Good to know, haven't touched those yet, hope they're not as bad as people say.
They're not. People just seemingly like to (justifiably) throw shit at them because when they launched they cost $10 a pop when they're actually just one chapters worth of content with the boss fight cut out and sold as a new chapter. The first DLC episode is some of the best content in Lords of Shadow. Fun and engaging puzzle, encounter, and level design, (without spoiling anything) interesting gameplay twists, and some cool lore stuff. They also fixed the single biggest issue with the game's story in the DLC episodes by giving the loading screen voiceovers to Gabriel, which gives him some much needed depth and personality that was so sorely lacking in the main game it was nearly impossible to empathize with him (I like to call this the "Issac Clarke, Dead Space 1" syndrome). The boss fight in the second chapter is actually a very well designed fight, and a really fun culmination of the game's combat system. Story wise it's kinda a rushed, trashy mess though. It feels like 3 (or 2 really long) main game chapters of plot thrown into a single chapter.
Also after "it" happens, there's no ludic change in Gabriel, making the event fall completely flat in the eyes of the player. I understand why they did it though considering they'd have to go in an totally redesign the game's combat to account for the change (like they did in LoS2), not to mention spend the resources making a new Gabriel model, but in pointing that out I feel the need to clarify I'm not making excuses for the content here. Honestly when it comes down to it, they should have saved this event for the new game, or better yet, instead of wasting all that time faffing about in the swamps, forest, or mountains in the main game they could have allotted those resourced into an expanded ending scenario in the main game which dealt with those changes in a much better, non tacked on way instead of being forced to fill in all the holes in the original ending in post release DLC.
While yes, yes, I understand that hindsight is 20/20 and all, it goes back to how deeply flawed this game was overall. Fortunately enough for the game's sake, I like to think this game is deeply flawed in all the "right" ways, and promising in the ways that matter It's flawed in ways that seem to stem more from inexperience and overambition rather than shoddy game design, and despite all this it has a very well designed and rounded combat system at its core (in spite of some aggravating hit detection issues), some interesting puzzle design, and a very engaging and beautiful world built up for it. Thus, for me anyways, I can confidently look forward to LoS2 because despite the game's plethora of problems because underneath it all I can see a great game buried somewhere in here underneath all the schlock, and there's a team here talented enough, that along with the newfound experience and hindsight of what they did wrong with the first one, who can make something remarkable.
Overall LoS1 feels very Dead Space 1 to me. A highly flawed, yet remarkably solid title that with the added iteration of a sequel could become something completely fantastic, and only time can tell whether or not Mercury Steam can come together and pull the rough from the diamond here and make something really outstanding. Based on what I've seen of LoS2, I'm pretty confident that they'll pull it off
