Fallout 4 DLC Review
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The one completely new thing added in the DLC is the cage. Cages allow you to "store" creatures in your settlements, but they're sort of goofy to use. Instead of capturing a creature and placing it in a cage, you build a cage and leave your settlement for a while, and then when you come back the cage is magically filled. There are different cages for different creatures, and you can catch everything from dogs to brahmin to deathclaws. You can also catch humanoid creatures like Gunners and supermutants.
Sadly, the cages aren't really cages. They're more like big, closed boxes, so you can't create a viewable zoo or anything like that. What you can do is attach the cages to arena platforms, and have your captured creatures attack each other. Or you can build a beta emitter in your settlement, which means released creatures won't attack your allies, but they will help you to defend your settlement against attackers. Cages also mean that creatures of the same sort are more likely to attack your settlement, so if you imprison a few deathclaws, then you'll have to deal with deathclaw invasions.
I guess some people out there might find cages fun and / or interesting, but I thought they were a curious waste of time, and I have no idea why anybody would want to deal with them. If you find cages useless as well, and if you combine them with a small collection of additions that are less than you see in free mods, then the Wasteland Workshop DLC isn't very impressive.
Far Harbor
The Far Harbor DLC begins with you receiving a radio transmission from Nick Franklin's Detective Agency. When you head over to Diamond City to find out what's going on, you learn that a fisherman's daughter has gone missing, and that you're needed to track her down.
When you talk to the fisherman, he tells you that his daughter was always monkeying around with a radio, and that he's worried somebody might have contacted her and lured her away for some nefarious purpose. After searching the fisherman's house, you discover that the daughter started having strange dreams, which caused her to believe that she's a synth, and so she traveled to an island off the coast of Maine where synths supposedly have a safe haven.
This takes you to Far Harbor, the main hub of the island, where the DLC begins in earnest. The island is basically a mini-Commonwealth, complete with locations, quests, and even competing factions. Before the war, the island catered to rich tourists, and so its locations include tourist attractions like a day spa, a double drive-in, and a bowling alley, and there are also a couple of swanky hotels (one with an attached vault). But now the island is wreathed in a strange, radioactive fog that seems to breed dangerous creatures, including giant hermit crabs (which use trucks for their shells), appropriately-named gulpers, and ambushing anglers that jump out of the water and attack you if you get too close.
The radioactive fog is actually the linchpin of the island. It has attracted the Children of Atom, who see it as a gift from Atom, but this puts them at odds with the regular residents of the island, who would like to see the fog go away. Meanwhile, the synths on the island are caught in the middle and just want everybody to get along. These three factions work better than the original game's factions, and they have better reasons for why they don't like each other. You're also given more options for how to settle their differences, which is nice. Unfortunately, the fog is a little graphics heavy, so if your computer could barely play the original game, then you might have all sorts of trouble with Far Harbor, because the fog is everywhere
The quests on the island work well enough. Finding the missing daughter is straightforward, but that's just the excuse to get you to the island. Most of the quests involve the three factions and either helping them towards peace or driving them further apart. There are also a variety of side quests, including a fun one where you have to solve a robobrain murder mystery.
Finally, just like in the Automatron DLC, the Far Harbor DLC adds a new enemy faction -- trappers, who have spent too much time in the fog, and who have gone a little bit crazy as a result. The trappers didn't seem especially difficult to me, but maybe that was just in comparison to the strange creatures you find in the fog with them. But trappers add a new trapper style of armor, so they give you even more options when equipping your character.
The Far Harbor DLC is nice, but it's not great. It's a "more of the same" DLC, which is useful if you're simply looking for more things for your favorite character to do, but not as useful if you were hoping for something that would change how you play the game, or give you an excuse to start a new character. The DLC also seems pricey at $25. That's half the cost of the original game, but it doesn't have anywhere close to half the content.
