Elder Scrolls Online: High Isle review

Posted by ZOE on August 8th, 2022

Now that Elder Scrolls Online High Isle has been out for about a week, I wanted to give out my first impressions of it now that I've been binging since release.

Story

The story of High Isle is certainly a breath of fresh air, being more grounded. It deals primarily with politics, war, and conspiracies. Breton culture has a heavy influence on traditional medieval fantasy themes. Dukes, lords, houses, knights, nobles, etc. And those themes are present in the story. There is a slight spin on it where it goes into the old old lore of Bretons where Bretons once had a strong connection with Y'ffre and a culture built around Y'ffre. A small faction of this culture and people who still follow it are present in the story. So you'll find nooks of lore deeply rooted in druidic-style themes. The quest hubs and storylines presented in quests were also entertaining/enjoyable. They followed those same themes mentioned above. I believe I know where the story is going and I'm really excited. They're setting up the villain to have depth and dimensions.

New Allies

The expansion also adds in two new allies. One is a Breton Templar and the other is a Khajiit mage. Filling out 2 of the 4 remaining classes. I'm guessing this means that the next allies they add have a high chance of being a necromancer and warden. I won't go into the personalities and such of the companions since I know some consider that a story spoiler. But I feel like they fit into archetypes well and their storylines were entertaining.

Antiques

As with previous expansions, new artifacts for the antiquity system were added. The typical collection here that you see in most of these expansions. Some ESO Gold generators, some furniture, etc. For mythic items there were quite a few added with interesting uses. I wont go over each one, but the ones that have generated the most talk is a belt that makes it so that you can't dodge, but instead generate a large damage shield when you use the dodge button. But the biggest one by far (and one that caused the most drama over people fighting for the leads) was a ring that disables weapon switching. So you only have one weapon/skill bar. To replace this, it gives you practically every standardized buff in the game (Major berserk, brutality, force, courage, etc) permanently. Making "one bar" builds do-able to some degree. I have no idea how/if they are meta though.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading. I give the DLC/expansion an overall 8/10. You'll find a lot of familiar faces in terms of the way the content is designed, with the major thing that causes this expansion to stand out above the rest is the new ToT "mini-game" (that's honestly on par with a full fledge card game). ToT really offered a new way for players to just hang, do things in a tavern, and add some fun depth to the world. While also providing a valuable form of content for crafters and housing people alike. The environments are beautiful as always with influences from the Aegean Sea. The story is interesting and deals with the political friction in the world. If you're a big fan of ESO, or even trading card games, I do recommend this DLC.