Elder Scrolls Skyrim – Dawnguard PS3 Review

Elder Scrolls Skyrim – Dawnguard PS3 Review

** SPOILERS **

The last piece of downloadable content for Elder Scrolls Skyrim arrived on PS3 last week.  Dawnguard was actually the first piece of DLC to release for the game, but persistent bugs and issues prevented it from reaching the PS3 until last week.  Was the long delay worth it?  Here is flydrs review for the PS3 version of Dawnguard.

First and foremost, Dawnguard has some awesome content.  The DLC allows you to side with either vampires or vampire hunters, the Dawnguard.  If you side with the vampires, the goal is to block out the sun so that you and your brethren can wreak havoc on the rest of Skyrim.  Conversely, should you team up with the Dawnguard the task at hand is to prevent this from happening and stop the vampire threat.  Each side has a good amount of quests to complete, and it’s worthwhile checking them both out.  With that said, even if you choose the Dawnguard path, you can still obtain the new Vampire Lord form.

Vampire Lord perk tree.

The Dawnguard DLC offers a number of unique weapons and armor, new spells and perk trees, and followers.  The perk trees are a nice addition; if you’re a Vampire Lord, there are different perks that can be acquired to make you even more powerful.  In addition, for werewolf players there is a new werewolf perk tree that can similarly be utilized.  It’s also cool that you don’t need to spend perk points on these upgrades, in case you’ve already reached level 81 and extinguished all of your perks.  In case you cured your werewolf ability earlier on, you can talk to Aela to get that power back.

Gargoyle’s are a new creature added in Dawnguard.

Now let’s talk about performance.  By and large, Dawnguard performs decent on PS3.  Unfortunately, there are times when the frame rate will drop dramatically.  The only fix for this seems to be to save the game and restart.  When the frame rate drops that much, the game is simply unplayable.  The frame rate drop tends to happen after you’ve been playing for awhile.  Others have complained about the random vampire attacks in cities being problematic, but this can be avoided by fast traveling to an area just outside the city and then entering the city.  Despite these couple of issues, Dawnguard is still a great DLC that I fully recommend.

+ Cool storyline.

+ New powers, weapons & armor, and followers.

- Still have performance issues from time to time.

Review – 8 / 10

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Robert Birmingham is Editor-in-chief at flydrs.com.