with the last one being unlock-able with premium currency. Simply completing missions gives stratagem currency and grants progress on warbonds, with currency you have to search for around the maps being needed for ship modules or unlocking warbonds. This system is fantastic as a baseline, with incentives to go out and search for resources in-map being rewarded while also not being necessary for those looking to just enjoy the game. Having premium currency as a reward for just playing the game should always be like this.
  
• The core-gameplay is probably my favorite part of the game, it is astounding that Arrowhead went from Gauntlet/other top-down co-op games to making such a fluid and satisfying first/third person shooter. The weapons/environments sound amazing(even better with mods), the feedback from firing and enemy response is phenomenal, crescendo events are intense, and the enemies are just plain fun to fight(mostly). Of all the other co-op shooters I have played I am hard pressed to find one that give me the same intensity of panicked desperation as our position is overrun by a horde and everyone flees. Seeing my allies one by one fight their own intense battle while watching them fall is superb design that is hard to properly replicate. Darktide/Vermintide2 would probably be second best in this regard, but having teammates actually die over and over really drives home the desperation more than they could ever replicate.

• Not all weapons are created equal, often with some really good stratagems/weapons being stuck behind specific warbonds. One of the biggest bones of contention recently was the nerf to one of the most popular weapons a week after the new warbond released. This has apparently become common practice among Arrowhead Warbonds, with nerfs being handed out shortly after people find out incredibly good builds or showcase just how powerful new weapons are.
  
• The stratagems are fine, but gaining progress in warbonds/getting samples can be an absolute slog. As an example: some higher upgrades for ship modules cost 250 common+200 rare samples, with even the highest difficulty missions giving a max of 40 commons/30 rares. That is, of course, the highest difficulty where if you don't have a really solid team you are lucky to get even half of those. Lowering the difficulty gives you more time but then you are forcing yourself to scour every little location and it is insanely tedious. Super credits can be similar, with each warbond being $10 and the freemium currency being mostly found in 10c bundles(find ~100 on average to unlock a warbond).
  
• Some aspects of the game absolutely suck in terms of fighting. Automatons are probably my favorite to fight, but they have incredibly annoying flyers+jammers that can often be spammed in certain missions which absolutely kills the enjoyment when I feel I lost to cheese rather than my own failings. Bugs? I have to drop ordinance on every outpost I come across simply because if you don't insantly kill all the bugs you are likely to get a bug breach. An endless horde from the ground that I can in no way interact with or run away from?(they chase you across the entire map and always know your position) Sounds like CBT to me. Illuminate are fun to an extent, but with only 3 enemy types currently you mostly get spammed by voteless(zombies) and overseers(armored warriors) that have jetpacks, being able to track you forever. I love the combat, but enemy balancing seems way off in certain aspects like these.
  
• Bonus: The Community. Out of all co-op shooter game communities I have come across on steam, HD2 stands proudly at the peak of Mt Awful. DRG/Darktide/Vermintide2 communities have their moments and outrage is expected when certain expectations are not met, but HD2 goes beyond that. Any update, any lack of update, any change, any content, anything that happens with the game or Arrowhead/PSN gets blown way out of proportion with easily 50-70% of all discussions being complaint threads. If you play this game, avoid the discussions. [[If you have no intention to buy the game then it is still a free clown-award farm]]

All of that said, the game still stands tall on its own and it a superb game that anyone who is a fan of co-op extraction shooters will enjoy. It is an absolute crime that this game is sitting at 76% overall with all the drama surrounding several unpopular decisions(specifically warbond nerfs/enemy rebalances/PSN fiasco), the game deserves far better than what knee-jerk reaction reviews give it. I highly recommend it even at full price for anyone with a friend/group that loves co-op shooters, otherwise I would recommend grabbing it on sale and trying it out for a bit as even matchmaking can be a great time with some of the friends I have found there(multiplayer is fine, discussions is a plague). Super Earth needs heroes like you, now more than ever.

Honestly this iteration Total Warhammer is a mixed bag for me, as well as a lot of the community with ~80% recent and ~70% overall, but I do recommend it.

The game has undergone a massive face-lift since TW2 and it really shows.

• Auto-resolve tells you what units die in battle now. WHY DID IT ALMOST TAKE 2 DECADES FOR THIS TO BE ADDED??? Playing any other Total War for me now feels absolutely awful when I have to quick-save and guess what units may die.
  
