I played completely unmodded for the first time in years (since Special Edition released tbh) and it was with both bittersweet nostalgia and amazement that I rediscovered all the bugs and glitches. You'd think that they'd take the time to do some bug fixing while polishing up the game for a new release, especially if said new release is going to break all the mods and fan-made bug patches. But no such luck. I'm just happy I play on PC where I can just bust out some console commands to bypass bugs and solve them manually.
When Anniversary Edition was first announced I read through the official FAQ to get a picture of what the AE would include and what made it different from the other Skyrim releases, and from that I got the idea that Anniversary Edition would be a brand new release. But when release day came I realised that that wasn't the case. For consoles it's a brand new separate game. For PC they released it as a DLC for Special Edition. I'd had the idea that I could keep my Special Edition separate from my Anniversary Edition and thus have one modded game and one un-modded game, but no such luck.
The main difference between AE and SE is that AE includes all the Creation Club content, which is basically paid mods. Since I have never paid attention to the Creation Club before it was all brand-new for me. There are, in total, 74 Creations and all of them are included in the Anniversary Edition.
And man, was it a nostalgia trip!
My favourites were all of the slightly more lengthy questlines:
• Forgotten Seasons
• Saints and Seducers
• The Gray Cowl Returns
• Ghosts of the Tribunal
• The Cause
But basically I also really enjoyed anything that made me go "oh hello, I remember you" from previous ES games (Wraithguard, Sunder, Goldbrand, Shadowrend, Chrysamere, Knights of the Nine...). Umbra was a nice reaquaintance and along with Kaarstag, the Reaper and the Ebony Warrior, one of the toughest enemies in the game.
Forgotten Seasons was completely Dwemer inspired, and I do love everything Dwemer. Solving the puzzles and finding all the pieces to get my Dwarven Crown, and Dwarven Horse (hello, ESO), as well as shutting down the weather machine was very enjoyable and one of the first major Creations that I jumped into on this playthrough.
Saints and Seducers is a series of quest relating to the Shivering Isles DLC from Oblivion. Such a nostalgia trip, but not really made for a low-level character as I found out the hard way. The first Saints camp was pretty close to Whiterun and so I ran over there pretty early in the game and got my ass handed to me on a plate. The enemies hurt like hell, so I resolved to wait to do this questline until I had leveled up a bit, which turned out to be somewhere at the end of the Civil War.
The Gray Cowl Returns was a callback to the Oblivion Thieves Guild, and it was a nice stealth/heist quest that I really enjoyed doing. The reward, of course, was the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal, which I never used because it made all the guards hostile on sight.
Ghosts of the Tribunal was the last CC questline I had left and it was such a Morrowind nostalgia trip, with so many Morrowind items and fashion and weapon styles from the Morrowind game. This questline made me want to pick up Morrowind again. Running around with the cult of Almelexia, killing a cultist of Dagoth Ur and saving the temple from Ash Zombies... My Skyrim character even looked straight out of Morrowind when I was done with this questline! xD
The Cause was the return of the Mythic Dawn from Oblivion. Complete with an Oblivion Gate and a trip to the Deadlands. I hated the Deadlands in Oblivion, to the point where I started to run in the opposite direction if I noticed an Oblivion Gate opening. It was way too repetitive! But for this Creation I ended up being kind of disappointed that it didn't have me run up towers to destroy Sigil Stones. Instead the way to close the opened Oblivion Gate was much more simple. This creation also featured a borderline lore-breaking trip inside an Ayleid ruin. The Ayleids never got as far north as Skyrim, which was firmly Dwemer territory. But they kind of got around it by placing the entrance to the Ayleid ruin far inside a cave system that started in the southern mountains of the Rift. Which would place the Ayleid ruin somewhere in the northern mountains of Cyrodiil... Probably somewhere east of Bruma. I wish this questline were longer, because it felt a little rushed, but it still ended up being one of my favourites.
Everybody talked about the addition of fishing for this edition. I dislike fishing in any game, but I gave it my best effort in Skyrim. The first few fishing quests I completed as intended, by going to a specific location and then fish until I got the different kinds of fish that the quest asked for and then handed it in to the questgiver. But it soon became exactly as mind-numbingly boring as fishing is in any context, and when that happened I turned to the console and just added whatever they asked for to my inventory via console commands and handed in the quest. The only fun thing added by the fishing Creation was the quests concerning crazed mudcrabs. Although the end was kind of disappointing. I wanted something Cthulhu-esque to come out of the Sea of Ghosts and instead it was just a massive spirit mudcrab. Although I guess it was fun to use catapults instead of just peppering the enemy with arrows, and it was kind of fun to watch ridiculous amounts of soldier NPCs get slaughtered by frenzied mudcrabs xD
The farming Creation was kind of fun, but the quest leading up to actually owning a farm and managing it was really just a downer.
I enjoyed the addition of the Wild Horses and especially the unicorn, which gave me all sorts of nostalgia feelings towards Oblivion, and I exclusively used the unicorn after I got it. Even the Dwemer Horse had to take the backseat in favour of the unicorn.
In the Bittercup Creation I chose wrong and ended up with a very short and simple quest that didn't do much in terms of story or content. I read up on it afterwards and honestly, not making a choice at all seems like the best choice in terms of story.
Unholy Vigil was another quest I enjoyed while doing it but the end of it just made it fall flat. Like that's it? We're done? Already? The way to get to the disappointing ending was a lot of fun though. Kind of like a detective story concerning the Vigilants of Stendarr. The start of this quest is a bit buggy though. The Hall of the Vigilants is destroyed after you reach level 10 if you have Dawnguard DLC installed and the letter that starts the quest is originally on a table, but supposed to fall underneath the table... Instead it's stuck inside the table so you kind of have to noclip to get to it. Thanks, Google. Story was awesome. Ending sucked.
There were also so many new houses in AE! Like damn, so many. The first one I used was the Tundra Homestead just next to Whiterun, but it soon became too small. I started to consider building a Hearthfire mansion like usual, but then I came across Hendraheim and used that for the longest time. Until I did the quest Guests for Dinner (which was so obviously a trap) and at the end got the house Bloodchill Manor, which (unsurprisingly) became my favourite Skyrim house ever. And I used that for everything, including the petting zoo added by the Pets of Skyrim Creation. Mystwatch was also really cool and reminded me of the wizard tower house in Oblivion.
In this playthrough I decided to do everything the base game had to offer on top of all the new content. Including all the Ritual Spell quests and all the minibosses. I had done Destruction and Restoration Ritual Spell quests before, but I had never bothered with Conjuration, Illusion or Alteration. I bothered a bit more with them this time around but not enough to get them to max level... Console, here I come. Conjuration was a pretty fun quest. When it comes to minibosses I had fought Karstaag and the Reaper before, though never on the same playthrough, but amazingly I had never fought the Ebony Warrior before. Because he just never bothered showing up during my playthroughs where I got past level 80. He didn't this time either. I jumped around all the hold capitals, waited around, got assaulted by several other spawns, but he just never showed. So I forced him to show up via console so I could do the fight and the last quest I had left. Karstaag is still the hardest miniboss in the game and the only one that actively requires kiting and a stock of healing potions/food and/or restoration magic.
I had a lot of fun playing through Skyrim again and all the new content was definitely worth it. Now it's time to shelve Skyrim for the forseeable future and when I get that itch again the modding community will hopefully be up and running for the AE too :)