Dredge: The Iron Rig

Overall, if you’re looking for more Dredge, or a reason to delve back into the game for the first time since The Pale Reach, The Iron Rig more than likely has at least a weekend worth of fun to offer you. Even if it feels in places like it could have been a bit more than just another fish added to the catch of a good and spooky net.

I fell in love with Dredge all over again while playing The Iron Rig. It completes the game in a way I never thought I needed and makes it feel brand new. Every point that the base game made about humanity’s impact on the world and the unknown implications from…well, the unknown, is heightened by the DLC. It’s the perfect reason to replay, a fantastic excuse to stay in bed all weekend and play a cozy horror game, and a new way to make yourself wonder about what’s lurking out of sight the next time you look out at the vastness of the ocean.

The Iron Rig adds an intriguing side story to experience while you revisit old locations hunting new prizes. While a bit repetitious for seasoned sailors, the DLC does add some fun upgrades to aim for and characters to meet.

Through slick design refinements and engaging new storylines, The Iron Rig's otherwise conservative aims still make for a seaworthy expansion.

Thanks to The Iron Rig, Black Salt Games' title gets a new, rich and multifaceted addition. A final adventure among the mysterious seas of DREDGE, between the specter of environmentalist destruction at the hands of capitalism to nature's violent response thanks to incomprehensible forces. A quest that will accompany the now-tried sailors to challenges old and new, dredging full nets in the title's morbid and fascinating play loop of daring fishing trips and sophisticated upgrades. The perfect complement to the production's ludic offering, as long-lived as it is exciting. Hoist anchor for the last time, there is still work to be done... and a few threats to face, with the wind in your sails.

In the end, the thing The Iron Rig does that the game really needed was breathing new life into the endgame of Dredge.

The Iron Rig DLC offers that trademark DREDGE spookery, a myriad of new tools, and shoals of extra species to lengthen the overall experience. This new tale isn’t as well told as The Pale Reach, but the extra gameplay content is much broader in scope, encouraging me to even polish off quests from the main game that I had previously consigned to the deep. If ‘more of the same’ makes you want to pull your waders on one more time then you won’t be disappointed, but players expecting vast new experiences may want to give it a miss.

DREDGE: The Iron Rig is a nice excuse to get back onto that eerie ocean, but if you've already completed the game it's a bit lacking in danger.

The Iron Rig is a great addition to Dredge, but going any further would be scraping the rotting guts from the bottom of the barrel. The second piece of DLC already reminds me of the Lazarus taxon that Ironhaven Corp’s scientist explained to me early on; it raises a seemingly extinct game from the dead and gives it life once more. I loved my time with the DLC and binged The Iron Rig over the course of a day in a way that I rarely do with games any more, but the game itself offers a warning to developer Black Salt Games: drilling too greedily and too deep can have devastating consequences.