Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind Expansion Pack: Bloodmoon
by Bethesda Softworks
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Our Price: $19.99 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $6.49 (click here) Category: Video Games See more product details |
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Video Game Reviews of Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind Expansion Pack: Bloodmoon
Customer Review: Buy this instead of Tribunal
Summary: 4 Stars
This is expansion is much more enjoyable than Tribunal, which is very claustrophobic. Bloodmoon gives you a new (large) island to explore, with an entertaining main quest and many interesting side quests. The graphics are great, and the falling snow made me feel chilled in the middle of summer.There are a couple of small irritations. There were too many annoyingly aggressive creatures outside which made quick travel impossible unless you levitated (which I ended up doing). Of course you can't do this if you're escorting someone, which made those errands tedious. I also crashed while zoning quite a few times.
Overall, this is a worthwhile expansion pack that will add many more play hours to Morrowind.
Customer Review: A honey
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Tribunal" refers to a Morrowind-specific concept, and Tribunal the expansion pack is a marvellous add-on to an existing world.The city of light and magic is located at an unknown spot in the world and while you are there the world map is of no use. Instead of a "world" you are transported to a mega-city, which sports distinct styles of architecture and fashion, with a separate temple, government, underground sewers, and marketplace.
I actually got the expansion pack bundled with the Morrowind game, and I would recommend playing Tribunal together with the main Morrowind quest to enhace your freedom. Unfortunately since Tribunal has a rather one-dimensional plot, if you wait to tackle Tribunal until you've exhausted Morrowind you may be disappointed when you want a distraction from doing the nth chore for the same group of people.
Playing this way is also more fun since assassins from Tribunal escape to Morrowind to hunt you down, giving new characters some welcome and expensive goodies that can fetch a nice price when sold.
The artwork of Tribunal is breathtaking, and especially the gruff Ordinators wear a fashion that is the pinnacle of elegant taste. Tribunal also brings back the Dark Brotherhood, familiar to Daggerfall fans, complete with signature armor that is eerily awe-inspiring.
A beautiful addition to Morrowind, a great place to explore, and a load of fun with new rules to learn in order to win.
Customer Review: As if the original did make me enough of a slave!
Summary: 5 Stars
Morrowind alone is amazing, but now we have Bloodmoon! That's right, you get to be a werewolf! The main quest in Bloodmoon can be done as either a human or werewolf, and how you get to the end will vary slightly. The first time I did it, I stayed human. By the near ending of the quest, I was literally saying "whoa!" out loud to myself. I'm trying not to give anything away here, so stick with me! Bloodmoon is very hard, and sometimes very frustrating. Then you get near the end and you are SO glad you didn't give up. The last few quests have you running around feeling like your racing time, even though you aren't. My heart was in my throat. It was just awesome!My boyfriend came over the next day and played through as a werewolf. The werewolf scenario was more frustrating for him. He found that being a werewolf, the quests were VERY hard and thus very frustrating. However, they were still pretty cool. And being a werewolf, you run around panting like crazy with tunnel vision like a wild animal! You can jump really high and such. Just running around is a kick.
The very last quest is extremely difficult, and will probably be very frustrating. Both I and my boyfriend have yet to beat it. It's worth it though. Bloodmoon really pulls you in!
Other fun stuff about Bloodmoon: snow, new monsters, new weapons, new stuff to explore, help build a colony, one line of quests even ends with you running the show and choosing where your own house at the colony will be built! Also, why not search for the fabled Soveigngard? The 'heaven' of the Nords!
