So a friend of mine was able to hack into the DLC early, and streamed it on twitch. I'd normally avoid spoilers, but I took one for the team here so I could judge the quality of the DLC. This review will have no spoilers, so don't worry about that. If you want spoilers, you'll have to PM me.
Now, on to the review. Level design is excellent. The DLC area is absolutely massive, and you easily get lost in it's many secret passageways and mechanical contraptions. Enemies are brutal and vicious, often suprising you with unique and startling attacks. There are too many unlockable shortcuts to count, and bonfires are few and far between, so you gotta use those shortcuts.
You also cannot warp between the DLC bonfires, which adds another layer of difficulty to the challenge. There are a lot of items. Tons and tons of chests and stuff, due to the nature of how he got into the DLC, he was unable to open the chests. Even if he could, a lot of items still have to be added into the DLC, so they would have been place-holders.
Now, to what I'm sure most people are wondering about, boss design. There are 3 bosses in the DLC. The first one I wouldn't really consider a boss fight, kinda dissapointed in that particular boss fight. 5/10 on the first boss fight. Second boss is much further into the level, took this guy about 3 hours to find it, and even then he had to hack through a door because he was missing a key.
The first real boss you face is what I would describe a deadly mix of the darklurker, nashandra and Mytha, with a bit of gravelord Nito and some completely new shit in there. I won't spoil any of the lore or attacks, but this guy had a powerful build and he gave up after the 5th try and went to bed. It also does some really unexpected shit that is sorta cheap, but scares the crap out of you.
Overall 8.5/10 on this boss.
And that's just the boss you have to beat in order to get to the dragon. Yeah, the dragon's gonna be a badass.
I haven't seen the final boss yet, but it's a dragon. (duh) And that it's only slightly bigger than Kalameet, so no ancient dragon one-shot fuckery here. When the streamer quit, I'd say he was about 2/3 of the way through the DLC, so still a good deal of stuff I haven't seen yet.
Overall, here's my score.
Level Design: 9/10, amazing shit. You'll get lost, over and over and over again.
Enemy Design and placement. 7/10 some clever traps and tricks, but overall too many ganks for my liking.
Boss design. 9/10, if we're just counting the actual real boss. That other thing wasn't a boss fight...
Amount of Content: 10/10, easily more content than in the AOTA DLC.
Overall, I'd give the entire thing so far a 8.5/10. If you're on the fence right now, buy it. They've addressed almost all the complaints people had about the vanilla game's level design and difficulty. There's not fucking bullshit teleporting here, the entire place is one big fucking interconnected maze of mindfuckery. Completely non-linear.
Anyway, I can't wait until the 22nd, and I hope I've helped some of you decide whether or not it's worth $10.
...I can't wait.
I'd say a blind play-through would take anywhere from 5/7 hours depending on how good you are, and whether you had help.