• The new factions are magnificent, extremely versatile in their gameplay which is my main draw in playing other factions. A pretty decent stream of content from DLCs means there are a few new leaders to play every year or so, and with some factions getting a face-lift(chaos my beloved) it makes playing them feel like a brand new experience that dwarfs my enjoyment of them from TW2.
  
• With new factions they also revamped the alliance system in fantastic new ways, mainly the outpost/war coordination system. Being able to simply *direct* allies as to how to conduct the war is a huge boost as I can, in theory, tell them to defend one front while I attack somewhere else. The outpost system also allows faction variety beyond the base faction system, allowing vampires to get siege weapons or skaven to gaet *actual* late game infantry, which is wonderful in expanding an army roster list.
  
• Siege battles have been drastically improved in terms of variety of maps and simple changes never made in TW2; highground inside cities so your artillery can fire at an assaulting army, heavy gunner units can mount walls, and siege points that can be used to build defenses inside the city after the walls fall. All of these things seemed like a no-brainer for siege defenses, but were never implemented in TW2 outside mods.
  
• The new Immortal Empires map is MASSIVE, with so many factions available(especially with faction unlockers) that you could probably play tens of thousands of hours and still not get full campaign experiences for every little faction. The changes to some starting locations is also appreciated, allowing me a refreshing experience with some faction leaders in newer locales compared to TW2.
  
• The new factions are magnificent, extremely versatile in their play-ability which is my main draw to play other factions. A pretty decent stream of content from DLCs means there are a few new leaders to play every year or so, and with some factions getting a face-lift(chaos my beloved) it makes playing them feel like a brand new experience that dwarfs my enjoyment of them from TW2.

At the same time many of these positives come with direct downsides linked to them.

• Auto-resolve is just terrible if you pick certain factions. I was playing Ogre Kingdoms and was about to suffer a 90% loss of units in my army against Skaven(genuinely only clanrats/skaven slaves in the armies). We played it out manually where we literally right clicked the Skaven and walked at them. 34 deaths(our army consisted of ~800) to 2000 kills. There are about half a dozen factions where auto-resolve just isn't an option, even on the lowest difficulties. I now use a mod to slightly adjust auto-resolve so I don't waste dozens of hours fighting early game infantry battles.
  
• The DLC-spam has become notorious in the strategy game community. Paradox is the prime example in this monument to greed and Creative assembly seems to be going down the same route. The DLC that get put out are often half baked and overpriced beyond any reasonable doubt. I don't mind purchasing dlc that add dozens of hours of game-play, but when they are abysmal on release and only become playable years later(looking at you Ogre Kingdom) then it just shows how little effort CA is willing to put in to shave a little money off its community.
  
• The outpost/war coordination is just pretty poorly implemented. Constructing outposts costs a ton early/requires you to trust 1 of their cities, unless it is a massive capital like Skavenblight be ready to rebuild it when their city gets taken/razed. Ever ally with someone but don't want an outpost? Enjoy clicking a bonus notification button *every turn* to ignore building an outpost, even if they are the same race as you and give you no new units in any of their cities. The war coordination system seems good on paper, but it won't stop your allies from taking territory that is clearly in your path, nor will it stop your allies from drip-feeding their armies into a stronghold and never capturing it without you paying war-coordination money to turn their brains on. I want to like the system, but whenever I say 'Hey I can use the war-coordination system for this' I can, indeed, not use the war coordination system for that or I can do it faster myself.
  
• Many of the sieges that are available I just skip. In the game's beta-immortal empires form it felt more forgiving and nuanced, with rebuild-able defenses that made a running defense of your city viable so long as your army didn't break. Most of the time I kind of groan when I have to play one out because I rarely feel that I out-maneuvered or outsmarted the opponent, but rather the enemy decided to slowly scale walls while being shot or funneled into a super tight choke-point with a tier 4 defense tower bombarding them. Basically TW2 sieges felt so cool because the walls and chokes meant so much in terms of tactical advantages, now you just toss units around to provide the bare minimum for resources and hope the enemy dies of cringe enough to shatter.
  
• The new map is big, but it is so big that it ends of being its downfall. With 554 settlements and 278 factions at the start the developers have taken a step back and gone 'this isnt viable for our players to be expected to conquer most of this' and taken the piss out of long victories. In TW2 a long campaign victory really FELT like you had the world in your hand, making you conquer enough in most cases that your victory was all but assured after the fact, now many factions just say 'raze/conq/sack 60 settlements+get a resource to lvl 3 of 5'. With that shortened win condition in play they also added a system to challenge the player more in the short term to balance out the removed late game difficulty, the anti-player bias...
  
