Wonderfully written and I agree.

I bet it will be like infamous except with dragons... and a [censored]tier UI.

Having skyrim in hand for a few weeks now I can be certain this is the last TES game I will pre-order. Its sad for me as this was my favorite game series, but with cut-rate release standards and broken crap throughout the game why bother anymore?

Well, you pretty much hit the nail on the head. Everything you said I totally agree with, especially with how NPC interaction is so black and white now, and how most of the loot is totally worthless. Well, I could continue to elaborate what else I agree with you on, but then I realize that I would just rewrite your post.

I particularly enjoyed your description of all the magical schools, as that has been my exact same experience with them. So many of the spells are useless the instant you purchase them simply because they do not scale and the level that NPCs decide to sell them to you isn't very good. By the time I could pick up a higher level ward spell, that ward would get broken instantly. It doesn't help that using wards is practically suicide, as the player is staggered when a ward is broken, making using them far more hurtful than not using them. It seems to me that a mage basically has one option: Conjuration. Destruction just isn't worth it unless you have the time to abuse the Impact perk and have the enchantments to back it up.

its never a good sign if the average critics review is 95% while the average player review score is 10% less...never good never good

Great writeup in the sense that it does a solid comparison and accurately reflects the many things that were lost. There has, however, been a very significant gain - the AI. Much better than any previous game and it makes a huge difference to game play. As for the rest, I try to play around limitations and flaws while I anxiously await the release of the CK to begin fixing them.

hahahaha I thought it was just my awful luck! That being said I found an awesome pair of 50% frost resist ebony boots near a word wall. Thats been the highlight though. :unsure2:

oblivion had awesome deadric quest and random side quest ala through a nightmare darkly or the one where you went into a painting

I think the majority of the average players' review of Skyrim is unspoken. I have a hunch that most people thoroughly enjoy Skyrim.
The majority of people that have to complain about it come to the forums, while the majority of people that enjoy the game don't.

True of any game. Sadly, negativity is a more effective enticement to debate than positivity or being constructive. At least the latter improves once the modders are unleashed upon the game.

I'll tell you what we really gained: Very lively world, lore is nicely weaved into the world so that its very seamless, and better AI.

However, we lost a lot of good things, but in addition, we also gained a lot of bad things. I do not think an almost purely perk based system is the way to go. It makes me feel like I'm not leveling up my skill to get stronger, but simply to get more perks to do individual things. This is especially apparent while playing a mage. My skill literally has no effect on my spells other than a single thing; magicka, which is easily diminished or removed thanks to %cost reduction enchantments. So all that a mage is left with is leveling their skill purely to get more perks. I feel like I'm grinding experience on World of Warcraft. :sadvaultboy:

dont get me wrong, player average of 85% is still a very good grade and all the people that are complaining are certainly enjoying the game...i guess we just hoped some things were better or can't understand why some good things weren't kept/imrpoved...my assumption that player scores are lower than critic scores might simply be that some players are disappointed in some aspects why still enjoying some others...

I just don't want to come on these forums anymore. I remember being here when I first got Oblivion and that was two years after release, so all the h@terz had left. I love Skyrim, but like Oblivion it has flaws, I just think it's strange how you guys can't look at the glass as being half full? I'd find it difficult to believe that anyone here truly thinks that there are more negatives than positives in Skyrim.

So what's the point in spending an hour writing an essay underlining every single flaw? Either play the game and take the positives, or just move on and play something else until it's modded or whatever. Beth don't read these forums, you're all wasting your energy.

The changes to Oblivion were a response to criticism aimed at Morrowind. The changes to Skyrim were a response to criticism aimed at Oblivion. The changes to TES 6 will be a response to criticism aimed at Skyrim. This is fact. Bethesda has stated many times that they DO read these forums (albeit, with the view of developers and many, many grains of salt).

His criticism (and it WAS constructive criticism) was well laid out and very well spoken with supporting evidence and even suggestions. What is there to complain about?

Thanks for the review but it's not really helpful to me. As a non-Morrowind lover who plays less than 80 hours per week, I must look elsewhere.

My thanks to you Faulgor (OP) for this review. Since english is not my first language I could not have put it better than you - rather much worse...

I may have mentioned some other things, may have said this or that differently, but there is no important point missing and I have nothing substantial to add to your review.

I still have Morrowind installed, and Skyrim reminded me - in contrast to Oblivion - sometimes of Morrowind. But when I opened the game with my character which is quite high level, must be the third or fourth play through and I already have most of the quests done, I was shocked. I had forgotten how many spells and enchantments were possible in Morrowind. How many armors, and other items, with different enchantments, and so on...
I was sad to see, that the successors of Morrowind, one of my 3 favorite computer games of all the time (and I started with Arena, Ultima 5, and so on) are badly - sorry - dumbed down. I mostly play mages or wizards in role playing games, including online (Ultima Online Freeshard) or on the table (Warhammer, DSA and D&D).
Armor repairing - which you did mention, and spells which can damage or destroy armor, is just one example. I do not complain the flying (levitating) is no longer in the game, since the engine does not support it, starting with Oblivion - but why not 'Feather Fall' in Skyrim? And so on...

