However they lack the brain damage the water in Whiterun gives them, Riften citicen are less likely following you into your house telling you the same they have told hundreds of times before.

max out your pickpocketing and strip every guard in the city down to their skivvies. get the master level illusion spell mayhem and invisibility. go into the barracks when it's full and cast mayhem and then go invisible. you will be treated to a wwe style royal rumble where all the city guards all duke it out bare handed in their tighty whities, hilarious!

Nice Town in a lovely Hold. Shame most of the residents are total wastes of space !

I personally love Windhelm.

Yeah sure it has its flaws.

But damn, it is the most depressing and cold city of all, I love it.

And I love walking around there at night time.

But Riften is okay aswell.

Riften is my favorite city. i love the npcs there. and of course the TG.

Honeyside is my favorite house (prefer it over Hearthfire houses I've built). The trees in that area are beautiful.

I like Mjoll, Marcurio, the court mage (forget her name), Balimund and Brand-Shei. Sadly my hopes of ever helping Mjoll clean up Riften are forever gone now.

Riften and Falkreath are my two personal favourite settlements in Skyrim. I love the atmosphere of the Rift and I feel that Honeyside's view from the porch, overlooking the lake, is the best view in the game. Especially at sunrise/sunset.

Well after you survive the barrage of scripted cutscenes on your first visit, it's not a bad place My thief characters always get Honeyside as their home. It's handy that it has an entrance both to the city and out of it.

Even with my old computer Skyrim never had a slowdown problem, and my new computer gets 115FPS with all the high end texture, AA, and injected lighting mods. I have to spawn 100 Legion+stormcloak NPCs to get lag, and thats more of an engine problem. Riften has awful people, but it looks really nice, reminds me of fall season here.

Interesting to see so many people who love it, and so many who hate it!

Like I said, I didn't come to appreciate it until almost a year of playing the game. I think a lot had to do with three things:

1) I started playing Skyrim on a better computer that could run High graphics -- suddenly I could see how beautiful Riften (and the rest of the province) is. Also, since moving to a new computer I don't notice any FPS drop in Riften (and I have DG) -- not saying it isn't there, I just don't notice it.

2) I became thane, and found that the route to becoming Thane of Riften is a bit different than in all the other holds, which made me appreciate the uniqueness.

3) I got Honeyside, and it sold me on Riften. I love that it has a separate entrance from outside the city walls -- no other city house in the game offers that.

I like Riften the same way I love Markarth. The lands and cities are pretty, the people are terrible, and my actions in both of them would realistically cause the city's economy to collapse and fall into anarchy. (As in I kill off the Thieves' Guild and Maven in RIften and release Madanach and kill off the Silverbloods and the Jarl in Markarth, and every single guard in both.) But it doesn't. Life just goes on

That Court Wizard is so freakishly ugly. But that's pretty common for Wood Elves.

I like Riften well enough, but what I like even more is the Rift in general. Hunting that forest and the mountains as a werewolf is spectacular, the way the moonlight casts it's shadows, how dense the forest is, the different coulours you get through the leaves, the amount of game there is to hunt...... My second most favorite forest would be the Flakreath area I even had a den there with my werewolf character, but all in all the Rift is my home away from home.

I think of all of the cities in SKyrim, Riften has to be my favorite.

It's relatively close to Morrowind, so my Avatars feel that much closer to home. The Rift is one of my favorite Holds, simply wandering around through its autumnal forest is a gorgeous undertaking.

I've seen people post on the (supposedly) horrible framerate in Riften, but I have never experienced even the slightest drop in FR on either my Xbox or PC.

Honeyside is one of my favorite houses. It has everything I need, a bit short on book storage, but everything is right in one cozy space and relatively close together. The people of Riften are a benefit as well. Tons of merchants to off-load loot, and the corruption and attitude of the city and populace fit amazingly well into any evil RP (which I run a lot of...).

In short, Riften is one of the houses that I most frequently get... actually, I always get the Honeyside in Riften. I really do like everything about the city and hold.

Well there you go

There were plenty of hours I sat on my back porch of Honeyside, watching the sun set.

Then Hearthfire came out and Lakeview Manor put that view to shame. I moved. I enjoyed Honeyside, but not Riften itself. Too far away from Whiterun, or anywhere else in Skyrim for that matter, and the people are so inept, they let their own water causeways, once used for industry, dry up.

In my current game, the only house I own is in Whiterun. It's the best located house in the game, and when I'm collecting rare trinkets, it's easier to haul them there than it is Riften (though, Honeyside can display them better).

A shame Breezehome didn't have display cases and a mannequin.

In terms of the location of Whiterun itself, sure it's the best located city in the game, but I would argue that if we're just talking about houses, Honeyside has a distinct advantage (for city houses, at least) because it has its own unique entrance, meaning you can ride a horse right up to your back door. In Whiterun, you have to go through the city gates to get to Breezehome, though I'll admit it's not a long walk.

I prefer Vindred hall over all the houses, its so spacious, honeyside is just cramped and dark.

I prefer either Hjerim or Breezehome for the non-DLC homes.

I looked it up ... Wylandriah is the court wizard. I like her because her character has some amusing dialog.

I like to call Riften home. I get no framerate issues, Honeyside is a hunters dream shack, plenty of [censored] to steal and of course the convenience of the TG vendors. Awesome town.