• I despise the anti-player bias. It is a value hard coded into the game that does as it suggests. Your allies will falter, your neighbors want YOUR stuff over all worldly possessions, and you are sitting there trying to wonder why a game that makes you fight 5 random factions at the same time is a 'fun' experience. TW2 didn't need this in the game and there is diplomacy for exactly this reason. Someone strong? Make a treaty with them. They don't accept? Ask your neighbors to join a defensive pact. They declare war? Bribe other factions to join or beg your allies to intervene. Instead we get the 'free thinkers' iRobot meme the second the player gets beyond 10 settlements. I use a mod to turn this setting off and the game is genuinely frustrating without it.

I do really like this game and recommend it as probably one of the best total war games ever made simply because they have directly improved the Total War formula so much, but understand that there are very solid reasons why people don't recommend it.

I really didn't go over *all* of the QoL differences between the two games, but they are so numerous 'itsmehawkeyeg' made a 27 minute video breaking down how much they worked on improving the base experience. If you are a fan of the Total War games, this one is a must have.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vagZwUHu4k8

After years of being DLC abused by Stellaris I needed a new space strategy to scratch that itch. I craved something more in-depth and story focused than Sins of the Solar Empire, yet less bogged down in diplomatic bs than Stellaris, and ES2 found me.

The game is very satisfying to build an empire and is very dynamic, with anomalies/events/starting locations/faction bonuses all leading to varied experiences throughout play-throughs. The game is still familiar enough not to be overwhelmingly different between runs, still sharing the same overarching tech trees and major factions, yet faction bonuses allow you to fully lean in to certain empire strategies easily.

It isn't a perfect game though, one of the main reasons I think this game isn't as popular as other 4x space games is the tech tree, which is an endless stream of decisions with more branching choices the more you make. With each tech having up to 4 different bonuses it can become a dizzying affair to sort the best paths early, the only real solution is to muscle through it and figure out which techs are best for your scenario, with a few choice techs always being a good idea to rush. The AI also bugs out quite often even years after release, saying they are going to war with you when they do not actually declare war or systems that can't be colonized because a quest was never patched, the game can be pretty rough around the edges sometimes.

Despite all that the game is a solid 4x space strategy that has tons to offer in terms of interactivity and replay-ability. It is absolutely worth picking up on sale because the full game off-sale is a hard sell at $95(drops down to ~$20 on sale).

Even if you buy the definitive edition do not play your first game or two with dlcs enabled, disable all of them. Awakening is a horrendous DLC at the time of writing this review and while Penumbra/Supremacy add an extra layer for players who enjoy the game it is not a well crafted experience for beginners, since you may be surprised with invisible fleets/planets or system killing weapons in your first game.

In an already fantastic 4x space game Awakening does Endless Space 2 a disservice. Half of positive reviews are people who played with the DLC once and said 'neat new content' or were hopefuls that the Re-Awakening would turn crap into gold, but all we really ended up with was gold plated crap.

Several months into the Re-Awakening patch the game is still riddled with bugs specifically introduced with this update(disable Penumbra unless you want your save to break 200 turns in). The academy isn't as nonsensical as they were before, but still are incredibly annoying or unbalanced in half a dozen different ways.

--It is harder to get them mad at you, but the reparations tick up WAY faster (I went for 20k reparations achievement only to find I was at 2mil over the course of 10 turns in midgame).
--The ONLY way to get turn-based approval is by killing a pirate lair, no other options outside of donations and has almost nothing to do with the Academy. Not a terrible drawback, but still incredibly weak.
--The approval with the above statement is completely overturned to make players hate the dlc less. Kill 5 pirate lairs over the course of the game? Enjoy taking a free system from Isyander every 8 turns for the rest of the game.
--The fleets are insane if you actually fight against the Academy mid-late. They pump out killer fleets every turn later on and heaven forbid you get invaded by their doom-stack, have fun fighting a 20k army at a rate of 500-per-turn. It isn't impossible, but the academy is stronger than any AI on endless difficulty simply because they get free ships constantly.
--They gutted the roles into a sad joke.
--------------Spear of Isyander was op and the only reason to actually gun for the roles before, but practically a joke now. If buying privateers wasn't one of the worst mechanics in the game then there would be no need for the spear role at all. You get one powerful fleet while Isyander gets dozens, the role falls off so hard mid-late it is pathetic.
--------------Vaulkeeper is alright, but if you want laws from a certain faction you will just unlock them yourself, since the time between academy terms means you only spend half the time with the laws enabled.
--------------Legate is my personal favorite due to getting minor faction boosts, but it is straight broken in many of the games I play. Also its introduction makes one of the achievements in the game completely impossible to get without rolling back to an older version(master of dust achievement).
--------------Librarian is a flavor role and nothing more, hero info means next to nothing and is a less charming version of Stellaris's Curator Order.


