Due to work, and the fact my computer is practically a potato. I've held off playing Skyrim until now and was playing it on the PS3, I gotta say.. I'm disappointed in how many game crushing bugs there are on console after all this time.

Can't continue the main quest because the winds on High Hjalmar still stop/kill me even after using the shout to dissappate them.

Can't continue the Civil war quest because for whatever reason the fort I need to take is empty, so the skirMish never kicks off.

Can't continue the Dragonborn DLC because the sun stone won't react to my shout.

Can't continue Dawnguard because the main npc got punted god knows where by a dragon 12 seconds after I loaded in, the quest marker is where she should be but she's in orbit, or something.

Thieves guild storyline bugged out too and that's where I quit.

I'd start a new game but.. why bother?

Well... that's the nature of a game of this size, really.

On PC, you have a whole lot of bugfixes to work with, and playing with the graphics at lowest isn't terrible.

Yes, and it's also the nature of bugs, too. Myself, I've never experienced a single one of the bugs the OP describes. Some people get certain bugs, others don't. As a person who has beta tested mods for a number of years I can vouch for the fact that some bugs are remarkably hard for a developer to reproduce on their end. And they can't be reproduced they are extremely hard to fix.

I'm sorry you had such an extraordinary run of bad luck, OP. It sounds like you set a Guinness World Record for "Highest Number of Bugs Encountered In A First Game." I would encourage you to try again. But of course it's up to you.

The sheer amount of bugs this game has really boggles the mind sometimes. What is really strange is that some bugs are very obvious and yet Beth left them unfixed.

Playing Skyrim on consoles is a bit tricky sometimes. To avoid bugs one must be aware of them and adjust playstyle to it. For example to avoid save bloat one must "play janitor" after every battle, clean up the items dropped by the slain enemies and deposit them in a container.

On PC we at least have unofficial patches to squash bugs but it does bring up another point. It should not be modders' responsibility to fix gamebreaking bugs.