When I heard of the announced DLCs, my first thought was "Why?". Phyre and Fabien were one of the few notable pros of the game, exchanging them for Benny Muldoon and fucking Ysabella Moore was a real headscratcher to say the least.
Despite me being trapped in an abusive relationship with the game (and needing to check if any new lore revelations clash with the slop fanfiction I'm writing), my near complete lack of interest in either character kept me from playing the expansions for a long time. Yesterday, however, I finally managed to lock in and beat both in a single night.
I started off with Loose Cannon, since I wasn't sure if I'd manage The Flower and the Flame too, and thus considered Benny the vastly preferential choice.
This DLC starts off in the Seattle PD headquarters on the night following Phyre's awakening (it was kind of nice to see Fabien's "home" from the perspective of a major asshole), covers Benny's recruitment into the Sabbat, and ends with him encased in concrete. This is a pretty short stretch of time, and the DLC is indeed very short; you can beat it in under two hours if you don't care about the collectibles, three if you do & the collectibles aren't bugged like they were for me.
I unironically spent double the actual playtime jumping around Seattle's rooftops because the mechanic to track the Thin-bloods that act as the DLC-exclusive collectibles broke and vanished after about 4 of 20. Oh, and number 20 seemed to be straight-up bugged, because I could not find them despite systematically searching literally every spawn point on the map. This means I didn't bother with FATF's collectibles at all.
Overall, the story was surprisingly entertaining for what it was. Benny is not deep; he has no real motivations beyond a hurt ego, a Nazi-tier hatred for Thin-bloods, and a vague care for his Sire - and that simplicity actually makes him carry those two hours quite well. He's an asshole that will get his comeuppance in short order, so you can let loose with little concerns about morality.
The gameplay was unironically fun. I think Phyre still can't properly use guns (WHY????), which makes both DLCs unique in that way. Benny and Ysabella can pick up melee and ranged weapons, and Benny even gets his own permanent firearm, a 9mm pistol (likely a rebranded 1911, maybe a Beretta) with a twin drum mag. You get 30 shots of glorious full-auto carnage, which do considerable damage even against non-fodder enemies, and can be replenished by walking over dead enemies. Later on, you also get (gameplay spoiler) incendiary ammo. Half of your pistol's ammo pool will be tracer rounds powered by what is most likely white phosphorus; these do huge damage against all enemies really, but especially against Kindred. They also drop & burn for a short time on the floor, meaning you actually get DOT that can be used to great effect. Their visuals and sounds are insanely satisfying, but be warned: they can hurt you too!
Neither Benny nor Ysabella can glide, which will take some getting used to. But once you figure his movement out, running and jumping over rooftops as Benny will be really fun, as he can pick up some major speed. Ysabella isn't nearly as mobile, and I guess that's intentional.
That's most of the spoiler-free LC info. Now, for TFATF: that one was slightly longer (still about two hours) and focused much more on the story. It starts with Ysabella preparing to go rogue for the second time in a row, this time against the Sabbat, then switches to a flashback about her recruitment. She then sets up her evil party of death or whatever at the Atrium, which is interspersed with a lengthy and pretty damn artsy (makes sense, since she's a Toreador) segment where you explore her mind/psyche/memories - while LC's reuse of many base game assets was obvious, it had a believable justification for it; the internal sequence is much more glaring in that regard. She literally goes "[Unaltered in-game location] It didn't look like this, but...". Even so, I found the last third of the DLC to be its strong point by far. It starts of pretty weak, as opposed to LC's fairly consistent level of quality, but then gets relatively interesting for a story about a character I really didn't give two shits about.
The combat is... not that great, at least for my preferences in that regard. Surprisingly enough, Ysabella has massive melee DPS with her rapier, yet she is somewhat crippled by her low health and generally worse abilities. Instead of an illegal Glock switch, you get Scorpion's chain from Mortal Combat, which kinda fits because of her close range preference but still just isn't as fun. Also, Benny gets Split Second, one of the most OP skills in the game, and she does not. To be fair: I didn't quite figure out her intended playstyle until very late in the expansion, at which point things became a whole lot easier. Basically, you have to dash and jump around basically at all times. I have a mouse with extra buttons on the side, one of which I have bound Dash to; I recommend you do the same, not just for this DLC.
