I admit that I had limited experience with The Elder Scrolls series going into Necrom, the latest expansion to Elder Scrolls Online. Yes, I had absorbed some knowledge about things like the Dragonborn or Dagoth Ur or arrows in knees from pop culture osmosis and internet memes, but this would be my first dive into Bethesda’s popular fantasy franchise. Because of this, I resolved to write my review with two goals in mind: evaluating how good it was as a piece of content and how good of an introduction it is to the world of Elder Scrolls.
Necrom provides two unique new worlds for players both new and old to inhabit. The Telvanni Peninsula is the first area players will explore. It’s an expansive open zone dotted with giant mushrooms, and in its center is the titular capital city of Necrom. Within the city of Necrom lies the realm of Apocrypha, the home of the eldritch entity known as Hermaeus Mora. While the game’s graphics are admittedly very poor (which is understandable given that the game is almost ten years old), the art design for both of these areas are still very impressive. Apocrypha in particular struck me with its Lovecraftian influences shining in every inch of its world. Its green and purple skies, alien enemies and wildlife, and landscapes that seemed to be made from strewn about books and bones all come together to create a trippy and unforgettable environment.
The expansion also adds a lot of content for players both new and old to enjoy. Necrom’s main campaign takes around eight hours to complete, making it a fairly sizable main campaign. Of course, this isn’t counting the multiple sidequests (including two quests to unlock new companions) and two new PvE dungeons for players to enjoy. Necrom also gives players a new class to enjoy: the Arcanist class. For my review, I made my character an Argonian Arcanist named “Bowl: The Lizard Wizard” (I would have gone with “Liz: The Lizard Wizard”, but that was taken) to get a grasp on the new playstyle. The Arcanist class is a versatile and, more importantly, fun-as-hell character class. It comes with three skill trees based on offense, defense, and support respectively: Herald of the Tome, Apocryphal Soldier, and Curative Runeforms. The Arcanist class also has a unique mechanic called cruxes. Using certain abilities, players will generate magical symbols known as cruxes that will be used to power and alter other abilities, encouraging varied magic use to push your magic to its limits. Personally speaking, I had tailor made Bowl to be a master spellcaster from afar before buffing her defenses to rush enemies with a massive two-handed sword, and it made the combat so much fun.
Unfortunately, the main quest of Necrom does not do justice to the environments and new class. To set the stage, the player character arrives in the Telvanni Peninsula and is immediately recruited by Hermaeus Mora, a Lovecraftian-looking eyeball god of fate and knowledge, to act as his helper in stopping a sinister plot to infiltrate the realm of Apocrypha and uncovering a secret that threatens all of reality. This is a compelling set-up for a dimension-crossing adventure, and, to the DLC’s credit, the campaign has high points. The levels that take place in the Apocrypha look appropriately creepy and striking, and there are a few side characters that I quite liked. Scruut, a tiny Eldritch eyeball creature that monitors the threads of fate, who takes the nihilistic view of humans inherent to most eldritch horror fiction and presents it through the attitude and mannerisms of a moody teenager which, I will admit, was a fun twist on a common trope. There is also a ghost wizard voiced by Steve Blum, and I will never complain about the presence of Steve Blum in something. He gives a fun performance as a once-living yet eternally-irritable magical specter, and the campaign would not be as fun if he wasn’t a part of it.
Leramil the Wise, the main NPC of the expansion, isn’t as endearing as the other two. She’s rather boring, mostly serving to deliver exposition in a dry, monotone way before letting you use her portal to Apocrypha. There isn’t much to say about her in all honesty. The main villains of the campaign don’t fare much better. The main antagonists are a trio consisting of a boring wizard that doesn’t get much in the way of characterization, an elder god that probably had more significance to Elder Scrolls fans, and a demon lord using the previous two villains to pursue his own goal of uncovering a secret hidden by Hermaeus Mora. The demon lord was easily the most interesting of the trio as, though he allied himself with an evil wizard and dark god, he still had a code of honor and was willing to aid the player when his companions threatened the whole of reality. I was compelled by his journey to uncover his once-lost memories in part because of his gray morality. Unfortunately, the ending of the campaign where he finally gets those memories falls flat. It’s presented in a very dull, uninspired way and the only fallout post-campaign is Hermaeus Mora, despite being the one that gave you this quest under the pretense that the secret could end reality itself if it was learned, essentially tells you, “well, reality didn’t end, but we’ll watch over things in case it does”. As a result, the entire campaign feels very underwhelming and incomplete.
Despite its weak narrative, Necrom is not a bad expansion. Its new class is fun, its worlds are interesting, and it adds a lot of content to an already huge game. At the start of this review, I had said that I would approach this review with the intention of judging whether or not this would serve as a good jumping-on point for potential new players. While I believe some aspects of the narrative benefit from prior experience with the Elder Scrolls lore, the actual gameplay and world of Necrom feels like a small piece of a huge and ever-expanding pie, and it gives you just enough to judge whether or not that pie is to your tastes. I give Elder Scrolls Online: Necrom a 7/10.
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Related: Reviews by Josh Freeman
I love games and love talking about games. Some of my favorites include action games (both 2D and 3D), metroidvanias, roguelikes, shooters, and Indies.
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