Skyrim Rating

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

The expansion I think will only be available via download from xbox live. Did you at least download the patches? It fixes a lot of the major problems.

Now that the "newness" factor has worn off for me, I think it's a great game, but I'm not sure if it's going to rank as one of my favorite games of all time. It's definitely very solid, and well worth the money spent to purchase it, but I'm not sure if it would receive an epic ranking from me. It's very good, but not fantastically great.

[joacqin]

Compared to all other single player role playing games released the last few years Skyrim stands head and shoulder above the rest. As I have written before there are lots of things I do not like with Skyrim the fact is that I have spent more hours on it than any other SP RPG in years. Fun hours and I am still not done with it. I am sure that I will start both one or two more characters in the reasonably near future.

I also think that as we grow older and more experienced our taste gets more advanced. I am not sure that if we had played many of the games we have such fond memories today that we would find them as great. I know that I am way more picky nowadays than ten years ago.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

I largely agree with your assessment - especially the part about Skyrim being the best SP RPG in last several years by a wide margin.

My assessment was really questioning whether or not it is a "Pantheon" game for me. I'm not sure it's there - and at this point, I think it's going to fall just short. It's like the difference between BG/SoA/ToB as compared with IWD/HoW/TotL. The former is a Pantheon game series, the latter is just very good. Or, to throw out a Blizzard comparison, it's like the difference between the Diablo series and Warcraft/Starcraft series. Again, the first is Pantheon, the second isn't, but still a great game series. The Total War series is another example of a great game that falls just short of Pantheon status.

Keep in mind that for me, the Pantheon is a very, very, exclusive group. It's the BG series, the Diablo series, the Civilization series, Sid Meier's Pirates (countless hours spent on both the original and subsequent one 20 years later), and the Pool of Radiance Series from TSR dating back to the 1980s of my childhood.

Actually, this deserves it's own thread...

[Nizidramanii'yt]

This game might deserve a 4, but I've given a 5 based solely on the fun I've had with it. I almost haven't had this much fun playing games in years, perhaps even a decade. Sure, it had bugs, but it was huge fun.

[Morthond]

Four from me. My disappointments with Skyrim are mostly to do with the insane lack of spells and the lack of in-world relevance of anything you do. The Civil War questline, just as an example...

Spoiler!

I expected something somewhat epic even if downplayed due to it being a side-quest chain but after researching and agonising over which side I wanted to back and subsequently going through the series, I was left feeling like such an idiot. Four/five five minute quests which are basically identical, a speech from the faction leader and the uniforms/accents of city guards changed and there, that's your civil war over.

It left a bad taste in the mouth as the whole Stormcloaks/Imperial rivalry seemed like quite a big deal with many NPCs commenting on the situation and having opinions but apparently no-one in Skyrim actually cares much. The rest of the quests in the game similarly have no impact either apart from retarded guard comments that you hear ad nauseum ("Psst - hail Sithis!" - how the hell would you know about that, random guard??)

...but ultimately it's just simply a fun game. The graphics, the character customisation, the flavour of the setting, the opportunity to play without NPCs etc. I'll rank it about equal with Dragon Age (which I found utterly tedious storywise but very fun in other areas so, similar experience weirdly!).

[LuCiFeRsHaL0]

I happily give Skyrim a 1/5 stars. The previews looked great, actually everything looked great. After starting it, waiting for installation (PS3) and trying to sit through the talking I just thought it was terrible. I borrowed a friends copy so I'm glad I didn't waste any money on this. I had nothing but errors and glitches. Utlimately very very boring. I gave up on Bethesda awhile back after Fallout on ps3. There are MUCH MUCH better rpg's on ps3 than this.

[Rawgrim]

90 percent of the glitches and whatsnot, has been fixed with patches now. Allthough I never encountered many of them to begin with (xbox360).

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

I think a lot of it has to do with when you purchased the game. My understanding was that it was terribly buggy when it first came out. I did not purchase Skyrim until March, and so for me, the worst of it was already over - fixed with the first couple of patches. Evidently a new patch came out yesterday, as I was forced to download it when I tried to play.

