Hey! I've been playing Skyrim for 25 hours, according to Steam, and wanted to give some feedback to Bethesda!

Let's begin, shall we;

Good things:

1. The landscape of Skyrim is gorgeous! Well, atleast for me as I can run it with ultra settings and I'm using a bunch of mods that enhance alot of textures and faces. But the vanilla game looks amazing on its own!

2. Exploration. When I first came out of the "tutorial" dungeon, and heard when Hadvar said that it's best if ve split up, I was very anxious and exited to go and... explore. I went into west, I think, and encountered Pineapple Watch, if I remember correctly (something with Apple, attleast), and was just amazed that this random dungeon had so much depth and story. There were warnings on the walls telling that nobody is allowed to try to steal the bosses' treasure that was at the end of the dungeon. Also by reading the diaries, journals and notes of the other bandits had lying around gave me a hint of some uprising against the boss with the treausre. The boss also had some quarrel with her father who wanted her to get off the path of banditnism, which was cool and added a layer of character to the bandit boss.
My point is, the game rewards exploring with story and sometimes good equipment!

Now onto the bad things:

1. Combat. This might be personal preference, but I do not like the combat. I play on "Apprentice" difficult level, it feels about right for me. There are some horrible difficulty spikes though; I was roaming a random dungeon, and I was easily one-hit killing the normal bandits, and when I came up to the boss, he killed me in two hits. I understand and agree that the boss should be more diffcult than a normal bandit, but still, 2 hits is pretty over-the-top hard. I did manage to beat him by using healing potions and a healthy amount of shield bashing.
This leads to my other point: Combat is quite boring... I use the same tactics for any difficult battle; Shield bash, a few normal swings, shield bash, a few normal swings, enemy dies (enemies occasionally, like the bandit boss I mentioned, simply "ignore" the shield bash and get a hit on me). That's only for 1v1 battles though, but I've yet to encounter 2 difficult enemies at the same time.

2. Companions guild. It was disappointing. I finished it about 1 hour ago and it was quite weird how I was a whelp a few hours ago and now I'm the Harbringer. And guards still think I "fetch the mead"...
I won't go into spoilers about the quests or anything, but there was a certain part that REQUIRED me to do something, and if I didn't do it I couldn't continue the questline.
I hope the other guilds perform a bit better.

3. Lack of choice. Almost everyquest end the same way, no matter what choices you pick. The rewards are also almost always the same. I can't really go in-depth as that would make this spoilerific. Though here was one quest in Whiterun about a few Redguards that did allow me to pick sides, but the reward was the same whichever side you picked. But for the most part, no choice or consequense.

4. No attatchment to "Main Characters". I just didn't care about anyone that took part in the main story... Again, I can't go in-depth because of spoilers but I'd like some more emotional moments or something in DLC.

I won't go over the balance issues as I couldn't care less about them, I want exploration and story in Bethesda games.

My final verdict is 7/10, which means a great game but not one I will be playing (not same as re-playing) for more than a few weeks from now. I'll play it again after a few years when DLC and GOTY edition have arrived.

Thanks for reading and give your opinions!

Sums it up quite nicely. :thumbsup:

One tip is that you actually play the game more before you do a review. 25h isn't much for a game like Skyrim, and one guild definitely isn't much.


I have played for about 80h now, and I still can't write a review yet because I have so much to see and breath.

25 hours is not enough to judge a TES game. This is not Koladootey.

Hence the title, "casual gamers review".

25 hours of play is plenty time for him to tell us how he feels about his 25 hours of play.

To his credit he knows what he likes and what he doesn't and isn't too big to admit some of his conclusions boil down to personal taste.

Thanks for letting us know how you're finding the game.

Azrael
The Nord with the Sword

Also, playing on apprentice really doesn't allow you to really do much of a review on combat. I play expert and don't one shot bandits and get two shot by the bandit boss.

It's good to see a casual gamers opinion. Pretty sure everyone else on this forum is pretty hardcoe. Thanks for the input.

I admit, it might not be fair to review a massive game like this after just 25 hours of game time, but this is just how I fell after that time. And if I do play for about 50 hours more, I think that my positives (landscape, exploration) will get more positives as I explore more and see new sights, and some of my negatives (combat and lack of choice) will stay the same, unless I've been extremely unlucky and only done the most linear quests.

About combat: I play as an Orc who uses a shield and sword with heavy armor. I am level 23. I have most perks in all of those trees, so my combat experience will remain the same, unless I change to a two-hander which I really don't want to use. I'm planning on getting smithing perks so that I can create Dragon armor.

Oh, and Azrael, I'm totally gonna steal your name for my next Character!

I'll give you an even more casual review :

THIS GAME IS REALLY FUN! 9.5/10

People can make a review when ever they want. If this was a Awesome 10/10 review you wouldn't be telling him 25 hours isn't enough.

I agree with everything you've just said, also annoying how biased the game is to heavy armour users. Like 20 different heavy armours and 7 light..

