You should try other new games besides Morrowind. But hey, whatever rocks your boat.

Works the same way as the weapon executions, pretty much.

It was how I killed that one [censored] from the orphanage. Grabbed her shoulder with one hand and pasted her face with the other. It fit the moment and quest perfectly. :3

I've seen two so far, one is essentially where you grab the enemy's head and pummel him in the face until he dies, and the other one is a sort of Metal Gear Solid CQC attack that makes you drop the Enemy to the ground, killing them on impact, since they removed the Unarmed skill, I have no idea why they gave barehanded attacks finishers.

OP made some very good points. I do agree with most.

Lockpicking is broken. I have never perked it, yet I can pick a Master lock in less than 5 tries. Lockpicks? I carry about a hundred of them. I will NEVER with any character (even a thief) waste a perk on Lockpicking. EVER! So, why is it even there?

Speechcraft. I use three perks to get the Merchant perk. That's it. I don't need more gold in the game anyway but it's nice to sell off my loot easier by letting everyone buy everything.

The warrior I'm playing now I have intentually never made a potion nor do I pick up any item that is an alchemy ingrediant (except salt since that's also used for cooking). My warrior uses healing potions he finds or eats cooked meat that he cooks. That's it, nice and simple and role-played fine.

Smithing is broken. I ruined my first character by quickly raising it to 100 so I could make Dragonscale armor. Legendary Dragonscale and Legendary weapons = god mode. I had to start over and now I am leveling my main 'class' skills as evenly as possible. Gameplay has become excellent skill-wise.

I had feared before the game came out that the magic damage would be fixed. I had just played Dragon Age Origins for about a year and loved the way magic damage became more powerful as your magic skill did. The fact that Bethesda could not follow this simple example is nerve racking. I'll only play a mage in this game when I am to the point that I really want to hurt myself mentally. Where they afraid that mages would become too powerful? Maybe Bethesda made the best to the choices given.

Bottom line for me is I love the game though. When compared to other games and even other TES games I can say I like this one best (yes even more than MW). There is a lot I would have done differently, but at the end of each day I'm playing Skyrim and loving it.

Yup, I did a few hand-to-hand finishers with one character before he'd hit level 2. They work just the same as the others. I agree that Archery and Destruction should also have finishers though.

I agree with your sentiment. The guilds in this game are an utter disappointment, one of the few areas of the game I am actually disappointed in. The College of Winterhold drops some serious lore mentions but never goes far into it. The rest are permissible but not to the quality and length that Oblivion or Morrowind had. I only hope DLCs add some factional depth and conflict. I find that Skyrim's faction quests whet your palette but do not go far to actually satiate it.

Speech is the other area that I felt really took a hit. Character interaction is all but useless, you are forced into questlines (Daedric, Thieves, etc.) regardless of your moral leaning. Those are honestly my only grips at this point, after 87 hours.

Strange that I never experienced them then. Guess I have to load that savegame again!

As some have pointed out your review is not entirely accurate but then again there's so much you can experience within 200 hours in Skyrim. It is a good and well thought out review nevertheless.

While reading I felt the part about NPCs is the one I could most relate to. It is a shame that such a beautiful and complex world feels devoid of life at the same time because of underdeveloped NPC interaction. The rest can easily be fixed and improved with mods so I'm not too concerned.

Can i just say that was a spot on review, you got some points across that have really hit home the truth (the either you are or you're not logic). I too am loving the short, sweet sidequests very much. When it comes to complex quest writing and character design is where Bethesda falls short.

Skyrim is a beautiful game, and a huge amount of content. Although the quests are on the rails with little choice i find them fun to go through still.

These are just a few design choices that irk me (minor). Skyrim is still mind-blowingly good, and will be a much loved game for years to come.

The OP pretty much summed up my own opinion of Skyrim perfectly. I think this was one of the most honest and balanced reviews of the game so far - very well said. :goodjob:

I think the OP's main point is valid, that Skyrim is about quantized (usually binary) options. This or that, one or the other, etc. Conversation options are especially distressing since often even the options are simply an illusion, the result of the convo is the same no matter what you pick.