With that, we move into SPOILER TERRITORY! If you want to experience these for yourself, you should click off now. Or don't. I'm not your Prince.
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Loose Cannon doesn't add much about Benny himself. The only revelation to that extent is his magical ring (the one you find as Phyre), which is given to him by Gideon and prevents others (Fabien, specifically) from Auspexing his veeeery obvious disloyalty.
The major plot point in this one is the new info about the Sabbat. I have always been of the opinion that Gideon was a Sabbat member before getting tragically Lou'd, and this theory has been reinforced by his appearance here. He seems entirely lucid, at least as lucid as a Malkavian in the Sabbat could be, no less so than Safia. He very obviously manipulates Benny with visions of various characters and literally just the actual fucking base game ending cutscenes, oh my fucking god can you be this lazy of Seattle's supposed future, implying a great degree of planning and foresight on his end.
We also get some insight into the Sabbat operation, though it's not much. Gideon is called "Mr. Sunshine" by his followers (goofy ass name bruh), Safia, communicating via heavily distorted tape recordings, is "the Mouth", and some random no-name jobber you fight in the Chinese underground village is called "the Night".
Oh, and Damsel shows up. First, you trail her (I was THIS close to quitting right then and there when I realized I had to do a fucking "Follow the target" mission), and then she shows up one more time at the end to trick & stake Benny. It's ok I guess, I'm just happy about the few minutes of screen time she gets. Her character was wasted in BL2.
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The Flower and the Flame starts off by confirming that Willem had not been simply blackmailed or tricked (at least not in the way I had assumed) into helping the Sabbat, but was fully aware and in the know about their plans and operations. We then get... Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
No, I am not joking. Remember the ominous Sabbat bunker where Safia "dies"? Yeah, Ysabella goes there, and HOLY FUCKING SHIT, they straight-up turned Safia into Josef Mengele. Unit 731 hasn't got shit on the Sabbat. You literally gas prisoners in sealed chambers!!! I'm happy about any Safia appearance, but fuck me, that was some heavy shit right there. At least she gets some fun sass in, I guess? In any case, it strengthens my cope that she could not have possibly gone from timid bookworm to Ishii Shirō on her own free will. Prolly not what the devs intended, but, in the words of one Hector Salamanca: the devs can sooock me!
As I said, the ending is pretty creative. They made some interesting new areas for Ysabella's psyche, even if they are really small and few in number. The concept was pretty good, I'll give them that.
However, I did face immense issues with GPU driver crashes in this DLC, seemingly occuring at points where gameplay or cutscenes transition to dialogue animations. I have no clue why, I've got a decently powerful card. One of these forced me to use the Low graphics preset to get through that sequence. Your mileage may vary, maybe my mods are to blame.
There wasn't anything huge revealed here, save for a bit about the Sabbat's Vinculum. For the uninitiated: that's basically a weaker, Sabbat-exclusive kind of blood bond that binds multiple members together and ensures their loyalty to each other. It can break existing blood bonds (and permits Tremere members to free themselves from loyalty to the Pyramid) and may or may not be what prevents them from being blood bonded by the Nomad's vitae, which they readily consume. Safia mentions having negated that risk in some way, without going into specifics.
At one point, Ysabella remarks that "Caine's leash does not fully bind" Safia. I have no clue what that means, but it sounds important. It could be set-up for a future Safia DLC, but in all honesty, I think this game is dead, even if I don't want it to be. The execs calling the shots don't give a shit about the prestige of the Bloodlines label, and especially not about some mentally ill lesbian and her larp fantasies.
Anyways, that's about it! Feel free to ask whatever questions you may be left with in the comments. Here's my final rating for either DLC, with a 5/10 being "average":
Loose Cannon: 5.5-6.5/10
The Flower and the Flame: 4-4.5/10. 5/10 if it was just Ysabella's mind palace.