To be frank, I don't understand how some people can have such poor impressions of the game. I can understand if you don't think it's a great game, but it's been one of the better RPGs to come out in a long time. If you like RPGs, and you like fantasy games, I can't understand how you can't think it's at least an "OK" game.

[Rawgrim]

I got the game 2 days before release (pre-ordered it, and i got it early). The only bug I ever encountered was when quests didn`t update. It was a game breaking bug, but a simple re-load fixed this. I never encountered any other bug. Maybe its just alot worse on PS3?

[joacqin]

I bought it day one and haven't seen a single bug or glitch. I experienced a slow down and some crashes in my first game but I thought it was due to my computer. It didn't happen in my other games so I guess it was the game. I still enjoyed it a lot, I even enjoyed it while it crashed a bit more than acceptable but only ever saw crashes in my first game and the first week or so.

[Exor]

Originally Posted by Aldeth the Foppish Idiot

...

To be frank, I don't understand how some people can have such poor impressions of the game. I can understand if you don't think it's a great game, but it's been one of the better RPGs to come out in a long time. If you like RPGs, and you like fantasy games, I can't understand how you can't think it's at least an "OK" game.

Personally I think it is ok, but I can easily understand those that call it a poor game.
Story, irrelevant, to me had 0 tension.
Combat/Mechanics, imho way to simple (largely the magic system/spells available).
UI.. terrible, absolutely terrible (defined on how many actions it takes to switch a spell/change equipment/sell-all-gems).
Art, loved every green area disliked the many gray ones (50%+?).
But it is a good "world simulator" one can drop,place and pick up anything, people have occupations/property, the exp-principle get-better-at-what-you-do and most importantly mod support. mods>all.


I guess it depends on what one finds fun, personally I want to have a set of as different as possible actions for my character(s) and try to find out what happens eg. support-xy/murder-everything*/pacifist or using enhance-jump to get to a ledge for save ranged attacks/invisibility+silent kills/ultra-shield+flaming feet...
In Skyrim my actions are either not that different from each other or have a to similar/weak effect.

*I still remember how annoyed I was at Fallout: New Vegas for no one caring that I slaughtered the entire ceasar's legion camp (with my fists, ..naked) :/.

[Spellbound]

I'll give it a 4 - due to the follower issue. They were so static, I ended up dropping them after a bit. Overall, though, I thought it was a great game, pretty to look at it and very playable. I didn't experience very many glitches. I do wish the game offered different sort of environments though - I got a little tired of seeing the same gray colors of the rocks/snow, etc. There didn't seem to be much change from that, even down in the southern parts of the region. I know it's supposed to be in the northern area of the continent, but a little greenery would have been nice! (other than what was found in a handful of caves).

[Nykidemus]

I really really wanted to give the game a poor score, because I have a rather huge chip on my shoulder about Bethesda. I have repeatedly been excited about one of their releases and disappointed with the reality.

I tried really hard not to get sucked into the hype around Skyrim, but ended up picking it up on a steam sale, cause it was the only thing anyone at work was talking about for a weeks.

So, the base Skyrim is extremely pretty. Being from the north myself, it made me badly homesick - Bethesda has always done scenery quite well, and they didnt shirk here.

They do NOT do as well with character models. ALL of the elf-based races look awful, and the humans are only a little better. I settled on an Orc, because it's hard to **** up giant tusks and green skin.

He was a fighter-mage. Axe in one hand, spell in the other. One big thing in their favor is that all of the noob-level spells are flamethrower style - making them vastly easier to use than the standard firebolts and such from Oblivion. Unfortunately they dont scale, so you eventually have to move on to the firebolts/balls and then it's near-impossible to hit anything. Also, spells and arrows both seem to have crazy short range. After trying to shoot a mammoth at medium range for a minute or so and not knowing how the hell I was missing, I went to the internets, wherein the true glory of Skyrim was revealed.

Mods. (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/21586 fixed the slow-projectiles issue.)

If you're playing on something other than PC, you are sorely missing out.

Mods to fix the terrible faces, mods to fix your horse trying to tank dragons, mods to fix your iron ingots weighing more than the ore they're smelted down from, mods to adjust the crummy ragdoll effects on bodies, mods that turn some of the "infinite use, but 30 second duration" racials (khajit) into a toggle, mods that fix the god-awful interface. Mods that fix bugs.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/19 - the Unofficial Skyrim Patch is a nearly must-have. It fixes sooo many things.

