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I’ve rarely played DLC that retroactively makes the base game better, because most of the time DLC is just more of the game with some added features— and that’s sorta true in this case too, but those new features happen to be a bunch of boring, annoying, repetitive bullshit that makes the entire experience aggravating.

Truth Quest adds a new location— which is one of the things that I surprisingly really enjoyed. It’s unique in the sense that it feels like a new place apart from the base game; the atmosphere is moody with newly added overcast weather, including occasional rain, instead of the frequent sunny weather that the base game had (and that I often didn’t enjoy and found repetitive). The content inside this new location however, is not anything new; it’s the exact same side activities that were present in the base game, except with harder (more annoying) enemies, five new infamy levels (kill me), some new time trials that don’t do much for me, and objectives that seem like they were intentionally designed to frustrate you and waste your time. I’m referring to the comms towers that purposefully embrace the game’s clunky and slippery controls, which I don’t understand; why design a game around being a sea creature, but then make objectives that force you to go onto land in order to jump into the air a thousand times trying to bite something that is out of reach, all while running out of breath, being shot at, and fighting the controls more so than the enemies trying to kill you? I honestly don’t fucking know, it seems like a baffling idea to me, one that isn’t fun whatsoever. As if copying and pasting all of this side content onto a new location wasn’t bad enough… they also decide to add all of it again to the old locations too, making you effectively redo all of the old stuff… what the actual fuck? What were they thinking?

The gameplay while underwater isn’t much better to be honest… They add a few new enemies, most of which are bosses that have some of the same abilities that you have, and they’re not fun to fight because the combat doesn’t have enough depth. You’re basically dodging for most of the fight, and then going in for a couple hits once they get stunned, it doesn’t do anything for me and by this point I’ve had enough of the combat system to not want to do it for another 3-4 hours. I sorta liked the last boss, but just because it actually adds some new gameplay mechanics and has some spectacle to it. The lack of new equipables adds to the repetitiveness of it all too, they implement a single new mutation set, but I wouldn’t say it’s noticeably better than any of the other ones, it just has a general feeling of doing more damage, there’s nothing there to engage with and it’s more of a “Oh a new set? Guess I’ll put it on for a damage buff” type-thing. It’s not something you have to actively think about while in a fight, just spam the attacks and you’ll be more than fine.

The base game at least had some meaning behind its final hour, because up until that point we were following Scaly Pete and his story; but in here, it swaps all of that out for some generic conspiracy theory shit that is way too boring to keep track of, seeming as I’ve literally forgotten all about it five days after playing it. The story completely loses all the charm that it once had, and lacks any sort of fun because of how out of place and random it all feels when looking back at the main game.

Playtime: 3.3 hours

DLC's - Ranked
2021 - Ranked

I found ‘Truth Quest’ to be quite a bit less appealing than the main game. The story didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me (something about a world takeover scheme involving insectoid viruses and vaccines?) but that doesn’t matter much. I really enjoyed the base game and I couldn’t, today, tell you what it was about. I think the two biggest issues I have with 'Truth Quest' are 1) the amped-up difficulty and 2) the requirement to reach infamy level 5 before the final boss will spawn. ‘Truth Quest’ is much more difficult than the base game. Here, for the first time, you need to consider your shark build. That might seem like a good thing, but honestly, ‘Maneater’ is a game with slippery enough controls, and a chaotic enough camera, that it needs to stay easy. This is a game of stupid fun, not one of precision combat. So any time precise combat is required, the experience suffers. And the requirement to reach infamy level 5 was a bad idea. To raise infamy a single level, you need to increase a (very slowly filling) meter by eating humans and destroying hunter boats. Once it fills, a hunter leader spawns in some armored vehicle with a ton of HP and you need to destroy it to go up an infamy level. This gameplay loop was in the base game but I ignored it completely because it’s, ya know, not fun. So here in ‘Truth Quest’ I needed to get myself all the way up to level 5 and so spent an entire game session working on just this. And like I wrote above, difficult combat, slippery controls, wonky camera, etc. I still look forward to a ‘Maneater’ sequel. ‘Truth Quest’ was not the 'Maneater' followup I was hoping for.

There's something a tad depressing about reaching a 100% completion rate in a really good single-player game. The sense of accomplishment is great, but also bittersweet because it means you've reached the point where all that title you were enjoying so much has left to offer is a nostalgic replay in a few years down the line. Such was the case for me with Maneater, an open-(water)world RPG that had me craving more even after I unlocked that platinum trophy by tackling every objective on the map. Thankfully, this DLC was made to help satiate some of that hunger.

