imo this is a good example for how dlc should, and shouldn't be used.
the base game is fine, and if you enjoy turnbased, tactical combat, with rpg elements you'll probably enjoy it, although i do want to note that the characters themselves aren't narrative characters, like in fire emblem, but rather blank slate type characters like in x-com 2 which i find essential if a game wants character death to be a viable consequence players will accept. as someone who enjoys well designed "hard-core" game modes i think viable character death(with out loosing story content) is essential.
the game scales enemy teams to your party size, wich prevents you from steamrolling, but also makes combat far longer i always felt incentivised to keep a small tight party because of this, i believe there is some more balancing to be done regarding that particular challenge and game flow. in the "late game" i tend to start avoiding fights to save time... but the obvious issue is that it is verry subjective as to what is too much/long or too easy/short. as a note though the last time i have played was shortly after the skelmar invasion.
my biggest issue with this game is in the way updates and dlc's are handled.
the narrative dlc's are generally speaking fine, besides two imo the pits were completely uninteresting to me because having another arena with more fights with more random mechanics didn't feel interesting to me considering that fights are, at least to me, often more work than its worth.
the other one beeing the pirates of belerion, it is fun in general but since the implementation of the boat is limited to only the dlc area, it ends up feeling like walking and camping with extra steps, and money drains. also you gain boat upgrades by completing the dlc areas quests so by completing the area you will have all the upgrades, which are now mostly useless, since you completed the area, and you will never again need that boat.
i despise such assinine game design.
if you grant upgrades, through completion, you need final challanges that test you at full strength.
dlc's like the tavern and fief offer interesting utilities, but they will eat up your time, since you will have to manage them just like the camp, and you will need to do so every night, or at the verry least you are incentevised to do so
every night.
on top of that when the tavern came out i replied to a poll they made, and told them i was baffled about the tavern and told them "it felt like a money printing animal daycare" and that "it should have been a stronghold instead" should have been is the important part of the wording in my opinion.
now here is the issue with the dlc model as a whole, they sold a product that for the most part cannot be changed, if these were free updates it would have been easy to combine these ideas, and develope the tavern into a stronghold with an inn, a combnined feature with less micro managing and more utility in one tool. but if you change a sold product, even a bad one you set precident that the product you are selling cannot be relied upon.
adding gameplay features through dlc is a difficult balance, its obviously an enticing idea, but if like in this case, the added features cause issues, you cant realy roll them back, or change them too much. if you change things too much people might want refunds, or grab their virtual pitchforks. so with a model such as this adding more and more dlc's you kinda have to live with it that there are problems at the core, that are somewhat solved if you pay for a dlc (early game economy for example) but the dlc's are stapled on in a way that causes new problems, since they werent originally concieved as a part of the whole mechanically speaking.
ending an in game day while looking at the camp is fun, taking a look at your tavern every day is fun too, but once you have to do both or even all three(the fief) every day, the games original flow breaks apart bit by bit.
tl;dr: base game sure if you like these kind of games, dlc's only grab stuff with new regions like skelmar invasion.
