buh

(In an almost striking disregard for the base games mechanics, Plitinius Mero gladly divulges any information I ask, unless it's the topic of the empire, which he will only divulge with friends, after all, secrets and gossip are nothing compared to the importance of basic well known information about the biggest country on Nirn) It seems strange that I’d never bothered to complete Tribunal, but with how badly it is talked about within the community, I guess it’s not particularly surprising. What may be surprising is why I’d bother to review it, and the main reason is so that I can have a more analytical baseline to compare it to when I use mods that alter the DLC, especially its dungeons and quests. I will be spoiling a lot of content in this review, so, if somehow, you do not already know the entire plot of Tribunal, I’ll give you my tldr; Worth experiencing, better than people say, horribly designed, horribly interesting with nowhere to go.

Spoilers ahead!

I guess the first part is getting the main complaint out of the way. For the main one, that the sewers are a tedious slog filled with extremely strong enemies, yes, that’s true, however, this is more a failing of the base games introduction to Tribunal itself. The sewers also, fundamentally, are a boring dungeon, there is exactly one, as far as I experienced, ‘puzzle’ and the rest of the content is basically just a slew of tedious encounters. Though these are the most widely criticized part of the dlc, however, I really don’t actually have much issue with them other than how boring and how central they are.

Dungeon is the word for this dlc as a whole though. That’s what they wanted to fix, morrowinds dungeons, in large part, are small and lack meaningful quest content, so they resolved that by making a dlc basically entirely built around doing dungeons. I had resigned myself to a very poor and unpolished experience, and that was, in relation to the sewers and dwemer section, what I got, empty rooms and corridors filled with enemies that were able to kill me in one to two hits(even at level 15, though I started the dlc at level 1 to be able to actually experience the content early, though by the time I’d reached the dwarven section, I did need to go get some gear from the base game). Enemies are new, but uninspired, little justification is given as far as I experienced it for why there is a goblin army, why beneath mournhold, why justify it in the end, even if it is fundamentally part of the main plot(a city built upon a city, and apparently, built upon another dwemer city, how inspiring.).

The sewers are where a lot of the side quests are also engaged with, and the side quests are both refreshing and really bad. Rewards are deranged, the Bipolar blade stands out as one of the most strikingly incompetent reward placements or balancing I’ve ever experienced(weird implications about the quest it involves aside). A trivial quest that takes about 5 minutes to do, involves no combat, no real questing at all, rewards one of the best swords in the game, beaten only in the dlc itself by the rewards for the main quest. Other quests often at least challenge you, but the rewards are themselves often uninteresting, however, there are some enjoyable quests here. In terms of why they are refreshing, I think it’s important to explain that I really enjoy the density, while mournhold is extremely tiny, it is content dense, quests seem to come at you basically from every angle, in a way that I very much appreciated considering the base games general lack of non-faction quests in cities. Clearly, this was a direct improvement, however, it comes at the cost of making your entire dlc area about 20 buildings total, and then 3 gigantic(for morrowind) dungeons.

Characters in the dlc vary from interesting to irritating, clearly there’s a lot more personality here, and you can feel it in the sheer deluge of new voicelines you’ll experience in mournhold, one quest is even almost entirely voiced. Unfortunately that same quest has the npcs involved in it stand around in a main area for all eternity as if nothing had happened, a side effect of wanting a more ‘alive’ quest in the sense of having an audience, and lacking the willingness to have said npcs move the fuck away from the area after it was completed. Somewhat baffling really given how much space said quest takes.

As for the main questline, I liked it, it clearly lacked development time, and maybe passion, as the interviews describe. I think the final part of the DLC is actually really good, the dungeon has puzzles. The final reveal I assume was both very unsatisfying, and at the same time is built well towards. I do think the imperial side of things is a lot stronger in terms of doing what morrowind does well, which is stories about the characters and political intrigue, but the Almalexia section does not lack drama, it just seems fundamentally unconnected with the imperial side or really the city itself.

Tilesets are genuinely probably the best part of the dlc, I fell in love with the clockwork cities designs, for how little they are used, the impact is strong. The alternative dwemer tileset addresses the issues of the basegames. And finally, the mournhold tileset itself is just undeniably pretty. I had already been a little spoiled in that regard by Tamriel Rebuilt, and I realize now that the decision to restrict those assets to mournhold/Almalexia(the city) itself is a good one. The sewers have a bunch of issues, and it’s strange in that regard, because it feels like they didn’t playtest it, open sections have invisible walls for some reason, it’s not particularly interesting to look at in comparison to the other dungeon tilesets. The underground city tileset is also particularly uninspired, which is a shame, I guess they didn’t really have the time to focus on making the ‘city under a city’ actually feel that way. But it functions, and in some way working through the dlc to actually experience the improvement in dungeon tilesets and layout is something that feels strangely good. The characterization of Alma is interesting, and the bossfight she presents is actually mechanically doing *something* which is impressive for morrowind.

