I realize of course that they are graphically inferior, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying a good game. I still play my nintendo from time to time and have a blast. So my question is, are they fun or do the dated graphics and game play bog them down?

The biggest problems with the first two ES games are the glitches and the design problems. In other words, they're excellent games, but they have a handful of pretty glaring issues.

I only tried arena and daggerfall after playing skyrim, arena i found to be veerrry frustrating and hard to get into but i found daggerfall really easy to get into once i changed the controls to what i liked. Im really loving daggerfall at the moment.

It helps to compare against games with similar restrictions. The playable screen size for Daggerfall was 320 x 200, which is not that different from a modern smartphone. It holds up well against that class of games, even if it can't match a modern console or PC game.

A strong influence of why I loved Daggerfall so much was being creeped out by what I saw, and being genuinely unsure of what might happen to me if I took a certain action. Often times in more modern games you can reasonably tell when you can beat a creature in combat. That's less often the case in Daggerfall. Sometimes you'll have genuine concern over what might happen that you'll avoid the situation altogether. For instance, there is a certain quest you have to do that sends you against zombies when they're still quite dangerous to you. At that point, they do quite a lot of damage to you, and the fight with them often backs you into a corner and you're lucky to survive if you know what you're doing. Then if you beat them, you walk into a room full of Ancient Vampires and Ancient Liches, some of the most badass creatures in the game. But they're under the control of the King of Worms, who may or may not give a damn about you. Any kind of misstep would mean piles of suffering for you. Ancient Vampires in the game didn't just kill you, they unloaded on you with spells and attacks that kept you reeling even after death, and bouncing from your grave until they were done with you.

And even in a large way, you didn't have a good reason to trust your questgiver in many cases. Maybe you'd solve your quest and tell the prince about it instead of the queen. Different things happened because of that. Maybe you found some great information and told the Dowager Queen of Daggerfall about it instead of The King of Wayrest. You in the end have the choice of being the kingmaker, and weighing how the parties involved treated you in the political situation, you get to see how your pick in the powerplay wins.

Arena is interesting because it is the first TES game. I somewhat enjoyed it, and thats saying a lot considering its age. I found it interesting to be able to traverse all of Tamriel. I liked Jagar Tharn, and the visions. I liked the sneak attacks from his minions. I especially liked the sound effects. There was somethng genuinely chilling about the soudns of ghouls and vampires too. I think if I had discovered it when it first came out (if I hadn't been 5) then I think it would probobly still have been one of my all time favorites. None the less, I plan to go back to it at some point.

Daggerfall is different again. Its... well, its massive. I loved the plot for not being 'stop the super-ebil badguy/monster'. While magical and fantastical, the plot was rather mundane until the latter parts. I loved going from cty to city and meeting the nobles, learning more about them, and seeing the first steps into what TES would become. Where as Arena was standard D&D style fantasy, Daggerfall was the series taking shape. I liked that you could buy a house, that there were ships to sail, that though randomly generated and dull you could walk almost endlessly. Everything felt smother and more sleek, and the graphics arn't terrible even by todays standards. Better than Doom by any rate. Not to mention - dial up the creep factor of undead moans and the dungeons to eleven. Daggerfall creeped me out and made me jump in ways horror hasn't been able to do since the early days of Silent Hill. Also, boobies make everything more pleasant. I mourn that Daedra Seducers are no longer in TES games.

I actually just finished my TES Big-Box/CollectorsEditon collection. Arena, Daggerfall, Battlspire, Redguard, Morrowind, Oblivon and Skyrim. The two I really want to go back and play since I haven't are Battlespire and Redguard.

Blame that on the introduction of 3d actors. Getting that morph to work would be a major challenge. One that TES VI should take up!

I love Arena and Daggerfall, but Im not a graphic demanding player.

Arena is a hack-n slash game . It is too different from all other TES games, and maybe this is something that makes me like it more. An example is that All races / claesses have that unique something, like actual better proficiencies in weapons (Wood Elf for bows, Redguards for melee) or spell schools (Battlemage in Destruction) - that is, assuming the calculations work (no verifiable way for this). Also, you cannot make uber-artefacts ,and this kinda makes me enjoy a lot questing for artefacts. I like its simplicity.

Daggerfall is great in how you can customise ur class. Its the scarriest of all, the initial dungeon is a real test to ur nerves! Both worth trying a couple of hours. IF you decide to, try a High Elf Battlemage with Arena (you′ll use any weapon + cast most offensive spells), and Daggerfall... You′ll have to spen a lot of hours t ogetting used to it, but its worth the experience!