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Perhaps I used the word "loot" a little more than I realized.
Don't get me wrong though I am a fan of the crafting system in Skyrim. I just feel that if you are going to go through some epic battles, solve (supposedly) diabolical puzzles, and overcome overwhelming odds in a campaign quest you should be rewarded appropriately. It is so often the case that I will finish some huge endeavor and beat the invincible boss who is guarding the "amazing chest" and when I open it up my hopes and dreams usually crash down when I discover the epic treasures within are just not quite as good as the weapon/armor I just made a couple quests back. I think the ability to make Daedric and Dragon weapons/armor should be taken off the table entirely. Keep the ability to improve them as part of your perk, but no making the original items themselves. How much happier would you be to find them?

Loot, loot, loot. Sorry couldn't help myself.

You serious? They handled Oblivion's game-ending ABomb Bug by ignoring it.

The techie fanbase has done so much more to debug and iron out the wrinkles in ES games than Bethesda ever has.

I would say Bethesda relies heavily on post consumer feed back to fix their games (arguably too much). I play on X-box 360 so any of the bugs I experience are usually only fixed by Bethesda proper. Either way games on this scale are few and far between, they do a reasonable (not phenomenal) job of fixing it. But everyone has their own experience, mine haven't been bad with any of the Bethesda games I've played.

I don't really have the time (or patience) to deliver a full review, but Skyrim is great. Much easier to make new characters in than Oblivion, and overall a better experience. However, I do sometimes get lonesome for Oblivion... then I realize I own it and play it for a while. All very fun.

I find it much harder to roleplay in Skyrim than it was in Oblivion or Morrowind, and the rich lore accounts for 1/3rd of my interest in Elder Scrolls games. As for glitches&bugs, Bethesda does care about their customers' satasfaction in my opinion, and they do try to fix these glitches, most of the time. I think a bigger issue is game balance, though I would like to see the "Ultimate weapon dealing over ten million damage per hit" glitch being fixed. Plus, werewolf totems and magic should probably be balanced better. Plus light armor can reach extremely high protection which is pretty unfair to heavy armor users. The fact that if enemies partially detect you they run directly to you without checking other areas at all kind of bugs me, but allinall Skyrim's pretty good. I still prefer Morrowind and Oblivion, but it's still a great game.

My logical opinion of the game-

My first impression was jaded as I was very hyped for the game and after about 3-4 days I started to sober up a bit and realize that while it is GOTY it isn't quite as perfect as I thought.

The first glitch I noticed was a tear in the terrain near the base of the hill towards the Glenmoril coven, seeing through the world kind of damags immersion for me and I wonder how Bethesda didn't notice this, I have found at least a dozen since then.

I have also noticed that the game freezes a bit after about 50 hours or so of play time and it gets progressively worse until the 100 hour mark when you will see issues with the flowing water near the blacksmith right inside the gate of whiterun when standing around 30 feet away or so, same for the water draining down the slope to the circle where the gildergreen stands

Also the Khajiit have clipping issues especially with the Dragonscale helmet thus rendering it worthless from an RP perspective unless you play on the PC which has a fix for it.

The game can sometimes freeze up during load screens or take an exorbitant amount of time to load even if you install it to the Xbox 360 hard drive.

One positive note is that the Silt Strider NPC's don't disappear or fall to their deaths like in Morrowind GOTY for the Xbox seeing as there aren't any lol...

I may sound overly negative but I really do enjoy the game although I feel it has a bit too many issues and being able to level to 81 thus attaining 80 perks makes rerolling pointless in the longrun unless you roll a pure mage.

Overall though the game was/is enjoyable and I am hoping they release content that is similar in scope to the Shivering Isles sometime as that was excellent DLC imo, I actually preferred SI over the base Oblivion game and spent a lot of my time in the "new" zones.

I really wish that Bethesda added spears and exotic weapons though, there really is no reason to not have them other than the marginal amount of development time it would take, I'm sure people wouldn't have minded waiting until December 12, 2012 or whatever if Spears were added, or even if they made the Magic system less plain... I liked magic in Morrowind/Oblivion but now I just don't find it as interesting due to the lack of spells/summons... I mean really Bethesda? Where did all of the awesome looking summons go like the Spider Daedra for instance?

