Unfortunately this DLC is very light on content and does nothing to fix the core problems with the base game.


This basically adds nothing to the main campaign. I loaded my completed game and went back to Corsus and literally couldn't tell the difference.

There nothing in the way of new story content and what little new there is (a boss or two and maybe a merchant if you are very lucky) can only be found in adventure mode... The trailer made it look like this would be an expansion with story and stuff. However a random dungeon generator where you MIGHT encounter a boss without dialogue or an old Merchant is NOT an worthwhile expansion.

Corsus was actually more interesting when I visited it in the campaign before. This procedurally-generated "adventure" is just barren and eerily lifeless.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2077216796

Honestly the Corsus Adventure mode feels like something that was held back/cut out of the main game in the first place. When adventure mode first launched a long time ago, Corsus was conspicuously absent. It certainly isn't worth $10 to wander around a less populated version of the place I already went to in the main campaign... I completed adventure mode multiple times and the closest I ever came to something interesting was meeting and ugly old woman who told me that she hated the Iskal Queen... who of course did NOT show up at all in the randomly-generated world either that time or at any other time.

Survival mode... why? This is chasing trends and it's completely pointless. As it tells you before starting it, it has no effect on the main game. In an RPG with resources and upgrades to grind for, challenges ought to at least give you resources for completing them. What's next? Battle Royal mode perhaps... ugh!


The worst thing about this DLC is that it doesn't give players the option of disabling this game's utterly broken and deceptive level-scaling system. I would like to say that the "level-scaling" in this game is a completely pointless treadmill designed to give the player the illusion of progress when you are actually accomplishing nothing but it is actually worse than that. The level-scaling in this game will actually make the enemies STRONGER when you level up relative to yourself.

A player with a level 1 gun will actually kill a level 2 enemy faster than a player with a level 20 gun will kill a level 21 enemy... and since the game automatically adjusts the levels of all enemies to player's gear score +1 upon entering a new area, that means that if you upgrade, rather then getting stronger relative to the enemies, you will actually be getting weaker. Of course, you still DO need to level up sometimes regardless since there are minimum levels for some areas so if you simply never upgrade, you will end up badly under-leveled.

In general, the best thing to do is to NOT upgrade until you get curb-stomped by an unkillable enemy and then upgrade and NOT re-roll (re-rolling makes the areas count as new so it will make the enemies your gear score +1 if they aren't already that strong.) The game makes this extra hard for you though because it actually lies to you. Boss weapons (any weapon with a built-in mod) are actually twice the level that they say they are so if you make the mistake of upgrading your boss weapon to the same level as your other gear, you will quickly find that all of your other gear starts to become almost useless and the boss weapon becomes your ONLY effective weapon... did I mention that just beating a boss can sometimes cause your gear to upgrade without your permission? Yeah that sucks.

Considering how deceptive and broken the level-scaling is, they could have at least used the opportunity offered by selling a DLC with virtually no content to offer players the OPTION of disabling level-scaling and playing though a game in which the enemies levels were fixed and players could actually strengthen themselves relative to enemies (like in dark souls and MOST games which have RPG mechanics.)

Alas, it was not to be...

This is actually one of my favorite games but I can't recommend it because the core systems lack integrity. Sad...

P.S.

As a final note, I am REALLY not a fan of games which dump DLC in your hard drive without permission but then make you pay to access the thing they just placed on your hard drive without your permission.

Update:

This was the first of many negative reviews for the Swamps of Corsus DLC (it came out at a time when most of the reviews were both VERY short and positive) and after I posted it, one of the devs (who was also the community manager at the time) became so angry that he TWICE posted a false accusation that I hadn't played the DLC as you can see from the screenshots in the Google drive link below.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Ch1hR5N9poTyLJPv9

After I proved he was wrong, he began attacking me in the official forums and finally issued a perma-ban for a completely mundane post about faults with the gameplay and possible ways of fixing the same. (The screenshot for the ban is also in the google drive link above.)

