An honest review of the new episode

Hello to all!

A good handful of people on here will recognize my name as one of the OG's, for those of you who might not I'm curse! I've been playing the game since beta like some others but I'd say I've become more of a casual player over the last couple years. I log in for maybe an hour or two daily and play what I can. I'd like to say I'm the games target audience in terms of playtime VS Money spent. I want to state that to begin with to help set the stage from my point of view on this post. this is completely subjective to every players point of view and all opinions are welcome.

So, Let's begin! I will break this down into a few separate sections to make it easier to digest, TLDR if you will.

-OPEN WORLD
I've come to accept reusing old areas but I have to say this was a HUGE notch up from usual. You can tell that we're in south Gotham but the art team did an awesome job re-hauling it into something fresh. Visually i think it looks very well done. It truly feels like Apokolips has invaded and taken Gotham over.

On the mechanic end of things, few things that I would really like to suggest having fixed.

1. the weekly missions. The Brimstone bounty should complete upon his KO, having to take out the extra lava guys seems a bit tedious.

2.The Apokoliptian payload is an interesting change of pace! but having to do it a few times to complete gets very old quickly. my suggestion would be to up the health pool on the Payload, increase the adds that spawn to help towards the counter.

3. Not sure How exactly I feel about it yet, but the spread out on the missions is an interesting new take. If anything, Labeling the teleporters around would help, but I'm sure in a few days I'll be saying "Man, I wish these were all near each other"

-SOLO
Ok, So I love having an Elite solo. it's easier to grind, I don't feel like I need a partner to help complete it, and the difficulty of the Elite version is right on pace IMO for how i like to play. I did find the Hall crawl boss fight with Lashina is pretty fun! it was a new take to have things feeling fresh and I applaud the devs for trying something new. My ONLY Gripe with it is the simon says minigame. That got old after the 2nd run of the instance. While I haven't leveled the Augment up yet to assist with it, the "hit box" on the pads needs to be adjusted to register that I've stepped on it.

other than that, I like that we reused an instance that has only ever seen the light of day maybe once? This is the type of content Re-hash that I'm personally ok with. Using older playrooms we only saw once or twice before. (Maybe we'll revisit Bludhaven soon)

-ALERT
Both versions are quick and easy, Elite could use a bit more pizzazz to it but fun other wise. Normal feels pretty balanced, Elite just needs to be a bit more challenging, Hoping elite plus brings that home for the taste of difficulty I like to have now and then. Clocktower was a nice choice for the environment and it was dressed up nicely

-RAID
Only having ran it twice, the raid seems a bit meh, I like the environment, but there's just something missing here, I'm going to call out Obsidin chills review video here and agree with the fact that we could have repurposed the general Kraze add into another boss with mechanics. Granny feels like a alert boss, and the Darkseid fight is kind of bland. Again, I'm hoping that with elite plus it brings a better pace.

-GENERAL COMMENTS

• Bully buster suit is nice, I always find that there's always at least or or two styles in a gear set that stand out to me and this one has a few for costume creating that'll i like.
• LOVE the new Harley voiceovers.
• Base items are cool, nicely themed with the episode
• Do not like the green fog in the Open world, kind of hurts the eyes a bit

-SUGGESTIONS ( purely subjective)
Here's where we add some cash syncs that aren't episode marks... (strong negative opinions on that btw)

• Apokoliptian player housing, would love a base where I can look out the main window and see the giant Darkseid statue
• One or two new emotes, maybe omega beams or boom tube summon
• Retexture a Slimline every episode to match the theme, charge 5-10$ for it

Overall, I like this episode more than Brainiac Returns. The story is quirky in a positive way, The replayability is there, and they have the chance to bring in some cool vendor chase items. Looking forward to seeing what weekly mission gets added next .

TLDR, raid needs some work, open world needs some adjustments, but I'm gonna give the episode an 8/10

If more people critiqued things they way you do, the world would be a better place

Thank you for this well laid out analysis, especially from one who has been here from the start! I have only played the solo (Reg setting), as I was just too sadden last night to even turn on my PS5 because of monetization decisions made by the Powers that Be.

I was really looking forward to this DLC, and I am glad to read a review that gives me hope for it.

Adding base to the theme of the new content is what they should be more concerned about as shop content rather than adding commercial rip-offs that will only motivate people to stop playing!


