Icarus: Dangerous Horizons Expansion Review Summary

The excellent DLC adds a praised new map and welcome creatures, but frustrating spawns, poor AI, persistent bugs, crashes, and bad optimization hurt the experience.

New Map Praised: The new map is widely praised for its beautiful design, detail, and scale, with specific mentions of the Elysium and Kepler maps. It is considered a welcome and challenging addition that enhances the overall experience.

DLC is Excellent: The DLC is described as awesome, challenging, and packed with content, often called the best DLC for the game. It is considered worth the price and a significant upgrade to the base game.

New Creatures Added: New creatures and animals have been introduced, filling a gap in the base game's variety and providing fresh hunting and taming opportunities. They are generally well-received as a positive addition.

Fun and Challenging Missions: The missions, including story operations, are considered fun, well-crafted, and challenging, with a much-improved narrative compared to previous content. They provide engaging objectives for players.

NPCs a Positive Addition: The introduction of interactive NPCs is seen as a long-awaited and valuable feature, allowing players to shoot at or talk to them. This adds depth to the gameplay experience.

Frustrating enemy spawns and AI: Enemies frequently spawn directly on top of players or inside bases, aggro from far away, and can attack through walls. This leads to constant, unfair combat and base destruction, making progression difficult.

Persistent bugs and crashes: Many players report ongoing bugs, glitches, and crashes that make the game unstable and sometimes unplayable. These issues occur across base game and DLC, including falling through maps, stuck progress, and Unreal Engine crashes.

Poor performance and optimization: The game runs poorly even on high-end systems, with low FPS, stutters, and high GPU usage. Performance drops significantly during weather events, in certain biomes, and in multiplayer, making the experience frustrating.

Terrible DLC value: Players find the DLC disappointing, with rehashed content, few new features, and a high price. It feels like a remix of existing material rather than a substantial expansion.

Map design issues: Maps are poorly designed with labyrinthine layouts, incomplete textures, and large empty areas. Some biomes are underused and lack interesting features.

DLC adds new Elysium map: Multiple clusters report that the DLC introduces a new map called Elysium with new areas to explore and missions. Clusters 1 and 30 highlight the map as a major addition.

New mounts and tameable creatures: Clusters 3 and 13 mention new mounts and tameable animals, including specialized mounts. This adds depth to creature taming and traversal.

Survival and crafting core gameplay: Clusters 6, 10, and 27 highlight survival, crafting, and base-building as core mechanics. Exploration and building are central to the experience.

New animals and wildlife variety: Clusters 7, 19, and 26 mention new animals and increased creature variety, adding more life to the world. This includes varied wildlife and tames.

Tier 5 endgame content introduced: Clusters 4 and 32 report a new fifth tier of items and technologies, providing endgame progression. This is a significant addition for veteran players.

Poor optimization across hardware: The game runs poorly even on high-end setups, including RTX 4090 and 5070 Ti, with users comparing it unfavorably to well-optimized AAA titles like Cyberpunk 2077. Many feel the optimization has not improved or has worsened over time.

Severe FPS drops during weather: Multiple reports show FPS falling dramatically during storms or other weather events, sometimes from 55 to 10 or even lower. This performance degradation often makes gameplay a nightmare and is one of the most frequently mentioned issues.

Crashes after Dangerous Horizons expansion: The Dangerous Horizons DLC has introduced significant instability, with the game crashing frequently after installation and sometimes failing to restart. Some users found that launching in DX11 or reducing autosave frequency mitigates the issue.

General lag and stuttering: Players report stuttering and lag in various situations, including during boss fights, near certain creatures like the Gribbler, and even in single-player mode. This affects overall smoothness and responsiveness.

Frequent Unreal Engine crashes: Crashes occur consistently during common actions such as killing animals, cutting trees, entering caves, or when new creatures attack. These crashes are often tied to the Unreal Engine and disrupt core gameplay.