More importantly, he also abused his position to angrily tag EVERY ONE of my screenshots (you can see one of them in the google drive link) for Remnant as violations of the Steam terms of use which not only removed them but also temporarily banned me from uploading ANY screenshots to Steam even from other games since if your images are tagged as violations, you will be banned from uploading for a few days for each image that is a violation.

If Steam allows devs to start intimidating people who post negative reviews, user reviews will obviously become useless except as a form of astro-turf advertising.

Update:

The dev un-banned me from the forums, tried to convince me that the ban had nothing to do with my negative review and was just a reaction to an ordinary post in a thread about level-scaling and the problems with the same which I created in 2019 and which the dev just deleted along with every other thread I made significant posts in. (You can see a screenshot of the ban in the google drive link and decide for yourself if any sane person would issue a perma-ban simply for the discussion of game mechanics in the same.)

He also claimed that the systematic banning of ALL of my screenshots which occurred at the same time was just a mistake... one which he apparently made eleven times in a row.

Further, despite my request that he do so and his initial promise that he would take care of this situation, the dev has NOT told steam that he removed the screenshots in error (that would obviously require admitting his "mistake" to steam) so at time of writing I am still banned from posting any user-generated content of any kind since when your screenshots are removed for violating the terms of use, Steam automatically creates a temporary ban which gets longer with each image that is removed.

Update 5/13/2020

ARC games (the publisher for this game) apologized and promised to make sure that this would never happen again. (They're good people by me.)

https://photos.app.goo.gl/rPm45t9oMPVMj4bw9

However, Steam support first tried to claim that there is nothing Steam can do to lift the ban on my posting images to steam and then the person responsible reversed her story and said that the ban WHICH ARC GAMES HAS ALREADY APOLOGIZED FOR was legitimate.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/QwC8TxgPFun22zhr7

Steam support is so lazy that it is defending a ban which the company that issued the ban has ALREADY acknowledged as WRONG.

So yeah... while I don't recommend the DLC, don't boycott the base game (which is pretty good) on my account. At least the publishers are trying to do better.

P.S.

The man who started this is actually a very talented person... if he had just been kept away from the customers, things would have been better for all involved.

