Fallout: New Vegas - Honest Hearts

In Honest Hearts, the player is tasked with completing mundane quests, while slaughtering any wildlife or natives that get in the way. This may sound like an oversimplification, but this DLC has so little substance that I regret buying it for a dollar in a Steam sale.

The problem with this DLC is that it loses the qualities that make the base game so great. Aside from one choice at the end that feels forced, the player has basically no agency. Guns are the only solution to any of the problems presented, punishing characters geared towards other play styles. To make matters worse, most of the playtime is made up of blatant fetch quests.

Joshua is the element I see the most praise for, but his presence didn't really improve the DLC. While it is an interesting concept for a character, the absence of plot makes the execution uncompelling. Similarly, the idea of travelling to an untainted part of America was initially intriguing, but after just 20 minutes of incinerating the local fauna I'd seen everything Zion had to offer.

How do you take a concept as badass as the Burned Man and waste it on such a middle-of-the-road DLC? Dead Money was a disaster gameplay-wise but at least its horror atmosphere, plentiful dialogue and unique characters made it interesting and worth the time.

Honest Hearts has all the elements but they are all wasted. Joshua Graham feels more like a side-character. The whole tribal conflict is underdeveloped and uninteresting. The map is full of locations with map markers that have nothing unique about them or notable loot (besides some interesting terminal entries). The villain is not hyped up at all. The dialogue quantity is a fraction of the one from Dead Money (and you have such an interesting setting and main character too ffs).

It's only a 3/5 due to being, at the end of the day, standard New Vegas gameplay, but everything that makes the base game great is sorely missing.

Well I do feel this is a step up from the previous DLC Dead Money, its still generic middle of the road DLC. It was interesting going to a new area that wasn't wasteland, you are basically in a desert now, but aside from that its just generic go to this area collect these items, go to this area fight these enemies/creatures. Plus this DLC is super short, I think I beat it in 3 or 4 hours and I did a majority of the side quests. The story wasn't enough to interest me, I didn't care for any of the new characters, and the novelty of the desert wore off a bit fast. The quests were short enough to not get boring but damn were they so generic and uninteresting. Its basically Fallout but with Native Americans and a desert instead of a wasteland.