Yeah, I agree about the DLC. It was fun, but had a very different vibe from the main story, and yeah it all felt like overkill. As much as it added to the story, I didn’t need the horse armor backstory and the new horse skill-tree. The horse skills could have been useful in the main game, but it felt wasted in the DLC, I barely got to use them. Loved the new map though, it felt so different from the other regions.
Wanting something to be true doesn’t make it so. I played, and I even enjoyed big parts of it (after heavily modding, to be fair). I think it got more hate than it deserved, but in no reality can it be considered a really good game, let alone their best.