To anyone who rates this DLC well: what content is there that actually improves the game outside of flavor text? Nakalim that butcher any Sophon players early game and do little else? An expanding minor faction that does literally nothing but give you treats and concede to most of your demands? A broken experience from release to remaster?

This DLC is a bad joke and despite the best the community has done for it this has become a guaranteed 'disable content' outside of achievement hunting for me.

A solid co-op horde shooter that is fun solo or with a group of friends and has a ton to offer.

• Overall gameplay loop is very satisfying. Weapon unlocks come fairly fast when doing your assignments and searching for overclocks lets players feel rewarded for playing even after all weapons are unlocked. (All weapons will take <50 hours to unlock while all overclocks may take well over 100+ hours depending on how many weeklies you do)
  
• Map design and soundtrack are stellar. The way the maps are generated can still surprise you hundreds of hours in and different biomes keep the missions feeling fresh. Sound track is also fantastic, mixing up tracks to make sure you never grow bored of the same song while gunning down hordes.
  
• Enemies feel good to shoot, even at higher difficulties. They all have very exploitable weaknesses with armor that feels satisfying to chip away as you gun certain enemies down(Praetorian especially). It is all well balanced with very few enemies feeling 'unfair' to die to.
  
• The class system is fairly well balanced with no dwarf having a direct advantage over the other while all having their own strengths. That being said, any missions without a scout(or an npc companion in solo) will quickly make traversing the caves worse as you will be fighting without very good vision and struggle to mine high-up materials. It isn't impossible to finish a mission without a scout, just a real detriment to not have one as opposed to all the other classes.
  
• Mission variety is wonderful, with no mission feeling like a repeat of another type. While many missions may have a ton of shooting in them none of the tasks are 'just go down and shoot'(outside of 'elimination)' which keeps the gameplay/gunplay fresh as it is a sideshow to the actual missions themselves.

All that being said the game does have a couple drawbacks.

• The weapon variety is fairly low, with only 3 primaries/3 secondaries per class. While modifying them to act different is cool some weapons are just plain bad so sometimes it feels like you only have 2 choices, which can grate on players who don't care for the other 2 choices.
  
• The community is extremely helpful but, like a surly dwarf, doesn't take kindly to any kind of back talk. Ask for help in discussions and keep complaining to a minimum for them to welcome you warmly. At the same time the in-game community is about as kind as they come, so don't feel bad about being bad playing any difficulty below Hazard 5.
  
• It is different for each player when you will grow bored of a certain mission/mutator, but once you hit that point it drains almost all the joy out of the game. When you have an assignment you get random missions in that tree and about half of the community groans when Rockpox/Industrial Sabatage show up, making you annoyed more than excited. You can turn off rockpox, but to do so you need to put easily 50+ hours into the game to get that option, and I.S. has no such option.

Overall it is an extremely approachable game for new players that is more than worth its value(especially on sale, $10 for this is an absolute steal). More content will be added to this game in the future and for the content it currently offers it can easily give you dozens(or hundreds) of hours of enjoyment.

• Since Feb 2021 the game has had sub 100 players on steam[including peaks]. The game is fairly dead.
  
• I liked this game with friends but never alone.
  
• The game at certain points was flooded with cheaters, the creators have done their best to stem the tide but with a free game it is hard.
  
• I don't recommend the time investment I put in, but it is absolutely free to try, just not my cup of tea nor do I recommend it.

Let me just start out by saying that Paradox REALLY needs to stop releasing DLC along with a significant game update that has nothing to do with the DLC, many of the reviews(like with Nemesis) are specifically complaining about the awful update and not the content provided with this DLC. This combined with the fact that the dlc was 100% broken on release and actively bugged out the core game if you didn't even own the dlc lowered the review percentage massively. Even with all of that in its favor this DLC, in my opinion, is really mediocre. [People who recommend this DLC scroll to the bottom for TLDR*]