As many other people have said, the characters are a bit wooden, and they could have had a little bit more in the way of different voices, but I think the real issue that drove me nuts was the interface - and specifically the things that were obvious carry-overs from it's console-designed roots.

Potions refuse to sort in any sort of sane manner. The mouse controls - especially in menus - are incredibly sluggish, and cant be turned up sufficiently with the in-game UI. Ini modification can fix it for aiming in the world, but not in the menus. The menus themselves are hard to navigate, and often nested in order to accommodate D-pad controls.

I was pretty stoked that you can equip a spell on either hand, and a weapon on either hand. I quickly reversed which button did what, because having the right click swing the left sword, and vice versa drove me insane - but then found that spells from your quick-select menu automatically went to the left hand, and weapons to the right. Then I found that you cant use a shield at all unless it's in the left hand, and with a bow "main" click will always be draw and fire. I eventually got used to shooting the bow with right-click, and zooming in with left, but I never could use a shield.

Many many many of the quests are of the "fetch me this thing from this dungeon full of random bandits!" which were pretty uninspiring. There are a LOT of such quests, if you just want some motivation to kill bandits - and sometimes that's fine, but engaging storytelling it is not.

The main plots are not actually terrible. The Dark Brotherhood and thieves guild plots are both quite solid. The Companions guild is pretty good - though

Spoiler!

if you end up contracting lycanthropy the controls and limitations of the werewolf form are miserable. I imagine it's the same for the Vampire Lord.

The Mages guild questline is so so. Nothing it brings up is ever really explained.

I have no idea how anyone could ever side with the Imperials after they're about to execute you for "Cause you happened to be there, and now it sucks to be you". The Stormcloak quests seemed like they should have been so awesome, but after a half-dozen "Go to this fort, kill everyone there. Now on to the next!" quests I just wanted it to end - and end it did, with a tolerable speech, and a "I bet some more plot will happen eventually-but-not-during-this-game" epilog.

Dragons are neat - but frustrating to fight. They're near impossible to hit with ranged weapons while moving due to the terrible physics on projectiles, and they seem to have an arbitrary dislike for landing more often than once every 5 minutes or so. Eventually when they are no longer terrifying the game starts to feel like dragon-exterminator, and they lose a bit of their grandeur. Again - mods can fix this - http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/21528 - making the dragons you run into once you've leveled up a bit still at least moderately scary.

On the whole I'd give the base game a 3 - but the fantastic mod support made possible by the very very solid editor has led to the ability to tweak almost any of the things that are really bothering you, and smooth out some of the rough edges. As much as I hate to give it one, post mod support it gets a 4.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Originally Posted by Nykidemus

if you end up contracting lycanthropy the controls and limitations of the werewolf form are miserable. I imagine it's the same for the Vampire Lord.

The werewolf remains terrible even after the Dawnguard expansion. The problem is that no matter what you're still limited to one transformation per day, so it's simply not practical to level and gain perks as a werewolf. The Vampire Lord, OTOH, can be toggled on and off at will, making it much easier to play, and the perks are actually kind of good.

Dragons are neat - Eventually when they are no longer terrifying the game starts to feel like dragon-exterminator, and they lose a bit of their grandeur.

Dawnguard also fixes this. They introduce two new dragon classes Revered and Legendary, which are beefier versions beyond ancient. On Master difficulty, even at the armor cap, a legendary dragon bite hits for around 400 damage. So, even if you have a lot of health, you better be able to kill him before he hits you twice, or be prepared to start chugging potions like crazy.

[Nakia]

I have played over 700 hours of Skyrim and gotten my money's worth. I have not purchased the DLC Dawnguard and probably won't unless there is a mod that I really want that needs Dawnguard. I only gave it a rating of three because of the bugs and problems Modders doing quest mods are having.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Originally Posted by Nakia

I have played over 700 hours of Skyrim and gotten my money's worth. I have not purchased the DLC Dawnguard and probably won't unless there is a mod that I really want that needs Dawnguard.