Also the bestiary gets reduced on each subsequest game I've noticed, where did Ogrhim, Minataurs, Dreugh, Golden Saints, Harpies, Liches, GOBLINS "really, I mean how could they leave Goblins out when Skyrim is teeming with orcs!!!!" and why are there no Dwemer ghosts in Skyrim while they were in Morrowind, wherever a ruin may be found they should as well logically unless Ghost busters got them in the last 200 years, I mean it makes sense that they aren't in Oblivion as there aren't Dwemer ruins but they are in Skyrim so there is no excuse other than laziness.

I mean they only added a few races such as Falmer, Hagravens, Dragons, etc yet they opted out of adding anything more than bare bones.

I loved the re-introduction of Werewolves but what's the point of being one when they are HORRIBLE beyond level 30, I mean really bad... the only reason to be one would be for the 100% disease resist tbh. I personally don't like playing a Vampire but they are actually good in Skyrim overall.

You must admit a lot of the points I brought up are pretty spot-on regarless of your worship of Todd Howard. I am only bringing these up for the miniscule chance that the Bethesda team reads this and fixes most of the "issues".

Ok, I'll bite.

The Good
1. Altmer no longer have a weakness to magic.
2. The game looks fantastic.
3. War paint is epic.
4. Imperials look more Mediterranean than ever before/ Imperial armor resembles the Lorica Segmentata.
5. The character models are "gritty". Given the dark nature of the Skyrim story line, it fits like a glove.
6. Ancestor Guardian is usable again.
7. Khajiits and Argonians look AMAZING. Great job, Bethesda!
8. Smithing and enchanting. Enough said.

The Bad
1. Orcs no longer have a magic resistance.
2. Attributes are gone. I miss them, as I feel it made prior ES games more challenging.
3. Dragon fights could have been waaaaay more epic.
4. Weapons and armor no longer degrade. Part of the TES challenge was having a backup weapon or tons of repair hammers.
5. Orchish armor looks boring. Bring back the Samurai-style, Bethesda!
6. All races start out with the same carry capacity. I didn't know female Altmer were as strong as Male Nords...

The Ugly
1. Bugs and glitches galore.
2. The Reachmen are not Bretons! They are their own, separate race.
3. He-man is jealous of how buff your character is, but it has zero effect on gameplay.
4. It's possible to be an outrageously high level before leaving the opening dungeon.
5. Some of the female Orc presets are more attractive than the female Altmer presets (OK, this is strictly a personal opinion, disregard if you feel so compelled).

All in all, it's a good game. Yeah, parts could be better, but it could also be a lot worse (anyone remember the original Two Worlds?).

Now i started to play Skyrim and yes, its much more detailed more real in a sense.
For one thing i am surprised that may machine handles the game so well.

What i wished for is that the keys were the same like in oblivion, but i just need to get used to the new combinations.

The kill cam reminded me of Fallout. Its nice but down the line i may turn that off. Not sure where right now but i am sure you can.

So far i am really excited and pleased with the game. Its fun to play and to explore.

My review: It's good but not as good as morrowind

Standard reviews for nostalgic people are standard

I, like many here on the forums, have nostalgic connections to the other games in the Elder Scrolls series. My first experience with the series was with Oblivion, which still stands as my favorite, though I have played through Morrowind as well. Both of them are all-around great games, and I found them enjoyable on different levels. This meant that I was very excited when the first bits of gossips about Skyrim started going around. Then, when the official trailer aired, I was hooked.

Initially, when I started out playing, I was completely obsessed with what a beautiful game it is. The scenery, the night sky, and the ruins really took my breath away. I loved the visuals, loved the effects, and found myself easily immersed in playing. It was a fun experience, but after a while, I started to feel disappointed. Most of that disappointment came from the main quest, which I felt was lacking. I won't go into spoiler territory, but needless to say I never felt like I was needed. This was probably because the Dovahkiin had spent so much time out in the wilderness picking flowers for potions. The world seemed to go on well enough without my needing to save it, or really do anything. Dragons? Yes, I love them. They are amazing, wonderful, and a million other adjectives. I just don't see them as that big of a threat.

Final thoughts and review? Skyrim is an amazing game filled with outstanding little things that hold it together. I just find it kind of sad when all of these little details and wonderful things have to cover up the generic storyline. Play it, of course, but also play the other games in the series.

