Atomic Heart: Blood on Crystal Review – Out With a Whimper

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The team behind Atomic Heart has been openly working on the next phase of its story. They’re currently developing a full sequel, Atomic Heart 2, as well as a separate online shooter called The Cube. But before moving forward, they’re giving the original Atomic Heart a proper conclusion with a final downloadable content pack, Blood on Crystal. The DLC’s main purpose is to finish the story of the first game while also setting up the events for both Atomic Heart 2 and The Cube. Whether it succeeds in doing both effectively is a more complex question than simply good or bad.

Atomic Heart: Blood on Crystal continues the story immediately after the original game. The DLC begins with our heroes meeting on a beach to plan their next steps. To help players remember what happened before, there’s a helpful recap video at the start that summarizes the entire plot. The DLC assumes you’ve already finished the main story with P3 and his allies, meaning they’re all at their peak strength and confidence when the new adventure begins.

Not much was surprising there, and the major plot twist was obvious from the very beginning. By the time it actually happened, I was honestly bored.

The story quickly establishes its goal: P3 is determined to finally stop the villain, CHAR-les, and dismantle his operation. Just as they’re preparing to attack his base, though, they’re ambushed on the beach and forced to fall back and regroup.

After a strong start, Blood on Crystal slows down considerably as the characters spend a lot of time planning – mostly how to cause destruction. The main character, P3, gains a new partner named NORA, who is integrated into his glove. This also heavily foreshadows a predictable betrayal. Following a rescue by Granny Zina, the group decides to directly confront CHAR-les at his hidden Crystal Complex.

The story isn’t very surprising, and the major plot twist is obvious from the very beginning, which made it hard to stay engaged. However, the DLC isn’t all bad. It features some of the best boss battles in the game, particularly the final fight against CHAR-les. The environments can also be visually striking, especially as you progress through the story.

The story in Blood on Crystal suffers from the same problem that makes much of Atomic Heart‘s narrative feel flat. While some characters are interesting, and the voice acting is generally excellent, these strengths aren’t enough to fully save the overall story.

While the characters are generally engaging, they sometimes lack seriousness, resulting in overly playful banter during battles – reminiscent of, and often as distracting as, a Marvel movie scene. This constant attempt at humor unfortunately diminishes the impact of the DLC’s more heartfelt moments, as it’s hard to feel genuine emotion when a key character is an AI residing in a vending machine.

“The entire DLC would have benefited from removing respawning enemies entirely”

While the story and new levels in Blood on Crystal are good, the DLC doesn’t offer much that feels new overall. You’ll mostly fight the same uninspired robots with the same weapons you’ve used throughout Atomic Heart, and a few new enemy types aren’t enough to change that. It’s also frustrating to start the DLC with an empty inventory, forcing you to rely on just your hammer and Secateur for a significant portion of the roughly four-hour experience. This makes the early battles feel repetitive and forgettable, and regaining your full arsenal requires a lot of time spent collecting crafting materials.

Honestly, the biggest problem with Blood on Crystal isn’t just the story feeling slow, it’s how the levels themselves feel. I found myself constantly backtracking, solving really basic puzzles and checking to see if I’d missed something. And to make matters worse, enemies kept respawning way too often! I understand wanting to avoid long, empty stretches, but the fights I was forced into weren’t fun – they just felt like a way to waste my potions and supplies. They really could have made this DLC so much better by getting rid of respawning enemies altogether and adding some new, interesting fights during those long walks.

The game feels pretty monotonous, mostly because the combat gets repetitive. While there are some interesting concepts, like powers working better against specific enemies, you can complete the entire expansion without really needing to strategize. The CHANCE modules sound good on paper, but they don’t work smoothly enough to be worth using.

The story in Blood on Crystal suffers from the same problem that makes much of Atomic Heart‘s story feel flat and unengaging.

The game ran very well on my PC (AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, Radeon RX 7800 XT, 32GB RAM). I was able to play with all the highest visual settings—except ray tracing—at 2560×1440 resolution and consistently achieve over 60 frames per second. There were a few dips in performance during the very beginning, especially in the opening ambush where frame rates sometimes dropped to around 50 FPS, but after that, the game ran smoothly and stayed above 70 FPS.

The Blood on Crystal DLC isn’t really worth playing, even though it finishes the story started in Atomic Heart and hints at what could come next. While the story is okay and some boss fights are good, much of the DLC feels tedious. It doesn’t offer enough new content – like abilities or weapons – and suffers from poor pacing. This isn’t just about awkward conversations; the gameplay itself is made worse by enemies that constantly reappear.

The best thing about Blood on Crystal is that it’s fairly short – I finished it in about 4 hours, though completionists aiming for all collectibles and achievements might take up to 5. Even so, there isn’t much incentive to play through it again after finishing. Ultimately, this DLC is really only worth checking out if you’re already a big fan of Atomic Heart.

This game was reviewed on PC.

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2026-04-22 17:43