I found a really good looking light armor with my orc, it was called Savers Hide I think, it looked REALLY orcish and cool! Too bad it was light.

Thanks for the review, good to see what other peoples first impressions are like.

I agree with not really connecting to characters, I think it's the lack of 'genuine' interaction, they just talk at you in a very generic way. And they don't respond to any in-game events.

When I crafted my full Dragonplate armor, none of the Companions even mentioned it, you would think they'd be impressed, considering what they're all wearing. But no, they only have one thing on their mind - retrieving objects from dungeons.

There's so much fail in this review:

"and I was easily one-hit killing the normal bandits, and when I came up to the boss, he killed me in two hits. I understand and agree that the boss should be more diffcult than a normal bandit, but still, 2 hits is pretty over-the-top hard."

lol, thats kind of the point of bosses.... there harder.

I agree with most of what you said, especially combat. On expert level using tactics and strategy often gets me killed in combat, while going just berserk on the bandit chief when I have to repeat works surprisingly well. Also enemy bosses are either beatable at a level or just too strong, and if they are strong and I'm too stubborn to let go then most often it's not some brilliant thinking that brings the success but sheer luck ("hey look, that ice troll got stuck" or "that stupid dragon messed with a giant").

As I said, "I understand and agree that the boss should be more diffcult than a normal bandit", but the jump from me one hit killing bandits (and it requiring them to hit me 10 times before I die), to a boss that is 2 shot-killing-me (and it took me quite a few blows to kill him, as well) is quite big. Too big, in fact.

You disagree with one statement in the entire review and there is "So much fail"? I think we know where the fail is.
OP, pretty accurate review even for the short time you have played. If it's adventure and story you are after, I think your rating is going to bloom in time. I found that just when I was feeling the game gave it's all, something cool happens to svck me back in.

"This leads to my other point: Combat is quite boring... I use the same tactics for any difficult battle; Shield bash, a few normal swings, shield bash, a few normal swings, enemy dies"

so don't you think u should turn up the difficulty, if your using the same tricks every time and it works, maybe combat wouldn't be as boring. Bethesda doesn't care if you have trouble with bandit bosses on apprentice.

Why should I turn up the difficulty when I'm having trouble on Apprentice?

My point is, bosses are too hard compared to the normal enemies. I was expecting the boss to kill me in maybe 5 hits, not 2. And I do not see the point in turning up the difficulty as it only increases enemy health, thus making for only longer battles. I enjoy 1-hit killing some enemies, but I want a reasonable challange at the end of the dungeon. I'm not saying the game is easy, as I usually fight 3 normal bandits at the same time, and they can kill me if I'm not careful.

The lack of Moving Trees by wheater (no SpeedTree), Wacky Physics (Out Dated Havok Physics) and no Facial Animations in Skyrim made me gave it that score, heck your char does not even follow a NPC with his head when in a Conversation, he/she is MOTIONLESS and LIFELESS looking directly at nothing showing no emotions at all, also didnt like Acrobatics and Hand to Hand to be partially removed. In all this things Oblivion is better, but in all the rest Skyrim wins hands down, like in deep, variety, story and exploration.

Here is a small Rushed review about things i liked/disliked in 14 of Nov:

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1267305-things-i-personally-liked-and-disliked-about-skyrim/page__p__19227150__fromsearch__1#entry19227150

The curse of enjoying earlier TES games like Morrowind and Oblivion is that I can't stop an endless amount of comparing the things they have that Skyrim kind of lacks (like the beautiful, otherworldly architecture in Morrowind and how I find Oblivion gates much more fascinating than random dragon encounters and lots of nord crypts).

Lucky is the casual gamer that's just arriving to the series, who gets to view Skyrim with a fresh perspective, able to enjoy the game for all that it is without nostalgic comparisons.

Skyrim improves upon a lot in my opinion, but it still has flaws and steps backwards. OP, I think you won't mind the difficulty spike of boss battles as much when you get more experienced and powerful as you keep playing. Always check your HP when fighting a boss and keep lots of potions handy if you can.

Not a bad review at all, you make some valid points and write with some clarity :goodjob:

I think this is possibly my biggest problem with the game: I'm just feeling a real sense of ambivalence (if that's not a contradiction in terms) towards pretty much everything and everyone; 200 hours in with plenty to do and I shouldn't be able to put it down, as was the case with previous TES games, but I'm just having a bad case of "meh" with Skyrim at present. I'd agree with the overall score: not taking unresolved problems like the UI into account, I'd also give it 7/10.

Edit:


This is something that bothers me, too. It may be an apparently small issue, but when my character shows no response at all to my environment, I can't even develop a connection with them let alone anyone else. I know this is a hold-over from the two Fallouts, but I've no idea why they've done it.

You should try them on Master, Bosses are very doable on Adept, I can only imagine how quickly they fall on Apprentice, and no that wouldn't require exploiting or Power gaming.

Also yes the lack of emotion/actions from your character is rather odd, even in Morrowind your character did stuff like look at people, in Oblivion they had idle animations.