DayZ Livonia Review

"Same Stuff, Greener"

December 6, 2019 at 7:31pm
By Jason Stettner

For the first time ever, DayZ has received a DLC expansion. This is a brand new map titled Livonia, which is a 163km2 in size. This will be slightly smaller than what players might be used to, and it creates more situations for where players will be interacting with one another.

It should be noted that this does come with the 1.06 update, but that also applies to the core game so any features found here will also be present on the core standard map. While that’s great, it also limits the special bonuses that this region would have brought as a specialty.

So largely what we’re getting here is just another landmass to play on. That’s great if you’re a fan and starving for more, but if you’re largely a casual player it’s not necessarily something that does brings a lot of value. It’s also a lot of the same recycled content, in a slightly new landmass. It’s just the other world, but greener basically.

The vast majority of buildings, items or structures are the exact same as they were before with no difference at all. The zombies are the same, and now the items are the same as the core map. The big difference here comes to the terrain, it’s more of a flatter atmosphere with hills instead of anything too mountainous. There are rivers which were probably my favorite expansion, and a neater layout for certain cities which are more limited here quantity wise.

Even the general flora is basically just a greener version of the other stuff as it’s noted as a different season. This is also a rainier map, so you’re likely to have chilling issues leading to death. I’d note that the lightning is a new addition, but that was also added to the regular map as well.

It’s essentially just the same sort of content, but re-arranged in a new area. For some this is a must have change-up from what they’re used to whereas others will find this as essentially just the same thing but in a different location. I’ve played far too many hours of DayZ because I record video content for Youtube, and I’m truly thankful to just have something different.

That being said, I was still hoping for a greater level of variation. A few slightly more destroyed and abandoned buildings are cool and all, but that’s not necessarily the biggest hook. I really wish they would have pushed things further, instead of just piling zombies into denser spaces. I should also describe the sense of what they were looking to provide environmentally wise. This is noted as an Eastern European terrain in the southern Topolin-Nadbor region of the larger Polish speaking country of Livonia.

The Conclusion

DayZ Livonia feels like a lot of the same with recycled content and a very slightly altered environment to visit. For hardcore fans I’m sure they’ll love to just have somewhere different to play, the more casual amongst the survival folks will find this rather plain and too similar. I did find it to have some lovely areas, and the rivers are a great addition.

At the same time, it’s just more of the same. You’ll be going through the same buildings, killing the same zombies and fighting off the same types of other survivors. It’s just denser in some areas, and blander in others with open empty fields. It’s great that the content that’s new here with 1.06 is available in the core map, at the same time that eliminates some of the value of having something unique or well a hook to this expansion.

I hope this is the first of many areas, at the same time I want them to push the designs further with unique additions. Go wildly different, maybe desert, or say a snow biome with unique landmarks to visit. This honestly feels really lazy. I appreciate the time I imagine placing things down took, at the same time with the value point on this more original creations should have been made available here.

A handful of new buildings, and retextured trees really doesn’t do it for me. The forest areas also come across as empty, making a larger portion of this a useless point to travel through unless you’re forced to spawn there after changing servers. It also introduces some new minor bugs, which can be annoyances at times.

Read our DayZ PS4 Review
View our DayZ Hub

DayZ Livonia Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by Evolve PR

Rating Overall: 5.8