As someone who has put a large chunk of my time into Elder Scrolls 5:
Skyrim already I felt like I'd pretty much got as much out of the game
as I could, so when (finally) the first piece of DLC was released I was
looking forward to playing it, although coming 8 months after the
original game was released it does seem a bit late, I stopped playing
Skyrim quite a few months ago and Bethesda might have found themselves
receiving a few more sales if they'd been a little quicker in releasing
it. Still, Skyrim was easily the best game I played in the last year so I
was more than willing to give Dawnguard a go.
The Dawnguard DLC
story focuses around Lord Harkon, a vampire Lord who has his ambitions
set on destroying the sun and bringing darkness to Tamriel for ever,
allowing his band of vampires to rule the land. Early on you are given
the option of either helping him, as a vampire or opposing him, as a
member of the "Dawnguard." Both sides have their own new skills and
advantages of course and you'll want to play through both sides of the
story to get the most out of your DLC.
If you decide to join the
good guys and save the day and become a vampire slayer, a member of the
Dawnguard, you'll get new equipment such as crossbows and new armor to
help you. You can also hire a giant troll, complete with armor, to fight
alongside you in battle. Myself I like to play as a werewolf and I
received a whole new skill tree to unlock as well as some new allies to
fight alongside me. The more interesting side of the Dawnguard DLC
however is the ability to play as a powerful vampire Lord (don't worry
it's nothing like Twilight!). You gain new powers such as the ability to
reanimate enemies, teleport as a cloud of bats as well as a powerful
energy blast that acts as a life-steal.
The new quests and
abilities can be great fun however there were quite a few downsides to
Dawnguard as well. Firstly playing as a vampire Lord you are forced into
3rd person viewpoint, which although allows you to watch as your
awesome looking vampire rips people to shreds can be a bit unwieldy,
especially in tight spaces. The aforementioned life-steal ability can be
a bit too powerful as well, I found myself relying on it rather than
using some of the other cool abilities available to me simply because it
made many fights so easy. When you are in Vampire Lord mode you can't
loot or interact anything so you'll often find yourself having to
constantly go in and out of vampire Lord mode which can detract from the
experience somewhat. Although the two factions offer replayability for
your money a significant amount of the quests are used by both factions
and so the second run through can feel a bit familiar, although it is
worth playing through twice.
Dawnguard inherits both positives and
negatives from its parent Skyrim. Just as with my initial play-through
of Skyrim I found myself stopping and wondering at some of the fantastic
visuals and scenery, but just like Skyrim I also found myself
contending with bugs and glitches that really should have been ironed
out before release. Normally these would result in my having to reload
to an earlier saved game in order to complete a quest because a vital
NPC was missing.
Overall Dawnguard offered decent value for money
for its $20 cost. For my money I probably got around 15 hours new
gameplay (including replaying the main quest) and enjoyed trying out the
new vampire mechanics. $20 is quite expensive for a DLC and the bugs do
impact on the gameplay somewhat however if you loved Skyrim you'll
still love this, if you didn't love Skyrim Dawnguard won't go very far
towards improving your opinion. Overall I give Dawnguard a score of
3.5/5.
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