Seems to me like this expansion isn't supplemental to base XC3. More like XC3 is supplemental to this story instead. It feels as if this was the game Monolith was trying to make from the start. Compared to the base game, it feels like more care and consideration was put into it overall. The areas are prettier and more fun to explore, and the unity system and new incursion battles are great additions. All of the affinity stuff they added and/or reimplemented was pretty neat too. I'm interested to see where they'll take the story from here going forward into the future.