The Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon

The Good
STORY Solstheim, home of the Nords of Vardenfell, Morrowind. Without giving much away there are two major quests, one involves working for the Empire creating a mining colony...the other involves a prophecy, Nordic tribes and warewolves.

The new stories are a bit more interesting than the previous expansion, and they flow a bit more tightly as well.

GRAPHICS Nothing really new here. The new landscape, trees and buildings for Solstheim are really good as usual, lots of nice touches, like skins on the floors, engravings here and there and so on. The new weather effects are really good as well - the snow is one of the best I've seen in a computer game to date. The new armor and weapons are also done to standard as well - nothing seems to have been skipped.

SOUND The previous expansion pack was pretty light on the case of new sounds...this time they've listened and added some stuff in. There's new fighting music for starters, plus many of the NPCs now say more things - and this can range from grumbling about not having any boots to freezing from the cold. The new enemy sounds are good as well, Wolf howls are not a nice thing to hear when you're stumbling in a blizzard with only a candle to light your way.

GAMEPLAY Bloodmoon adds more to exploring rather than Tribunal which involved lots of Spelunking in caverns. Also it's an actual island, not a set of interior sets that have no realistic location on the actal game map. Bloodmoon is clearly visable on the main map. The quests are also a bit more tricky this time than the normal "get this, kill that" style the others have offered. While that formula still exists - they've made it a bit more interesting. Also there's a larger sense of achievement in this game, the previous games didn't really have much changing unless the major plot quests were done, in Bloodmoon, you watch the mining colony slowly grow into a sizeable village, you see the dark happenings of the Bloodmoon prophecy unfold around you as strange things go on...you get more drawn into this world in comparison to the previous game. The game's quests are a tad too short...a lot of it involves running around the forests of Solstheim....there's alot of exploring to be done...fortuantly the island does not take long to cross. There are a few more weapons here than in the previous expansion pack. Proper Nordic weapons are here, along with some nice new ones, Ice and Hunter. There's a few new classes of armor, some that can only be aquired though quests where you must collect raw material for the armor to be made. The new armor styles are: Nordic Chain, Ice, Wolf, Bear, Snow Wolf and Snow Bear. All are nicely done and look pretty cool. This game is also more forgiving in terms of a player's level. Tirbunal requred you to be around level 60 or so...you can complete Bloodmoon easily on level 30. Also getting to the island is far easier as the expansion is not as tied up into the Morrowind story as Tribunal is - it's a very seperate game. Also being a warewolf is well done...during the main quest you contract the disease which can be simply cured...and and the end you get a ring that can turn you into one.

Turning into a Warewolf in front of people is not a good idea - like being a Vampire you get shunned, you have to transform in secrecy, then hunt at night in order to stay strong for the next night...the fun thing is that no one knows that YOU are really killing them - so you can slaughter a whole bunch of people then change back and no one will blink an eyelid. You can only attack hand to hand....and you cannot cast spells, use your inventory and weild weapons...theres's a quest to cure being a Warewolf in the game as well - I'm not sure if there's a clan like there are for vampires. Neverthe less - being a large shaggy beast with very fast speed and the ability to maim most things really quickly is fun.

Also while Cliffraces are no where in this game (the only one you see is a ceiling decoration in a Great Hall) the Wolves, Bears Fryst Hags and Smugglers do present a small challenge for the adventuers wanting to traverse with no trouble over the plains. Other new enemies that you will encounter are: Spriggians - sexy tree-women that attack and you have to kill three times before one is concidered dead, Ricklings - little blue Dwarves that sometime ride on boars and there are other nastys for you to find out as well.

The Bad
It was a bit too short on things to explore...there's all this forest area....and there's not really any hidden goodies or strange things...well ok there is Uncle Sweetshare - the Moon Sugar dealer in his little workshop in the middle of no where...one of the things I loved in Morrowind was hunting down weird and strange objects....and there were a few...but it's a bit of a shame that there's not as many in this game - Tribunal suffered alot from it...it just made the world a slightly duller place...there weren't really any new books to read...you couldn't really get into the mythos of Bloodmoon...

Also was lacking were cool weapons to get...well there were some...but part of the fun of raiding odd areas was to get new powerful weapons or things that were really really rare...instead you just get more glass swords, or weapons that don't do as much damage as you would like them to..

One of the biggest gripes I had with this game was the amount of useless crap locked in chests with lockpick ratings of over 60 You pick open a lock with a score of 86...only to find a pair of pants and 10 gold...it's pretty annoying and you generally don't go touching chests and crates in the end. The other downside to the game is there's not much reason to stay in Solstheim when the quests are done..there may be a few odd places to explore - but nothing to really keep you hooked into giving the isle a good explore.

The Bottom Line
A very well done expansion - better than Tribunal in many ways...but not as expansive as I would have liked - this expansion should have deserved at least a few more months just adding more things in to make the world of Solstheim more lively. A good ending to the third chapter in the Elderscrolls series.