Besides the inevitable hype for Bethesda’s newest IP in the last two decades, one of their steward online games that don’t come with the number 76 attached to has also been doing rather well for itself.
Elders Scroll Online is coming up for a decade since its first launch in April 2014, and with their new expansion, Narcom just came out recently, we went deep into 20 hours of playtime to see what it is like nowadays and also check out the new expansion too.
So, how the heck is ESO now?
So, ESO plays like a mixture of Skyrim with some online elements that the likes of its series sibling, Fallout 76 took heavy inspiration from as well. The game now opens with a short island with the low-level stuff and then you get to pick your starter place like the of Hammerfall or even Greater Skyrim, kinda like a side story of how your actions will permanently change this area (at least per character).
Combat is by far the most unique thing in this edition of TES. Depending on preference, the combat might be your most liked or disliked aspect of this game, depending on how you feel about the addition of stagger and dodge rolls in your melee-based RPG combat.
It does feel more simplistic as the skills have been more streamlined into button-based combats that you can add in yourself (kinda like Path of Exile) and tweak depending on your build, another aspect that you can see within Fallout 76 recently as well.
Locale-wise, it feels massive with most of the places you’ll visit does have the size of bigger towns like Solitude in Skyrim, with the massive castle and seaport that can bring you to other places in the massive system (with some of the locked within their massive expansions over the years), and location does feel like what you would expect for a TES game.
Quest is done via meeting NPCs naturally as you explore the area (much like Skyrim) and you can gain EXP and better weapons/armor in your travels, which comes to my only complaint that storage is something that you have to buy via their in-game currency (Crowns) and it’s quite pricey to put in items that you want to save and/or have little value to sell to the vendors. These can go wayward up to an hour of content with twists and turns that you might not even suspect. Which is where we shall lead to…
Necrom
Necrom’s expansion does a pretty good mix of both fantasy horror with Cults and politics, as you do in uncovering spies, an advent plague and even poisoning a person for the mistake of having a headache. All within the new area of Telvanni Peninsula and Apocrypha, which has an interesting world building of towers and fungi vegetation sprouting around, along with volcanic ash across some parts as well.
There’s also a new class in the form of Arcanist, a more of a death-bringer mage class that holds the three elements within a mix of Illusion, Destruction, and Conjuration, in short, which are: attacks, shielding, and healing.
I didn’t get to use it that much but some of my party members during my playtime do like the flexibility of the class where they could switch class quickly from healing to damaging the harder bosses during the quest.
All in all, it is one of the more unique expansions that you could play within ESO, and it is really beginner friendly to start off after doing the tutorials quest, all thanks to the level-scaling systems.
Conclusion
It is one of the more intriguing additions to the long-running title that’s already brimmed with Elder Scroll content from decades of stuff, with a new area and class that is fun to explore and play. Though ESO is quite an expansive experience, getting this and Necrom could be a way to join the rabbit hole that is this game.
Played on PC, Review code for Elders Scroll Online and their Necrom Expansion is provided by the publisher