Gotta be Blankenmarch for me. I loved discovering new places in Oblivion, and I was so excited when I found that new town until I realised it was this. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Blankenmarch

For me it was the Imperial City. I felt the Imperial City was too barren and lifeless. It lacked the illusion of a real city for me. I could not suspend my disbelief. On top of everything else its nearly identical pie-shaped districts were a pain to traverse.

To be honest, I think it has to be either Ald-Velothi or Leyawiin. Leyawiin seemed lacking of many things. Too many Argonians!

The Imperial city in Oblivion was feeling a bit lame for capital city. I wondering... is Summerset Isles a more urban and built up metropolis than Cyrodil? Just because it is the capital it doesn't mean it is the most populated. It could be a bit like Japan or China compared to Germany.

Leyawiin was a good idea for a design but again felt in a bit lame. A cheaper looking more run down city made of mostly wooden huts and happen to also have a port on the main river leading out to sea, I would imagine to be much busier. More expensive wall cities made all of stone and up in the grasslands I understand to be more selective as to who lives there.

Skyrim cities are definitely a break through in the right direction. Winterhold is feeling a bit laid waste. Even for a once city where most has collapsed into the sea it feel a bit empty. Hopefully a dlc may bring more life into the place as some posters have suggested on a thread as an idea for dlc would be good.

Imperial City. Ugly, deserted, a lame excuse of a capital.

http://faux.uwcs.co.uk/sutch.jpg.

@Thumbtack - Haha, true!

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I personally liked the Imperial City. Even though I got the Regal Imperial City texture mod, as well as the one mod that makes the districts much nicer looking, I still loved the city. I just think there could have been more people in it. But I definitely love the city itself!

The city of Vivec was awful. From an urban design perspective, it's as if they went out of their way to make the layout asinine. The very bridges between cantons, the entrances, and ramps between levels are evenly distributed in an effort to make them all as inconvenient as possible, which I suppose the slave owning populace wouldn't mind, but everyone else ought to. It wasn't an open city like most others in Morrowind, and the neighborhoods were so uncoordinated.

The windowless (mostly) mud ziggarat doesn't even strike the residents as a suffocation risk with the indoor torches burning away the oxygen, but without those for light the whole indoor area should be a damp, moldy, and dirty structure with all the people maintaining a permanent cough. And there's a sewer on this thing? It's built out on the water, there's no storm sewer since the water runs down the outside, there's no processing of the wasted dropped into the non-existent toilets, so is there any reason whatsoever that this strange cluster[censored] of a place has a sewer system? It just drops it into the inlet anyway, and there's no running water.

I agree that the Imperial City was pretty bad. It actually had the opposite design philosophy that the center of power of an empire should have. Centers of power need to be crazy unorganized messes, where new emperors tear down things as they choose and build other things. Where poor people crowd up all the square footage they can and have a complicated relationship with the power structure. The city didn't even have a mayor, are they expecting the damn emperor to run their city? He has bigger things to take care of! The Imperial Palace barely had anything to it, and there weren't apartments built for the visiting kings, diplomats, and dignitaries. Or even the Elder Council!

Easily the Imperial City. There was a lot of hype about it stemming all the way back to Arena. The epicenter of all Tamriel and home to the glorious empire forged by Tiber Septim. Bethesda failed bigtime. For shame.

Yup, I agree with those who vote for the Imperial City. The NPC's that "mingle" in the Merchant district feel forced, the streets are pretty void of "life", no market stalls, and it is very confusing. I love the arena and the Waterfront. I really think the devs missed a great opportunity to really make something out of that city! It had so much potential!

Falkreath - tiny little dump. Meant to be the capital of one of the holds but it's barely any bigger (or differently architectured) than Riverwood.

I'd probably have to go with the Imperial City as well. It's just ridiculous that there would be only one market in the entire city, and in that market there's exactly ONE bookstore, ONE armor shop, ONE swordsmith, ONE (ok, two) alchemists, etc. The city was just too small, too colorless, too barren, too boring. And a temple with nowhere to pray, or even sit and reflect? Bit pathetic, really.

