Overal a good game and when all the things are put together, it sounds great. Lots of quests, unique dungeons, dragons, total freedom, children, etc
BUT
a lot of those things, when taken apart from each other become average at best. Now this is not a complaint, it's my opinion and you can decide not to agree with it, it's more of an observation. Let's examine each thing carefully :

Quests.
Sure, there are radiant quests but these quests don't differ much from each other. Sure there are guild quests, but they are so damn short. Sure there is the main quest, which you do once and you won't want to do again. Daedric Quests are also a let down, apart from Sanguine. They are also short.

Dragons.
They had so much potential with these, but what do we get? The same dragon pasted to another dragon and called a different name with a different color. The only exception to this is the Frost Dragon, who has long sharp spines, and maybe the green blood dragons, with their different tails. Can't wait for the CK so the moders do an excellent job with this, so much potential cut short.

Children.
1. No beast children.
2. All children look the same, 100% same face, be it female or male.
3. Totally annoying.

Spells.
Only 10-15 spells for each magic school, and only about 4 variations, way to go. Sure they look nice and aren't the 'small ball of magic, just with another color' oblivion had, they look dynamic and better, but choice is always better. Waiting on Midas on this one, or some other person.

Armor.
Great, great, great potential, but unfortunately lost. We have... maybe what? 12 full sets of different armor? They could do much more different armor, I'm sure modders will take care of this though.

Horses.
Slow, stamina runs out in 10 seconds, die easily, bandits attack them first. Fortunately, some moders already fixed some of those problems.

Marriage.
Total failure. Half of the available marriageable NPCs are Nords. Khajiit and Bosmers are outcasted, only 1 for the Orcs and a small amount for Argonians. A shame.

Towns.
Smaller than Oblivion's. Some towns are just plain bad, only a couple of quests in them, example : Falkreath. "Taverns are a great place to find quests" - Todd Howard. Yeah right, 2 quests the most.

Taverns.
Only 2-3 songs, Ragnar The Red, The Age of Agression and another one that I forgot the name of. They also seem awfully empty, with the exception of The Bannered Mare.

Engine.
The awful engine problem... the town problem. When you enter a town, FPS takes a huge hit of 25-30FPS. Not even The Withcer 2 on Ultra does this to me, and even on lowest settings, Skyrim still takes this FPS hit in towns. Clearly an engine problem.

I think that's about it, the good things about Skyrim are : Big, open world and everywhere is uniquely different. Dungeons, they definitely nailed it with Skyrim, much better than Oblivion. Level-Scaling is tons better. Interesting Perk system and Dragon Souls system. Races look ace. More varied voices. Animations, night and day from Oblivion. Dragons are finally in the game, though could be much better and varied.

So that's about it. Some of these problems can easily be solved by mods, but I guess I expected more.

I agree but accept it. Roll on CK eh?

Yep, CK can't come fast enough.

It's a fun as hell RPG that you get more hours out of than most games.

is this what our society has become? some loser in his moms basemant, breaking down a game, one that he could never make in his life i'll add, telling us whats wrong with it while he flips burgers for minimum wage? i swear every person who gets on these bords has had a horrible life or something. stop being some emo depressed child and enjoy the damn game. you dont need to pick it apart, you your self said "good in a package" so stop picking it apart FFS.

I bet you're one of those bitter old men that sit on their chairs infront of their houses screaming at kids to get off their lawns.

You need to get off your high horse.

If someone wants to post their review/opinion/feedback, let them. That's ultimately what will help Bethesda make the next elder scrolls better since they took A LOT of the feedback from Oblivion and incorporated it into skyrim.

But you wouldn't know that, would you? You just want to conform to whatever a company hands to you without question.

Sounds like you would fit well in China bro.

Remove those uncalled for parts, talk to me in a civilized way and maybe I'll reply and discuss with you in a civilized way. I'm talking to you politely, instead of writing a comeback, because I am not arrogant.

What a constructive post BlackEye. You truly are the very personification of wit/maturity/not irritatingness.

I do agree though. One shouldn't criticize something unless one is capable of making it oneself. Movie reviews, car safety reports, and history books be damned.

You got voices wrong, there wasn't as many variations than I thought, Sure Gideon Emery is one sixy sounding British man, but for all the Penitus Oculatus? No thanks. I wish Voice Artists would add variation to their voices. /rant over

Ps I will do VO work for free!, I am deadly serious I would have loved to done some of the voices for the game, if it meant not hearing 1 person do the voice of over 150 people!

Are you serious about some of those? "No beast children"? What do you expect from games?

Dragons are simply dragons. You can't do too much with them before they become something different from dragons. And with the different shouts they use they at least have some variety.

I think there's enough armour sets in the game. A lot more than 12 too.

