Skyrim Rating

[Taluntain]

In this poll we're checking how high our community rates The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

[8people]

I was going to give it a four originally, but decided on a five. I've enjoyed the game immensley when I get to play it. I like the level up system, I like characters involved (even if they could have invested in one or two more voice actors ) and I like the freedom to take the story wherever I wish it.

I'm looking forward to DLC, too, as whilst I can identify certain points in guild quests or world quests that have slight hiccups they're the small breaks that indicate something was taken away or is a stub to be built on - so I'm interested to see if the points I think can lead onto more things had the same potential in the developers eyes.

[joacqin]

After not much thought I felt compelled to give it a five. It is probably the best single player RPG I have ever played. I can spend many minutes list things that are less than perfect but most of them only seem like that compared to all the things that are utterly brilliant.

[Barmy Army]

I don't like how you can't 're-jig' your character. I played through the game so far basically as a jack of all trades. I can cast a bit, fire a few arrows, melee a bit. My points are spread too thin across the board, and as I got further into the game I realised I wasn't good enough at one particular thing, and the game got hard. I ended up having to kite stuff for ages with the bow. I needed to specialize in one thing, but by the time I realized that I was too far in to start again. Damned if I'm doing the first god knows how many hours of the game again. Because of this, I shelved it and haven't been on it since. This is the one thing that ruined an otherwise exceptional game for me.

3.

[8people]

I had that, Barms, well technically twice

Made a character who I wanted to use spears, found out within ten minutes there weren't any started again with a thief.

Got a fair way into the game - was perhaps level 38 or just under. I had got to the point I was an excellent sneak, pickpocket and merchant; however in combat I was so poor that I needed a henchman meaning I could no longer sneak and pickpocket. By that time I was also a bit of a one hit wonder. I had a handful of skills to focus on but had let the non combat ones get too far ahead

Having such an epic level of failure, in playing a second time round with the same character - only ensuring her selected stats stayed relatively equal or oriented towards combat has made for a much more satisfying game.

Though I admit, when I purchase a game my idea is that I will be failing the first attempt in a rather complete fashion, thus whilst I'd spent forty odd hours on the first thief I did not feel I missed out, I simply got a better grip of the game - hopefully one day you'll give it another go and have a better handle so you can enjoy it more thoroughly, though I understand your frustration.

On PC you could use the console to change your character though, but mine's on the PS3

[joacqin]

You could just lower the difficulty level with that character Barmy. I am on my third character and it has been a completely different game and I keep finding new things. Heck, I find completely new neighbourhoods in the cities and vast stretches of wilderness none of my previous maxed out characters saw. The abundance of content in Skyrim is almost offensive, 70% of it is wasted on the average player and I wonder if anyone has seen and done everything.

[Marceror]

I gave it a 3. It's a beautiful game with a lot going for it, but I just couldn't get into it when all was said and done.

[Barmy Army]

Originally Posted by 8people

I had that, Barms, well technically twice

Made a character who I wanted to use spears, found out within ten minutes there weren't any started again with a thief.

Got a fair way into the game - was perhaps level 38 or just under. I had got to the point I was an excellent sneak, pickpocket and merchant; however in combat I was so poor that I needed a henchman meaning I could no longer sneak and pickpocket. By that time I was also a bit of a one hit wonder. I had a handful of skills to focus on but had let the non combat ones get too far ahead

Having such an epic level of failure, in playing a second time round with the same character - only ensuring her selected stats stayed relatively equal or oriented towards combat has made for a much more satisfying game.

Though I admit, when I purchase a game my idea is that I will be failing the first attempt in a rather complete fashion, thus whilst I'd spent forty odd hours on the first thief I did not feel I missed out, I simply got a better grip of the game - hopefully one day you'll give it another go and have a better handle so you can enjoy it more thoroughly, though I understand your frustration.

On PC you could use the console to change your character though, but mine's on the PS3

Yeah, I've got maxed out sneak and stuff. My first hit, either with dagger or bow packs a wallop, but after that it's cat and mouse. I did try and use the console to change my dude, but I failed epically and ended up breaking the game a bit, so I stopped. I really like the look of my guy, I've got this armour from completing the thieves guild quest line, Nightshade or some name, I can't remember, but it looks mint. But it's a case of mutton dressed as lamb unfortunately.