---The new vassalization is what I was drawn to the most, I bought this day 1 because I use vassals in any non-extermination play through, hell even the crisis perk allows for vassals and I go full into it. My main play style is to ride out the early game for economy and tech to come in mid game and sweep up half the nations into being vassals through several vassalization wars, but this dlc doesn't really facilitate that. Unless the target is in a federation/are a vassal themselves there is absolutely zero insentive to declare wars of vassalization, doing it peacefully is faster and cheaper plus doesn't end with your vassal hating your guts. This turns most of my favorite mid-late game play style into just signing treaties because doing it through war is objectively worse in the end (plus it is disgustingly easy to propose vassalization if you are stronger than them or offer pay them). The customization options itself are alright, but there isn't really much to say besides that. Sure you can get them to pay you in addition to their normal vassalization or specialize them for your purposes, but even on Grand Admiral difficulty the AI are still worse than a player in almost every aspect which makes it less appealing. On top of that there are many options that no sane person would choose that just seem there to pad out the menu (who in their right mind would offer to join a vassal in an aggressive war?) The vassal aspect of this DLC is alright but nothing more than a rework that adds little to what vassals already did or could be done with trade agreements.

---The origins have never been a real selling point for me but I consistently finding myself using the subterranean origin because it gives me neat bonuses and no max mining districts for any playstyle, making sure I always have enough minerals no matter how crap my starting planets are. Imperial Fiefdom? A bad gimmick, it seems like it was meant to capitalize on the vassal update but the massive drain to your economy/tech early-mid game means that you really cripple yourself by playing it(plus you can start 1 tile away from the xenophobic fallen empire, meaning permanent wars). Teachers of the Shroud? Not much special, but a selling point since you automatically start out as psionic without having to spend an ascension point. Slingshot to the Stars? Another gimmick origin to show off their new megastructure, that is it, nothing else. Progenitor Hive I was kind of excited for this since hive minds kinda suck after a couple years of soft nerfs, but the downsides massively outweigh the gains. If you happen to lose your progenitor ship in a fight you are screwed, tried once and never found a reason to replay em.

---All the megastructures are fairly mediocre to me, barely worth their cost in game let alone real life cash. The orbital rings are a joke, it feels like they are trying to take inspiration from what New Ships and Classes [NCS, the most popular Stellaris mod] did to star-bases without blatantly ripping them off. The rings are barely worth the upgrade costs and do very little for the planet as a whole, playing with NCS myself I rarely even build rings. The Quantum Catapult is neat, but that is where my liking for it ends. You plan an inaccurate one way trip that would only take a few jump drive jumps to get to. Sure it is neat to leap deep into enemy territory, but almost all wars involve slowly taking over systems in a spread so as not to have to backtrack and retake stuff you missed the first time around. The Hyper Relays is what I see most reviewers gush about but I barely see the appeal, they are worse/early game gateways. It also makes wars annoying as your enemy can jump between their systems just fine to run away but you have to slowly take em the hard way, meaning it is a lot easier for the AI to get around you while you try to take over their territory.

As someone who has played Stellaris 2.6k hours the main thing I desire from DLC at this point is any type of replayability, this dlc adds basically no replayability at all. This $20 DLC feels like a $5 DLC or FREE update to the game, with the main draw being the vassalization overhaul with the other content just slapped on to excuse the price tag. Nemesis and Overlords does basically nothing for me because once you play through a full game once or twice with them there is nothing special that surprises you or nothing new to discover. Synthetic Dawn/Ancient Relics were half the price of this dlc and add far more replayability and gameplay variety than this DLC while being only half the price. This isn't worth the money and where I was excited about Stellaris DLC in the past I am slowly becoming jaded with all the recent DLCs just being reworks of mechanics or species packs instead of adding fun and new ways to enjoy the base game.

The other problem with these last few expansions is that they are just overhauls of certain aspects of the game that are locked behind a paywall. Federations/Nemesis/Overlord are literally just an excuse to paywall Federations/Intel/Vassals. I have several friends who I want to get back into Stellaris after a 2 year break, but explaining that a lot of the changes to gameplay are locked behind $40 worth of DLC is an instant mood killer [if they want to play when I am not online].


If the vassalization rework was an update for $5 I'd recommend it, nothing else in this DLC is even a selling point.
*For people who recommend buying this full price Paradox is coming out with new content just for you. It is a make-up kit, rubber nose and wig sold separately, since you clowns will buy anything so long as it adds something.

