This DLC had a fun and interesting story which kept me playing just to find out what would happen next. Other than the story being interesting the rest of the DLC seemed very lack luster. The main story line takes 6-7 hours to complete at max, the dungeons are a bit dry, the new areas that it does give you have boring objectives or relatively pointless side quests within them. The biggest disappointment for me, was the fact that whether you choose the Dawnguard storyline or Vampire story line the main quests are pretty much identical and bring about the same end. I would recommend that Elder Scrolls fans buy this DLC but definitely wait for it to go on sale.… Expand

Honestly, compared to older expansions such as Knights of the Nine or Shivering Isles for Oblivion, this is absolute **** Some of the new weapons and armor are nice but other than that, the DLC is lacking in content. When I was playing through it, I became bored roaming through the generic caves and dungeons and began to care less and less about what would happen next as I just wanted it to end. Overall it's not worth $20, wait for a sale...… Expand

If, like me, you had hundreds of hours in Skyrim and would like more of the same, Dawnguard is for you. However, if you only enjoyed the game a small or medium amount, you might want to wait for a price drop or just not buy it at all. In other words, Dawnguard is more of the same.

wait for a steam sell if you really want this its nothing more than an elaborate mod for the price of a full add-on, I think Bethesda has really stopped trying at this point. The modding community has done more to fix the problems with skyrim than the company that eagerly took 59.99+ a peice for it. I ove the game but as usual the producing company half-asses it and charges full price then runs off and leaves you to fix a lemon. Hats off to the modding community they are leaps and bounds more talented than bethesda programmers and this add-on proves it.… Expand

Dawnguard is more akin to Morrowind's Tribunal or Oblivion's Knights of the Nine than Bloodmoon or the Shivering Isles. It's very heavily story driven, focuses more on Items/Powers than locations (though It does add two rather large areas, one of which is spectacular to see), and is generally relatively linear (Though it does branch once early on). That being said, it offers far more content and is much better polished than either of those expansions were. Knights of the Nine and Tribunal could both be very easily run though in under 2 hours. The vampire-side story alone took me 8 hours to complete and I wasn't bothering with any of the side content. The new weapons are powerful and well designed. The new vampire lord form is satisfyingly powerful once you get the hang of it (note - Don't use Serana as your follower as your main attack gets heavily debuffed due to a bug), and the new werewolf perks add some flavor to what was previously a very flat and uninteresting feature. To top it all off they've tweaked and improved various undocumented parts of the main story and integrated the new story-lines into it quite seamlessly. They've also improved the visual fidelity of a lot of the particle effects dealing with smoke/steam/fog and fire. For what it is, it gets a solid 9 out of 10. It's no Shivering Isles or Bloodmoon, but it wasn't meant to be. That'll be Hearthfire. Bethesda works in patterns here people. Each TES game has a smaller, story driven expansion first, and then they add the major expansion with whole new continents and worlds to explore second.… Expand

Pros: It's more Skyrim. There's some cool armor, a hot new follower, more fights to get into, incentive to level up your character some more.
Cons: Falmer ruins, fetch quests, terrible story, bugs, the penultimate quest in which you have to get a bow (don't know why I'm trying to avoid spoilers for this) is the worst most-time consuming lackluster mission I've played in a video game in years, $20 for only $8.50 worth of real content.
Summation: Butts.… Expand

Finally a DLC this year that was worth it's money! You get over 1GB of content for your buck and they even hired Laura Bailey as voice actor for this (she also voiced the female main character of Saints Row: The Third). The ending was a little abrupt, but you get some nice weapons, a great companion, a new player home, stronger dragons to fight and mesmerizing locations to visit. I give the full score for this.… Expand

I've spent over two hours trying to fix this dlc to simply make the quests progress. I have completed about ten minutes of playtime for two hours of work and am now stopped again because another part of the quest is broken.

This is not an expansion, it's a small packet of DLC. I know the vampire lord has to be modded to be any use, but everything on the dawnguard side seems awesome to me. Quests aren't especially boring or anything and the side ones actually force you to go to new places you might've skipped over before. It was basically worth it for me simply for the crossbow and smithing upgrades (though the latter was already in through mods anyway).… Expand

