» Wed May 02, 2012 4:33 pm
I recall playing Oblivion for about a month until the blatant scaling simply got to be too much for me, and I went back to playing Morrowind. After being "spoiled" by Oblivion's much more detailed and newer graphics and animations, it was really difficult (for about the first 5-10 hours) to deal with Morrowind's primitive (but artistically excellent) visuals. It prompted me to download several CDs full of graphics replacers, a body replacer, and eventually a heap of other mods. With MGE, Better Bodies, Visual Packs, and too many other mods to list here, it now looks about as good as Oblivion, and even has the same sort of animated grass (I got mods to reduce grass height in both games, rather than waste hours hunting for bodies and fallen objects in the weeds).
The combat in Morrowind is almost totally dependent on the skills and attributes of your character, rather than you as a player. If you like "traditional" RPGs, where the game is focused on the character instead of the player, then you'll like it; if not, then you'll probably find the combat horrendous. Don't "spam" the attack button, since the damage you do with the weapon is based heavily on waiting for the weapon to draw back completely to deliver full power. Rapid "spamming" will do minimum damage with each attack, which can be good in some cases, especially for delivering enchantment effects, but is terrible for slower, higher maximum damage weapons.
With low weapons skills and low Agility, most of your attacks will miss. With low magical skills and low Willpower, most of your spells will fizzle. As your skills and attributes improve (either through practice or paid training), you will notice yourself failing less often, and eventually failure will be negligible. You start out with almost nothing in the way of equipment, and if you remain that way, your character is actually about as fast as in OB. Most players, however, will want to armor themselves, and most buy as much stuff as they can afford, until they're moving at about half-speed, near full encumbrance. The choice of how much to carry is yours; don't blame the game for making you move at a snail's pace. It's the price you pay for trying to become a "tank".
Unlike the later games, Morrowind forces you to make hard choices with consequences. You can have just about anything, but not everything at once, and the ability to do A competently means that you probably can't do B very well. Morrowind offers the player and character a lot more freedom than Oblivion and Skyim, but you don't get it for free; it's a longer road to "mastery" than in the newer games. Personally, I feel that there's no worthwhile "reward" without "risk", and Morrowind offers an enormous amount of both; don't expect to instantly be "powerful", just because you're "special". In Morrowind, you start out as just some stranger who got off a boat, and nobody cares about you. If your Personality and interpersonal skills are low, they may even hate you, especially compared to in Oblivion, where everyone (other than a few thousand bandits) was instantly your friend.
If you like Action games, and play Oblivion and Skyrim for that reason, then you'll probably find very little of interest in Morrowind. If you enjoy "building" a character, exploration for its own sake, and the risk and reward that comes from the possibility of running into places, people, and things far above or below your own level, as fits the world instead of the character's current level, then you just might find it to be your favorite TES game, in spite of the aged graphics and crude animations.
You'll miss out on one of the best games ever.
