Just Cause 3: Bavarium Sea Heist Review

I’m back again with the third and final DLC of the Just Cause 3 Air, Land & Sea Expansion Pass: Bavarium Sea Heist. Set following the events of Sky Fortress and Mech Land Assault, there just happens to be a third defunct eDEN operation, set some kilometers off the coast of Medici.

Honestly, I was expecting something underwater, but instead I got a bunch of floating platforms and rigs. You’re introduced after a mission to the fastest boat in the province: the Loochadore. It’s a rocket boat, with rockets and a minigun, and is only the fastest because the nitrous takes absolute ages to use up.

The first thing that struck me during Sea Heist was that it is boring. Most of your time with this DLC will involve going from one place to another place, by air or by boat. All of your objectives in each of the missions happens to be 5-10km away from each other, which really pads things out.

Then there’s the Loochadore -- it’s a great boat, heavily armed and really fast (if you’re holding the nitro). However, it’s only useful for this DLC. Going back into the main game, there’s practically no need for it. At least with the mech, you can call it in to tidy up any settlements you want. And the Bavarium wingsuit from Sky Fortress is useful absolutely everywhere!

As with both of the other DLC, you have two missions, and one area to liberate. The area is absolutely massive, but only contains five places distanced about 3km from each other in a circle. I already mentioned this DLC really pads things out, didn’t I?

The Stingray Station itself is pretty cool -- yet another abandoned eDEN station, it fell into disrepair after an accident they had trying to control the weather. That’s where you find the eDEN Spark, the only awesome part of this DLC. More than your average lightning gun, it doesn’t actually shoot lightning, but polarise the area you point it at, and summon a stream of lightning down upon your foes!

Of course, it’s absolutely useless when aimed at things under a roof, but that’s Rico’s problem, not a design flaw. Unlike the Loochadore, it is very useful for using in the main campaign, as fully charged it will easily take out loads of enemies. It’s almost overpowered, but the slow recharge rate stops it from being too OP.

There were several things that I didn’t enjoy about Bavarium Sea Heist. There were no surprises, as even the ending was telegraphed well in advance. About every 10 seconds the Black Hand comms go off with “We are sending naval troops to your location” or similar, whilst liberating the five areas. The game is more padding than gameplay -- if it was land-based, it would have taken about 20 minutes, instead of just under two hours. The Loochadore was too slow when not using nitro.

As an ending to the DLC, it was disappointing. As a way to add more cool stuff into Just Cause 3, it was disappointing. The only good thing to come out of it is the eDEN Spark, but at least if it was released as DLC on its own it would have cost less.

I quite enjoyed the last two DLC, and couldn’t wait for this one. Unfortunately I just didn’t have as much fun, and although it does build more into the eDEN lore like I wanted, it’s just not enough. At least, due to the price of the Air, Land & Sea Pass, it’s basically free?