For a first expansion, Dawnguard certainly isn't "bad", but it feels somewhat small compared with previous expansions. Let me quickly get the good points out the way; the quests are compelling, the new crossbow is satisfyingly powerful and the boss fights are better than they were before. The biggest issue with DG is the price; it simply isn't worth £14 for what essentially amounts to a 6-10 hour questline and a couple of new dungeons & weapons. The new locations are hit-and-miss: the soul cairn is bare & boring to look at while the Forgotten Vale is much more interesting to explore. However, there's not really much to see there besides the view and a couple of new enemies. Another improvement made to the game is the boss encounters; they're not as bad now. The boss fights now involve more than just wailing on the enemy until they stop moving, but they still don't feel very diverse or satisfying. Although the DLC claims to have a two-way choice in it, there really isn't much impact one way or another: the quests are more-or-less the same although the vampire questline has a much more lively story than the Dawnguard's hum-drum boring serious storyline. There is one occasion where a certain character's dialogue changes depending on how far you progressed through the main quest; which is at least a step in the right direction. So I guess the final question is "is Dawnguard worth it"; in my opinion, yes. Yes, but only if you're a Skyrim fanatic who has exhausted everything the main game has to offer. Otherwise, don't bother. 7.3/10… Expand

All the content offered is very good, although the best way to enjoy it is to start a new character and enjoy how flawlessly the DLC is incorporated into the main character career in the existing world. That is right: this DLC exists not as an expansion for you to pursue when you reach, say, level 50, but rather to enrich playing through Skyrim from scrap all again. The only problem is that, given the immense scope of the original game, the amount of new content is simply not enough given its price tag. Sure, if you are new to Skyrim and have little financial constraint, go for it, it is fun and enriches the world, but if you have already played and finished the game, well... sorry, but it is not worth the 20 bucks. With a level 40-50 master overkiller you have absolutely no incentive to use the new skill trees, and will easily breeze through all the new challenges. If you are expecting another Shivering Isles expansion, you will be sorely disappointed.… Expand

Dawnguard is not your traditional Elder Scrolls add-on. It does not include new expansive environments and lengthly quests, nor does it provide you with multitudes of new weapons and spells to add to your arsenal. What it does succeed in doing, is provide a fairly substantial addition to your Skyrim experience. IF you are a hardcore fan and much enjoyed the game, you will find reason again to enjoy it. However, if you're in the market for something like the Shivering Isles was to Oblivion, you may want to steer clear and bide your time.… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Dawnguard is quite a good DLC. For $25, it adds a considerable amount of content. I personally got 8 hours out of the main questline, and another 4 or so to finish the side quests. That's about $2 and hour, which is pretty damn good. Most importantly, it got me back into Skyrim again, after a long break. Isn't that what a DLC is really about? I went through and finished the missions I hadn't done yet, all because Dawnguard got me playing Skyrim again. I went through and got the extra achievements for the game, and ended up playing about 30 hours into the game.

The Vampire Lord mode is quite a good addition to the game, but I feel it could have been done a little bit better. There were a few minor glitches with doors due to the Vampire transformation.
The werewolf perk tree is a good enhancement, but really adds nothing useful to werewolves. If you intend to play consistently as a werewolf, this won't do much to benefit you.

As a whole, the expansion did just that - it expanded the game. If you enjoyed Skyrim, I couldn't recommend this more. If you didn't like it that much, perhaps this isn't for you.… Expand

I enjoyed this DLC (even if it was on the expansive side)... It did get myself back-in to Skyrim and start playing again (in-fact i started a new character days leading up to the release..).. This is a DLC and not an extension pack, but it boarders on the good side.. I'm wary of DLC in general as DLC seems to be a rip off, especially weapon packs or something along that line (e.g. Bioware DLCs) I wasn't a fan of the fallouts so i can not compare to their DLC, but all in all i found it goodish.. I played the DLC twice through once with Markon? once with the dawnguard... I think i preferred playing as Dawnguard and i even persuaded Serana to turn human after it was done.. Im not a big fan of the vampire class :/ I would have like to seen a bit more character progression with Serana. All in all, i think it was worth it... I biggest peeve i had was it was delayed for PC... I hated that!!!… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Lost vale was great, soul cairn a bit boring, the other missions revisting old haunts for veterens so-so. Plot wise, characters and new equipment a bit of a let down.The trailer for Skyrim was true to the game, The trailer of Dawnguard was amazing but the DLC is a bit of anticlimax.… Expand

Skyrim is a great game, and this is great DLC. Most of the Negitives so far are based on Price. I don't mind dropping 20 bones for more of this awesome game!