I got to add something.
After playing for a while i come to the conclusion that the game contains some bugs (acceptable) and some pure annoyances.

One of the bugs that is quite annoying if you don't know what to do is if you become a werewolf (maybe vampire too) and you are in sneak mode, the game doesn't let you walk upright anymore. The key just simply doesn't respond anymore.
I cam across of one solution that says you simply should sit in a chair and then stand up again. Works. Tested.

The other annoyances is, that enemies ones attacked will not always follow you. I had it on some occasion that a simple walking out of the door would not make my enemy follow me. Very strange. Overall some enemies seem to be very dumb indeed.

Also, i still can't comprehend the leveling system. It seems to me that you gain much easier a level but you are still weak overall. For some reason i liked the leveling system in Oblivion better. Not sure if it was better, but it felt better.

And, as i mentioned before, i don't like the interface. Its really for consoles and i fear Pc players just have to live with it. Not sure if there is a mod for that. On the other side, i haven't spend any time on making myself macros or quick keys so i go to the menu.

But i think that the atmosphere in the game is really great. I get the sense to wonder somewhere and snow falls, fog is building up... its just great. I actually enjoy that more than Oblivion.

There is also another thing that just popped in to my mind yesterday. If you listen to the sound that is played while you leveling up, its almost identical to the sound in Civilization 3 (i think). It has this gotcha effect. Not really bad, but not great either.

Well, that what i had so far by playing 21 hours so far.

*Removed for being irritating and badly written nonsense.

That is why bugs dont get fixed sometimes.

When i first saw Skyrim, i thought (Please dont hurt me) it was boring,then when i finally started to play it i loved it.
My review is that you should buy this guy if you like role-playing first person games.

I've enjoyed it so far, I think it's a huge improvement on Oblivion. I think they still need to improve on the role-playing and atmosphere aspect, but overall it's a thoroughly enjoyable game.

There is a lot of things I like about Skyrim (the combat, the visuals) and there is a lot of things I dislike (the horrible questlines, the lack of real atmosphere).
But the first thing I noticed about Skyrim (which really sums up the game experience for me), is during the opening scenes when you get saved from the prison block, when General Tulius yells out 'get those towns peo..', cutting out the words mind sentance (and this happens every time I start up again, although I can see it on the subtitles). It's the lack of polish Skyrim has which really get's to me (though I think it is a good game overall). While it doesn't make the game unplayable by any means, it's these bugs that come up which make it a less then ideal experience for me.

There are a lot of glitches and/or bugs in the game. The games are getting very comprehensive and for that reason the beta test can only catch so much. At least that what i am telling myself.
The one thing i don't like about 'The Elder Scrolls' is the fact that once you hit a certain threshold in your level container, you are more or less unstoppable.
End game bosses are usually no problem anymore and so strategic planing is not even necessary.

My sneak skill was so good at the end of Oblivion that i just sneak by and reach my destination. That can be contributed to the skill of course, but it seems almost to perfect.

Others may have different experiences then myself, but this is the same in this game too. I did like Skyrim since it captured an atmosphere that was really joyful.

One thing that has always bugged me was leveled items (which Skyrim has handled better but still has it's issues). It really is a problem for me, to think of going through a difficult section of the game, to get a weapon leveled with my character. If I manage to make it through at level 1 I want the same award I would get at level 100. Really takes away the roleplaying aspect imo.

I have only played for about a month but I absolutely LOVE the game. When I first left the starting dungeon I was taken aback at the water, the glorious water! It ripples and flows as if I'm actualy there! And if I stop and listen I can hear birds chirping that sounds exactly like the birds around my area. When I walk into a town I can hear the distant ring of the blacksmith and the chopping of wood. I have to say the experience for me has been stunning, and that doesn't even take into account the quests, dungeons, and roleplaying aspects (I particularly love these) such as smithing, woodcutting, mining and so much more. I can live basically any lifestyle I want! (I did that anyways in oblivion but my imagination had to do a lot of compensating) anyways, the game is amazing and I only wish I had more time to play it

I know it's bit of a late review since I got the game on release day, but my thoughts are pretty easy to sum up; it looks great, and the gameplay is much improved, but a lot of it is really boring.

