Well well well, see what happens when you strive for quality over quantity?
I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this expansion.
The characters and acting are both great. I was honestly afraid including Idris Elba would be a weak attempt at stunt casting to sell the DLC but I think he delivered.
I guess one of the issues that surfaced this time around is the sound mixing. It might be just me but the voice quality difference between Reed, Songbird, and Alex was jarring! Alex's voice especially sounded very muffled compared to the other characters and this was very distracting at times.
The plot was very engaging to me. I'm kind of a sucker for 007 type of stuff which this DLC was clearly inspired by to some degree so I was easy to please on that regard. Also, contrary to the base game, I quite enjoyed all of the four possible endings to this story. I think they each have their pros and cons and there was obviously no perfect solution in sight, and that's ok because they were sufficiently coherent.
I was also very impressed that the DLC managed to mesh pretty seamlessly with the base game. I was afraid Dogtown would be completely isolated from Night City and that you would have to go through a tedious process switching back and forth between base game and DLC — I couldn't have been more wrong!
Not only does the content fit perfectly geographically speaking, it encourages you to continue the (base game) main quest (or any other side activity) as you go through the plot by giving you some down time every now and then. Furthermore, some gigs that you start in Dogtown will have you travel outside of the territory which was also a nice touch.
Speaking of the territory, I think Dogtown's smaller scale did wonders for exploring. Because it's so compact and well crafted, there's always something interesting to see in each corner, be it a cool landmark or a random crate drop you can go ahead and klep.
All in all, I think the biggest problem with this piece of content is that it belongs and is dragged down by the base game and its inherent issues with RPG mechanics. One of the things that pissed me off a couple times was the forced combat sequences, but that's nothing new here and I've already went through that on my review of the base game.
However, despite a couple of sketchy decisions, I heavily recommend this DLC.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this expansion.
The characters and acting are both great. I was honestly afraid including Idris Elba would be a weak attempt at stunt casting to sell the DLC but I think he delivered.
I guess one of the issues that surfaced this time around is the sound mixing. It might be just me but the voice quality difference between Reed, Songbird, and Alex was jarring! Alex's voice especially sounded very muffled compared to the other characters and this was very distracting at times.
The plot was very engaging to me. I'm kind of a sucker for 007 type of stuff which this DLC was clearly inspired by to some degree so I was easy to please on that regard. Also, contrary to the base game, I quite enjoyed all of the four possible endings to this story. I think they each have their pros and cons and there was obviously no perfect solution in sight, and that's ok because they were sufficiently coherent.
I was also very impressed that the DLC managed to mesh pretty seamlessly with the base game. I was afraid Dogtown would be completely isolated from Night City and that you would have to go through a tedious process switching back and forth between base game and DLC — I couldn't have been more wrong!
Not only does the content fit perfectly geographically speaking, it encourages you to continue the (base game) main quest (or any other side activity) as you go through the plot by giving you some down time every now and then. Furthermore, some gigs that you start in Dogtown will have you travel outside of the territory which was also a nice touch.
Speaking of the territory, I think Dogtown's smaller scale did wonders for exploring. Because it's so compact and well crafted, there's always something interesting to see in each corner, be it a cool landmark or a random crate drop you can go ahead and klep.
All in all, I think the biggest problem with this piece of content is that it belongs and is dragged down by the base game and its inherent issues with RPG mechanics. One of the things that pissed me off a couple times was the forced combat sequences, but that's nothing new here and I've already went through that on my review of the base game.
However, despite a couple of sketchy decisions, I heavily recommend this DLC.