Downloading...

Just finished it, some thoughts:

Not as good as LOTSB, but still a good piece of DLC. If you are worried about such things, it lasts about an hour and a half or so. It serves as more of a prelude to ME 3 than an epilogue to 2. Nice re-emphasising of the threat of the reapers after the collectors from 2.

Combat is fine, nothing beyond what you would expect with the exception of a few (optional) stealth sections early on. No real 'decisions' to be made, alot of the dialogue is automatic.

Some obvious parallels with Bring Down The Sky from ME 1, although the game does not point this out in an overly unsubtle way, more of a 'oh crap of course' sort of way.

Playing the game again. Should I leave it till after the Suicide Mission?

To the people that have played it:

Is this quest best played before or after you've done the main story?

EDIT: Beaten to it!

Without spoiling anything, it makes more sense for it to happen after the suicide mission. Played it on a completed game, no idea how it changes if played pre-suicide mission.

Well I played what I assume was the first half... gonna go back and finish in a bit, but I have to say so far you can really see the difference in level design. It's just straight-up poor compared to the main game and previous DLC.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-03-30-mass-effect-2-arrival-review

Finally a review where the sun doesn't shine out of this short, and offensive addon's bottom!

Finally? Have you been desperately searching for a bad review or something? Our old friend Jim Sterling has given it 8.5/10 on Destructoid saying it's better than Overlord but not as good as Lair.

LOL Nope. I visit maybe 5 review sites semi-regularly and 4 out of the 5 all had raving 8.x reviews which I didn't agree with when taking into account the price and the length and how willing they seem to be to bend over backwards and take something that should've opened Mass Effect 3 (which may just end up as lots of micro dlc for ME2 :P). I'm just nervous EA's greediness is going to ruin Mass Effect in much the same way it ruined The Sims & Spore.

Does being better than Overlord mean anything? I haven't played Arrival yet but I found Overlord plot to be boring, predictable, and definitely not worth the money. I still don't understand why it was praised as the best DLC before LotS was released.
On the Bioware Social forums I've found divided opinions on Arrival so I'm not very optimistic at the moment.

This add-on kind of shows what is wrong with "DLC" on the PC. Monday night I reinstalled Mass Effect 2, reinstalled the patch, reinstalled all the DLC from before so my save would work right, set the game up again, forced AA again, made a mouse profile with lower sensitivity again since Bioware didn't make a setting for that in the game... and all for 90 minutes of gameplay.

Kind of a downer.

Of course ME2 is so good I am now replaying some other missions, so I guess in the end it doesn't matter much.

Was any of the DLC for DA:O any good? Return to Ostagar was OK, but Witch Hunt was a total red herring for DA2 (although I am still hopeful for some payoff in the inevitable DA3), Warden's Keep was meh, The Darkspawn Chronicles was basically the 'evil mode' from LOTR: The Third Age, Leliana's Song squandered any potential it had, and the Golems of Amgarrak was just painful, i'd had enough of the deeproads in the main campaign to last me a lifetime.

So yeah, Return to Ostagar was Ok. And Warden's Keep was alright, although I never would have paid for it had I not got it as part of the Ultimate edition. Overall the DLC for ME2, alt appearance packs aside, has been much better.

The good:

Return to Ostagar - Gave you closure on Cailian, and some great loot. Cailians arms and armour are tailor made for an Arcane Warrior with all the stamina regen.

Leliana's Song - Nice story, I think if you like Leliana then you will like this even if it was confusing as Leliana seems to imply in Origins the events happened in Orlais.

Golems of Amgarrak - Purely to give your Lv35 Warden a challenge. The end of Awakening makes the Warden almost God-tier. Golems brings you back to Earth.

The Bad:

Darkspawn Chronicles - Like you said it's Evil Mode. It was fun but the DLC I will probably never play again. Finding out Herren was a Desire Demon was lulzy though.

Wardens Keep - I put this in the bad simply because you can't import the equipment and blood powers to Awakening. Sloppy. A lot of people started Awakening naked as a result.

The Ugly:

Witch Hunt - I don't know anyone who wasn't disappointed by it. Bioware promised closure and delivered another cliffhanger.

Shale and Warden's Keep are the only ones worth bothering with. Leiliana's Song would have been good if it was like twice as long as it was.