Specifically, the guild quest lines are all pretty rubbish, in particular the thieves guild are really unlikeable, lacking the robin hood style of oblivion which means it's hard to engage with their story line, plus the stealth missions are all really bad. Likewise the Dark Brotherhood's quest-line is really bad as well with the ridiculous Cicero and a bunch of really uninspired missions which, when compared to the first half of the Oblivion Dark Brotherhood quest-line, is really disappointing. The mages college is likewise pretty boring; tons of visual flair, but you can do the entire quest line without any mastery of magic whatsoever, and it's possibly my candidate for worst quest ever, as the story and missions are just really dull; I mean, big powerful artefact of doom? I was hoping for something a bit more intelligent personally.
The Companions aren't so bad, but even so all the guilds just feel like something to do, rather than something that I want to do. I'm pretty bored with the formula of arbitrarily gaining ranks, culminating in leadership of the guild, by simply doing some missions that don't demonstrate any of the abilities that the guild is meant to aspire to. I'm also not so big on the tired theme of "save the guild"; I'd much rather see guilds with two separate quest-lines, one that tests your skills and encourages you to get better as a warrior/mage/thief/assassin while rewarding new ranks, and one that's a story mission anyone can do, but you need to do both to gain prominence in a guild. On the latter note though; does anyone really feel the need to be the head of every guild? I think anyone should be perfectly happy with a decent home and a grand, if not head, rank, being guildmaster of everything is becoming formulaic. The other thing that is sorely needed is choice; wiping out the dark brotherhood feels tacked on, and there was so much potential for a destroy the thieves guild mission to save Riften (though there is evidence it may have been planned but abandoned). Still; Skyrim was at least as buggy as Oblivion, so Bethesda is going to have to get it's act together and come up with tools for preventing buggy quests before they try branching quest-lines, but moral choice is something I think all players would like to have, rather than rigid story lines; especially ones as boring as the guild storylines!

The civil war was likewise very disappointing; there is pretty much no reason to fight for one side or the other as the outcomes are boring, and pretty heavily bug-ridden. The fort-battles were a dull way to take an entire province for one side or the other; the peace-treaty path is actually far more interesting, and a lot shorter (travelling to each capital aside). I dunno, I'd have happily waited an extra 6 months or even a year just to see the civil war handled properly, with more battles like the walled city battles, but with more interesting objectives, political wrangling, and so-on. I mean, there are a bunch of possibilities that aren't played out; Skyrim could instead push to become a vassal state of the empire, effectively a close ally, which would give them the autonomy to claim they can worship Talos without it being a breach of the White Gold Concordant (since they're not in the empire anymore) while still able to help the empire and trade with them etc.

I was also pretty disappointed by the stealth elements; slitting throats is endlessly entertaining, but there seems to be no real option for a pure stealth character as enemies are seemingly hyper-aware and even at night any stealth outdoors is impossible. It basically requires you to use invisibility in cases where arrows and/or throw voice aren't enough, and it feels like a big cop-out to me. Also the general lack of any good stealth missions didn't help either, as noted above. They could also do with elements like how enemies behave in the Arkham series of Batman games (permanent states of alert, becoming more and more agitated with each takedown) and Deus Ex as well for the ability to move bodies to avoid detection.


Don't get me wrong, I love the game, and it's better than oblivion in many ways, but at the same time it's actually not that much better than Oblivion when it's all tallied up, and I'd hoped for it to be a bigger overall improved, but many of the same problems are still there; while we now have more variety in even dungeons of the same type, there is less variety in the quests, with all the same bugs and problems to go along with them. Plus the inability to actually sell the stuff you accumulate is a pretty big issue, I've started up the game to play for an hour only to realise that I've all done is try to sell the stuff I'm carrying! In a loot heavy game it's a bit rubbish when you avoid picking up valuable items knowing you'll never sell them! Oh, and random dragon encounters can become annoying after a while too; I've taken to not speaking to the Jarl of Whiterun for the bulk of a new game, as while I love dragon battles in cities and at dragon walls, the random ones elsewhere become a pain after a while.