This review contains spoilers. Dawngaurd was really not that bad. It was definitely not the best. This should be 15$ rather than 20$ but it has new weapons. I love the crossbow, and the dragon weapons. What I don't like is the barren soul cairn, and the barren pilgrimage with the water vase. It need more action and more enemies at certain parts. I did though like the Harkon Great Vampire Boss Fight. It made me feel like the power of the sun was in the bow and I was using it to defeat one of the greatest vampires ever. It need more though. It was not a bad 10 hours I spent but could be better. Is it worth the money? Depends how much you love Skyrim. If you just play Skyrim every now and then then buy it on a steam sale but if on X-Box 360, then you will need to play and like Skyrim quite often and be in to the game. To my opinion, I think this DLC was good.… Collapse

It's nice to see that todd Howard thinks the PC UI for Skyrim and the levelling system are fine. Rather than fix what is broken he is out milking the Skyrim cow for more money from half-witted gamers who get weak at the knees if you put their skill trees in the stars (and don't notice how poorly designed those skill trees are). Skyrim was a pretty dull feast of copy-pasted filler. But that didn't stop hordes of lonely young men mistaking it for love (of a prostitute). The game got unwarranted rave reviews from all and sundry and sold, who knows how many copies (Zenimax is keeping the number under their hat, probably in the range of 5-10 million copies). You would think with all that damned money Zenimax would have given some back to Todd Howard and the copy-paste team and asked them to FIX Skyrim, to improve it to extend it. But NO! If people are dumb enough to throw both their money and their dumb-assed 10/10 scores to Skyrim, Zenimax figured it was fine to 'screw the fools some more.' Which they did here. For a price of around 33.33% of the Skytim game you can get an expansion that has about 1% of the content. Like everything else in the game it borrows liberally from the copy-pasted environments and totally lack-lustre writing that has bored you to death in the tedious realm of the Nords. Its about as boring and uninspired as the rest of the POS game and it does nothing to fix the consolised UI or the horrible levelling system. Since plenty of fools are fool enough to buy this DLC unquestioning, and even score it score it yellow or green scores (INSANE!), you can all expect more useless over-priced DLC FOREVER and a day. If you do not protest at this garbage with a score bomb score of 0-2 out of 10, the bastards in publishing will just keep on offering more trash like this, at sky-high prices. Wake up, foolish consumers. This is poor design AND terrible value for money. Wait for the GOTY edition on sale fools! Red score this trash! Shame on Todd and the copy-paste team. Out there whoring for Zenimax rather than making the game they should.… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Fine for a DLC. Dawnguard story line is fine but not the best. Some places like fort Dawnguard, castle Volkihar and Forgotten Vale are nice other than that every other places are nothing but a waste barren land. When first time I played dawnguard it was nice. Then I tried to play second time it was terribly boring. This dlc is best for someone who actually love skyrim very much.… Expand

Just i have ambiguous feelings. The implementation is good. there is a companion who is living after skyrim companions who are dead. the conversations are good there are a little likeness than FNV. But the lore, story, huh. So sure Bethesda tried to build new"lore into base lore but it is a near same than awfull last some Underworld movie. and it give feeling again "Iam the GOD" . And true there are zones for hit and miss. Just i havent finished this dlc yet but i dont believe it will change my opinion. So summary we can applaud because Bethesda heard some criticism for Skyrim. But i wrote a critique to skyrim and i was worred because of lore. Seem it wasnt baseless.… Expand

It's no Shivering Isles in terms of quality or content, but it's no horse armor DLC either. It's decent, it provides some motivation to try out a vampire character if you haven't already, and it gives you an excuse to go back to Skyrim. As long as you don't expect a mind-blowing DLC at a bargain price, you should be satisfied.

I like the base game very much. I have no idea whether or not I like Dawngaurd DLC. Dawnguard is full of MAJOR quest line stopping bugs. After I was turned into a vampire(one of the first steps in that quest line) no one but the guy who turned me would recognize me as a vampire. This prevented me from progressing in the quest line. I over-rode that step with a code I found online only to have one of the steps mess up a short time later in the quest line to keep me from progressing. The same issue occurred for two pre-existing charectors I had so I made a bran new charector and tried again. Guess what? Same thing happened with the new charector. I wrote to Steam but of course Steam doesnt care if they sell broken games. I wrote to the game support...three times. No reply. They dont cover the issue in their "common problems and answer" pages but the problem is rampant according to what I found all over the internet after a random search. Dont buy this mess and if you do, dont say you werent warned....… Expand

Well, to start off with what I disliked.
I see Skyrim as one of the best single player RPGs ever released (besides DA1, but I still see that Skyrim gives you more options and different pathes). The huge downside is the amount of bugs in the game, which never got fixed. This did not change in Dawnguard, and really sometimes kills the fun of playing. In example, on some bugs you have to exit Skyrim and wait 24 hours (real life) for the bug to be gone. That's not the kind of quality I expect.

