Right, my evaluation of the dlc (long post is long):
Background: I played it with a post-SM adept, who remained faithful to Kaidan, had warp ammo as bonus talent, and adopted the Mattock as extra weapon. I took Zaeed and Miranda with me originally as they are my go-to team mates when I don't know what I'm going to be up against.
I immediately found myself at a disadvantage because Liara and myself were full adepts, and with hindsight I wish I'd have changed out to a tech/shield depleting bonus talent before hand. I took Garrus with me to the SB base, with this knowledge in mind, but because he ended up on the floor it made the final SB fight more challenging and I died a few times.
I preferred the Spectre fight to the SB fight, although it felt rather hectic and random because of her charging out of the way all the time. And all the rocket drones threw me (see above - lack of tech talents).
I saw the Spectre betrayal coming a mile off.
The cab chase was fun, but I think the controls were needlessly fussy. I didn't see the point in having LS l/r for banking, and then RS l/r for steering. Steering would have been enough. I crashed multiple times. Thank god for the numerous autosave points during it.
Stasis: the jury's out on this. I only ever really used to use Stasis in ME1 once you could do damage through it. I couldn't tell if you could do damage through stasis this time or not - but I suspect not (I'd appreciate clarification on this). As I played this first run through on normal, I really didn't feel the benefit of it. I imagine you would on much higher levels when you need some crowd control. During the SB fight, with 2 pure biotics, Liara could only warp (after shields were gone) and stasis didn't work. I'll play around with it a little more, but I don't think I'll be using it, which is a real shame.
Fighting through the inside of the SB base reminded me of Omega - the aesthetic was similar as were some of the background sounds. Fighting on the exterior of the SB base reminded me of some of the fights during the battle of the Citadel in ME1 - the parts where you're outside fighting geth and you can see Sovereign in the distance bringing down his big old arm thing. Add to that the couple of times the ME1 music kicks in (oh my - I absolutely loved that) and the dialogue like the omni-gel comment, and it helped provide some of the familiarity that was lacking in the rest of ME2.
I thought the main missions, the playable part of the DLC, was too short. Yes it was well executed, but I was surprised to be at the SB base so quickly. I thought there would have been a couple of extra missions beforehand. However, the time I spent reading the dossiers and watching the vids, and talking to Liara on the Normandy made the mission, beginning to end, last about 3 hours. Without the stuff post-killing the SB it was just over 2 hours. Considering you can go back and do the post-SB killing stuff at any point, I think that 2 hours simply was too short. That said, I was impressed at the length of the SB base exterior section - something like that tends to be much shorter.
There's a thread in the non-spoiler forum about the lack of character development in ME2 for Shep. The gist of it is that ME1 has some great moments where we see into Shep's mind, and experience his/her frustrations, worries, feelings, through dialogue choices and through cut-scenes. It's thought that ME2 was distinctly lacking in that area, and it was a story about the team mates' character development, with Shep merely being a foil for that. This dlc added exactly the sort of thing people on that thread have been lamenting the lack of. The chance to be asked by Liara about your feelings, to be able to express your worries - that was some great character development. On the one hand I'm so happy it was included in this dlc, but on the other it highlights that this sort of thing really should have been present in the main game. Shep became human again - it's just a damn shame you have to spend 800 pts to see that.
Since there are no dialogue options for you to renounce your work with Cerberus, and because you can return to the base and get fresh intel and the like, I personally think this works well as pre-SM dlc, and when I do new playthroughs I'll always play it as such. Overlord I think works either way. You definitely want to play this dlc AFTER doing the collector ship though, because of the revelation that the SB had worked out that the collectors were prothean.
All-in-all, I enjoyed this dlc, and I don't regret buying it. For its length I'd say it's 560 pt dlc, not 800, but I'd heard it was short before I bought it, and I still bought it. I look forward to playing it again with my other characters.
There is a lot of interest in some Ash/Kaidan dlc. As Kaidan is my favourite team mate of all time (OF ALL TIME) I'd love that, especially because of the distress the Horizon incident caused. The complete and total lack of any reference to Kaidan/Ash in Liara's dlc was massively disappointing. No dossier information, and not even one line by Liara. This surprised me, and made me very, very sad. BW have hinted that Ash/Kaidan will play a bigger role in ME3 and these things will be resolved. If it is done in a satisfactory way and not just paid lip service, I'm happy to wait for ME3 if it means the story as a whole is better served. If it's just going to be lip service, then an Ash/Kaidan dlc is pretty essential imo, for those who feel utterly shafted atm.
Here endeth catabuca's appraisal of the Lair of the Shadow Broker
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