I fear, this is the last game in the Elder Scrolls series I have bought...

Magus01

Wow Magus01, I loved Ultima 5 and started TES with Arena too (on my mother's work computer back in the mid 90s...fun times). Great post (both the original and this one).

My best gaming experience was the vanilla EQ (and then Kunark and to a lesser extent Velious), as it had an immersive open world and traditional class types, with all the fun of horrible balance issues. After that it became way too onerous to play MMORPGs though. But the good old days of Ultima Online and vanilla Everquest are fond memories.

The OP's review is brilliant. I, too, lament that a potentially extremely interesting, diverse and malleable storyline has been changed into a series of linear questlines you CANNOT stray from. Eg. the Dark Brotherhood.

Even the awesome Khajiit design cannot make up for the loss in gameplay complexity, plot intricacies and character design (in comparison with Morrowind, of course).

You can see them browsing the forums quite often actually... and that's just when they're logged in. I'd honestly be surprised if 12 hours go by where a single dev doesn't at least take a quick glance at the forums.

And I really hope they take a good look at this topic. It's a more honest and accurate view of the game than they'll find in pretty much any journalist review.

EDIT: Just as I typed that, a dev started viewing this topic.

Good Review. I love skyrim, but a lot of quests are so bad writen, Didn′t some famous Dev Man quit bethesda after Oblivion? Forgot his name but i think he was some kind of director of something.

Good post Faulgor, I pretty much sign everything You said. The base game is excellent, enthralling even but the weird leveling/scaling/combat strikes back very hard, which means for me half the game lost. I still don't hate this game, I'd like to see it better

I think you were way unfair to Alteration when you said it's worthless.

Yes it's not as good as maxed out armor, but ebonyflesh with 3 levels of mage armor still gets you 300 armor. That's over half the cap. And if you've got dual casting and stability it lasts for 3 minutes (still not as long as I'd like, but a decent amount of time).

To get more than 300 armor rating with heavy armor, you need daedric armor (not easy to get if you don't have smithing) and a great deal of heavy armor and/or smithing perks. Light armor makes it even more difficult.

On top of that you can get magic resistance perks and an absorb magic perk, which if you're a breton makes you basically immune to enemy casters.

Also I haven't had too much trouble with illusion spells not working on NPCs by the time I get them. There might be a problem at the very highest levels after enemies have scaled past you, but if you've got kindred mage (which is only a couple of perks and only requires 50 points) and dual casting you shouldn't have a problem with anything susceptible to illusion.

Amazing review. Almost everything you have said is spot on. I really really despise the idea of things becoming obsolete in RPGs, especially when it comes to skills and perks. The entire Smithing tree in essence is flawed. Really and truly the only things that matter are Daedric and Dragon crafting (only Daedric if you wear Heavy Armor). The time it takes to skip whole tiers of equipment is appalling. Not even crafting, I went from having a starter Bow to a Hunting Bow, to an Orcish Bow, to an Elven Bow within a matter of 20 minutes of standard gameplay. The idea that my Steel, Dwarven, Orcish, and Ebony Perks are absolutely WORTHLESS once I get the next perk tier is ridiculous.

I'm in the same boat as RedScream.

I've clocked in just over 100 hours into Skyrim and I feel this 'review' is more like a scrutiny of its flaws; a narrowing of the scope on a positive only to couple it with derogatory words like however. You make some valid points (many of which I agree with) and your prose technique is spot on, but still, it's all a little too negative for me. Skyrim deserves a lot more credit than you're giving it.

Maybe you can add in more things you enjoy? And if so, deliver the same amount of detail and depth as you did in expressing your disappointment? Cause to be honest, I feel like after reading it, you're unconsciously telling me to stay the [censored] away from this game. Haha. Your vocabulary is rich and passionate when you're expressing dissatisfaction, but whenever I come across something positive it lasts a good sentence until it finds another variant of however. From an objective standpoint, this is bad as I feel your opinions are outshining your statements.

tl;dr I agree with most things you say, but I wish you didn't present Skyrim so lowly.
It's a wonderful little gem, even if it is a bit scratched.

I stopped reading as soon as I saw "dumbed down". I can't take any review that uses that term seriously.

I didn't agree with much of what I read up to that point anyways.

Maybe that's how he feels about Skyrim? I know I do, just about. When the cons outweight the pros for a player, its hard to talk about the good aspects in more than a passing sentence. I've already said what I though they improved on (The world, the lore presentation in the world, and the AI, oh, and I guess I should add the melee combat feels great), but as far as I'm concerned, everything that the OP discussed is how I feel as well.