Developer Mundfish has made no secret of the fact that it has been working on the next chapter of the narrative that began with Atomic Heart. While the studio has a full-fledged sequel in development, along with an MMO shooter, The Cube, it has also decided to give the original Atomic Heart a final send-off with the release of its last DLC, Blood on Crystal. Right from the outset, Mundfish makes its intentions with the DLC quite clear: to wrap up Atomic Heart’s story while laying the groundwork for Atomic Heart 2 and The Cube. How well it manages that is more complicated than a simple “well” or “badly”.
Atomic Heart: Blood on Crystal picks up where the story last left off, with our ragtag group of heroes regrouping on a beach before they decide on their next move. In case you might have forgotten certain plot elements, thankfully, there’s even a recap video at the very beginning that provides a broad strokes-styled summary of the entire plot leading up to this moment. The DLC also assumes that P3 has been through all of the previous content after wrapping up the base game’s story, which also means that he’s at his most confident, and his allies are at their strongest when we start out.
“There isn’t much new happening there either, and the big betrayal is telegraphed so heavily from the opening cutscenes that I found myself yawning by the time the story finally pulled the trigger.”
The story makes its intentions clear right from the start. P3 has just about had it with primary antagonist CHAR-les and has decided to shut down his operations once and for all. Before we can head to his base for one final assault, however, the beach where our heroes are regrouping comes under siege, forcing them to retreat.
Blood on Crystal’s pacing immediately slows to a crawl after this, with characters taking their sweet time to discuss the next steps of a plan that largely revolves around destroying things, while protagonist P3 is given a new companion in the form of NORA, now installed in his glove. This also sets up an eventual betrayal that is far too obvious. After being rescued from an ambush by Granny Zina, our heroes decide on a plan of action, which revolves around taking the fight to CHAR-les directly, right down to his secret Crystal Complex.
There isn’t much new happening there either, and the big betrayal is telegraphed so heavily from the opening cutscenes that I found myself yawning by the time the story finally pulled the trigger. Thankfully, not every aspect of the DLC is dull. It has some of the best boss fights of the entire game, with your final encounter against CHAR-les being especially noteworthy. Similarly, some of the environments can also look quite impressive at times, especially as you get further into the story.
Ultimately, Blood on Crystal’s story is held back by the same issue that has long made much of Atomic Heart’s narrative feel dull. Sure, there are a few characters that can be quite interesting, and the voice acting is often phenomenal.
However, the characters also have the tendency to not really take things seriously enough at times, which can lead to mid-combat dialogue that often feels ripped right out of a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie in all of the worst ways. Those attempts at humor also undercut the DLC’s few moments of genuine pathos, because scenes that are meant to be emotional can only go so far when one of the central characters is an AI living inside a weapon vending machine.
“The entire DLC would have benefited from removing respawning enemies entirely”
This emphasis on wrapping up the main story also means that, outside of its story content and new levels, there isn’t much that feels fresh in Blood on Crystal. Sure, there are a few new enemy types here and there, but during the roughly four hours it takes to finish the DLC, you’ll still spend most of your time fighting the same bland robots with the same weapons you’ve been using since the start of Atomic Heart. Being stripped of your inventory at the start of the DLC was another point of frustration for me; you’ll spend a considerable amount of time with just your hammer and the Secateur, which also has the side effect of making early fights quite boring and forgettable. Getting your arsenal back to where it likely was by the end of the previous DLCs would require plenty of grinding and scrounging for crafting materials.
The poor pacing doesn’t just affect the story either; the level design can also feel sluggish, with simple puzzles often forcing you to backtrack just to make sure you haven’t missed anything. If that weren’t enough, Blood on Crystal also has the tendency to trigger enemy respawns a bit too often. Now, I get it: long stretches of simply walking through a game can be dull. However, the combat encounters you are often forced to fight through repeatedly aren’t particularly interesting. Rather, they act as little more than a way to drain you of your resources. The entire DLC would have benefited from removing respawning enemies entirely and instead adding fresh encounters to those otherwise long, drawn-out traversal sequences.
Overall, the gameplay feels dull, due in no small part to how repetitive the fights become. Sure, there are some theoretically good ideas here and there, like some of your powers being more effective against certain enemies. However, you can make your way through the entire DLC without having to think too much about any of it. The idea of CHANCE modules sounds great in theory. However, in practice, it never quite feels fluid enough to bother with.
“Blood on Crystal’s story is held back by the same issue that has long made much of Atomic Heart’s narrative feel dull.”
There weren’t many performance issues to speak of. On my mid-range PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, a Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU, and 32 GB of RAM, I was able to crank up all the visual settings to the max, minus the ray tracing, and could still stay above 60 FPS at 2560×1440. While the early parts of the DLC, especially the opening ambush, did raise some concern, with frame rates dipping to around 50 FPS at times, the rest of the experience was smooth sailing, with performance staying well above 70 FPS.
Unfortunately, Blood on Crystal is an entirely skippable DLC. While it does wrap up the main narrative threads left dangling by Atomic Heart and pave the way for future games, there’s little reason to actually play the DLC. The story is largely just fine, and while the boss fights can be pretty great, the rest of the DLC feels like a chore to play through. The lack of many new things to play around with like powers or weapons also doesn’t help, and the poor pacing extends well beyond just the awkwardly-timed dialogue, with the core gameplay being negatively affected thanks to the presence of respawning enemies.
Blood on Crystal’s one saving grace is its relatively short runtime. While I was able to wrap it up in around 4 hours, depending on your play style and your desire to hunt down collectibles and Trophies/Achievements, that figure could vary by about an hour either way. Despite this short time-to-beat, however, there also isn’t much of a reason to revisit the DLC once you’ve wrapped it up. All in all, the DLC is incredibly difficult to recommend for anyone who isn’t already a massive fan of Atomic Heart to begin with.
This game was reviewed on PC.