DAMN Nakia! And I thought I was hard core! I love the game, and while I certainly have logged a couple hundred hours on the game, there's no freakin way I'm anywhere close to 700! Then again, I didn't purchase it until March, so you had a 4 month head start on me.

As for Dwanguard, I like it for the new enemies and new items. I like dragonbone weapons, I like crossbows, I like dragons once again becoming very fearsome opponents with the introduction of revered and legendary dragons.

[Rawgrim]

Skyrim is great. Dawnguard is not great. My level 5 character got attacked, along with cizizens of the town, 6 people killed, and I got turned into a vamp. Now i am forced to play a creature that Twilight has forever ruined for me. Fun. Some of the people killed in town also has quests tied to them, as well. Nice gamebreaker Bethesda.

[joacqin]

Isn't vampirism easily curable the first few days?

[Rawgrim]

It was in the previous game. By walking into a temple and activating a shrine. I did that. Doesn`t work. So now I can`t use stores anymore, because I get attacked on sight every time I enter a city. That chic in Whiterun that I was going to deliver a mammoth tusk for, died as well. Killed by a random vamp that attacked the marketplace. The old lady in the marketplace died too. I seem to remember she was involved with the Dark Brotherhood questline. I guess that one is screwed too.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Unless you let vampirism go for more than few days, it's curable with a simple cure disease potion, purchasable from any alchemist for about 100 septims. I know because I've done it. However, if you're being attacked on sight, you've already progressed to full-blown vampirism, and the potion won't work. You need to feed on someone to get that taken care of. Of course, that's going to require you to sneak into a town unseen, find someone sleeping and do it. So you don't want to go to Whiterun for that. (Although the Whiterun stables offer a decent possibility.) Failing that, going into Riverwood where there are few guards and breaking into a house should do the trick.

Now that you've progressed to full-blown vampirism, the only way to cure it is by visiting that guy in Morthal. I don't recall his name, but he's the local wizard in the town. You'll also need a filled black soul gem - which he does sell, at a cost of around 2000 septims.

It is extremely unfortunate that Whiterun got hit that hard so early in the game - I might have just restarted if that happened to me.

In my previous playthough with Dawnguard, it was Riften that was ground zero for the vampire carnage. That was subject to numerous citizen deaths, although not all at once, and certainly not when I was level 5. I actually was capable of completing several in-city quests before major characters started to die. All the merchants in the marketplace were eventually killed. The only one left was Balimund's apprentice, who took over the Scorched Hammer after Balimund's death.

The only real solution to this is to start the Dawnguard questline. If you side with the vampires, you won't see any more vampire attacks, but you will see Dawnguard attacks on you. (Of course, they're vampire hunters, so they don't attack townspeople.)

[Rawgrim]

I actually DID drink a potion of cure disease. Didn`t work. I did the quest in Morthal, however, and got rid of the vampirism. Sadly, when I did the next dawnguard mission, I got infected yet again. I drank a cure disease potion immediatly when it happened. Lets hope it worked...

[Jondar]

I picked p the game earlier this year and couldn't get into it. (Probably a 2).
Got bored waiting for BGEE and decided to try again. I love it! I'm still fairly early in the game. My most difficult quest to date (my fault for letting myself be distracted) was tailing some guy named Gulum-Ei. I lost him after the distraction and couldn't find him to save my life. Finally went to an earlier save and never lost site of him. Killed anyone that got in my way (not sure, but this may be why I'm now being attacked by guards in Markath with a bounty on my head).
I'm now at the point where I just got the Nightingale Armor set. Cool!!!
A few queries:
1) Not sure I understand how one uses poison in their attacks. I drank it once by accident and started taking damage.
2) I bought the game through Steam and it says I have version 1.4. Now I'm hearing that 1.8 is coming out. What happened to all the other versions in between?
My rating: 4

Edit: 1 other thing that happened was with the vendor outside of Dawnstar. My 2nd appearance there, I was greeted by them in a heated battle with a dragon. The vendor was killed before I could intervene and I haven't seen any of them again in any city.

