The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal Review for PC

The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal Review

When combined with the original game, Morrowind Tribunal's complementary features make an excellent role-playing game even better.

Even though they are becoming increasingly common, expansion packs for role-playing games don't generally offer a rewarding experience for anyone other than the most devoted fans of the original game. By the end of a role-playing game, your character has typically developed great abilities and explored vast territories in order to dispatch a nigh invincible foe in an epic confrontation. Most RPGs offer sufficient closure in this regard, so expansion packs often end up diluting the original experience by tacking on a few anticlimactic quests and offering several new absurdly powerful magic items that unbalance the gameplay. The Elder Scrolls: Tribunal avoids most of these problems by offering an experience that is both sufficiently novel and interesting and yet also integrates well into the Elder Scrolls setting.

The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal has several new, tougher monsters.

Recently, RPG developers have become more adept at making worthwhile expansion packs. Diablo II: Lord of Destruction improved the graphics of the original game, offered new and diverse characters, and concluded the main plot of the series. Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal was even more satisfying, since it offered a lengthy plot that logically concluded that series of games. Those expansion packs were so successful because they sensibly expanded upon and resolved the plots of the original games, while previous RPG expansions had just tossed in a few extra quests that didn't necessarily resolve the main series' plot. Tribunal, on the other hand, makes a compromise by letting you explore its areas either before or after resolving Morrowind's main plot. Since Tribunal's plot ties in well with the lore revealed in the original game, it's a design approach that works reasonably well, even though a direct continuation of Morrowind's main plot would probably have been more satisfying.

In Tribunal, you'll meet some legendary Elder Scrolls characters.

Tribunal is set entirely in Mournhold, the capital city of the Imperial Province of Morrowind. Mournhold and its political intrigues were frequently described by characters and texts in the original game. The royal family of Mournhold was the subject of several books that could be found in Morrowind, and the recently deceased former monarch was a member of one of the three dark elf "great houses" your character could join. Finally, Mournhold is also the residence of Almalexia, one of the three mortal heroes who created the tribunal after ascending to divinity. Since one of the most appealing aspects of the original game was exploring its expansive geographical areas, it's somewhat surprising that the Tribunal expansion confines your adventures to the relatively small setting of the municipality. The city contains the royal palace and four separate districts, each of which only consists of a handful of buildings or landmarks, and the entire area is populated by only a few dozen non-player characters--while the original game had more than 2,000 NPCs. However, there are plenty of things to do in the more-confined setting, because virtually every character you meet plays a role in one or more quests. While the original game offered a fairly free-form world to explore, Tribunal provides a more-focused, story-driven experience, which may disappoint players looking for more open-ended exploration.

The events in Tribunal revolve around unveiling the true nature of the threat spawned by the simmering rivalry between the Imperial Monarchy and Almalexia. The main plot is conveyed through solving quests for one or both of those rivals, and scripted events are used more frequently and effectively in Tribunal than in Morrowind. There are also quite a few ancillary quests, several of which have goals that are more novel than the standard "fetch this" or "kill this monster" quests in the original game.

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Player Reviews

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Viking_1298

7.5
good

Not exactly my favorite expansion but there's still some value in it. Continue »
rohitmitra5752

8.0
great

Tribunal falls a little flat when compared to the original Morrowind Continue »

Critic Scores

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IGN 8.6 / 10
Game Rankings 79 / 100
TechTV 4 / 5
GameZone 8.9 / 10
RPGamer 5 / 10
GamePlasma 7.8 / 10
Just RPG 83 / 100
Cincinnati Enquirer 3.5 / 4

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