It’s big in terms of landmass, but around 30% (or more) of that playable area is unpopulated with a handful of harvest nodes - gone are the days of finding quirky details in weird places like base game (e.g the skeleton banquet). The quests are bloated with repetitive dialog and waffle artificially buffing the time it takes to complete. There are two new enemies a toad and a critter-dog. The mythic leads are hilariously placed. Companions are a rush job... better than expected but still need a LOT of work to be anything other than a time sink. But it’s more content for the game you love, so... yeah.

The zone is pretty, I am happy about companions, but and I can't put my finger on it. I wasn't as wowed by it as I was by elyswer or summerset. I am not sure why, I don't dislike but I just don't know.

IMO there's been a sharp decline in quality/creativity since Murkmire (I didn't like the zone, but it's quite unique and it's clear that a lot of thought went into it).

Elsweyr was OK, but the zone is extremely annoying in terms of navigation, and the number of buildings that can't even be entered is ridiculous. The architecture and furniture is pretty neat, albeit fairly niche in terms of which houses it works well in.

Southern Elsweyr: same as Northern, except neon to the point that I honestly (I am actually serious here; I have to turn the in-game brightness down when I do there) worry it's going to give me a seizure sometimes.

The two DLC dungeons that came out during the Elsweyr year are among my absolute lease favorite in the game.

Greymoor: serious letdown. I hate Blackreach, and the above-ground section of the area is completely underwhelming. It all feels very phoned in. Kyne's Aegis introduced no sets worth running, and the trial itself is totally forgettable, so for me personally, there's no reason to run it. I'll give them credit for Unhallowed Grave though (whenever that came out; I consider it part of Greymoor); I hadn't had that much fun in a dungeon in a long time when it came out.

Antiquities are fun, but you run out of content fairly quickly save the awful grind for some of the motifs. I was hoping that they'd be regularly introducing more furnishing items than has been the case too.

Markarth: better than Greymoor at least in terms of zone story and the architecture in the city itself, but outside of that it's Greymoor 2.0 when it comes to the overland aesthetic. The dungeons that came out around that time are pretty decent.

Vateshran Hollows... ugh. I appreciate the work that they put into it, but it's just miserable for me, and a lot of it is because the mechanics are just clunky (that minotaur boss, the add craziness at the final boss that makes targeting one of the chained adds nearly impossible).

Blackwood: I'm not using a companion, so I can't speak to that; maybe it makes the DLC really fun for people. I haven't done a whole lot of content besides exploring the overland, but I find that really, really uninspired in terms of aesthetics. Maybe the public dungeons and delves and Rockgrove are awesome and will change my opinion, I don't know. But the effort that went into some of the stuff (overland feels recycled, as does some of the furnishings) seems minimal.

What happened to the DLC and their corresponding expansion zones being so different from each other? Morrowind and Clockwork City. Summerset and Murkmire. Why have they started just kind of extending the existing DLC zones in their expansions????