[Sujamma]

I gave it a 4. It is an awesome game, very big map, lots of quests, cool graphics. However, the story is a bit weak. Also, I hated how the Dark Brotherhood story ends, I was more satisfied with how the Thieves' Guild story turned out. After I finished all of the DB quests, I felt like "Really, that's it? No awesome comeback? I mean sure I killed the emperor and all but still. Something awesome should have happened."

Originally Posted by Jondar

1) Not sure I understand how one uses poison in their attacks. I drank it once by accident and started taking damage.

I think you have to highlight the poison and then press enter or E? I'm not entirely sure. I forgot. A smaller window should appear asking if you want to poison your weapon or not.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Originally Posted by Jondar

My most difficult quest to date (my fault for letting myself be distracted) was tailing some guy named Gulum-Ei. I lost him after the distraction and couldn't find him to save my life. Finally went to an earlier save and never lost site of him. Killed anyone that got in my way (not sure, but this may be why I'm now being attacked by guards in Markath with a bounty on my head).

Your bounty (if any) is individualized for each city. So if the the guards in Markarth are attacking you, it's for something you did in Markarth. The Gulum-Ei quest is in Solitude. Killing Solitude city guards will certainly get you a bounty in Solitude, although you can kill the guards within the warehouse that Gulum-Ei enteres without incuring a bounty.

I'm now at the point where I just got the Nightingale Armor set. Cool!!!

The Nightingale set is a decent set of armor - one of the best in the game short of echanting your own armor to have the exact attributes you want on it. However, from my experience, it is only really good if you're using all the skills that the set gives bonuses. So it's not really enough to be a thief. You have to be thief who uses sneak, one-handed, archery, and illusion. Now you probably have the first three covered. But if you aren't using illusion, you're better off with the Guild Master's armor set (and if you have the Nightingale Armor, you'll get the Guild Master's set soon enough).

1) Not sure I understand how one uses poison in their attacks. I drank it once by accident and started taking damage.

When you select a beneficial potion, like healing, stamina, magicka, cure disease, etc, the character simply drinks it. When you select a potion with negative effects, you'll get a popup box that asks if you want to coat your weapon with the poison. The problem is that some potions have both beneficial and deleterious effects. Sometimes when you click on them, the character will automatically drink them, which is bad if you want to use it as a poison.

2) I bought the game through Steam and it says I have version 1.4. Now I'm hearing that 1.8 is coming out. What happened to all the other versions in between?

Well, 1.8 isn't out yet. 1.7 is that most current at the moment. No big deals in patch 1.6 and 1.7, but you REALLY want to get 1.5, as that fixed a ton of bugs. (Albeit, if you're able to find 1.5, I can't see how finding 1.6 or 1.7 would be a problem at all.) Here's a list of the official patches.

Edit: 1 other thing that happened was with the vendor outside of Dawnstar. My 2nd appearance there, I was greeted by them in a heated battle with a dragon. The vendor was killed before I could intervene and I haven't seen any of them again in any city.

The vendor outside Dawnstar is a member of the traveling Khajiit caravans. As the name implies, they travel around Skyrim and stop at different cities. So while they do a circuit and eventually return to Dawnstar, there's no guarantee that they will be there when you visit the city.

[Jondar]

Thanks Aldeth!!!
Shortly after posting my reply, I started a new job which necessitated me arising at 4:30 AM and getting home in the early evening; which leaves little time to play. But...
I've moved forward with Smithing, Enchanting, (each time I do alot of smithing (iron daggers) I save them to advance enchanting). Soon, I'll be able to smith and enchant better armor and weapons.
I'm still using the Nightingale Armor (made Exquisite through smithing).
Currently going through some of Mages guild quests so I can use Healing and Destruction.
Lately, there's been this grey horse that seems to be following me around. Is this a freeby? Hope so. 'Cause I have managed to get him killed. Had to dismount to take care of a Frost Troll that attacked us. While in the battle, a giant killed the horse. So I whomped him good.
Haven't gotten around to trying that poison thing yet, but I will. Does it also work on top of the elemental damage that the weapon does?
This game has me VERY addicted. Is there any way to upgrade my review to 5?
Thanks again!!!

Started a new game after that episode in Markarth. If this keeps up, I'm in trouble when they finally release BGEE.