User blog comment:The Milkman/Skyrim DLC Review: Good, Not Great/@comment-9156240-20130531033901

While I was never able to purchase Shivering Isles myself for my game of Oblivion, I've heard amazing things about it. To be honest, I was thouroughly impressed with Dragonborn, and the Dawnguard quests were engaging and interesting (I didn't really like the Soul Cairn, though). However, I'm not exactly a hard person to please. Give me any game where I can create my own character and role-play in an open world, and I'd be happy to kill whoever you want me to kill.

All jokes aside, though, what I was getting at was that even though I haven't played Shivering Isles, if the Skyrim DLCs weren't as impressive, I must be missing out.

I was just happy to have a small distraction from the usual Skyirm routine with Hearthfire. Going home every now and then to play hide and seek with my kids and defend my house from giants was nice and refreshing. I even got a little bit worried for my kids at one point. They live at my Falkreath Homestead (since it's the only one with actually nice weather) and I decided to try and go a day without fast traveling. I was exploring around my house and I found this weird little sacrificial altar barely 150feet from my house! In fact, I think it's shown in the first picture. After I killed the Arch Necromancer there or whatever, I was looking at the stuff he left around and I was like, "W.T.F. My kids could be playing tag and run right into this bloody skull and dagger!" I had a nice laugh about it, though. I wonder if Bethesda did that on purpose.

With Dawnguard, I spent literally an hour looking for the fort before I realized it was in some zone that could only be accessed through a cave. At first I was like, "Oh, of course it has to be a zone!" -eyeroll- I was expecting to see one of those crumbling forts that dot Skyrim, but then I see this massive gothic fort and my jaw just drops. I'm like, "Whoa. Plot twist. It's actually got a new design!!" So that got me excited. Then I saw huskies and flipped shit. I was like YESSSSSS. HUSKIES. And then I betrayed the Dawnguard and became a vampire lord. At first I was upset because the vampires only had the ugly ghost dogs and they didn't have huskies. I also didn't really know how to use the Vampire Lord powers well, so I barely used it, but it was still cool being able to say that I was a Vampire Lord. I eventually got cured, though, so I could get my face remodeled. Despite everything, though, I enjoyed it immensly. The new architecture, the actually interesting characters... it was a nice mixup.

Dragonborn was... nice. Yes, I said the n-i-c-e word. The dreaded word for all review ratings. I liked visiting Solstheim, but you're right when you say it's a lot like Skyrim. The bandits basically just become dark elves and get new names, and the wolves just become Rieklings. Raven Rock was cool, and it was nice meeting Glover, but it still felt too much like what I'd already seen. I felt like the only actual new thing was Tel Mithryn- and, well, Apocrypha, I suppose, but I hated that place with the passion of a thousand burning suns. Whatever creator decided to make a creepy library where my follower couldn't come with me must have crawled out of Dante's Inferno or something... I liked Frea. It was awesome having a new voice actress for her. I got tired of the regular Skyrim voices reeeeaaallll fast. While she was cool, I felt like she wasn't as fleshed out as she could have been. If she would have been more like Serana, I feel as though I would have visited the Skaal village more often just to visit her. The Bend Will shout was awesome, but it was not awesome at the same time. Flying dragons just doesn't... well... work. While the idea was AWESOME and the integration of it with the boss battle was an interesting idea, it just didn't work! At all! I'm hardly suprised, though. This is Bethesda we're talking about here!

All in all, I liked the Skyrim DLC. I feel like if they would have continued making DLC, they would have gotten better, but now that they've stopped, well... I don't really even know. Their DLC was nice. As I said, it was a distraction from the main game. But I didn't feel like any of the DLCs did their own thing well enough to make it more than just a distraction.