Skyrim has great graphics, and great warrior and mage gameplay with stealth gameplay that could do with a little bit more. I think Bethesda now needs to look toward making great missions to go along with and take advantage of these things, and maybe ditch some of the formula in favour of new ideas when it comes to guilds and daedric quests, which are becoming tired and only adding to the pool of fairly boring missions. Visually the game is miles ahead, and the character of the world makes it hard to even think of going back to Oblivion, but we need quest lines that quality, and the confidence that we can receive these things without a hundred bugs to go along with every quest :p



The main problem is that they don't seem to have any kind of toolkit to help them prevent bugs in the first place; they need an editor that can tell them when conditions within a quest are in conflict (to prevent the many levelled weapons that don't level properly), or conflicts between other quests in which case one makes an NPC non-interactive while another quest may be active. This is what I thought the point of the Radiant quest engine improvements were supposed to do, but if anything they've made quests buggier as you now you might get a quest to a location that's no longer reachable!

After many months of pain and suffering, the PS3 version of the game is finally reviewable (yay).

THE GOOD

The game's gorgeous. The amount of detail put into it is amazing. You can look at the ground and be almost as amazed as when you're looking at the scenery. That's the amount of detail they've put into this game. The character animations aren't even close to realistic, but they're a huge leap from Oblivion.

Also, the audio is amazing. The sound effects for the spells, the roar of the dragons and the swing of a sword are those little things that make the game amazing. But the background music takes the prize. It's beautiful. There's a perfect moment, when you're at a high point of the world and suddenly you hear a beautiful part of the song in the background and everything just feels perfect. There's nothing like it.

The combat is also good. The choise between being a warrior, archer, mage, assassin, etc really makes the experience unique. A certain quest can be very different when played as an assassin instead of a mage or a warrior. The game also allows you to change the combat style whenever you want. You can also create hybrids! Everybody's happy! Also, the enemies actually think before they act (well, most of the time).

Then there's the unlimited freedom. You can almost literally do whatever you want! Rob a house, jelp a civilian, murder a local shopkeeper, join a guild, escape from the prison, buy a house, get married, etc. etc. The possibilities are endless!

THE BAD

Although the dragons are amazing and fun to fight at first, they really get boring and annoying after the first few dragon fights. They're just not that hard to beat! Seriously, you're more afraid of bears and giants than dragons at the lower levels.

Most of the quest follow the same code: person X wants you to go to dungeon Y and retrieve item Z and then bring it back to him/her. It gets really boring after a while, much like the dragon fights. They could've made unique quests like in Oblivion but nope! "Let's save time and make all of the quests almost identical."

Also, I've heard that the user interface isn't PC friendly. Don't know about that, because I've been playing the game on PS3.

THE UGLY

The final boss was a disappointment. I won't spoil anything, I'll just say that it was a disappointment. And after you've completed the main storyline, it's like nobody really cares. The guards are still rude to you (only one new line is added to their dialogue), the jarls won't congratulate or thank you and the people act normal. No special treatment or anything.

Also, I'm still waiting for the Dawnguard DLC for PS3. It's been out for Xbox 360 for almost six months and for the PC just one month less.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Now that the issues have been fully patched, it's definetly worth buying. If you're buying the PS3 version, don't buy it because of Dawnguard.

I've had the game since midnight of 11/11/11.

The Good:
Most everything

The bad:
A few nitpicky things that mods fix

The ugly:
I need a better graphics card to play this on ultra

Those beta testers must be really incompetent to miss the infamous Mouse Lag Bug.

While I can sympathise with just how complex the games have become, Bethesda really do need to develop better tools for detecting issues. There really isn't any excuse for items that have levelling conflicts (e.g - levelled item variants that aren't possible to get and similar issues), or a way to detect NPC conflicts due caused by quests that may override one another's dialogue options but can be active at the same time. I thought the Radiant Quest system was supposed to help with this by letting common quests be developed as a single template, but most of the radiant quests have a bunch of bugs associated with them too!

Now that Skyrim has raised the bar on the visual quality and dungeon design, I'm hoping for the next title they can focus more on incremental updates visually, with a stronger focus on quest and story quality, and avoiding bugs. As bland quest-lines and quest-breaking bugs are probably my two main gripes with Skyrim; there's still plenty of fun stuff to do, but some of the guilds especially are really boring, though often with plenty of visual flair.

When i started playing it, I was impressed by the huge world which is created in Skyrim. And i liked that there's so many possibilities in it.