A little information first..
These are my opinions and I believe they are justified even if subjective. Please don't flame if you disagree. If you feel the need to publicly disagree, please state why you do and explain your reasoning. I'm always up for discussion and will respect your opinions even if I don't agree with them.

A bit of background:
I have been an Elder Scrolls fan since 2002 at age 13, when I went to best buy to buy a new game for my Xbox with a gift card. They didn't have the game I wanted, and I ended up buying Morrowind based solely on the box art and description, it seemed fun. I knew nothing about it or that it had only come out about 2 months before. I was absolutely blown away by it. I probably spent 300ish hours playing TES-III during the summer of 2002. Then I learned of the PC expansion coming out, so I got the PC version, which in-turn got me into PC gaming (DAMN YOU BETHESDA!). A few upgrades, a lot of stress and frustration, and a couple days later and I had it running with a bunch of mods. Loved it. Loved Mournhold. Loved Bloodmoon. When I heard about Oblivion I couldn't get my hands on enough info about it, I salivated away and discussed on the forums and debated and embellished and fantasized. In the end, while a lot of fun, it never lived up to the hype or nostalgia. Don't get me wrong, it was great, but just not the same. So when I found out about Skyrim, I refused to go to the forums, to watch trailers, or read about it. I wanted it to be as new and fresh as possible. I'm extremely glad I did that. Even during my first 100+ hours of playing, I stayed away from Skyrim-nexus and the forums, and only used TESwiki a few times when really stuck. I would recommend this type of play thru for everyone. And while I haven't done everything in the game by a long shot, I have done enough that I feel it's safe to come back to the forums and the modding community to enhance my experience further. I have beat the main-quest, the thieves guild, the companions quest-line, the college of Winterhold, and many many side/misc. quests. So here, after that, are some of my opinions of the game. I'd like to know if I'm alone or not in these opinions, and if I am in the majority, I hope the development team reads this and takes it to heart for future games and expansions. So here are my pros and cons:

Pros:

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• Environment/Exploration. The world is beautiful and immersive, far more than the previous two games. The inclusion of non-aggressive animals makes it so much better and more realistic. The world is gorgeous and really fun to just go off and explore (something I find myself doing a lot).
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• Political intrigue. One of the things that made Morrowind really interesting and added re-playability were the Three houses. You could only join one, and there was conflict between them, leading to fun game-play and interesting (and good IMO) story telling. Not to mention the almsivi temple vs the imperial cult. We get some of this with the Legion vs. Stormcloaks and it was done really well I think. I enjoyed it. Also, the Political "Peace summit" you can do was one of my favorite parts of the game.
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• Being the Hero. It's great to be the main focus/legend again. Like the Nerevarine before us. While Oblivions' main-quest was alright, I didn't really enjoy just being an errand boy for Martin. In games I want to be the hero, not the Heroes lackey.
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• Random events. I loved this part of the game! People randomly coming up and telling me to hold an item, or being able to free/help certain prisoners. Hearing guards talk about rumors and having it start a quest (sort of done in Oblivion, but executed much better in Skyrim). Random brawls (so fun). I could go on and on...
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• The carriages. Sometimes it's the little things you guys. I love exploring this game but sometimes getting to a new city half way across the map is daunting! Hiring a carriage is great, and the nostalgic feelings of hiring a stilt strider make it even better.
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• The insane amount of side-quests. Most of them so far have been fun and interesting and add a lot of immersion to the world and/or story. I'm still amazed at the amount of them, and that it is all voice acted.
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• The amount of voice actors. Not having one voice for each race/gender is great, it adds more to the ambience and immersion. Good Job!
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• All the other things this game has been praised about, I don't really need to repeat it all of it. It really is a great game to me.
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Cons:
These are the biggest and most glaring to me, and while not many, they're a big issue for me when it comes to TES as a series and my enjoyment and immersion in the game.

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• Lack of weapon variety. This is over 200 years since TES-III... where have all the crossbows gone? Yes, I like that they have fleshed out the weapons they have, but there are ONLY THREE TYPES! (Six if you actually split one-handed and two-handed), it would be one thing if the fighting was literally visceral and amazing, and while it is much better than TES-III and slightly better than TES-IV, it's still just bashing enemies again and again... why couldn't we have more weapons again?
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• The perk trees. I like some of the perks, but having to get some perks we don't want just to get some we do is lame. The requirements are fine, but don't make us have to get a bad one (one we don't want) to get to a good one (one we do want).
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• No Faction ranks or requirements. I love the factions, and I love how it's been updated (A mages college that actually teaches me spells instead of telling me to deliver letters? Awesome), but what happened to the factions list? The ranks? The requirements to advance in the faction? It's little things like that that made the factions even better for me. It's aesthetic and doesn't do much to game-play but it's just nice to see yourself advance. Factions felt too easy to get through this time around. At least you had to do a certain amount of stealing in Oblivion before you got special jobs for the thieves guild, no such requirement this time around. Getting through the whole main thieves guild quest without having to do any of the "jobs" felt a bit lazy in my opinion.
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• Leading factions. Still doesn't feel like much of an achievement being the leader, few NPCs recognize it and fewer still treat you differently. The companions should NOT still be saying "I don't know why they let you join." after you're the leader... it ruins any sense of immersion and feels off (like a characters voice changing between dialogue).
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• All Open Factions. There was a part in TES-III where you had to decide loyalty to the thieves guild or the fighters guild (though there were ways to do both). Being a jack of all trades is fun, but being the leader of all factions would be like being the President of several companies and/or head Dean of several universities... Who the heck has that much free time or energy? I wanted to see some more intrigue between factions.. maybe the thieves guild having conflict with the legion/stormcloaks or companions, or any Faction vs. Faction story telling, where you have to pick a side (besides legion/stormcloak). Something that was more akin to a rivalry/territory war than political. It would have been more interesting and added more depth, not to mention re-playability.
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*side-note...
-Not really a con, but this is the land of the Nords! Daggerfall had were-boars, so I would have LOVED to see were-bears in Skyrim! Ah well...

