Oh hey this is our first DLC review! I've decided to just go for it with every chunky DLC review that's more than a couple hours/not baked entirely into the main campaign so we will start with Pillars 2's first DLC - The Beast of Winter
This DLC 'starts' insanely early in the game right after you leave Port Maje, Pillars 2's tutorial island, with a letter from the DLCs new companion ... Vatnir (I had to look up his name) ... who asks you to come by his little Glacier home of weirdos and devotees and... do something? I don't actually remember what the letter says because you get the letter at level 5 or 6 and the quest for it is LEVEL 15. Meaning there are like at least 15 hours between when this thing starts and when you actually start it? Kind of stupid but here we are I guess.
As you get to this 'island' in the southern part of the Deadfire you see it is a proper iceberg basically with Snow Elves living on it. This is a great idea since we see very little of them in either Pillars game and this DLC has a good amount of reactivity with Ydwin, the resident Snow Elf companion from the base game. Ydwin is a 'sidekick' in the main game which means she does not get her own quest and only a bit of dialogue so this is a nice bump for her that I hope is a thing going forward in future DLC (spoiler alert - it isn't). She has a lot of interactions with other elves on this island and we get to see multiple perspectives on what individuals from that culture think. The primary gist of the expansion is that there is an undead dragon who is roaming the island who has apparently stolen something of Rymrgand's and you have to stop it or it will destroy the whole of the Deadfire! So this sounds like good stakes of course but honestly the game does very little to properly set it up. We do not see the glacier grow at all during the quest, Rym doesn't even make this specific threat, and the other gods don't interject at all so seemingly they don't think it is a big deal. Also we see the same portal to Rymrgand's world in the first game and while it is alluded to that this may one day end the world we're never really given reason to believe this is an immediate threat which kind of takes the wind out of the sails of the whole story here...
But looking past all of that - the meat of actual DLC is quite good. We kick off by being introduced to these elf weirdos who don't mind dying (a great twist on a world where people know their souls will just come back again later anyway) and then we meet Vatnir - a grim doomsayer leading this group on a slowly expanding iceberg in a tropical sea. Then a zombie dragon shows up! A straight up Dracolich too - bound her soul to a vessel, is a bitchin' mage. She's quite a fight and I had to spend a few tries getting her down but eventually did, only to see her get shot up into the air when she died! That's a very neat hook into your story... then we talk more to Vatnir and find out he's basically just a wimp with a high Charisma stat - his whole schtick and personality are bullshit. We force him to come along with us to journey to Rym's realm to find out what the heck is going on with this dragon - where we meet up with said surly God who tells us that we need to get this item back from the Dragon BECAUSE.... I don't remember. Rym wants us to? So then you go through some of the old souls that are still hanging around Rym's realm and get a bit more info on the metaphysics of the Pillars universe (the difference between Rym's BEYOND and the Wheel) and get to see some neat parts of Pillars history - The fall of Ukaizo, meeting an Inquisitor of Thaos' (with some neat callbacks to what you did to him), and then seeing the Godhammer and meeting Waidwen which was actually pretty awesome. With Waidwen there's some bits to it where you go in the moments before, during and after the Hammer goes off and you have to put him back together. You also get some of his Sad Backstory and relationship with Eothas which is actually pretty interesting stuff, seeing how both of them felt about the "Crusade" they led and what they were trying to do.
More boss battles ensue and Rym tries to double cross you - do you accept having to come back here as a guardian when you die, or remain trapped here forever? You can beat him in a fight and you get sent back but not without a parting question "Why are you such a jerk?"
"It is in my nature"
An interesting response from an artificial being... And that's all from the Beast Of Winter.
The story then is overall pretty solid - not great in terms of stakes but going through the motions has some neat revelations and character moments. Vatnir is so-so other than his interesting curveball when you learn his true personality but honestly you get little out of him other than mewling, even when he comes face to face with his 'father' Rymrgand which SHOULD be a good emotional punch but isssss not? It seems to be setting up for more but only time will tell if it properly pays off. Gameplay wise we get some decent fights and a few attempts at puzzles which I was not wild about. I actually got terribly bored of one map and had to stop playing for a few days hahaha... I liked the bits however with Waidwen and I almost missed them!
All in all this is a decent enough expansion on Pillars 2 that is ultimately just a bit too thin. We don't go super indepth with lore, the new character is fine but not great, the boss battles are cool but basically just two phases of the same fight (Dracoliches are awesome and underused so I will not terribly complain I guess) and its overarching narrative doesn't ever seem to lead to anything lasting in the game. It's a neat side diversion but nothing more. White March this is 100% NOT.