The dlc, maybe fortunately for me(but less so for those who paid full price at release), is actually dramatically short. The majority of the content is found in the dungeons, but, ironically, nothing interesting itself is to be found in them other than goblin clubs and ludonarratively dissonant throwing knives.(Is there genuinely any explanation behind the black dart gang or are they just the worlds best knife artisans hanging out in a cave?)

This is way too long and way too incoherent as a review but I’m not redoing it, ultimately take away the idea that Tribunal had something it really could have been, but for a lot of reasons, was denied achieving it’s potential. Still, there’s glimmers of it, and outside of the sewers and the confusing rewards of the side quests, I had a good time.

Bark and Bite is another short but meaningful experience by Nirnwraith. Again the voice acting was excellent, and while I think there was a single instance of questionable asset use, as a whole, I thought this was good. This one, unlike others, could be comfortably called a quest, there’s seemingly at least two outcomes, and a few roleplaying opportunities.

I’d keep it in at least one more playthrough, and I think this is worth experiencing.

Demon of Dream is an underrated surprise. Despite lacking dialogue, there’s a detailed story here that takes place in a series of unique areas.

The dungeons here are varied in style, and the designs of the enemies are really a shining point for this mod, I had such a good time in combat. Over and over again I felt impressed in this regard, and the dungeons, which are the meat of this mod, are a huge source of that.

I struggle for criticism here, maybe it offers a few too many ‘novel’ things, I don’t know if the new merchant was necessary really, but I guess it’s a nicer way of getting rewards than the usual constant dumping of artifacts. Speaking of which, everything felt appropriately balanced, which is it's own plus.

The lack of dialogue is somehow, I don’t know, convincing? Normally I’d be bothered, but the specific presentation here has this mod seem much more compelling than something like the fishing content. The story is interesting, softly sad in numerous ways, but entirely engaging.

I’d absolutely keep this in further load orders, though I’d be wary of compatibility issues for one of the locations. Give this a go, it’s a strange counterpart to sleepwalking into a nightmare, and the design principles behind both are strikingly different in how they present a similar concept. I’m looking forward to potentially reviewing Gravewind, the authors other quest mod.

The Divine Question is another experience in the same vein as ‘Death Approaches’. It’s short, and very strange. The voice acting was excellent, and while again, I would stress, this is not a quest, it is a nice diversion.

I had no issues with bugs this time which is a bonus, but there’s not much to be bugged.

I’ll probably keep it in future load orders to reflect upon it some more, but it’s somewhat just a forced cutscene, and that could get repetitive and be eventually cut. Definitely worth experiencing though.

Heart of the reach is a very skyrim quest, and it really thrives in that manner. It’s effectively just one large dungeon, and as far as I could tell, very light on plot. But the dungeon is excellent, there’s secrets, engaging encounters, and it very much rewards exploration. It feels so much less claustrophobic than most skyrim dungeons, and whereas with most areas of this size I’d feel exhausted, the unique and surprisingly diverse visuals, combined with the secrets had it feeling engaging the entire time.

Notably, it’s the first mod with a dedicated spider area that I had a good time with. Largely that’s because Skyrim spiders don’t bother me, but also, it was pretty, the enemy designs were cute and in some minor ways unique.

To be somewhat critical, the voice acting, for how little there is, could absolutely use some work in its recording quality, the voices outside of this were very nice to listen to. Also, subtitles absolutely need a read over, they have multiple issues and completely skip parts of the sentence at times.

I feel like this integrates itself pretty well into Skyrim, and has a few unique goodies that, as far as I could tell, weren’t ridiculously strong either, barring the end reward which was absolutely well beyond anything else I could earn at that stage in my playthrough. I have mixed feelings about that, but it also was something you did have to earn, and subjectively just felt very strong rather than gamebreaking.

Overall, outside of the voice acting issues, this is a pretty well polished, charming mod, that I’d say comfortably sits in future load orders, and feels very much like it fits in vanilla, barring some lore weirdness.