Golden Idol Investigations: The Lemurian Phoenix Review (The Noose)
Another solid helping of Golden Idol mysteries, this time pivoting into the more spiritual/mythological work that was dominant in the last game's DLC.
I broadly enjoyed my time with this one! I like the way the narrative is pieced together and unfolds across the chapters. I also just generally enjoy the decoding that tends to take place when the game turns to these types of settings.
All that being said, I think it's weaker than The Sins of New Wells in a few key aspects. First, the connection to the main game's narrative is more casual than the last DLC. It feels like an ancillary side story that doesn't tell us much about the overarching story. I also found that the DLC's plot was far less surprising and contained no major twists that really surprised me. It has a twist, but I didn't have enough investment to actually care. Lastly, I also found myself trial-and-erroring my way through this one more than previous efforts. I felt like I had a decent grasp on what occurred, but minor details were very difficult to nail down and felt a bit too vague. I don't want things spelled out, but it felt too hard to confirm deductions and I was guessing my way through certain challenges just based on what felt like reasonable thoughts.
It's still decent DLC and I'm happy to be playing anything coming from this dev team, but I definitely think this is one of the weaker efforts on the DLC front so far. Hopefully the final two DLC packs contain some fun shake-ups.
I'd score it 7/10.