Mass Effect DLC: Leviathan

[Vince T]

ATTENTION: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Alright, just played through the new Leviathan DLC for Mass Effect 3.
Now, I'm not big on writing reviews, but everyonce in a while something crosses my path and leaves me with some thoughts. So here we go.

All in all a good DLC, the story was cool, the length was good and there was a lot of stuff to do.
There were some minor things that bugged me though. First of all, there were a couple of bugs.
- One, smaller being one of the NPCs in the first mission's mineral lab walking in place, kinda looking like he was doing the Moonwalk.
- Another less minor was that my emails were 'reverted' to a point shortly after the Citadel II mission, while I was loading a save from just before the final mission, meaning everything past "My Project" was lost. I haven't played ME3 for a while so I can't say for sure if this is related to this DLC or one of the past ones.

Gameplay:
Atmosphere FTW. Either you walk through an isolated mine with everyone behaving strangely and you begin to think "WTF?" or your in the middle of a battle on a cliffisde station with stuff falling apart around you and your only thought is "Don't look down" or a Kamino-style water world where the ground you stand on is in constant motion. BioWare nailed it with that once more. Also what I loved was the level of exploration during the few calmer moments especially the various goodies that were littered everywhere. I felt myself to run around an area three times just to make sure I found everything, especially during the detective-like office sequences. Also the missions were fat paced and action packed. My only quib here is that the pre-shown underwater sequence, apart from being disappointingly short, digresses from the explorational path by providing a quite narrow path to follow, indicated by automatically deplayed flares.

Presentation:
Superb as usual. In fact, the visuals, so I think, beat the original game in some places. Especially the dynamic environments of the second and third mission nailed my jaw to the floor. Sound was great, too. Great musical moments and sound design truly add to the overal atmosphere.

Story:
Like i said before the story was great, although there is one thing I'm not quite sure about: The Spoiler. I get the impression that the conclusion of the LDLC already provides a great part of the information you were priorly forced to wait until the very ending of the game(Extended Cut) so somewhat taking the surprise element from it. Of course, given the nature of the DLC story there is no way around revealing that stuff without crippling the story. So yeah, what I'd recommend you to do is to play it as late in the game as possible.

So let's summarise:
Pro:
- Great story
- Dynamic world
- Lots of Exploration and discovery
- Fast paced and power packed action gameplay
- stunning visuals and sound design

Con:
- Minor bugs
- Possible early endgame spoilers

Also, on a sidenote I noticed something. Of course the conclusion of the DLC provides you with some additional war assets, which, if you were thorrough can turn out worth around 500-600 points. That in combination with the lowered point requirements introduced by the Extended Cut makes it ever so easy to achieve the best game ending. I wonder if they did that knowing that Multiplayre activity might eventually dwindle with time passing? Just a thought.

[LateNightSalami]

Glad that you enjoyed it but count me among those that was so disappointed (to put it as lightly as possible) with the ending (yes even the EC) that I will not be revisiting the series until they retcon certain elements of the ending out. I hope people who want to get their enjoyment out of the DLC's do so but unless the DLC's fix the brokenness I won't be able to get into them and will just follow other's reviews of them until I find something that interests me.

Nice review though.

[JaggedFel]

I waited for a while to get ME3, and I finished it last night. I wasn't disappointed, but damn was the last portion just outright depressing (I stood still and listened to the entire radio conversation with the medic in London). Hell, even the soundtrack is a downer. Beautiful game, accented by the bugs we've gotten used to from the start (NPCs not being in the right position during dialogs, that 30° tilt when you start running on the Citadel, etc), and I actually don't have a problem with the ending (although I'm glad they did the EC to flesh it out a little).

I got the "perfect" ending playing SP only, although there's a few choices back in ME1 and ME2 that I may go and replay just to satisfy myself for the final fleet roster; not to be a point whore, but to have who I believe should be there.

Need more Mass Effect, dammit

[Vince T]

Wait till later this month, new Omega DLC coming on 27th

[JaggedFel]

Finished another playthrough of ME1 a couple days ago (without PInnacle Station, though) and I'm working on ME2 again. I'm going to get all of the mission DLC (skip the weapon/cosmetic stuff) before ME3. Have you given MP a try yet? Waiting until I get back to a new ME3 playthrough before I try it out.

[Vince T]

Yeah I played for a while, not overly serious or regular though.
It's not bad but eventually I lost interest, especially with the EC when you didn't need MP anymore to get the optimal ending.

[michaeljee]

Hi That is great, That is awesome information, i was also looking for this.the missions were fat paced and action packed
Regards