Elder Scrolls Online: Season of the Worm Cult Part 1 - Review
2025 is a big year for The Elder Scrolls Online, as after more than a decade of their release cadence, the team have changed things up, going to a more common seasonal approach. While the Seasons of the Worm Cult kicked off earlier this year, the main content has only been out for a few weeks now. With Solstice calling, we got to exploring this new land, but the new content also comes with a major change to the game, subclassing. Was everything included with Season of the World Cult Part 1 worth the time, or is it just sub-par?
Much like other expansions, as soon as you arrive at the Solstice port, someone clamours to get your attention. Of course, once you agree to help them out, you are thrown into the deep end of a quest that threatens the land and the people that live there. The Worm Cult (or Order of the Black Worm if you want to be fancy) is causing trouble, and the three different factions are coming together, in order to stop them. But tragedy strikes and a cult member sabotages their teleporting in, leaving you to run across the island, to find them and bring them back. This is just the first adventure that has you running across the land and fighting back against the Worm Cult. But before I go any further into that, I want to talk about the Hero’s Return, the games new way of welcoming players that have been gone for a bit.
Elder Scrolls Online is 10 years old and there will have been plenty of players that gave the game a shot in that time and gave up playing, for any number of reasons. Hero’s Return is a way to re-introduce players to some of the core aspects of the game, without needing to go through hours of tutorials. As I had not played the game in a few months, it did prompt me to do it, and I did. I will clarify here that you do not need to do this if you don’t want to, it is entirely optional. If you do it, then you are introduced to Vanus Galerion, a great mage who needs your help, basically it is a way for you to fight enemies in a few arena type areas. Upon completion of this little quest, you get some cosmetic items and a few meals, and you are back at whatever you were doing last. Depending on your skill level or how quickly you readjust to things, it should not take you more than 20 minutes and it is a nice way to get reacquainted with the game, without having any major stakes to worry about.
With that done, I jumped into the new main quest line and as I said above, things kicked off fairly quickly. The main quest line does have you running all across Solstice, or at least the part that is currently accessible and it is a great land to discover. The last major expansion for the game took players back to a familiar area, even more so with the release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, but Solstice is all new. This new island destination has everything you could possibly want, grand shopping locations, long sandy beaches and of course a few nice historical landmarks to discover. The downside is of course the Order of the Black Worm and the beasts that call it home, but that should not stop you. While the main city of Sunport has the usual array of things to do, I really found Shor’s Stand to be more interesting, as it felt more like what an island village should be like. The real reason to explore the island though is for the Argonian ruins, think Mayan and you are on the right track. Even when you head to the island of Summerset out to the west, it still feels like much of Tamriel, but Solstice is something new. Of course, we can not talk about the island of Solstice without bringing up the Writhing Wall, which tends to grab your attention from almost every point of the island. Even when you are facing away from it, you know it is there, it feels like this ominous threat that is just looming over you and it does make you wonder, what is on the other side?
The other major addition to the game now is subclassing, an option that unlocks on your account the moment any of your characters hits level 50. There are some requirements to make full use of this, and it makes sense for what is on offer, it is also nothing that will impact long time players. For those players who are just hitting level 50, subclassing may feel unnecessary, but for players who have more skill points than gold, it is something to spend some time with. The best part about the system is that once you have levelled up two new skill lines, to go along with one from your original class, you are not locked in there. If you decide you don’t like having the Nightblade’s Assassination, you can remove it and get something else instead. Now this is not something I cared about after messing around with it when it launched, but if you were to spend time with subclassing and the scribing skill, you could really create a character that reflects exactly how you want to play the game.
Now it would not be a continuation of a story from the beginning of the game, without a number of returning faces and in that space you are covered. Gabrielle Benele and Razum-dar are just two of the returning faces and they fit in well with the new batch of characters that players get to spend time with. Unlike when these returning characters first appeared, they have gotten a face lift, quite literally as the entire game has seen a number of visual upgrades over the years, including in character faces. I was happy to see them, but even happier to be able to recognise them with their updated looks. Which is a nice segue to talk about just how nice the new area looks, with Sunport being a real highlight, even when it’s under attack. My only real gripe with the look of Solstice is that there are to many places that look barren, and not in a war-torn sense, but rather a just nothing going on.
The audio side of thing is mostly the same as you might expect from the series, there is some fantastic music to enjoy as you explore the world and stellar performances for all the characters once more. Something new here are the Player Response, basically where you get to choose a response to a situation. Much like how it works in other games, you can be angry, happy and so on, but also like how it works in other Bethesda games, it can feel clunky at times. Much of this comes down to the voice actors delivering some weird lines, it is not every option you select, but it’s common enough you will notice it. Given this is the first time they have brought in this system, I suspect that if we see it again, they will refine the performances to flow better.
Seasons of the World Cult – Part 1 is a solid addition to The Elder Scrolls Online, it contains a fun story, some familiar faces and subclassing is changing the game, literally. Where it has issues though is that only half the new area is explorable right now and with the other half dependent on how players come together later this year, it might end up being only half a game for some players. That is an unlikely situation of course, but given that it’s possible, means those who are more casual players, may want to hold off for now. Those are hard core ESO players are likely already discovering everything Solstice has to offer and if you want to do that as well, you will have a great time.
The Score
8.0
Review code provided by Bethesda
The Pros
Solstice has a lot of fun things to discover, even though it’s on the small side for now
Returning characters gives the story a welcome back vibe, which is great
The Cons
Half the island being locked away for now, does limit the available play space
If you are not level 50 or don’t care about subclassing, the new mechanic adds nothing
