Hearthfire is by far the weakest expansion of Skyrim.
I really like the idea of owning a property but it's not implemented very well.
Buying a house with gold and customizing it is fun, but if you want to build your own house, gathering the materials might be very tedious and exhausting. Granted, it's still worth checking out because it adds some slightly important elements.
Final Rating: "Average" ~ 5/10.
I really like the idea of owning a property but it's not implemented very well.
Buying a house with gold and customizing it is fun, but if you want to build your own house, gathering the materials might be very tedious and exhausting. Granted, it's still worth checking out because it adds some slightly important elements.
Final Rating: "Average" ~ 5/10.
I think getting to build your own house in Skyrim adds a lot to the role-playing nature of the game, as it allows players to choose where they want to live of three different options. However, it is stupid how you need to collect different materials and then how weird it is to create the different parts of the house.
A bit of fun, and a cool feature, but a bit too limited to be put behind a price tag. It doesn't nearly reach the limit Oblivion did with it's smaller DLC, but Hearthfire doesn't add much in terms of new content, and the main selling points, that being the ability to build your own house, and adopt children are very underdeveloped.
Kids basically serve no purpose, they stay static, never aging, never growing, they have no emotion towards having a parent who is barely around, and in a series that has basically set it's goal as making every character feel real, and have the player feel as real as those characters, it's distracting how little personality each kid has, and how indistinct they are from each other. Ironically, the new adoption shares a lot of the same flaws as the base games' marriage system. Throw some child beggar a coin, and they'll instantly ask "Can you be my mother" every time you pass them for the rest of the game, and if you accept, they do nothing but show robotic love towards the player, and on occasion give you a gift.
However, it's mainly built on it's house building mechanic, and while it is fun to have a bit more choice in how you decorate your home, it basically is just a standard home, except now you need iron ingots, and stone to build that alchemy lab instead of shilling out 3000 gold or whatever. In retrospect, something along the lines of the Fallout 4/76 building system would be a strong fit, but I do have to say, I am a bit happy it's this way because it's certainly saved us from a generation of videos where people go to their "home" that in reality is just a "perfect" base with no roof or or walls, or anything, just a floor with every workbench in the game on it. I am shit talking you. You know who you are, and just know when I see it I judge you. I hate you, and your ugly base. Build a roof. Stupid.
Kids basically serve no purpose, they stay static, never aging, never growing, they have no emotion towards having a parent who is barely around, and in a series that has basically set it's goal as making every character feel real, and have the player feel as real as those characters, it's distracting how little personality each kid has, and how indistinct they are from each other. Ironically, the new adoption shares a lot of the same flaws as the base games' marriage system. Throw some child beggar a coin, and they'll instantly ask "Can you be my mother" every time you pass them for the rest of the game, and if you accept, they do nothing but show robotic love towards the player, and on occasion give you a gift.
However, it's mainly built on it's house building mechanic, and while it is fun to have a bit more choice in how you decorate your home, it basically is just a standard home, except now you need iron ingots, and stone to build that alchemy lab instead of shilling out 3000 gold or whatever. In retrospect, something along the lines of the Fallout 4/76 building system would be a strong fit, but I do have to say, I am a bit happy it's this way because it's certainly saved us from a generation of videos where people go to their "home" that in reality is just a "perfect" base with no roof or or walls, or anything, just a floor with every workbench in the game on it. I am shit talking you. You know who you are, and just know when I see it I judge you. I hate you, and your ugly base. Build a roof. Stupid.
Games I Like That Everybody Else Dislikes
Adequate. Rightfully the Black Sheep of the Skyrim DLCs, the other two just being jam-packed with incredible content while this can't help but seem puny in comparison - doubly so given the huge depth of immersion in the base game and its other expansions compared to this. I'm not going to say this is bad, like at all. I still dig it for what it is. Being able to adopt is a well-integrated feature, and it gives you a few more places to stay in key areas with greater customization than the base game affords (which is a nice selling point for those mostly uninterested in using mods such as myself). But the customization that it does allow is, as everyone else has already mentioned, pretty simplistic. Definitely not going to shake a stick at more content for this great game, but yeah it could have been more.
Adequate. Rightfully the Black Sheep of the Skyrim DLCs, the other two just being jam-packed with incredible content while this can't help but seem puny in comparison - doubly so given the huge depth of immersion in the base game and its other expansions compared to this. I'm not going to say this is bad, like at all. I still dig it for what it is. Being able to adopt is a well-integrated feature, and it gives you a few more places to stay in key areas with greater customization than the base game affords (which is a nice selling point for those mostly uninterested in using mods such as myself). But the customization that it does allow is, as everyone else has already mentioned, pretty simplistic. Definitely not going to shake a stick at more content for this great game, but yeah it could have been more.
This is actually my favourite expansion. In fact my favourite part of Skyrim as a whole was to get married and have children, and move to a house in the woods. I think maybe it's because I'm gay.
The house building part is all right. And there's always giants about, not a safe place to raise my kids. It would be 5 stars if they would let me adopt all the children, and maybe get more than one husband.
The house building part is all right. And there's always giants about, not a safe place to raise my kids. It would be 5 stars if they would let me adopt all the children, and maybe get more than one husband.