izigame.me

For those in 2025 who are worried about the mixed reviews, I can confirm that the two one major issues people have complained about in this DLC have since been fixed. The new elite units showing up early game and making it impossible can now be disabled (and should be) and I have experienced no bugs with the additional content.
I misunderstood what one of the major complaints about this DLC is. I thought it was elite units from the DLC showing up early game and crushing you before you have the tools to deal with them, but that wasn't the problem. This DLC causes 1 of the 3 missions that periodically spawn to be a "technophage" mission, which locks the threat rating of that mission to the second highest rating. Normally, mission threat rating is based on planet corruption, but not for technophage missions. Failing or ignoring these missions results in double the corruption buildup on the planet then a normal mission. This happens every single mission spawn cycle. So this DLC arbitrarily forces more difficult mission spawns but fails to scale player power accordingly. Ignoring these missions will almost certainly brick your campaign in the long run.
As for the quality of the content, that more or less has stayed the same. The dreadnought is fine, and his missions feel appropriately difficult based on the power increase he provides a squad, but some of his early game missions do feel a bit over-tuned. His missions appear semi-frequently somewhere around a 1:5 ratio of missions with and without him.
The tech-marine is low-tier bottom tier, EASILY the worst class in the game. Compared to the base game classes, and it mostly feels like a numbers issue. Every single one of his stats, his damage, movement, health, armor all feels like they need a +1 added. His mechanics are unique and interesting but he just doesn't have the numerical power to back up everything he does.
A Purgerator can take a psylincer at 17 range and blast a dude for 6 damage and 1 AP, but for some reason a Techmarine needs to use 2-3 AP and be in running distance to an enemy, and deploy all their servitors in order to squeak out similar damage numbers. Then, a random enemy throws a grenade at them and they lose half their health and all their servitors die.
It's a fine DLC to get on sale or in a bundle, and has obviously received love since release which is commendable, but still feels like it needed another balance pass.
EDIT: I have since played another 20 or so hours since writing this and have changed my mind. The techmarine is far worse then I initially thought, and the added difficulty of technophage missions really breaks the flow of the game. It so often feels like you're being forced into extra-hard difficulty missions for rewards that only serve to improve the worse class in the game, the techmarine. I genuinely think, especially for new players, the game is actually best experienced without this DLC.