When I sat down last year to write the Intro to my walkthrough/guide for The Elder
Scrolls V: Skyrim I opened it with the observation that the rush to rate the game as
a perfect 10 out of 10 game review score even before it had been released was more
than a bit premature. Even the reviewers who moved as quickly as they could to get
their reviews online did so at the expense of a thorough play-through and, as a
result, failed to take note of the bugs that they did not see because they did not
play the game with the usual measure of intensity and completeness that the process
normally receives.
It turns out that as writers — and humans — lessons are learned from the past; this
time around there was very little rush to review and the scores that The Elder
Scrolls V: Skyrim Dawnguard received were more in keeping with what it deserves. And
yes, there are bugs, and yes, the reviewers took note of them this time around. But
despite the bugs — and there really are more than a few — Dawnguard managed to
secure very high rating scores because bugs and all it is one amazing expansion!
Depending upon your play style there is anywhere from around 22 hours to as many as
40 hours (or much much more if your character is below Level 50 considering that you
will need to get it to at least Level 78 and that takes some major time to do) of
solid entertaining play.
The underlying theme in Dawnguard goes well beyond what most gamers expect in an
expansion to the point that it perpetrates significant — one might even say life-
altering — changes in your characters, and indeed that is an accurate assessment as
it essentially requires each gamer to make what is under ordinary circumstances a
horrible decision… They must choose to either allow their character to be turned
into a Vampire, or allow their character to be turned into a Werewolf.