XenoShyft - Dreadmire DLC

Very decent DLC with loads of content

5/10 Although the base game (Xenoshyft) had a few bugs when myself and a few friends tackled it, I still enjoyed cooperatively taking down the Hive. I liked the unique divisions and the ability to help out my co-op partners by playing instants and by adding troops to their lanes. The game was tough, but required resourcefulness and felt rewarding to win. Unfortunately, the divisions were not all equally powerful, and we found ourselves gravitating repeatedly to divisions like Armor, Weapons, Science, and the Command Center. We found the DLC divisions (Grafting, Psychogenics) to be especially weak. Although Dreadmire adds a new enemy deck, items, troops, and an environmental mechanic, it just doesn't feel very different than the base game to me. However, I thought that the Resource Officer was a cool inclusion - an option in Wave 2 to help you acquire items and instants. Although some of the new items and troops are more powerful than those in the base game, many are not. This can be a little bit of an issue with the new enemies you'll be facing. With Dreadmire, I never really found myself breathing a sigh of relief - every enemy is just brutal. Almost every enemy you flip has an absolutely nasty effect, from trampling damage onto the next troop in line, to stealing troops from your graveyard that you then have to fight or turning killed troops into enemies, or even repeatedly dealing direct damage to multiple troops. We were able to beat Dreadmire on the normal difficulty, but we failed during our hard run. I like the way that the divisions have been reworked for the expansion, but still found a few to be better than the rest. As so many of the enemies dealt direct damage and stole troops, we found it most beneficial to pack our own direct damage, a lot of damage prevention, and to play as many Flight Suit troops as possible (since these can be played instantly, they can often dodge enemy effects). The Demolitionist was also a good option, since it deals extra damage upon dying. Although the environmental effects are probably the biggest change from the base game, we also found them to be the most irritating. These effects always benefit the enemies more than you, even if you've acquired items that deal an extra damage or prevent an extra damage in certain conditions. They add another element of randomness to an already random game. Did you draw a hard with a decent amount of cash? What items are available during this particular game? What enemies did you flip, and when? Now you also have to think about the random weather conditions, and these can almost double the difficulty of some enemies. I like concept of Xenoshyft very much. It's thematically cool, has a neat deck building mechanic, can be played with friends, and demands cooperative attention. Unfortunately, the game always felt too punishing for players to really experiment with all the items and divisions available. Dreadmire doubles down on this issue, introducing almost strictly more difficult enemies and only some stronger items and troops. Therefore, you feel even more pressure to stick with certain divisions and strategies. In other words, it doesn't matter how cool the ideas behind the Psychogenics and Grafting divisions are if you can't win with them.