On the other hand, the DLC has been pretty fun. I enjoyed the hours of gaming through there a lot, the new characters, the new areas and so on. On this side, it has been pretty decent. Just, the content was (considering the price) little. Playing through the whole DLC (both sides) took me ~10-12 hours. But still, fine enough - and new Skyrim content.

In the end, if you liked Skyrim and spent hours, days, and probably weeks in the virtual world Bethesda created, you'll have your time and fun with the story. There are a lot of new opportunities to improve your character, and a lot of things to explore and do in the new content. Playing through does not include all side quests, I did not look at them yet, because I first had to re-roll in skyrim (new pc - didn't backup save games :D).

A little thing which I missed is the reference to being dragonborn. I'm just the vampire or vampire hunter, the relation to the original game was completely lost. No conversations about who I am, that I actually did slay Alduin (except once, Durnehviir did mention I did slay Alduin), that's not what I expected. I felt completely unrecognized, which should not be the case. Depending on my progress in the main world, there should be possibilities for different answers and dialogs.

Overall - it's a green rating. I did get my fun out of the game, but I am a bit annoyed of the bugs (especially quest bugs where you can't continue for 24 hours, which very likely means 48 hours if you're working and had a bad timing). The story is .. well, Elder Scrolls, and almost epic. I've got mixed feelings about the DLC, which is most likely due to the bugs, the rest was not 100, but probably 85-90 % of what I would have wanted to see.

It's good work, especially by the quest and game designers. Development and polishing should have been taken more care of.… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Alright, for DLC this is going to be taken as an expansion to Skyrim. Initially, the changes are subtle. New Quests, new factions, new Skills for Vampires (Or the lord, in this case) and werewolves. All of which is not what makes this a nine in my books. Let's take vanilla Skyrim (A game which had immersion but lacked the 'OMG! PLAY MORE!' factor for me) and then add a character which made me want to side with the Vampires and explore their lore. Hell, the end was... cut short... it just needed an extra hour.… Expand

not perfect, but the best dlc i have played, definitely better story than the main storyline and nice additions to the main game - must have for skyrim fans

For PC I can not see the point of it really, we have better community mods for free that cover most of the stuff in the DLC, apart from a new branch of story based mission is there any need for this DLC not to be free on PC? I say nope.

Need more Skyrim? Look no further. I wasn't impressed with the decision to focus on vampires with this DLC (in hindsight surely Dragonborn should have taken precedence), however the opportunity to become a vampire hunter, hang around with a pair of armoured Huskies and the disembodied voice of Laura Bailey (Serana) quickly changed my mind. Dawnguard isn't essential but I found it worth the experience Ancestor Glade (moths) and Forgotten Vale were incredible.… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Most of the reviews on Dawnguard criticize the expansion for its price. I bought it during the 2012-2013 Steam Holiday Sale for about 6 USD, and I would say this is expansion provided the best Skyrim experience I have ever had, and this is coming from a person who did not enjoy Skyrim. The fact is that this expansion provides an excellent experience for the price I paid, with epic set-pieces and locations that were vastly superior to the locations in the base game. For example, I was amazed at Fort Dawnguard. Unlike the rest of Skyrim's pitiful little cities, castles, and forts which have 2 meter high walls that can't even be accessed, Fort Dawnguard was an actual fort with actual accessible walls at a massive scale compared to everything else in Skyrim. It was the type of architecture that I was expecting in Skyrim in the first place. The expansion also adds locations such as the Forgotten Vale and the Soul Cairn, which I had lots of fun exploring and looting. Both locations were huge, and had some beautiful scenary, such as the Inner Sanctum of the Forgotten Vale. The dungeons and other areas were also much more interesting than the boring and repetitive locations in the base game, and were a welcome change of pace and style. Not to mention the fights and enemies are much more cinematic in this expansion. The fight against the vampire snow elf for example was extremely well done, and was always something that I fought Skyrim lacked, proper boss battles with a sense of resolution and accomplishment instead of "boss" characters that immediately attack you and then just randomly drop down and die. The addition of huskies and armored trolls were great. I mean, armored trolls! The crossbows are also excellent weapons, and I loved using them throughout the Dawnguard quests.

The narrative of the Dawnguard questline is superior to the other questlines in Skyrim. Serana was a great character, and progressing through the story with her created a questline that I actually cared about, unlike all of the other boring questlines in Skyrim where I am given no motivation and almost every character is introduced briefly and then thrown away, forgotten forever after only a single quest, and never given any depth, backstory, or sense of being anything more than just a character.