This DLC 'starts' insanely early in the game right after you leave Port Maje, Pillars 2's tutorial island, with a letter from the DLCs new companion ... Vatnir (I had to look up his name) ... who asks you to come by his little Glacier home of weirdos and devotees and... do something? I don't actually remember what the letter says because you get the letter at level 5 or 6 and the quest for it is LEVEL 15. Meaning there are like at least 15 hours between when this thing starts and when you actually start it? Kind of stupid but here we are I guess.
As you get to this 'island' in the southern part of the Deadfire you see it is a proper iceberg basically with Snow Elves living on it. This is a great idea since we see very little of them in either Pillars game and this DLC has a good amount of reactivity with Ydwin, the resident Snow Elf companion from the base game. Ydwin is a 'sidekick' in the main game which means she does not get her own quest and only a bit of dialogue so this is a nice bump for her that I hope is a thing going forward in future DLC (spoiler alert - it isn't). She has a lot of interactions with other elves on this island and we get to see multiple perspectives on what individuals from that culture think. The primary gist of the expansion is that there is an undead dragon who is roaming the island who has apparently stolen something of Rymrgand's and you have to stop it or it will destroy the whole of the Deadfire! So this sounds like good stakes of course but honestly the game does very little to properly set it up. We do not see the glacier grow at all during the quest, Rym doesn't even make this specific threat, and the other gods don't interject at all so seemingly they don't think it is a big deal. Also we see the same portal to Rymrgand's world in the first game and while it is alluded to that this may one day end the world we're never really given reason to believe this is an immediate threat which kind of takes the wind out of the sails of the whole story here...
But looking past all of that - the meat of actual DLC is quite good. We kick off by being introduced to these elf weirdos who don't mind dying (a great twist on a world where people know their souls will just come back again later anyway) and then we meet Vatnir - a grim doomsayer leading this group on a slowly expanding iceberg in a tropical sea. Then a zombie dragon shows up! A straight up Dracolich too - bound her soul to a vessel, is a bitchin' mage. She's quite a fight and I had to spend a few tries getting her down but eventually did, only to see her get shot up into the air when she died! That's a very neat hook into your story... then we talk more to Vatnir and find out he's basically just a wimp with a high Charisma stat - his whole schtick and personality are bullshit. We force him to come along with us to journey to Rym's realm to find out what the heck is going on with this dragon - where we meet up with said surly God who tells us that we need to get this item back from the Dragon BECAUSE.... I don't remember. Rym wants us to? So then you go through some of the old souls that are still hanging around Rym's realm and get a bit more info on the metaphysics of the Pillars universe (the difference between Rym's BEYOND and the Wheel) and get to see some neat parts of Pillars history - The fall of Ukaizo, meeting an Inquisitor of Thaos' (with some neat callbacks to what you did to him), and then seeing the Godhammer and meeting Waidwen which was actually pretty awesome. With Waidwen there's some bits to it where you go in the moments before, during and after the Hammer goes off and you have to put him back together. You also get some of his Sad Backstory and relationship with Eothas which is actually pretty interesting stuff, seeing how both of them felt about the "Crusade" they led and what they were trying to do.
More boss battles ensue and Rym tries to double cross you - do you accept having to come back here as a guardian when you die, or remain trapped here forever? You can beat him in a fight and you get sent back but not without a parting question "Why are you such a jerk?"
"It is in my nature"
An interesting response from an artificial being... And that's all from the Beast Of Winter.
The story then is overall pretty solid - not great in terms of stakes but going through the motions has some neat revelations and character moments. Vatnir is so-so other than his interesting curveball when you learn his true personality but honestly you get little out of him other than mewling, even when he comes face to face with his 'father' Rymrgand which SHOULD be a good emotional punch but isssss not? It seems to be setting up for more but only time will tell if it properly pays off. Gameplay wise we get some decent fights and a few attempts at puzzles which I was not wild about. I actually got terribly bored of one map and had to stop playing for a few days hahaha... I liked the bits however with Waidwen and I almost missed them!
All in all this is a decent enough expansion on Pillars 2 that is ultimately just a bit too thin. We don't go super indepth with lore, the new character is fine but not great, the boss battles are cool but basically just two phases of the same fight (Dracoliches are awesome and underused so I will not terribly complain I guess) and its overarching narrative doesn't ever seem to lead to anything lasting in the game. It's a neat side diversion but nothing more. White March this is 100% NOT.