Arrival is last chuck of DLC for Mass Effect 2 and is meant to bridge the gap between the end of ME2 and the start of ME3. You start off my receiving a message from your old friend Admiral Hackett requesting that you rescue a Dr held in a Batarian prison. Apparently she found evidence of an imminent reaper invasion but was captured shortly after. You must go in alone as sending in a squad could cause an incident with the Batarians. Like the previous DLC once you get this briefing it’s up to you when you actually want to do the mission.

Once you arrive at the prison arrival starts to differentiate itself by offering the player a stealthy way to find the prisoner. You can go in guns blazing but I thought I would take this opportunity to play the game in a different style and of course there was an achievement for not being seen in this part of the mission. Now the problem with stealth in games that aren’t built for stealth is that they suck, you get the extreme ends of stealth. Either bad guys spot you when they really shouldn’t or they don’t spot you when they really should and both showed up in arrival. It’s a bizarre choice to add this to Mass Effect when the game simply isn’t built for it. Shepard can’t sneak so the equivalent of Sam Fisher sneaking about is Shepard walking REALLY slowly and I’m not even sure if it made a difference. Honestly if it wasn’t for the achievement I wouldn’t have bothered. I won’t go into the story and further but stuff happens you kill some more dudes. At one point you take control of a LOKI Mech but that only lasts for a minute or two.

Arrival is 560 MSP and will probably take you from 1hr – 1hr30m to complete. It’s also worth noting you will not find anything in the DLC that you can take back with you into other missions. No new weapons or anything. Its one thing that arrival is not very long and not very interesting but the real sticking point for me is this. Bioware fucking lied. In no way does this tie into Mass Effect 3 in a way worth paying for. At the end of it all the message seems to be “Remember those reapers coming to kill us all? There still coming”. Arrival was pitched as an important piece of Mass Effect lore that will get you pumped up for Mass Effect 3 but it’s a short shoddy piece of nothing. As I mentioned you get nothing out of this DLC apart from the story and the story is bad. It does end with a reason why Shepard needs to go to earth so I can see how that would set up Mass Effect 3 but to charge for this and call it DLC is ridiculous.

Arrival is last chuck of DLC for Mass Effect 2 and is meant to bridge the gap between the end of ME2 and the start of ME3. You start off my receiving a message from your old friend Admiral Hackett requesting that you rescue a Dr held in a Batarian prison. Apparently she found evidence of an imminent reaper invasion but was captured shortly after. You must go in alone as sending in a squad could cause an incident with the Batarians. Like the previous DLC once you get this briefing it’s up to you when you actually want to do the mission.

Once you arrive at the prison arrival starts to differentiate itself by offering the player a stealthy way to find the prisoner. You can go in guns blazing but I thought I would take this opportunity to play the game in a different style and of course there was an achievement for not being seen in this part of the mission. Now the problem with stealth in games that aren’t built for stealth is that they suck, you get the extreme ends of stealth. Either bad guys spot you when they really shouldn’t or they don’t spot you when they really should and both showed up in arrival. It’s a bizarre choice to add this to Mass Effect when the game simply isn’t built for it. Shepard can’t sneak so the equivalent of Sam Fisher sneaking about is Shepard walking REALLY slowly and I’m not even sure if it made a difference. Honestly if it wasn’t for the achievement I wouldn’t have bothered. I won’t go into the story and further but stuff happens you kill some more dudes. At one point you take control of a LOKI Mech but that only lasts for a minute or two.

Arrival is 560 MSP and will probably take you from 1hr – 1hr30m to complete. It’s also worth noting you will not find anything in the DLC that you can take back with you into other missions. No new weapons or anything. Its one thing that arrival is not very long and not very interesting but the real sticking point for me is this. Bioware fucking lied. In no way does this tie into Mass Effect 3 in a way worth paying for. At the end of it all the message seems to be “Remember those reapers coming to kill us all? There still coming”. Arrival was pitched as an important piece of Mass Effect lore that will get you pumped up for Mass Effect 3 but it’s a short shoddy piece of nothing. As I mentioned you get nothing out of this DLC apart from the story and the story is bad. It does end with a reason why Shepard needs to go to earth so I can see how that would set up Mass Effect 3 but to charge for this and call it DLC is ridiculous.

Oh, about that "no new weapons or anything" thing, you do get a Body Weave and Heavy Weapon Ammo research bit. Maybe more, but I seriously don't want to play through this DLC again to make sure because BioWare's been so disappointing lately. 

The last 10 minutes of the DLC was great, I thought. I also thought everything else was boring and repetitive. Took me 1h 30m on Hardcore with probably 5 deaths and plenty of checking corners for loot and recharging shields. They could have added at least one interesting character or SOMETHING just to make it feel like the DLC was anything to remember besides the end.
I had to do the sneaking twice because someone apparently spotted me without my knowledge... Luckily I had a save just in case.

That's the Bioware DLC formula. It sounds very similar to Witch Hunt for Dragon Age, which also happened to be the final bit of current story related DLC released to bridge the gap into the next game. Half-hearted content with an event thrown in at the end to fool you into thinking it's worth it. It's not. My answer to anyone asking me if a Bioware game piece of DLC in the future is worth it will be "no, just youtube the ending." It's just unfortunate when they tie in a legitimately important choice to be possibly carried over into the next game.

This wasn't made by the ME2 team, it was made by a new BioWare studio

" That's the Bioware DLC formula. It sounds very similar to Witch Hunt for Dragon Age, which also happened to be the final bit of current story related DLC released to bridge the gap into the next game. Half-hearted content with an event thrown in at the end to fool you into thinking it's worth it. It's not. My answer to anyone asking me if a Bioware game piece of DLC in the future is worth it will be "no, just youtube the ending." It's just unfortunate when they tie in a legitimately important choice to be possibly carried over into the next game. "

" Oh, about that "no new weapons or anything" thing, you do get a Body Weave and Heavy Weapon Ammo research bit. Maybe more, but I seriously don't want to play through this DLC again to make sure because BioWare's been so disappointing lately. 

"

Was a pure let down, What was the point of Arrival they could have told everything that happend in it in a short Intro in ME3, they should have let you make that choice at the end that would have at least gone some way to saving Arrival from being the complete waste that it is. 

It reminded me of Dead Space 2: Severed in that it was DLC for a sci-fi thrid-person shooter from EA that was too short, too combat focused, and had a really an unsatisfying story, which I really only bought because I worked too hard to lose my S-Rank.
 
I think they won. Goddammit.

I thought it was fairly poor but since my flatmate paid for it I was happy to play through it. Stealth was poor but did provide something new to play and the last 10 minutes were pretty cool. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone though.

The story stuff was ok buy it was a disappointing DLC pack overall. My Shepard was designed around having my teammates so removing them completely made the whole gameplay experience much more tedious than it normally is. Also, I'm not sure how this bridges the gap to ME3 except that the Batarians might not like much anymore.