Review: Mass Effect 3 – Leviathan DLC

The second piece of singleplayer DLC for Mass Effect 3 released on August 28th for all three platforms.  But is this DLC worth your $10 in whatever points your system uses, or is it just smoke over the water? (This will be as spoiler free as possible, I will try not to reveal anything that wasn’t given in the description)

The story-line starts with Shepard getting a mission to meet up with an Alliance scientist, who basically is like a mythbuster for them, if someone says something from an ancient story or history doesn’t exist, he’s the one who goes after the truth.  The reason Shepard is called in is because they are hunting down a mythical creature called the “Leviathan” from ancient lore, and are finding evidence that means it could exist.  More importantly to you, from what they’ve dug up it appears it could possibly go toe-to-toe with a Reaper and win, making getting it on your side critical, if it exists.  But unsurprisingly, things don’t go smoothly.

Gameplay is the same terrific stuff as of the main game.  Through the course of the missions you’ll come across a few new weapons and upgrades, none of which really interested me at the moment, as they were of different styles than my character rolls with.  Graphically it looks as good as the main game, with some of the cut-scenes looking absolutely gorgeous.  The dialogue involved was also superb as expected.  You also get to do a bit of detective work, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

On the negative side, I’ve seen a lot of people who were disatisfied with the combat, calling it simply “filler” and saying it was nothing new.  To me, it never felt like filler, I knew the story would be a big part of it, and fighting through Reaper troops didn’t feel out of place in a galaxy that is going to pieces at their hands(or tentacles, or whatever they have).  The other slight negative is length.  I tend to play through games on the slower side, and it took me between 3-4 hours to beat.  This makes the price of entry seem a bit high, but if you are a huge fan of the series like I am, then is definitely worth it.

And while it would be hard to compare since I’d already beat the game, I think the revelations and story aspects were more powerful to me since I already knew some things from the end of the game.  It made for a few great “OH WOW!?!?” moments throughout the DLC.  And I have not yet made a third push through the end, but I can see how this can give you a few other conversation options in the end part of the game.

Overall, this is another great piece of DLC from Bioware.  If you are a fan of the series then I would say this is definitely a must buy.  It gets an amazingly good 9 out of 10.