[Pretty Long I'm sorry, I just had to write this all down so I could show my friends]

Soooo, I've already knocked another like 40-50 hours into this expansion. And I gotta say it definitely has it's ups and definitely it's downs.

I also can't really talk about everything so I apologise if I miss anything also I HAVE NOT COMPLETED KYNE'S AEGIS.

TLDR included at the bottom

~Remember these are just my own opinions.

Okay so starting off:

The Atmosphere and Ambience + Visual Design 8/10

In my opinion. It's great, seeing harrowstorms swirling around in the distance. Undead creatures inhabiting the forests the closer you get to ritual sites really sets the tone of the DLC and the Vampiric/Gothic theme it goes for. The music as always (I'm assuming composed by Brad Derrick) is great, with some amazing tracks which also set the atmosphere and gothic vibe while adventuring through this spooky DLC. However, as I've seen mentioned a few times before, there aren't enough "Wandering/Exploration" soundtracks as they all seem to have the very hard gothic style to them, which is great don't get me wrong, but when adventuring through Skyrim I would have liked some more casual peaceful soundtracks. However this is my only real complaint about the music. And holy moly don't even get me started on Blackreach. A once hated part of ESV has come back with a punch, with beautiful landscapes, wonderful, luminescent fungus which sprawls out across the entirety of Blackreach really sets a different feeling and ambience when I first ventured into the dark unknown. It's honestly great down there. I just really hope that they release a smaller home maybe a small mushroom cave house down there

Delves and Public Dungeons 8/10

The delves actually have pretty decent quests to go with them, as well as the Public Dungeons. However I personally found Summerset's and Elsweyr's more interesting. However it beats Vvardenfells. The design of the Delves are also pretty looking, decently sized, especially Frozen Coast, and have pretty decent bosses. The 2 new Public dungeons Labyrinthian and Nchuthnkarst
are also pretty decent. Nchuthnkarst having the better story/memento as well, if not my favourite public dungeon quest, very interesting, and you get to meet some old friends. The design of Nchuthnkarst is also very beautiful and I spent a lot of time just looking around at the amazing atmosphere, and the massive size of the public dungeon.

Harrowstorms + World Bosses [ 6/10 Harrowstorms ] [ 8/10 World Bosses ]

Straight away, the harrowstorms are extremely cool looking. However, slow, uncoordinated spawns, make doing the daily repeatable quest extremely annoying to do. Even if people call them out, I usually fail to get to them on time. The loot gained from Harrowstorms are also very meh for the effort everyone puts in, personally they're on the same difficulty as Dragons, and are much harder then Abyssal Geysers. ZoS have already talked about a few improvements they're "planning" to make in order to improve the storms, but currently they're really not that complete. Even if they added an indicator to the Current active one, and possibly the next active one, will really help out groups doing Harrowstorm runs.
The world bosses are just world bosses, so they're ok. Personally my 2 favourites are the Dwarven Charging Station and the Vampire feeding grounds as I believe they feel the most unique while the rest are pretty much just sponges in my opinion. There's not much improvement for these as I can see but they're pretty easy to do/even solo in some cases.

Main Quest + Side Quests [ Main Quest 5/10] [ Side (Not All Completed) 6/10 ]

Oh boy. So the Main Quest, I personally felt like this Quest line wasn't anywhere close to Summerset's (Meridia I'm begging, give me Darien back) However I personally felt like it was more fun to do then Elsweyr's main quest line. But it still wasn't the best. It had an Okay plot, with a pretty obvious twist which made it feel very cliche and when making a new character it will probably be the last one I complete. However, the two Main Characters in my opinion (Fenn and Lyris) are played very well by the Voice Actors, and the Friend of Fenn got me real scared that you might have actually killed of Fenn as well. The last boss fight also felt pretty badass, with pretty cool looking effects and mechanics. Still was very easy to complete on my main character. What I did like about the main quest line however, is that it did introduce Blackreach in a decent way. The rewards for this main questline however (A couple motifs, title and a pretty cool Dire-Wolf pet) were great especially the wolf, and I really hope they do some recolours for it, because i hate the baby animal pets.

The side quests are mostly forgettable, there are a few delve quests and main ones for the 2 smaller towns (Morthal and Karthwatch) are slightly longer than normal side quests, however they just feel like very short: "go get this, do that, then come back here for your reward" kind of quests. The quests in the previous chapter felt slightly better and more involving, providing better quality story telling, and in some cases better rewards through outift styles they just didn't feel worth doing apart from a couple extra hours of content.

Antiquities 6/10 (Excluding the bugs:8/10)

This system is great. Really good for getting back to older zones and exploring more places. However the initial launch was painful, especially for Gold leads upwards. Misalignment issues, which have been fixed, aren't the only issue. There's still very annoying Screen Shaking, screen tilts, UI bugs which hopefully will be fixed soon. Also there's still a plethora of Leads which just don't drop from places making it extremely annoying that something which should have been confirmed and fixed in PTS haven't been fixed.
The furnishings are definitely my favourite with beautiful pieces really help me create a more cool looking home. It's a really great addition and provides a good alternative to get furnishings apart from just buying or crafting the furnishings. The "Grind" was actually pretty fun, exploring old places, finding new ones (had no idea Betnikh existed, I've been playing the game for like 3 years) and it was also a good chance to be able to 100% some delves and bosses while I was at it, and even pick up some new leads for furnishings and other treasures.

One of the most notable treasures is the Dwemer Ebon Wolf is a must have for Dwemer Fans, It has a pretty cool design, however I understand people frustrations that It does use the same model as the Virtrine Dwarven Wolf, and is just a reskin. But for people with AWFUL RNG like me with Crates, having something I know I will get without spending money is great, and it was very fun running around places getting parts for it. It took about 2 days to get, and was worth it in my opinion.