I could go on, but for 6 USD, this was an excellent experience. This was the experience that Skyrim should have been, but wasn't. If anything, the original Skyrim was the game that had an unjustified price.… Expand

This DLC is great if you love running all over the game world doing nothing but being some person's errand boy. The main reason I played this DLC is for new loot and money, what else matters? In this story line, there is a severe lack of depth, purpose, and reward. The whole time, the suspense was building up to, "Hey, there must be something BIG at the end!" But after finishing the story, you get left with your hands empty, and your mind wondering, "Is this it?"

This DLC is not worth $20.00 if you want my opinion. You will probably get about a day or two worth of extra game time, and a few new things to try out, but other than that, it was pretty worthless.… Expand

66 meta rating? That's it? This DLC is FRICKIN AWESOME! $20 bucks it's worth every penny, hell its a steal at that price. The story is awesome, the followers are 2nd to none other in the whole game. Serana, Valerica, Hell dogs, german shepards, armored trolls. Content that lasts. There are so many free mods made for Dawnguard on the steam workshop. The Castle (Upgrade with free steam workshop mod's like Caslte Volkihar Redux)...

I give this mod 10 out of 10 because that is what it is. It's like a game within a game, everything you would expect from a DLC and way more. I can't udnerstand why anyone would say otherwise about this DLC. Now dragonbourne, that is a different story, I felt jyped on that one.

For me, skyrim is the ultimate game, the best made so far ever. Dawnguard just brings all that much more to the table of an already delicious feast.… Expand

A worthy addition to Skyrim and a great DLC (not expansion) overall. As an expansion, compared to TES IV Oblivion's Shivering Isles, this one falls short. The new quests and items together with the new adventure add some good bits to the game. I do have to mention though that postponing this expansion for PC and PS3 in favor of the XBOX 360 was not a welcome move from Bethesda as it alienates their fan bases using those systems and is just plain disrespectful to the PC folks which fought tooth and nail to make TES the greatest FPS RPG adventure on Earth.… Expand

Dawnguard is really only for your hardcore Skyrim fans. If you're only planning on playing this game 1 time through or whatnot, you probably shouldn't get it. I'm not a fan of all the underground playstyle, and that's all this really is. I would recommend this under 2 conditions: 1) It's on sale (At least 33%) or 2) You really enjoy the game and want to play everything in it. If you're stuck in a bind between buying this or Dragonborn, for the love of Talos, go with Dragonborn.… Expand

Let me start by saying the storyline in Dawnguard is amazing. Characters too. But that is about it. Th rest is very disappointing, very linear and I feel like it was made just so Bethesda releases something. I couldn't care less for this DLC.

i was dissapointed in this. the trailer made it look good but the actual product wasnt. its good for modders though if you can get it to work with the game in creation kit

I'm still trying to figure out why the PC version is rated lower than the Xbox 360 version. The PC version is superior in every way is it 'cause Xbox got it earlier or is 'cause mircosoft payed you off, But all in all its wonderful

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I quite liked Dawnguard, it has the charms and content to make me want to play it again and again. You are thrown into a typical "Human vs Vampire" story, going up against a legion of powerful vampire lords. It's got some new features, Crossbow, Vampire Lord powers (which don't have the lethal life drain in sunlight as was in Oblivion), Skill trees for the Vampire Lord AND Werewolf forms. Now in terms of storyline, it ends up at the same ending no matter what path you choose, there is no loss of achievements (if you are an achievement hunter). You take the Dawnguard side, you end up on the same path, you take the Vampire side, you end up on the same path, and so on. I went with the vampires (for the nice powers) on my first playthrough, I sided with the Dawnguard on my second playthrough and surprise surprise, *SPOILERS* Got the power anyway.

I would say the trip into the new areas and discoveries were very enjoyable to me, the rewards were very good and it did meet the price tag, to me anyway, I don't know about all of you. The Legendary Dragon is also introduced, a nice way of saying play more and get an achievement, new level of enemy blah blah blah.

I thoroughly enjoy this, infact I might even indulge in another playthrough soon when I get the time. 9/10 from me, some complain about the price. I got it for €10, retail :P Thank you for reading my review and enjoy … Expand

So Skyrim was a bad game to start with and needed to be patched in many ways and here comes their first DLC. And let's face it, this was just terrible. The quests was medium length and after I finished the Dawnguard's side I decided to try out the Vampires' side. So I join the vampires and after the first quest it is basically the same thing. The storyline was also down right crap. I than hoped the side-quests could redeem it. And I soon found out there was one and it wasn't very good to start with. Overall this feels just like Knights of the Nine the Oblivion expansion. Takes place in the same place and is very short. So being priced at $20 is not okay! It is worth maybe $5-10 dollars not $20.… Expand