Or that the one market is on the opposite side of the city from the docks or the one bridge into the city.

The Imperial city was the probably the worst although all cities in Oblivion were underwhelming. It looked awesome from a distance but when you got close it became clear that it was boring, poorly designed, filled with filler buildings and NPCs. I think it takes the top spot not because it was the worst in absolute terms (daggerfall and even morrowind also had a few underwhelming locations) but because of the whole hype surrounding it and the vast amount of wasted potential and poor design that wasn't fit for any TES city let alone the capital of the Empire and the central point of the entire game.

The TEMPLE DISTRICT in the Imperial city had not one shrine! That always drove me crazy. Come on!

Markarth... the trailer made it look huge when it was about the size of two riverwoods.. epic fail.... also whiterun for not having an arena

The Imperial City is getting a lot of hate, and to some extent I can see why. It didn't measure up to the descriptions we'd been given about it. But the again, do any of the in-game cities really measure up to their ''actual'' size? The games can't really give us the correct sense of scale since it would be too technically demanding. I actually think The Imperial City is a quite impressive for a game of 2006.

As for me, I was a little disappointed about Dawnstar. I had expected and hoped it would be a wee bit bigger.

Daggerfall City. Grand fortress city on the bluffs? Nah, just a flat, square collection of buildings that doesn't even look like a proper medieval city because the buildings are too sparse. The same could be said about any of the cities in the game... Wayrest, for instance, which was supposed to be a great river trading city but doesn't even have a port. The same could be said about any of the cities in Daggerfall, I guess... they had the scale but little character aside from the broad, superficial change in architecture (of which there were only four different styles). The major cities had the slight advantage of parts of them being made from non-generic layouts, at least. The dangers of making a game with 1996 technology and a possibly overreaching scale, I suppose.

For me, it's not about size but design. I don't have a problem with the wheel design (which I actually really like) or the compartmentalized districts. It's kind of weird, but I can handle it. What bugs me is just the bizarre choices like, as mentioned, putting the market in an awkward, isolated place, or how apparently the IC hands out charters to one shop and one shop only for each type of merchandise. The Elven Gardens hardly fit the description of either, the Temple of the One didn't even have a bowl where I could give tithes, the Waterfront had two ships, neither of which was a merchant vessel, Talos Plaza was dominated by a statue of Akatosh of all things, and the Arboretum had about five trees. The IC just doesn't feel like a city, it feels like Septimland as designed by a disciple of Sheogorath. And that's kind of weird because I generally thought Oblivion's cities (especially Cheydinhal and Chorrol) were very well-designed.

They're all pretty disappointing. Pre-Morrowind, they completely lacked personality. Post-Daggerfall, they lack size, scope, and the atmosphere of a real settlement.

I must be one of the few people who actually liked the Imperial City. Sure, it's a bit empty and lifeless... but that never really bothered me. Like Daggerfall with it's genericness, my mind just filled in the blanks. Besides, I know better than to expect a lively metropolis in an open-world RPG of this generation.

As for it being out of scale... you could say that about pretty much the whole gameworlds in the last 3 TES games. The gameworlds are unbelieveably tiny and compact, and none of the so-called "cities" really feel like cities.

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Personally, if I had to pick a most disappointing city, i'd go with Falkreath. Falkreath Hold is probably my favourite area in Skyrim... so it was rather disappointing for me to find out that it had such a plain capital.

Would you care to describe a superior design that would fit the limitations of the game?

Rorikstead. I was expecting some reference to the song while I was there, but I got nothing

Didn't actually mind the Imperial City, I was mostly just glad that it was different to all the other copy-pasted cities. And you've got to admit, White-Gold Tower looks stunning from a distance.

Vivec's definitely my favourite city, though.

Therein lies the crux of the issue, though. They should not have made it the focal point of TES IV if they didn't have the horses

Vivec City. To this day, I hate that city. I mean, come on, whose idea was it to make a bunch of giant squares that all look the same? And this comes from Vivec? The Warrior-Poet? That's the city he makes? It's dull and not pleasant to navigate.