*Edited for typos and clarity.

Excellently written review.

I agree with your observations pretty much across the board (150ish hours into various characters here).
The guild quests were all short and terribly unsatisfying, especially when the silliness that you mentioned where you still get people acting like you're not the freakin' boss.

Very very good review. Now this is constructive feedback.

Good job sir!

Best review I've seen so far, completely unbiased and not stained by that [censored] nostalgia. I agree with most of your statements, and yet you managed to avoid a nonsense rant.
*clap*

Completely agree really. Very well put.

It would be glorious if skyrim had the same weapon setup as dark souls. Weapon types, very different animations for each kind of weapon. In my opinion the combat system of the elder scrolls games isn't bad, but a lot of weapons have always felt the same.

The fact you have been untainted by forums leading up and after really shows.

Really well summarised points and not over-written. :thumbsup: from me.

You've played 100+ hours and haven't hit a single broken quest yet? So far my broken quests were all misc quests that didn't give a reward, or didn't get cleared. Had the Twilight Sepulcher revert to a weird state but didn't affect the function. Had some game freezes on loading screens. Enjoyed my time so far. But I think I'll put the game down for a while after having an awesome "radiant ai" moment doing the main quest after restoring the thieves guild. Anyway, I think I'll just wait for the patch that fixes this 1.2.Fail patch and leave the game to collect dust with a mostly happy heart.

(XBox)

well done landstrider :bowdown: good job keeping it plain

I agree 100% about the factions part... Every bit of it.

Good read and excellent points. Being thane in every city and the leader of every faction is a bit weird for sure. Conflicts between these would give more value when you start the game from scratch again.

Nicely written review (although I skipped your little "background" info). I must say that I agree with pretty much everything you stated here. While, I haven't really had much complaints about the perk trees, I definitely would have rearranged them at least.

Agree. I love this game to death, but it is not without flaws!

The faction leader deal is bizarre in my opinion. Like, I am the Archmage for the College. Then I decided to try and reach out to Winterhold.You know. Rwebuild them and repair things. Its like the whole town thinks I am just some schlep! I am the Arch Mage now!

Your post sums up my opinion down to a T.

One of the biggest disappointments in this game for me was how much of an easy ride I had through the guild quests. At least in Oblivion I felt like I had to earn the respect of Christophe in the thieves guide before I could advance, however, in Skyrim 1 quest in and guild mates are already telling me about the great things they've heard about me... and the entry task was hardly challenging. This was slightly different in the companions as you were called a 'whelp' a few times but that didn't last long at all and without merit. As stated, it just felt too rushed.

Thanks for an excellent review. This is exactly the information that I've been trying to gather from 500 assorted posts about each of the specific details in question. As a former and current player of Morrowind, I was strongly debating whether or not it was worth rewiring the house to get an internet connetion to the upper floor where I have my gaming PC set up (due to the annoying Steam requirement). Reading your review, I gather that the reasons I did not enjoy OB after about the first week are still a problem in the new game, and that Skyrim, like Oblivion, would soon migrate to "the bottom drawer" where all of the old games I don't play anymore end up, while Morrowind has sat prominently in "the short stack" of games I frequently play, right next to the PC, ever since I bought it over half a decade ago.

Bethesda has never really been good at status recognition when it comes to fame and guilds.
The questlines are really short in Skyrim. I missed how long each questline was in Oblivion and now can complete it in like 3 quests.

Very well said. I agree 100%.

*applause*

It really pissed me off when I was the leader of the Thieves guild and someone was still saying "What do you want? You've caused enough trouble as it is".

That said though, I think the Dark Brotherhood was much better this time around.

Thanks guys, always nice to get some feedback. I'm glad I'm not alone in my opinions on the factions and that you are showing your agreement here too. Hopefully Bethesda takes notice and strives to give us more of what we want next time.





Honestly, I've encountered very few quest bugs. I had to open up the console once to toggle collision to finish a thieves guild quest, and there was a misc quest in Winterhold that never gave me any journal entries, but that was it quest-wise really. There were definitely a few bugs and glitches here and there, but simply closing to the desktop and reloading made most go away (clipping issues, missing textures/models, random invisible NPS that were just clothes walking around, and twice a random floating NPC). I'm sure there are more that I just didn't notice or haven't encountered yet, which is nice, because it seemed I ran into every bug there was in Oblivion (though not so much with Morrowind, oddly enough).

I agree completely with DrowElf. When i first started playing Skyrim I kept telling myself "this is bringing me back to morrowind all over again." Sure the game has its flaws....but it is truely amazing to me.

I totally agree man, keeping it fresh and staying away from media let me start it pretty much free of speculation and hype (It'll never be as "new" an experience as with Morrowind when it comes to a TES game, but it was still nice).