This review contains spoilers
it's better than base game. easily.
looking through these reviews people are complaining about this for being too linear and confined to one location... and as someone who thought obra dinn handily bested base game outer wilds (as far as ""metroidbranias"" go), like, those are qualities that make me like something More not less. all of the bits i liked from OW are turned up to a fever pitch here and a lot of the elements i didn't really like are almost entirely gone.
you say "oh its not focused on the vastness of space :(" i say "i dont have to pilot that damn ship and wait 1 real time minute for it to arrive at locations almost at all :)"
you say "i cant read the history of these people :(" i say "they can deliver lore info without forcing me to just read a bunch of boring plaintext data logs? awesome! :)"
you say "its less open ended :(" i say "theres never a point where you're stuck banging your head against a wall, slowly travelling back and forth between the planets trying to find the 1 piece of information you need to progress :)"
add to this:
-it looks cooler than anything in the base game
-it sounds cooler than anything in the base game
-it maintains an even faster stream of "oh shit" moments than the base game ever does
the one downside here honestly is that, as its nature as a DLC, it needs to fit into the rest of the game, which includes the already established ending sequence. what this means is that after you find the last piece of information, it sort of fizzles out and it doesnt really conclude unless you "do the thing to beat the game again and its slightly different this time." this "new" ending does basically the bare minimum they coulda done while still maintaining lore coherence which is really just a shame, but i get why they didn't add more. but if i can write off hours at the beginning of games, i can definitely write off a weak last 30 minutes
looking through these reviews people are complaining about this for being too linear and confined to one location... and as someone who thought obra dinn handily bested base game outer wilds (as far as ""metroidbranias"" go), like, those are qualities that make me like something More not less. all of the bits i liked from OW are turned up to a fever pitch here and a lot of the elements i didn't really like are almost entirely gone.
you say "oh its not focused on the vastness of space :(" i say "i dont have to pilot that damn ship and wait 1 real time minute for it to arrive at locations almost at all :)"
you say "i cant read the history of these people :(" i say "they can deliver lore info without forcing me to just read a bunch of boring plaintext data logs? awesome! :)"
you say "its less open ended :(" i say "theres never a point where you're stuck banging your head against a wall, slowly travelling back and forth between the planets trying to find the 1 piece of information you need to progress :)"
add to this:
-it looks cooler than anything in the base game
-it sounds cooler than anything in the base game
-it maintains an even faster stream of "oh shit" moments than the base game ever does
the one downside here honestly is that, as its nature as a DLC, it needs to fit into the rest of the game, which includes the already established ending sequence. what this means is that after you find the last piece of information, it sort of fizzles out and it doesnt really conclude unless you "do the thing to beat the game again and its slightly different this time." this "new" ending does basically the bare minimum they coulda done while still maintaining lore coherence which is really just a shame, but i get why they didn't add more. but if i can write off hours at the beginning of games, i can definitely write off a weak last 30 minutes