Customer Review: A good conclusion to Morrowind main quest
Summary: 4 Stars
Being that Morrowind is one of the best games I've ever played, I thought I would give Tribunal a try. Glad I did. This is not simply a Morrowind redux. Tribunal is smaller and centered around a single city, doesn't allow for much roaming, and doesn't have the variety of creatures, items, factions, and quests as the original game. But for an expansion, it certainly has enough. I thought the Tribunal main quest was quite interesting, especially how the underground parts of the city unfold as you progress and your role in some grand schemes becomes clearer. My warrior character, who started Tribunal at 33rd level, died many, many times, so there shouldn't be any lack of challenge for most gamers. The city itself is beautiful, and the quests more interesting than many of Morrowind's. Tribunal's main quest should be good for about 30 hours of gameplay, and the side quest should add several more. Due to the linear, concluding nature of this expansion, it will not have much replayability for many people. However, considering the current price, the fact that the expansion adds some nice shops and items, and many mods that you can download require Tribunal, this is definitely a worthwhile gaming experience and investment.Customer Review: The best expansion pack of the year...
Summary: 5 Stars
Right from the start, "Morrowind" was an unusually good roleplaying game - though it had its fair share of flaws, I hasten to add. The second expansion pack for "Morrowind" addresses several of these problems, and essentially provides a much better game that adds a welcome dose of variety. Without "Bloodmoon," you have not truly experienced the best that "Morrowind" has to offer. Perhaps the most refreshing addition to "Morrowind" is the snowscape of Solstheim, the island that "Bloodmoon" adds to the mix. This environment is breathtaking and fun to explore. Best of all, it adds a very welcome variety in the atmosphere department - a department, I felt, in which the original game was lacking. While visiting Solstheim, you can kiss those barren, repetitive landscapes of Vvardenfell good-bye. In Solstheim, you will be treated to pine forests, dunes of sparkling snow, a Norse inspired hamlet, and even a castle hewn of ice. Wild bears, wolves, and barbarians roam this arctic isle in search of prey, and require you to keep your eyes and ears constantly open for encroaching attack.
The main quest that the expansion provides is considerably more involving than the whole "find and destroy Dagoth Ur" thing from the original game - although it's quite a bit shorter, as you probably expect from an expansion. Still, aside from one quest that requires you to tediously roam Solstheim performing brief quests to activate six elemental stones, the primary adventure demands far less busywork and errand boy chores, and instead gets right down to real, true blue adventuring - which was just too rare in stand-alone "Morrowind." And, of course, you can turn into a werewolf, which is a very nice touch.
Other nice additions to the expansion: quests that require you to fight side-by-side with NPCs (even an undead Nordic necromancer!), NPCs that react more realistically to you based upon your experiences with them, environments that change to reflect current events, and tightly scripted moments that bring the story to life in a way that "Morrowind" scarcely even attempted. Yes, "Bloodmoon" takes an excellent game and makes it that much better. As an Elder Scrolls veteran who has been playing the series since its introduction with "Arena," this goes a long way toward making the third game feel more like its forebears.
It's not perfect, of course. The game's dungeon environments are still very drab and basic. They look pretty enough, but mostly offer identical cavernous tunnels (now snow or ice-encrusted) with very few furnishings or artistic flourishes to keep them visually compelling for long. Maybe it's a good thing, then, that most of the dungeons are so small, since they're not much fun to explore in the first place. Whatever happened to those huge, sprawling dungeons from "Arena" and "Daggerfall?" Not only that, each dungeon seems content to keep hurling the same breed of foe at you over and over again. You won't find skeletons sharing their lair with werewolves, for example - and maybe that makes logical sense, but it's rather dull in gameplay terms.
The addition of falling snow is certainly a welcome atmospheric touch, but on occasion the isle of Solstheim will experience blinding snowstorms that can make the game's frame rate plummet considerably. These storms aren't too frequent, but they are very annoying when they happen. All in all, though, after installing "Bloodmoon" I experienced smoother frame rates, and graphics that are perceptibly enhanced.
Elder Scrolls enthusiasts, take heed: "Bloodmoon" simply can't be missed. In my view, it completes "Morrowind" by adding more depth, more variety, and a tighter, more interesting story. It is easily the best expansion pack I have purchased this year, in terms of how it enhances the original game (here even surpassing "The Frozen Throne" for "WarCraft III"). Do yourself a solid and go to Solstheim.
Final Score: A