This could accurately be described as more of the same. There is a new location to explore, a collection of challenging bosses to overcome, and even another added evolution set with its own unique abilities. However, the only significant gameplay change outside of its more challenging combat encounters are the time trial side-missions that see you swimming through rings to beat the clock. It's nothing innovative, but the main course was already so tasty that I had a hard time turning my gills up at this second helping. The only real complaints I have are that the overall package doesn't seem to run quite as smoothly anymore and that the new story theme has led to less funny narration.

Truth Quest gave me a reason to pick up what was probably my personal favorite gaming experience of 2020 again, and for that I couldn't be happier. You can tell the devs definitely ran into some trouble with the scope of their vision, as it isn't long before you leave its new locale and return to the well-scoured seas of the base game to finish your quest of returning to the top of the aquatic food chain, but things like the increased difficulty still provided enough variety by forcing me to do things like reevaluate my shark's build. Plus, it allowed me to squeeze a few more hours out of something I loved in a manner that hearkened back the the DLC structure of the 360/PS3 era, where you'd get to travel to an area off-map and have a cool adventure centered around a creatively kooky concept.

9/10

Playtime: 8 Hours
Score: 5/10

So I was a big fan of the base game, as playing as a Shark in an RPG setting is just so fun to me. And this DLC which I would say is expansion level, was ticking the right boxes for me. It takes you to a new map, gives you more shark hunters and apex predators to fight, raises the level cap, new evolution's to unlock and a cool enough story that takes place after the end of the base game. In some ways it impresses but in most others it disappoints.

To start with what it does right, going to a new area of Plover Island is cool and having the narrator (voiced by Chris Parnell) turned into a full blown conspiracy theorist is fun to see. Some of his new voice over is pretty funny too. Going around this area and causing havoc felt satisfying and you get to fight apex predators that have the same evolution sets as you, so it adds a little bit of challenge. I also really loved the time trial races, which is something I didn't think I would like, as I almost never like doing those in games.

The first half of this DLC is you exploring Plover Island and doing missions there which is mostly fighting this new military militia and taking on the 5 new shark hunters. Once your done with that, the second half has you then go back to Port Clovis to track down the Apex Leviathan. Your tracking its path of destruction while your given new activities to do in each of the old bayous. On one hand I like that this DLCs adds value back to the base games areas, rather then everything being on the new map, but on the other hand its just the same tedious busy work from the base game. Most of the destroy apex predator missions for example in these old bayous are just you fighting the same: irritated, electric great white shark over and over. Thats just lazy design man. Or the consume sailor missions, half the time don't make sense, as in the base game you were attacking civilians on beaches or golf courses which made sense, but here its just a bunch of soldiers standing around on a beach for no reason, waiting for you to eat them.

Some things I hated also were the helicopters and comm tower missions. The helicopters are a pain to deal with but thankfully there only on Plover Island and not back at Port Clovis but the comm towers are in both areas. I'm a shark, why am I trying to destroy comm towers on land? And you can't just hop over to it and bite it to death, as you need to hit the top part. The idea is that your supposed to grab bombs the humans throw at you in your mouth and smack them at the towers, but that is a lot easier said then done as the controls are just too slippery for it. I have played through the base game twice, and the controls were never ideal but they didn't bother me too much until I played this expansion.

This all I guess was supposed to be made easy by the new atomic evolution set, but I thought say this new set was really disappointing. I had heard stories from players that the ability this set has of you being able to shoot out a Godzilla style blast would destroy helicopters in one hit. Well for me it was as useful as harsh language. A blast from the set would barely even scratch most enemy vehicles or towers, and would only do a small amount of damage. I don't know if they nerfed this ability in a patch but it was just really not that useful. I thought after I upgraded all the pieces of the set to max it would get more powerful but it doesn't. Towards the end I was trying to destroy comm towers with this set, but it would take like 4-5 shots to destroy even just one tower. I wish they had made it so that the blast was very powerful but it would take longer to build up the ability bar to use it. I pretty much only used this set to take out towers, as it was preferable to smacking bombs at it, and the helicopters I just stuck to my bone armor and brute forced my way through fights by biting at the helicopter when it got closer to the water.

Lastly the story was just very disappointing for this expansion. While the base game didn't have an award winning story, I liked the mix of over the top shark movie and reality TV vibe it had. And you had Scaly Pete as an antagonist who I felt brought a lot to the game and kept you going. You would even get cut scenes of him obsessing over killing this one shark and it made you want to defeat him even more. This expansion has none of that, as the story is mostly loosely told by the narrators voice over. The closest things you get to antagonists are the final Shark hunter, Barbra Terranova and the Leviathan but theres no real story there. There both just a glorified shark hunter and apex predator that you already fought in the base game.

Overall, this expansion was just really disappointing for me. If you really loved the base titles gameplay loop and want more of it, then you might like this expansion and it does offer way more content then most DLCs do, but as someone who was a fan of the base game and played through it twice, this is a definite skip for me.

All DLC I have Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-dlcs-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/