The Missing Link provides more of the same great gameplay that's found in the main game, along with some excellent storytelling that fills in even more of the backstory and the last chapter of the main game seems to make more sense once you've digested the DLC story. Two things I particularly enjoy about the DLC are the mandatory 'respeccing' at the begining of the DLC and the final boss.
Like most, I'm not a huge fan of when games 'Metroid you' at the start - i.e. they give you a full complement of powers to begin the game and then suddenly take them all away. I was initially a bit annoyed when The Missing Link did this (with a servicable narrative explanation for why your abilities have gone) but the speed at which you upgrade in the DLC is several orders of magnitude faster than in the main game. As a result this gives you a really neat opportunity to completely redefine your character in a short time.
As I wrote in my impressions of the main game, I upgraded my character primarily in the areas of stealth and hacking, spending much of my time lurking in the shadows. For the DLC I decided to put all my upgrade points into combat and had a blast walking around like the Terminator! Best of all, since the upgrade path is accelerated in the DLC I was unlocking the higher abilities within just a few hours.
One of the few shortcomings of Deus Ex: Human Revolution was undoubtedly the boss fights. In a game that was all about freedom and quasi-sandbox style gameplay it was completely out of keeping that you were suddenly thrust into the kind of rote boss fights that you'd find in your average 3rd person shooter. It was also frustrating because you could spend most of the game focusing on stealth, hacking or conversation to proceed through the narrative, using your upgrade points to improve these traits but then suddenly you were put into a combat-only situation that became needlessly frustrating, just because you neglected to improve your combat stats.
Fortunately, the boss fight in The Missing Link is much better. Now, to be fair, I did have a character that was maxed out in his combat abilities but it was very easy to see how you could win the fight just by using stealth or hacking. I don't want to spoil it but it was far, far less frustrating than the boss battles in the main game.
The one downside of The Missing Link for me, personally, was the location. You spend all of your time in/around what is basically a military facility and while the art design is very good, my favourite parts in Deus Ex: Human Revolution were the inhabitied cities (Detroit and Hengsha). As a result, there isn't much NPC interaction that doesn't involve guns/fists and there are only a few side-quests.
The Missing Link DLC took me just under 4 hours to finish and is currently $15 on Steam and Amazon. I bought it during a Steam sale for less than half the price and though I did enjoy it a lot, due to it's length I'd suggest holding out for another sale. That said, I really did enjoy it and if you liked the main game I'm sure you will too.
Lavan
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