Well, it seems that Shattered Space pretty much sucks.
The good:
The planet looks great. The bad guys are tough - at this point, I'm playing on the highest difficulty level, and they can take a quarter to a third of your life bar in a single attack. You definitely need to be cautious. That's pretty much it.
The bad:
Everything else. They should have called this Weekend at Bajor. Basically all you do is perform fetch quests for the various factions of religious nuts vying for power and influence, while they try to fuck everybody else over and endlessly prattle on about their devotion to the great serpent. Seriously, the dialogue is nearly endless and tedious as fuck; especially on an initial playthrough, when you actually have to listen to it in case you might miss something important. Hint: you won't. Also, it's new Bethesda content, so of course it's buggy and twitchy, and the bugs adversely affect the main content. I finally hate quit after I'd had to listen to some old gasbag drone on about... whatever, and then the blue quest marker thing stayed on him after the conversation was over and wouldn't highlight where I had to go next. Yeah, I can go back to a previous save and redo it, and that will probably fix it, but I just don't really want to. And the new weapons and gear add absolutely nothing. I walked in with powerful weapons and armor, and nothing I found (or heard about in several angry reviews) top them. Most are heavy weapons, which are hands down the most useless class of ranged weapon in the game. And there is ZERO new ship, ship combat or ship modding content. Christ.
:-) But there are some new ingredients, so perhaps I could find a new recipe for groat stew or some such shit. Woohoo. Yeah, that'll really keep my interest piqued.
But the most glaring issue for me is that they did NOTHING with Andreja. In her companion quest, she talks about her family and homeworld and is devasted that she may never be able to return. And then we're on her homeworld, in her home city where half the population has been wiped out in this big incident that is at the heart of the DLC, and she never once mentions her family or being concerned about their fate or well being. You'd think the first thing she'd say is "let's go check on my folks." Nope. Other than a few innocuous comments, she adds nothing of value. You might as well have Sam and his brat Cora with you. Nice work completely dehumanizing the only decent companion in the game, Todd. Seriously, how do you fuck that up? You even deal with the family of her boss that you whacked at the end of her companion quest, and no mention is made of that, by them, her or you. You'd think they'd be a bit pissed off over that. Apparently not. I would have enjoyed the option to tell the bitch running House Kadic how much I enjoyed shooting her dad/brother/whatever in the face with a shotgun just to get a reaction, but it wasn't even an option.
When I first bought the game I got the top level package, so I didn't have to pay anything extra for this. For those who didn't, the DLC costs $30. IT ISN'T WORTH IT. Maybe at some point I'll give Shattered Space another look after they fix the buggy shit. But probably not.
:-)
I downloaded Horizon Forbidden West after quitting this crap in disgust, and plan on starting it later. I really liked the first game, and this one has very positive reviews.
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