Also there's plenty of good quests, with the radiant quests added to flesh the game out. It's just that many of the good quests are miscelaneous quests. And lots of quests are actually found while exploring by reading books, or talking to NPC's you find out in the world (not just in towns/cities).

Thing is, the game holds alot. The more the game has - The more bad things AND GOOD things will come.

You just have to weight the good pile next to the bad pile to see how much the game worth. Skyrim definetly outweights his bad with good.


Edit: Example

Children: positive: THEY EXIST, THEY NEVER EXISTED BEFORE! +10 points
Negative: No beast children, that takes out some immersion if you think about it but you know what? It does make sense, there are no beast settlers ALMOST in skyrim and I cant see why they would decide to make children. -1


And so on about anything else.

Welcome to new age RPGs. They sold the game on the hype of the past titles. Shame too. Game had HUGE potential and thought Beth would have been the company to push towards that potential. PC only title and this game would have been alot different though because of the limitations of the console.

Thanks for your critique. I like reading posts that are not ranting (especially on a disaster of a patch week).

Anyway, I only agree that the quests, specifically the guild quests, were too short (daedric as well) and the civil war quest line was not epic feeling enough. I wish those had been worked on more.

I actually loved the dragons until the last patch where they go a bit crazy flying backwards and what not. I just think they are cute. I don't think one has ever killed me though.

DLC's, Mods, get over it.

So the game's greater than the sum of it's parts. That's not a bad thing, it does happen.

i agree with (almost) everything you said, the quests usually svck (get this sword for me forr this cave! and they never even tell you where, you just magicly know it using your magic map, one of the few quests that was good was one of the few deadric quests iv done, sheogorath's, and it was awsome!!). but the voices, they recorded "some may call this junk, but i call it treasure" and other very boring lines for each (most?) race and both genders yet they hardly record any good dialog anywhere else (not to mention how you make no impact what-so-ever [that could be a good argonian name...] on the way the conversation goes)

p.s. ignore the idiots who think that pointing out the clear mistakes are a bad thing, devs want the feed back (suprising, aint it trolls?)

You do know most of the fan-base is Console players? Without console, Bethesda wouldn't have nearly enough money and TES would be no where near as good as it is.

Why do console players get so butt hurt when the whole console pc debate is brought up? Its a simple fact that the console has limits as to what the game could do which limits the pc version because the game designed for consoles then ported to the PC. I am both a ps3 and pc gamer.

Also, like I said, this is how new age RPGs are going to be.

As for the DLC & mods comment. A modding community shouldnt be relied upon to fix / improve a game that should have been that way out the box.

Agree with op. It felt very nice and shiny at first but now the flaws are really starting to show. I'd also add the terribly short, boring and linear quests and dialogue (save for a few examples) and the awful character creation and development.



So youre basically saying that anyone who doesnt make games or movies cant say anything about them? Makes no sense. The job of a critic is to criticize and the job of a dev is to develop. They both benefit from each other. Even if I cant develop a game it doesnt mean I couldnt see the flaws in it.

I very much agree with this concept. If I were to rate Skyrim based on how much I'm enjoying it I'd give it a 9/10.

If I was to break down some of the parts:

World (very impressive) - 9.5/10
Quests (lots to do, generally pretty good) - 8/10
Combat (pretty decent) - 7/10
Levelling/perks/skills (bland and uninteresting - only game I can think of where I don't really care about levelling.) - 4/10
UI (nasty on PC) - 3/10

Great that the game experience is better than the sum of it's part but disturbing that there are some very shaky elements (subject to individual tastes of course).

i do think they should make the next installment a bit smaller and focus more on the story and variety...

maybe when they will use the same engine it will leave more time for that... i think every single player game needs a lot of variety and a lot of WOW [censored] DIDNT EXPECT THAT moments...

I disagree. Most of the player base may be on consoles but not most of the fanbase. Most of these forums for example play with a PC.

They might have less money, sure, but look at many titles with far less budget. Witcher 2 for example. Amazing graphics, amazing world design etc. The benefits of PC only would overcome the benefits of a bigger budget. Getting a lot of money only seems to make bethesda greedy as well and the game more shallow and dumbed down in pursuit of sales and a wider audience.

Do you actually believe that? Do you really believe bethesda could've made a world as rich and big as skyrim, fill it with as many quests as they did, made all those hand-crafted dungeons with a smaller budget just because it would be PC only?

Agreed wholeheartedly. The people who make the game are professionals you just asked the topic starter to make wine from water... without having any water to begin with!
So get out of really devoted fan mode and act a little more sociable and tolerant with people Mr. Kim Jong Il

I simply looooove the bards. I wish for more songs, and I have already started gathering some classical guitar (lute) tunes that would kinda fit. Original work would be better though.

I don't know, I have but a few complaints, and I'm enjoying the hell out of myself, and I'm doing it for hours and hours - unlike most other games.