Personally, I think the DLC is pretty nice, the open world is very pleasant, apart from, as you say, the green cloud, which isn't very pleasant, but the rest is cool and seeing Darksaid again is always a pleasure and I really like the lava zones and the head on the ground in the open world, really incredible visually, real Darksaid!, but buying the DLC currency is an absolutely stupid idea, although it will be great for killing the game's activity, something we've already been warned enough about, but I guess it's the investors' choice that this happens...

Thanks for your honesty.

Pretty spot on. It's always a mixed bag for me. A always i wish there was a little more. I managed to get "everything" done on 8 toons and I already have my mains op belt ready for its second breakthrough. Don't know if thats good or bad.

I love the new raids map. The open world is fun too. If anything I wish things were a little nastier.

I get what they're trying to do with the bounties. It would work better if they spawned faster and in more places as well. Way back when we first had to fight the sub avs in gotham I remember things bugging out and they started spawning everywhere with groups fighting several at a time.

It was awesome. I keep wishing we could go back to something like that.

the simon thing in the solo needs to get removed and made into a league hall base item.

I really liked the open world, solo I have my reservations especially regarding the fight against Lashina, I really liked the look of the raid, what bothered me was the convoy weekly, I believe there should be more convoys on the map or increase the number of adds in the mission count, in relation to alert I liked it visually too, in general i could see the team's attempt to do something a little different in this episode, certain things didn't work very well as the daily missions spread across the map, and in relation to the convoy mission too, as I said if the convoy mission had more convoys across the map I believe it would be more fun, I confess that I ended up liking the episode, but I think a single raid is too little to sustain an episode, I hope that in episode 49 there will be two raids again.

I will give them props for the OW map. It's new even though still 'Gotham'...reminds me of when Gotham Wasteland came out for Trigon. Nice looking too. The instance maps all seem new too, which is a nice change of pace. The art team did a fine job this go-round.

However, the OW missions being all over the place is nonsense. At a minimum, make the missions auto complete...or complete to the journal so we don't need to make 2 round trips every visit. Ideally having dopplegangers, or a machine that would ALSO give the same missions out at the dock would be better (similar to how they do this for the Sub-Avatar or Man-Bat bounties (amongst others). Also, the teleporters need the mission giver names on the location, I don't really care that Nightwing is at 'Gotham Tech...whatever), but I'd rather know it's him I'm going to meet there.

Solo, Alert and Raid, I'm fine with (although if a count feat is added later to the solo, we...the players...will collectively revolt). All pretty easy, but maybe they will introduce difficulty in +....I'll never know. Raid SHOULD have 3 bosses though. And the color match solo thing could have just been 1 time. Very tedious at 4x around.

Personally I dislike the Harley voice, but pretty much anyone who is not the original is going to sound 'wrong'. Still, better than whoever did it in the Belle Reve stabilizer run at least.

As far as additional housing, emotes, styles, orbitals...whatever. As long as they are not feat related and truly optional, I'm all for it.

A) How'd you get the OP belt? I can't talk to Mr Miracle to complete the DLC checklist to open the vendor
B) By 'everything' do you just mean you've gone through the missions, or that you are already maxed? If maxed, did you buy currency in the MP?

A) The Mystery of the Missing Mister Miracle midsection...you have to do the solo...then go talk to harley in apo goth. from there you have to do one open world mission, talk to harley again, complete the alert, (maybe) talk to harly again (I forget atm if you need to do this), then complete the raid...then you can get the belt vendor to open up by talking to Mr. Miracle MM (as opposed to martian manhunter MM) as well as get the mission to go talk to barda to get the open world daily from her...at which point catwoman should be free to give you your bonus daily mark...I noticed even when I could talk to him to open up the belt vendor he still didn't have a mission marker over him to tell me to talk to him...I just got the circle to do it.

Once you figure out the flow of things its not that hard to figure out and navigate. Its not like we haven't done things this way before with other dlcs...I just figured we'd have a little wiggle room if we fudged it...and even if you do fudge it and complete everything you should be able to get the belt vendor to open the next day after reset (I did it both ways on my team).

B) "everything" encompasses getting the open world stuff, weeklies, solo, alert and raid done on 8 toons~max number of carney marks or whatever they're called. reset one daily mission to get the belt mission back on track. Also got all the briefs, investigations and collections out of the way on my main. House rules for me are the same as always...everything gets funneled into my main as far as resources go until he completes the op piece and then it goes down the list in order of import. Nobody is going to buy any gear until my main finishes off the op piece and a full set of elite with the possibility of a few accessories. I did the elite solo and alert but I'm holding off on the elite raid til next week...just wanted to speed through it all to get it done.

