Atomfall: Wicked Isle Review – Cults, Crypts, and Cautious Additions

Atomfall: Wicked Isle Review

Although it isn’t in my handful of top games so far this year, I enjoyed Atomfall’s alternative history sci-fi premise. I liked its rural English setting and bucolic countryside juxtaposed with post-nuclear-meltdown monsters. Atomfall had some interesting quests, quirky or dangerous NPCs, and interesting cults and mutants. The good parts were more than enough to make me look forward to the game’s first DLC, Wicked Isle.

Set Sail

The island in question is a relatively large piece of lake-floating real estate called Midsummer Isle. It’s accessible pretty early in the game via an NPC quest in Wyndham Village. Having a later-game character certainly helps survivability, but if you’ve completed the game, you’ll need to jump back to an earlier save. Like so many quests in Atomfall, what starts as a relatively simple request is the gateway to a much larger story. In any case, once you meet the boatman and get his map, you can travel freely between the Isle and the mainland.

Like the base game, Wicked Isle’s narrative quest involves clashes with a pagan cult, this time called the Abbey Druids. Alongside the Lake Bandits and a new breed of mermen-like monsters called the Aquatic Ferals, many of the enemies are essentially reskins of Atomfall’s cast of foes.

Atomfall‘s environments and sense of place were its strongest elements, and Wicked Isle has some interesting and usually dangerous landmarks to explore. At the center of Midsummer Isle, the Abbey’s complex of a ruined church, crypt and scriptorium were evocative and detailed highlights. To the north, the Chemical Testing Grounds was a challenging and unexpectedly puzzle-filled area to survive.

Additions to the Arsenal

DLC wouldn’t be worthy of release if it didn’t include at least a few new toys to play with. Wicked Isle includes around a dozen new weapons, mostly variations on the guns, clubs, knives, and bows from the main game. The Blunderbuss might be the single standout, with a devastating wide — though short-range — attack. If you’re deep into the main game already the new weapons might not feel like strong alternatives to what you already have. They do, however, serve a purpose against the island’s new enemies. The guns can also be fun to play with once you’re done on Midsummer Isle.

Ammo is, as always, in woefully short supply just as it is throughout Atomfall. Enemies are still often bullet-spongey and melee combat still feels imprecise and janky. These were two of my main complaints about the game at release, and they haven’t been significantly re-tuned for the DLC. Some of the quests seem to pad out the narrative with backtracking around the island and mainland, too. But this is not too much of a chore thanks to the generally attractive world.

To Play or Not to Play

If you think DLC should offer a literal game-changing experience or massive amount of new content, Wicked Isle will disappoint you. In all ways, it is of a piece with the main game. It expands the world with a relatively large new zone. It deepens or adds a new wrinkle to the base game’s lore. There are some new weapons, a handful of new enemy types and a small cast of new NPCs. If you love Atomfall’s world, fiction and mechanics, Wicked Isle is more of that, and included with the Deluxe Edition. If you were on the fence about Atomfall, Wicked Isle isn’t going to turn you into a fervent believer. Wicked Isle doesn’t do anything to hurt the main Atomfall experience, but it doesn’t do much to change or improve it, either.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***