Edit: Since making this review I have booted up Stellaris once. Stellaris was probably my favorite strategy game, with over 2.6k hours it is easy to see that, but this dlc has sapped all my enjoyment from the game. It isn't even the DLC itself, but the way they shoehorned vassalization into being the primary aspect of the game, even federations after the federation dlc wasn't this bad. Every enemy has a minimum of 3 other civilizations tacked on to them via being a vassal/overlord, by midgame there is no one left who is even a single empire, which makes diplomacy practically useless outside of the overlord. This use to be an incredibly dynamic and interesting strategy game that I greatly enjoyed that has now devolved into an absolute mess that crams as many differing civilizations together as possible.

I cannot add anything more than all the other comments have added.

This is a wacky/silly shooter game from the 200X's. The dialogue is funny at times, plot is contrived, and the game play is serviceable. I rarely grew bored while playing this game outside of challenges which are *mostly* fun not counting random difficulty spikes. The remake aspect is mostly visual and judging by the bonus concept art you unlock you can tell this wasn't a shameless cash grab but a genuine attempt to recreate the original's glory.

I was able to get 100% achievements and collect everything in the game besides probes [screw that crap] and while I enjoyed my time I most likely will not play it again for at least another few years.

The sad truth of the matter is that in terms of game-play the game is a product of its time, being outclassed by most games that have been released this last half decade. This game is fun but not worth the $30 unless you played the original and only experience joy through the sweet hit of nostalgia it can bring. Get it on sale for 66% off if you want a time-killer that is fun if not a bit forgettable.

This DLC is a real mixed bag but at the end of the day it is worth it for me.

• Characters: The two new characters are interesting but that is where it ends for me. The void fiend is a super cool concept but I just don't like the play-style of being forced to switch back and forth between the two forms, with late game either forcing you to play as the base form due to all the healing or stacking corrupted items to always be a short range nuker. The sniper is fun the first few times you play but the fact you have no mobility that gets easily run down+squishiness makes playing on higher difficulties a death sentence, plus the 0 crits outside of sniping make being lazy late game a bit harder, since no Opinion wisps or Daggers can crit.
  
• Enemies: Wow a lot of these guys are annoying, the blind pest is the worst enemy added to this game[wisps that bob up and down, do more damage, and fire faster]. The Void-touched enemies add collapse, which is just burn damage that stacks but in 1 tick of damage instead of many over time, not very fun to play against. The rest of the enemies added are pretty neat and mostly fun to fight, with differences that make them distinct from battling other monsters.
  
• Locations: As always Hopoo killed it in the design of the bonus locations, they are downright beautiful and fun to explore. Sulfur pools sucks ascetically but the rest are welcome additions. My only gripe is that if you go to Void Locus 4+ hours into a run and you DON'T have strides of heresy, you straight up die from how many instakill-aoe enemies spawn relative to your charging area. You can have 50x every other item in the game, you will still wipe [even with 50 dio's].
  
• Items: A few trash items were added in but most of them are great additions that allow for more variety in your play-style and replay ability, not much to say past that. Void caches also are an interesting mechanic that are mostly enjoyable to fight while giving out good rewards. 10/10
  
• Simulacrum:This mode is visually impressive the first few times you play it, but with how restrictive the area is and how brutally enemies can dog-pile you on monsoon. I know 0 people who play this mode outside of unlocking Void Fiend or using artifact of sacrifice.
  
• Eclipse: It is interesting, but for me and my group of friends we kind of hope for a difficulty between Monsoon and Rainstorm, since the jump between those two is pretty large. I get that truly insane people want a CBT game mode past monsoon, but this wasn't for us.

My main problem with this DLC is it feels like they fashioned a lot of this content around insta-kill mechanics, which are NOT fun in a rogue-like. Collapse/void enemies make it so once you get this DLC you far more likely to have your run end instantly. The saving grace is the void items and core items added with this content, while some are crap most are great additions to different play styles. It IS annoying at times, but it adds more replay ability to Risk of Rain 2 which is great in my book.

Pretty good boss rush game.

There is not much to say for this game outside of that. Failing at combat is aggravating to no end. Yes, Mr. Oar-man, please 3 stock me in your 4th phase after watching 1 jump-to-dock cutscene and 2 'lmao weakling' taunts However it is extremely satisfying watching how much you avoid/parry after 5-10 deaths, making it a joy to look back at. The story is there, some will claim it is weak while others claim it is compelling, to me it is interesting enough to hold my attention while making me curious but not spend several hours on a wiki page trying to understand it all.

It is incredibly short for a $20 game, I beat the main game in 5 hours on the highest starting difficulty, but if you can get it on sale and enjoy parry mechanics/bullet hells/boss rushes then it is a solid buy during a Summer/Winter sale.