I'm not hating this dlc. I find it somewhat pleasant but as always I wish there was more.

I thought of the auto complete idea myself. Would go a long way. Like I said above once you get the flow of things its not that difficult to pick up and hand in missions. I get its a little more involved (which gets tedious) I actually appreciate the "world building" ad "immersiveness" of it. Another idea could be to have catwoman or harley just hand out the reward boxes for all missions.

Yeah, I'm actually at the point in the mission where it says 'Talk to Mr Miracle' after completing the raid. No talkie though, so no belt. I'm wondering if it's because I already talked to him today to collect that big $25 bucks so he only has the replayable mission prompt for the 'find big barda' mission. I'll see tomorrow (I ran after reset today).

B) ok. So not 'maxed' like CR 460 or whatever...by replaying or buying your way there. Not saying you couldn't also do that, but for people who DO do that, then say "I've got nothing else to do" on day 2...well...that's on them.

And yes...Main gets it all, then alts get scraps. I'm down with that methodology.

Yeah...tedious was my complaint...not difficulty. The transporter points not letting us know where they go (like to WHO they go) adds SOME difficulty (seeing as 1 or 2 of the points just transport you to a fight, not a mission giver), but as you say, THAT issue would work itself out with repetition.

Daily grind is tedious enough. Adding bonus tedium is NOT needed.

after the reset, talk to MM right away, but under no circumstances accept a task from him for huge amounts of money (hmm 25 bucks?), talk, decline the task, wait until he finishes talking, the task will update and show you the location of the vendor with the belt and catalysts for it, run to him (buy if you want the task to be completed... or don't buy), after that you can return to MM and take daily tasks...

Yeah. With the fact he has a daily mission, I'm not sure why they couldn't have made catwoman the target for the final step instead. She's not a mission giver, so the only mission she'd have would be the checkin to finish the list.

I have no idea... this problem was pointed out on the test server... there were many different bugs pointed out there... many were never addressed... as well as in the last few DLCs... some time ago I was a very active (this is of course relative... but still...) tester... but each time one or another bug moved to the live server despite the fact that it was pointed out many times on the test server... it seemed to me that I would save more nerve cells by abandoning this business (pointing out bugs...)...

It is weird. I managed to talk to Mr.M and had the vendor open up on toon #3, bought the belt...but now I can't talk to Mr.M to complete the mission to get my little nugget of food (whatever its called). Guess I'm going to have to wait til tomorrow for that.

Normally I would even hold off buying the op item for my alts until I get the first one done and can discount everything else down the line but the stats on the new op belt are good enough that I'm deeming it worth the mark investment on my top alts to get it up to level 9 awaiting the first breakthrough until my main completes his (I also make an exception for Smashgirl in that she gets to keep and use her own resources).

I do like the Furies though. Given her little bout of tv exposure Malice Vunderbarr and Chessure would have been fun in game.

Same here. My methodology is work on my OP gear on Main + 1 head aug to max regardless of benefit. A 2nd head aug depends on the benefits (sometimes I only take it to 19 or 23) before I switch to an alt getting their augs up to that benefit level. The main benefit I'm looking for is if you get additional OP food/cats drop chances like all DLCs up till the last one (where there were none), because if they are there, I double down and do not open ANY daily/weekly boxes till a toon has the augs up to that level. If there are no additional loot benefits, honestly I don't pay much attention to the augs and just level them as I go, save that first 28 for the feat.

in any case, Main toon works on renown till Elite can be bought, then an alt toon would buy the standard vendor set at 1/2 price after the feat is purchased. Secondary alts get purple unless I hit max marks, which now that 999 is no longer a thing...and I WON'T be grinding even that much, I doubt any alts will get yellow gear save the one who does it for the feat.

I don't find any detriment running in purple vs yellow or normal vs Elite....but I don't run E+, much less run it on alts.

EDIT: As it looks like they are probably going to go with additional 'counts' on the missions, likely I'd try and get everyone to THAT level, as it will cut the grind down substantially. I haven't looked yet...so not sure if that is a benefit or not.

How do players have the energy for all that? I did it for the last episode, and I had to take a two week break to recover from burnout. Props to you; that much effort in a game I play to relax is simply not for me.

Usually when a new dlc drops all the focus goes onto my main and top two alts then I'll bring in a few more as I go along. Having 19 alts may sound like a lot but when you figure I've also been playing since launch it's not that far fetched to think I'm organized with my toons. Even as a kid playing games like AD&D I had character portfolios instead of character sheets...I can't help it. I love my characters.