Vengeance is a dish best served cold, or was that revenge? We only reviewed Crimson Alliance a month ago. And now the DLC Pack is coming out on Wednesday and it provides a short, but challenging extension to an already great co-op and singleplayer experience.
There’s no strong exposition to be had with Vengeance, but you are provided with three “maps”. First off, as story elements go – there are two singleplayer maps included. Both of which are stark contrasts of one another providing an amazing thunderstorm and gorgeous lighting effects and then on the flip-side seeing fiery dungeons and caverns. Each level is designed differently from the main campaign, they are lengthy and have less checkpoints. It doesn’t make things frustrating, just requires more skill and tactics when playing.
As they exist in the main campaign, there is a whole new challenge level with a unique twist, aptly titled “Fistful of Coins”. It’s a wave-based risk/reward level. It’s quite simple, start the Wave, once completed you get a set amount of coins. If your health and confidence is high enough, you can then move on to the next wave and so on. Now, if you’ve chosen to move on and die, then you lose ALL coins you’ve accrued. You can back out after each successful wave. This way of playing can be helpful in earning the coins for that special piece of armor or weapon you’ve been eyeing since the main campaign.
The game also features new achievements to the standard 12 and are on-par with the rest of the game. It’s a small piece of content that does extend the game, with gorgeous vistas and a great way to earn more money in less time. New weapons are strewn around these new SP maps in secret areas for you to find. Ice is a newer element of focus this time, with new clay jars to break that will freeze your enemies in their place allowing you to inflict massive amounts of damage. Lastly, there are new enemies to be encountered and defeated such as a huge fire golem that looks impressive and can qualify as a mini-boss.
If you enjoy Crimson Alliance and have either solo’d or co-op’d the main levels too much, then these new areas will be provide tons of replay and challenge.
A XBLA code for the DLC was provided by Certain Affinity for Review purposes