I wonder if this is how BGS is retreating from a true open world concept, by limiting options in a world that 'seems' open.

if you think about it, this "open world illusion" is the simplest way to do it...

[citation needed]

- Pickpocketing - can be easily leveled without save/reload in areas without guards. Mines and bandit hideouts work well.
- "What is the nature of his (Alduins) supposed tyranny? What does it truly mean for me to be Dragonborn, how did that come to be? Why do you send me to get an Elder Scroll to learn Dragonrend when we already know that doesn’t work to defeat him?" - please pay attention to what the NPCs are telling you >.> and read some books if you have the time. All of these questions are explained quite well. (note I do get your point, you just picked wrong examples)

Can't comment on alteration and illusion since I haven't tried those yet.

Other than that I pretty much agree with your review. Nicely written too.

Read the post I was replying to before jumping to conclusions, fool. If it was in response to the OP then that would have been the one quoted above my statement. It seems you too are pretty bad at the internet...

This is a very good and balanced review. I havent played as much (by far), but this feels very accurate in relation to how i percieve the game.

In my opinion, the flesh spells should definately be weaker than Light Armor in terms of defense rating, and Light Armor should be notably weaker than Heavy Armor. The only characters that should be able to reach armor cap, should be characters wearing Heavy Armor that's been upgraded with Smithing. In return, wearing armor should give a casting penalty like Oblivion did. And (heavy) armor weight should play an important part in character speed. The current system where all armor types can be pretty much equal (after perk and enchant investments) in terms of sneaking, magic potential, protection and weight is just plain bad.

100% agreed with everything until the character system. I love the leveling system in Skyrim. There are some balance issues for sure, but it's a single player game so balance doesn't play as large a role as an online shooter or a multiplayer RPG like Diablo. If they work out the balance issues (easy, just nerf crafting and increase destruction's damage output) it would be amazing.

The constellation and perk systems are big steps forward I think.

For the record, the DB storyline is great in this game. Not sure it trumps Oblivion's, but it's pretty good. The Thieves guild was great, but I would have liked more stealth missions. It felt like every mission involved combat (or at least allowed it).

For the record, I never really got into Morrowind, but I loved Oblivion.

Dialogue is my biggest gripe with this game. I'm tired of entering a city for the first time and having all gray options in dialogue.

The 60x damage comes from the obvious Orc racial ability, doubling your damage output and lessening incoming damage by half.

I wouldn't say less intelligent in general, but I would suggest less wise. As this group gets older they will long for games with more depth, more thinking required, while at the same time shelling out money to their kids so they can play the latest dumbed down version of 'touch the block with a stick' game on thier virtual 3D headsets.

It may be the best, but its also the dumbest.

I agree with most of what you've written, Faulgor. One thing that I don't:

The thieves guild I thought was pretty awful after the first couple quests. Specifically This pretty much killed my thief character. I had no interest in continuing after this.

I think most of the complaints that I and many others have come down to the fact that this game is part of a series. If this game came out by itself and was title Dragonborn:A Dragon Killer many of the complaints that people have would disappear. However when looking at the game as part of a now five game series its hard not to disagree with some of the changes in this game. Yes Skyrim is an amazing game. Yes it will probably be many people's game of the year. But is it an amazing Elder Scrolls game? I have played this game for almost 100 hours and have been greatly entertained the entire time but in the back of my mind the question is still there.

I see your point. For my character it fit perfectly because she was a Deadra worshipper, and thus I didn't get the chance to explore if there are other options. Sad to hear that there aren't.

I suppose you could just run away and pretend like you said "no". It's not an especially satisfying way of wrapping things up, though.

This is part of a larger problem, however, and that's the utter lack of choice in quests. Not even in an obnxious Bioware, goody-two-shoes/biggest-dike-in-the-galaxy sense. Often I can't even decline a quest. Or when I can it's more of a, "I'm busy right now, but maybe I'll swing back later."