I don't have all of the Mythic Items, I only have the Wild-Hunt Ring but it was still really fun to get the ring. However, fishing for leads is very painful for someone who hates swimming, overall I've spent around 6 hours fishing for the lead in arteum to get the Thrassian stranglers, and still haven't got the part. However the overall balance and utility for the items seems a bit off. Some people saying that the mythic items are awful, others saying they're great. But overall they feel like they're extremely tailored towards PvP, and then some being OK for PvE. Overall I don't see how they can be placed into meta builds for PvE, and more for just memeing around, or wanting to get to 10k spell damage which I admit on PTS was pretty fun to do.


P.S For those complaining about IC lead drops for band of brutality, isn't having no Damage crits in PvE EXTREMELY negative? Just a thought.


Vampires [ 8/10 NPC's ] [ 5/10 Skill Line Rework ]

The NPC's and characters are honestly great. New Enemy NPCs having more Vampiric focused abilities and appearances really helps create the immersion that you're actually getting attacked by a dangerous enemy. The look of their abilities, motifs, and overall sound design is great. The few vampiric boss fights as well are also great in my opinion. With lots of overwhelming, intimidating effects, maybe me intimidated about some of the stronger foes.

The vampire player skill line on the other hand, is a different story. It overall just feels bad for group content/PvP content. Having 1 spammable, which is melee only, and morph which heavily relies on a good healer, no gap closer etc.. make using Vampires a bit more difficult.
I will now go through each skill and a very, very short opinion on it.

Eviscerate + Morphs: Very simple slash ability, Blood for Blood needed for top DPS. Risky to use if not in group content, or have a lot of heals on bar.

Blood Frenzy + Shimmering Frenzy: Extremely risky toggle able abilities, and the bane of a healers existence in group dungeons. However, It definitely feels like a vampiric ability to be able to be this risky, for a pretty good reward.
Sated Fury: My preferred morph, since it's much safer to use because of the massive heal at the end of the channel (Whether you get too low HP or Manually toggle it off.

Vampiric Drain + Morphs: Basically the same as last patch, better stamina morph for a decent sustain. Magicka morph simply focused on Ultimate Generation and Heal.

Mesmerize + Morphs: Pretty fun aoe stun ability to use in PvP as well as Solo PvE. Stupefy looking more like a PvP focused stun down.

Mist Form + Moprhs: 100% better then old Mist Form in my opinion. More fun to use, very fun in AoE Solo PvE, especially the Blood Mist. Elusive Mist being a more PvP focused morph.

The Blood Scion. Very cool feeling ability, especially on Necromancers, being able to choose between the tanky colossus on backbar, then Damaging Scion on front bar feels amazing to be able to swap and choose to match to the situation at hand. Swarming Scion being a constant heal because of the passive Bats and Heal for Damage passive from the blood scion feels very fluent and fun in Solo PvE/Dungeons. Perfect Scion giving pretty much just vampire ability cost reduction without the fire damage, health recovery or increased costs just feels a bit useless if you're not Stage 4 (Which I'll get onto why it's not worth it later) and aren't using the vampire abilities constantly.

Finally the very controversial passives:

Right so I definitely prefer the idea that you need to feed to get stronger but these stage 4 passives just feel completely not worth it currently. Which is why everyone is going to be sticking with stage 1 or 2 if they want to be able to Feed every once in a while for RP purposes without being horribly under powered by the no health recovery, massive fire damage increase, and regular ability cost, which 12% still feels ridiculous.

Stage 1/2/3/4 Health Recovery: -10%/-30%/-60%/-100% Flame Damage Taken: +5%/+8%/+13%/+20% Regular Ability Costs: +3%/+5%/+8%/+12% Vampire Ability Costs: -6%/-10%/-16%/-24%

The only stage 4 passive: Reduces the cost of Sprint by 50%. If you continuously Sprint for 3 seconds you automatically become invisible. Is the only thing which I would want, it's very fun to just run through Delves and Public dungeons/Mat farming in Craglorn, without having any enemies get taunted onto me. However, you still need to keep in mind the massive cost increases, as well as having 0 health recovery.

The rest of the passives seem decent, especially Strike from the Shadows which increases Weapon Damage and Spell Damage by 300 for 6 seconds when you leave Sneak, invisibility, or Mist Form. And then Blood Ritual and Undeath being pretty much the same from last patch.


Overall Opinion (TLDR)

+ It's a decent chapter. Fun characters with an OK main story with decent rewards.
+ Great Atmosphere and level Design.
+ Very fun treasure hunting system with a lot of new cool treasures, cool looking new mount.
+ You get to explore Skyrim, Solitude and Morthal.
+ Decent rewards
+ Very nice scenery/atmosphere
+ Has a lot of Explorable area.
+ Blackreach is amazing to explore
+ Harrowstorms are fun to complete (Not the Rewards)

- some unbalanced passives for both Mythic Items and Vampires
- quite a lot of RNG based mechanics introduced with Antiquities
- Trash performance for 4 days after launch, however has been fixed as of now.
- Very predictable main quest line.
- Lackluster side Quests
- Harrowstorms taking a lot of performance
- ^ Don't drop decent enough rewards for the effort
- ^ Difficult to track down without any markers like the Dragons, if people don't Zone chat where they are

Overall: 7/10 - It's a fun experience, with a great atmosphere, however it has quite a few flaws.

Lyris and Fenn were great as always, and I'm still looking forward to the next Zone DLC (Fingers crossed for the Reach, Main city being Markarth)