Must-have DLC for fans: Many reviewers strongly recommend the DLC to players who already enjoy the base game, calling it a must-have addition. They suggest that if you like Icarus, you should not miss it.

Worth the price: Several reviewers consider the DLC well worth the money, especially due to additions like Tier 5 and Raptors. Some suggest waiting for a sale if you already own New Frontiers.

Recommended for survival fans: Players who enjoy survival and crafting games highly recommend the DLC, noting it offers excellent variety and a decent challenge. It is ideal for those seeking an adventure game experience.

Not worth the money: Some reviewers state the DLC is not worth the money, with one requesting a refund and another calling it a total mistake. They advise not to spend money on this expansion.

Not for casual players: The DLC is not recommended for those who prefer casual farming and walking around. It is better suited for players seeking a challenge or who are experienced.

Community fair range: $20.00 - $40.00.

Players most directly report fun from the start through exploring, building, surviving, and co-op, with crafting progression and storms deepening immersion. The main caveats are that the Dangerous Horizons DLC is late-game content and that some players face grind, lag, bugs, or repetitive combat.

Friction: Multiplayer lag when playing with friends; Bugs that can delete all progression; Hover vehicle randomly loses health; Combat and hunting feel basic and boring; Repetitive encounters; Grind and needing to learn mechanics.

Unlock drivers: More runway makes progression feel fresh again; Dangerous Horizons adds a co-op mission with meaning; Only the host needs the DLC on a shared server; Playing with friends makes the game even better.

Veteran Challenge Seeker: Takes on hard DLC missions after hundreds of hours and plays DLCs in sequence. Motivation: To master high-difficulty survival missions and extend a long-term Icarus progression. Stance: buy.

Co-op Survivalist: Teams up for co-op missions, survival crafting, and shared DLC access. Motivation: To share survival missions and base-building progress with friends in a cooperative world. Stance: buy.

Solo Open-World Pioneer: Solo open-world exploration, base building, and mount or creature taming and breeding for boss fights. Motivation: To explore, build, and tame or breed powerful creatures in a rewarding solo open world. Stance: buy.

Performance varies across VRAM cohorts: the 8-11GB group still recommends the game with FPS caveats, while the <8GB and 12-15GB groups report more serious optimization and stability problems.

Windows <8GB VRAM: negative. Included reports describe unoptimized DLC and major performance drops when maps contain many structures, with DLSS unable to compensate for some users.

Windows 12-15GB VRAM: negative. The included report describes severe stuttering, bullets passing through targets without damage, and random loss or disappearance of electric and oil networks.

Windows 8-11GB VRAM: positive. Both included reviews recommend the game, though they note frequent storm-related FPS drops.

Monetization: Audit of Icarus reviews finds paid DLC expansions and a monthly dedicated-server service, plus one optional cosmetic DLC purchase. Negative reviews focus on DLC entitlement failures, crashes, performance problems, and price complaints rather than predatory monetization. There is no evidence of pay-to-win, real-money gacha, lootboxes, currency obfuscation, or aggressive FOMO. Traditional DLC and price complaints do not indicate greed, and the optional cosmetic DLC places monetization in the standard, ignorable range.

Rich DLC content expansion: The DLC adds a new map, creatures, items, NPCs, and a new tech tier, significantly expanding the game. It includes both free and exclusive content.

Regular weekly free updates: Developers release weekly updates that add new content and fix bugs, often based on player feedback. This consistent support has been ongoing since launch.

Missing localization support: The game lacks official Japanese, Korean, and Russian localizations, though community patches exist for some languages. Players resort to unofficial translations.

Positive comparisons to Prometheus: The DLC is often compared favorably to Prometheus, with better exploration and challenge, though some prefer Prometheus for its atmosphere and mystery.

Iterative expansion building on previous: The DLC builds on lessons from Styx, Prometheus, and Great Hunts, but some content feels repetitive or lacks originality.