I loved it.
Pros:
+ great visuals
+ Iron Forest (expanded, "ok" starting era)
+ Ruins of CIRCA (expaned, unique anomaly)
+ Limansk (great, IMO much better than that part in Half-Life: Alyx)
+ CNPP (grand, many accessable places, cool-looking)
+ "Duty" vs "Freedom" (waaay better representation than in vanilla, better story, small optional content of localized faction war mechanic like in S:CS)
+ new anomalies and artifacts
+ new interesting characters (also - side characters)
+ return of some of the old characters
+ great QoL and easy access to the DLC (early start / late start)
+ I, personally, didn't encounter any game-breaking bugs - the build is pretty stable, only a few minor issues
+ fair achivements (was pretty easy to re-gain 100% - can be obtained within 2 playthroughs - this is where that "Late DLC start" helps a bunch)
My personal and subjective cons:
- the starting "villain" is a bit weak - I wasn't totally convinsed in his motives and he seems to be a little bit "rushed"
- IMO, the arguments and motives of the "Freedom" are a bit simpler and weaker than of the "Duty" (initially, I thought that I will be siding with Mavka, however, completed my 1st playthrough siding with Zulu --- after the 2nd playthrough, now with the "Freedom", my opinion didn't really improve)
- DLC mechanics (NPCs) cannot upgrade your gear, only repair (I think even in the "main hub")
But despite that, I think that this is a MAJOR (with a huge capital "M") expansion with many things done GREAT. Some of its parts I love and prefer to the vanilla game.
P.S. above my review it says that I played for 0.0 hours. I guess it cannot track my time in the DLC separately. I will edit this post later to specify how much it took me to experience it all.
