Review: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - The Order of Giants unearths even more adventurous immersive sim

Don't expect The Order of Giants to improve on the two problems (for some major, for others minor) that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle had. Neither is its combat more refined and elaborate, nor does its stealth rival the best in the genre. However, if you loved the original game from start to finish - and we declared it GOTY of 2024 - this expansion will easily work with you.

Because what can you ask of a DLC for the original adventure? "More mysteries, new locations, fresh puzzles, action scenes"? I'm sure your answer would go along those lines, and that's exactly what this DLC provides you with.

As a starting point, given its popularity and obvious lore features, MachineGames chose The Vatican, your first major map to explore in the base game. From here you literally branch out on an optional expedition, alternative and parallel to the central plot of The Great Circle, albeit related in key aspects such as the legends of the Nephilim giants or the dealings between the Holy See and Mussolini's dictatorship, but introducing a new and to some extent contemporary element: the cult of the god Mithras. And that's as far as I can read.

What all this means is that you take a detour from the shared ground between church and blackshirts to end up exploring sewers (including the famous Cloaca Maxima), a section of the Tiber river, some beautiful streets of Rome, and some fascinating ruins.

All along the way, between 5 and 8 hours of content depending on your pace and how much you explore each corner, you'll get another helping of the different types of gameplay that characterised Indiana Jones and the Great Circle in a delightful mix of genres that, more than we expected at first, ultimately leaned towards the immersive sim shenanigans, albeit with a great movie and adventurous touch.

And how are these different sections doing? Pretty good. I particularly liked a couple or three of the more elaborate puzzles, either because they recycled mechanics already seen in the base game successfully or because they really invented or twisted something new. In fact, some of the secrets are pretty far-fetched, and I'd venture to predict that most players won't complete the content to the fullest without a walkthrough guide to the Order of Giants including all the Mithraic artifacts like the one we've prepared for you here at Gamereactor.

What I want to say is that the DLC managed to get the same smiles out of me as the original game did just under a year ago. There are a couple of very authentic cinematic cutscenes, like Indy peeking out of a manhole in the middle of a Roman street or the first encounter with the cult members, as well as some very funny moments in live combat, like when you have to push the blackshirts down a well. From that combat, as well as from the stealth, as I said, don't expect much more: it's very well executed visually, but the enemies are pretty dumb and you'll usually get here very overpowered with skills in the form of "adventure books", so it's hard for them to defeat you in the end. The final boss, however, has looked and managed to be a bit different and fresh.

Looking at the finer details, I also liked the way the designers have tried to use the whip in a slightly different manner in the climbing and platforming sections, or the brilliant writing in many of the documents. At the same time, there are also minor bad details, such as some unfortunate updates to the motion blur effect and a number of glitches, mostly minor, but one more serious one that ruined one of the best puzzles for me, as you can read in the guide. Perhaps another downside would be that the level/map design is unnecessarily convoluted at times. It's fine to feel lost and have to keep an eye on those pretty hand-drawn maps, but especially looking for the last few secrets of the Cloaca Maxima seemed like a lazy device to confuse or artificially lengthen the game.

In any case, I didn't miss anything (I don't think one of those scripted explosive action sequences from the base game has any place here) and I had a great time solving the elaborate puzzles in this content. Good value for money (I felt much better value-wise than I did with DK Island & Emerald Hunt), although it's a weird deal for Game Pass players at least. Now what I hope and pray to Mithras is that Bethesda and MachineGames can get around to carving out a sequel to what for me was one of the best playable adventures of recent times.