Immortals Fenyx Rising DLC Review

Introduction:

At the end of 2020 I reviewed Immortals Fenyx Rising from Ubisoft, a game born from some ideas the developers behind Assassin's Creed: Odyssey had, following their research into Greco-Roman mythology. I enjoyed the action-adventure RPG game, even if there were times it got repetitive and frustrating, and so have been looking forward to returning to it, for the purpose of reviewing its three expansions: A New God; Myths of the Eastern Realm; and the recently released The Lost Gods. Fortunately the original key provided by Ubisoft for the base game included the Season Pass, making this return quite easy.

As these expansions are set after the events of the base game, and its revelations, spoilers are going to be unavoidable. Indeed the first expansion, A New God follows directly from one of the primary surprises at the end of the game. While I will attempt to keep this Introduction section clean of spoilers, the other sections will not be.

In the base game, you play as Fenyx, a shield bearer and master storyteller living in the shadow of their heroic older brother Ligyron, who managed to sink a fleet of enemy ships. Except for you, the whole of humanity has been turned to stone, so to reverse this, Fenyx intends to seek out the Olympians for help. An attack by the monster Typhon, however, has scattered most of the Titans. Aphrodite, Ares, Athena, and Hephaistos have been cursed by the monster, Hermes apparently managed to hide himself and so can guide you, and Zeus is one of the two narrators for the game. The other narrator is Prometheus, chained to a mountain telling Zeus the story. While this apocalyptic scenario of missing gods and petrified humans is certainly a serious one, there was ample humor in the base game, coming from the silliness of some situations, like Ares being turned into a rooster, as well as the foolishness of Zeus, and Fenyx's admiration of the gods and heroes.

Naturally, the end of the base game includes the defeat of Typhon and the restoration of humanity and the Olympians, but Fenyx's story does not end there. Indeed this new hero's role going forward is to be even greater, with the first expansion tackling just that.

As I mentioned above, my ability to play these expansions was provided by Ubisoft, as the original Immortals Fenyx Rising key included its Season Pass. The base game has a T rating from the ESRB for language, suggestive themes, and violence and you can pretty safely apply this rating to the DLC as well. Unfortunately you will want to apply a higher rating to the review playthrough as I definitely got quite frustrated at times and verbalized the experience.

Accessing the three expansions is quite easy as they each have their own large button on the left side of the game's Main Menu. They are not accessed through the map of the base game, though there are special missions you can complete for each expansion that grant rewards. This does make some sense as you do not return after the final mission, instead getting to return to a save prior to it or start a New Game+ playthrough, so there is no real path from after that mission to these new events. I should acknowledge I did continue to play the game some after the review, in a NG+ playthrough where I completed all but the final campaign mission, and worked on clearing the map of the various pieces of gear and other items. After unlocking everything, you can still find and invest various currencies to provide some boost, making the gameplay as long lasting as you wish. It is possible when starting the expansions to link the most recent save to them, for the purpose of carrying over certain content, both from the base game and from the expansion, after any content has been earned. If you close and relaunch the game, you will be returned to the Main Menu last used, so if you left from an expansion, you will return to its menu, rather than the base game's.

Being a DLC review, its format will be a bit different from my other game reviews, with a section dedicated for each expansion. Additionally, I will not discuss the graphics as, the graphics section from the original review (Immortals Fenyx Rising) should still be accurate. I think that covers enough, so we can get into the body of this DLC review!