Was released on March 5th and picked it up yesterday. For the most part I'm having a great time, though not for the reasons I'd expected. This DLC is really lighthearted, it's actually made me laugh more than anything else. The whole idea behind it I think is to give the player an opportunity to see the crew interact as friends (or family) rather than the constant drama of "brothers in arms".
The 'story' it presents doesn't last very long but introduces an amusing new character and gives a superficial bit of exhilaration at having your entire crew in the field with you for once. This makes for some amusing banter between the squads, with Garrus and Tali even taking some shots at Shep lol. Wrex is a bit over the top, but who's to say that isn't just who he really is now that he's past the whole 'me krogan you not' phase.
To me the best part, so far, began after the story bit ends. To celebrate shore leave you get one-on-one time with each crew member that can be hilarious, sweet, uncomfortable or even just plain bizarre. You also get to explore a new area of the Citadel called the Silversun Strip which has the Armax Arsenal Arena (essentially a single player version of the multiplayer game), an arcade (simple mini-games, a few rewards), a casino (couple gambling games), and your new apartment.
Your apartment is a gift from Anderson, it used to be his, and has some of his stuff laying around still. You can listen to some audio notes he made, but that's about it. More importantly the apartment plays host to the party that's thrown later, to which you can invite just about everyone you can think of (
) which is very entertaining. Glyph can organize the party to be raucous or toned down, I have no idea if or how this affects the events/dialogue of the party or if you can easily throw another or not, I still haven't finished mine. But so far it's had some brilliant moments,
.
It's really refreshing to see the gang come out of their shells for once. The only problem is some of the dialogue tries a bit too hard to convey the whole experience and doesn't necessarily fit the characters; this seems most prevalent in Wrex and Javik imo. Also I'm not sure how much (if anything) is left to do after the party; I think the Armax arena will be interesting to play with a little bit but the arcade and casino games are pretty shallow and won't have anyone coming back for more.
All in all its been really enjoyable for me, but also understand it's content that's more about the characters than the big picture. The word "reaper" is only even mentioned once or twice in passing and the storyline is fairly short. To me the heart of it is in seeing your crew interact and open up, and to me that's well worth it.
The 'story' it presents doesn't last very long but introduces an amusing new character and gives a superficial bit of exhilaration at having your entire crew in the field with you for once. This makes for some amusing banter between the squads, with Garrus and Tali even taking some shots at Shep lol. Wrex is a bit over the top, but who's to say that isn't just who he really is now that he's past the whole 'me krogan you not' phase.
To me the best part, so far, began after the story bit ends. To celebrate shore leave you get one-on-one time with each crew member that can be hilarious, sweet, uncomfortable or even just plain bizarre. You also get to explore a new area of the Citadel called the Silversun Strip which has the Armax Arsenal Arena (essentially a single player version of the multiplayer game), an arcade (simple mini-games, a few rewards), a casino (couple gambling games), and your new apartment.
Your apartment is a gift from Anderson, it used to be his, and has some of his stuff laying around still. You can listen to some audio notes he made, but that's about it. More importantly the apartment plays host to the party that's thrown later, to which you can invite just about everyone you can think of (
I don't know if this takes place at a set point in time or not. For instance I could not invite Legion and Mordin, so in my game this obviously takes place after both their deaths. If you haven't yet completed those missions it could be different. I also couldn't invite Kasumi, though I might attribute that to never completing her buggy ME3 quest.
Zaeed hitting on Samara, James trying to convince Liara/Kaiden/Jacob that physical strength beats biotics, EDI making wildly awkward conversation with Tali and Traynor, a spat between Jack and Miranda
It's really refreshing to see the gang come out of their shells for once. The only problem is some of the dialogue tries a bit too hard to convey the whole experience and doesn't necessarily fit the characters; this seems most prevalent in Wrex and Javik imo. Also I'm not sure how much (if anything) is left to do after the party; I think the Armax arena will be interesting to play with a little bit but the arcade and casino games are pretty shallow and won't have anyone coming back for more.
All in all its been really enjoyable for me, but also understand it's content that's more about the characters than the big picture. The word "reaper" is only even mentioned once or twice in passing and the storyline is fairly short. To me the heart of it is in seeing your crew interact and open up, and to me that's well worth it.
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