izigame.me

RimWorld - Ideology DLC; must-have for story building, but ultimately non-crucial. For newcomers, DLCs that should be prioritized would ideally be: Biotech > Ideology > Royalty > Anomaly, based on personal opinion. I don't even own Anomaly, but you aren't missing out on much if you don't, just install SCP Containment related mods on the workshop, you'll pretty much get the same experience. Biotech is both notably more important and a de-facto essential requirement to own, it adds mechanics that are inherently tied to a colonial management simulator rather than feeling like optional additions. Royalty is a nice to have and gives more incentive to focus on geopolitics, along with tying into Ideology in certain aspects for game modding, but doesn't meaningfully flesh out aspects of the game with unique mechanics that are meaningful if you wanted dynamic geopolitics like fluid base development and AI interactions with the player and other AI factions, etc.
If you love the story building aspect of RimWorld, then you'll find this to be just as necessary as Biotech is for fulfilling gameplay. Also, this DLC can make niche, extremely difficult challenges easier. But, it also inverses as well, because it can notably increase the amount of tediousness you can potentially encounter that can feel redundant and a slog to both progression and your patience. That's partially due to the base vanilla implementation of the gameplay mechanics, but also due to the nature of the DLC itself. It does leave the implementation of this left to be desired, primarily because the ideologies don't add enough difference to gameplay and can feel redundant. However, fear not, modding is here to save the day, community mods for this are what truly shine and where a lot of the value comes from. While its a bit disappointing, as the base implementation should be able to stand on its own merit and should feel less like you're paying for the mechanic and more of you're paying for a thoughtful addition to the game, for me at least, and many others, this is unfortunately the reality.
While this is also true for Biotech as well, I would rather play with it on than off despite its faults, I don't feel much incentive to play the base vanilla implementation of this, which is a stark contrast. Really couldn't care about Loyalty being on or off, primarily wanted it to maximize compatibility with potential game modding and to an extent Ideology which is were its primary value comes due to the lack of expansion for geopolitical interaction. Either way, I clearly desire more fleshed out political aspects of RimWorld, which Ideology effectively addresses for me, so It'd be hard for me to say I can't recommend it as I couldn't imagine not playing with it, but you should be well aware of the faults and also the fact selling this for 20$ is an up-charge for its base implementation, I would recommend waiting for the DLC to go on-sale but would still recommend.