Unfortunately this DLC is very light on content and does nothing to fix the core problems with the base game. [h1]Content: (and the lack thereof) [/h1] This basically adds nothing to the main campaign. I loaded my completed game and went back to Corsus and literally couldn't tell the difference. There nothing in the way of new story content and what little new there is (a boss or two and maybe a merchant if you are very lucky) can only be found in adventure mode... The trailer made it look like this would be an expansion with story and stuff. However a random dungeon generator where you MIGHT encounter a boss without dialogue or an old Merchant is NOT an worthwhile expansion. Corsus was actually more interesting when I visited it in the campaign before. This procedurally-generated "adventure" is just barren and eerily lifeless. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2077216796 Honestly the Corsus Adventure mode feels like something that was held back/cut out of the main game in the first place. When adventure mode first launched a long time ago, Corsus was conspicuously absent. It certainly isn't worth $10 to wander around a less populated version of the place I already went to in the main campaign... I completed adventure mode multiple times and the closest I ever came to something interesting was meeting and ugly old woman who told me that she hated the Iskal Queen... who of course did NOT show up at all in the randomly-generated world either that time or at any other time. Survival mode... why? This is chasing trends and it's completely pointless. As it tells you before starting it, it has no effect on the main game. In an RPG with resources and upgrades to grind for, challenges ought to at least give you resources for completing them. What's next? Battle Royal mode perhaps... ugh! [h1]A wasted opportunity... for $10:[/h1] The worst thing about this DLC is that it doesn't give players the option of disabling this game's utterly broken and deceptive level-scaling system. I would like to say that the "level-scaling" in this game is a completely pointless treadmill designed to give the player the illusion of progress when you are actually accomplishing nothing but it is actually worse than that. The level-scaling in this game will actually make the enemies STRONGER when you level up relative to yourself. A player with a level 1 gun will actually kill a level 2 enemy faster than a player with a level 20 gun will kill a level 21 enemy... and since the game automatically adjusts the levels of all enemies to player's gear score +1 upon entering a new area, that means that if you upgrade, rather then getting stronger relative to the enemies, you will actually be getting weaker. Of course, you still DO need to level up sometimes regardless since there are minimum levels for some areas so if you simply never upgrade, you will end up badly under-leveled. In general, the best thing to do is to NOT upgrade until you get curb-stomped by an unkillable enemy and then upgrade and NOT re-roll (re-rolling makes the areas count as new so it will make the enemies your gear score +1 if they aren't already that strong.) The game makes this extra hard for you though because it actually lies to you. Boss weapons (any weapon with a built-in mod) are actually twice the level that they say they are so if you make the mistake of upgrading your boss weapon to the same level as your other gear, you will quickly find that all of your other gear starts to become almost useless and the boss weapon becomes your ONLY effective weapon... did I mention that just beating a boss can sometimes cause your gear to upgrade without your permission? Yeah that sucks. Considering how deceptive and broken the level-scaling is, they could have at least used the opportunity offered by selling a DLC with virtually no content to offer players the OPTION of disabling level-scaling and playing though a game in which the enemies levels were fixed and players could actually strengthen themselves relative to enemies (like in dark souls and MOST games which have RPG mechanics.) Alas, it was not to be... This is actually one of my favorite games but I can't recommend it because the core systems lack integrity. Sad... P.S. As a final note, I am REALLY not a fan of games which dump DLC in your hard drive without permission but then make you pay to access the thing they just placed on your hard drive without your permission. Update: This was the first of many negative reviews for the Swamps of Corsus DLC (it came out at a time when most of the reviews were both VERY short and positive) and after I posted it, one of the devs (who was also the community manager at the time) became so angry that he TWICE posted a false accusation that I hadn't played the DLC as you can see from the screenshots in the Google drive link below. https://photos.app.goo.gl/Ch1hR5N9poTyLJPv9 After I proved he was wrong, he began attacking me in the official forums and finally issued a perma-ban for a completely mundane post about faults with the gameplay and possible ways of fixing the same. (The screenshot for the ban is also in the google drive link above.) More importantly, he also abused his position to angrily tag EVERY ONE of my screenshots (you can see one of them in the google drive link) for Remnant as violations of the Steam terms of use which not only removed them but also temporarily banned me from uploading ANY screenshots to Steam even from other games since if your images are tagged as violations, you will be banned from uploading for a few days for each image that is a violation. If Steam allows devs to start intimidating people who post negative reviews, user reviews will obviously become useless except as a form of astro-turf advertising. Update: The dev un-banned me from the forums, tried to convince me that the ban had nothing to do with my negative review and was just a reaction to an ordinary post in a thread about level-scaling and the problems with the same which I created in 2019 and which the dev just deleted along with every other thread I made significant posts in. (You can see a screenshot of the ban in the google drive link and decide for yourself if any sane person would issue a perma-ban simply for the discussion of game mechanics in the same.) He also claimed that the systematic banning of ALL of my screenshots which occurred at the same time was just a mistake... one which he apparently made eleven times in a row. Further, despite my request that he do so and his initial promise that he would take care of this situation, the dev has NOT told steam that he removed the screenshots in error (that would obviously require admitting his "mistake" to steam) so at time of writing I am still banned from posting any user-generated content of any kind since when your screenshots are removed for violating the terms of use, Steam automatically creates a temporary ban which gets longer with each image that is removed. Update 5/13/2020 ARC games (the publisher for this game) apologized and promised to make sure that this would never happen again. (They're good people by me.) https://photos.app.goo.gl/rPm45t9oMPVMj4bw9 However, Steam support first tried to claim that there is nothing Steam can do to lift the ban on my posting images to steam and then the person responsible reversed her story and said that the ban WHICH ARC GAMES HAS ALREADY APOLOGIZED FOR was legitimate. https://photos.app.goo.gl/QwC8TxgPFun22zhr7 Steam support is so lazy that it is defending a ban which the company that issued the ban has ALREADY acknowledged as WRONG. So yeah... while I don't recommend the DLC, don't boycott the base game (which is pretty good) on my account. At least the publishers are trying to do better. P.S. The man who started this is actually a very talented person... if he had just been kept away from the customers, things would have been better for all involved.