Originally Posted by joacqin

You could just lower the difficulty level with that character Barmy.

I guess I could, but I don't really enjoy the character. I'd quite like to be a killer caster guy, but I can imagine the game being tough as hell early on.

[joacqin]

That sounds like my current character, can slice off half the health of an elder dragon in one backstab (which I have only ever managed to do once, dragons being airborne and all that) but things get a little tricky in a fair fight. Thankfully I rarely fight fair, poisons are damn useful if I have kill someone from the front or just running away, re-stealthing and coming back also works wonders. Sure, it is not as powerful as heavily armoured, two handed axe wielding, fully enchanted nord who two chops everything on master but it is fun and powerful enough. Not to mention as you said Barmy, you look awesome in thieves guild/dark brotherhood gear.

[Merlanni]

Nightingale armour?

My kitty is only pet-able with gloves. Dark elf night blade. Destruction and light armour followed by alchemy, archery and one handed blade.

On PC with everything maxed out graphic wise.

I give it 92%

[Rawgrim]

I gave it a 4. I felt the followers were pretty one-dimensional. Mostly they just ran behind me and hardly spoke at all.

[olimikrig]

4 from me as well.

[Dice]

I gave it a four as well. I love the game. Beautiful and perplexing sometimes. And I do like walking around and just looking at things, the only thing it lacks is some real people .

[Paracelsi]

Not to mention hearing your favorite alchemist NPC's voice being used by a king in one area, a bandit in another and a villain somewhere else feels weird. Though I do like hearing Minsc's voice actor everywhere.

[Ravenstar]

Well, I was going to pass up Skyrim, until I found out about Minsc's voice actor. Now, I have to go re-think it.

[reepnorp]

The week before Skyrim came out I was talking to my friends about achievements on the Xbox, and how I always got bored of games before powering through for all of them.

On December 11, 30 days after Skyrim was released, I got the last achievement.

That said, I have not been as engrossed in a game as I was with Skyrim in an incredibly long time, I definitely give it a 5/5

The Nightingale armour looked fantastic, this was the first game I actually played using an HDMI cable and I was just blown away.

As far as companions are concerned, the only time I used them was when required for quests/achievements

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Originally Posted by Barmy Army

I don't like how you can't 're-jig' your character.

Well, if they did that, the game would be too easy. You could just re-create your character to optimize it for whatever dungeon you were in.

That said, I'm on my second character because I screwed up as well. While it was obvious to me that all games of this type favor specialization, I was led to believe that as long as you got really good at a couple of things, you were free to spend the rest of your points as you liked.

While that's technically true, there's the necessary qualifier of "one of the things you better be really good at is a means of dealing out damage". I made my first character a stealth character that, like you, was toast as soon as he got into combat.

So my next character was a tank, but I'm really considering after I get through the main quest to try a thief styled character again, only this time, I'll focus more on archery and only a few points in sneak early on. (You can't beat that first point of +20%, but after that subsequent perks on Stealth are only worth 5%, so the first one is worth as much as the next four combined.) It also seems that your base chance of hiding has much more to do with how high you sneak skill is rather than how many perks you've invested.

I also will have to incorporate potion (or more appropriately poison) use on my arrows. A perk or two in light armor and one handed will also be well advised.

[Paracelsi]

While it's well worth it to rummage your pack for just the right poison to use against a powerful boss, mage or something like a gang of trolls, poisons can be a hassle to use for "general" adventuring. Potions are different, they're much easier to sort through and you can just favorite the ones you'll be using most.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Originally Posted by Paracelsi

While it's well worth it to rummage your pack for just the right poison to use against a powerful boss, mage or something like a gang of trolls, poisons can be a hassle to use for "general" adventuring. Potions are different, they're much easier to sort through and you can just favorite the ones you'll be using most.

Definitely. Add in that unlike arrows, potions have weight (0.5 each). So since the number of attacks you get with a poisoned weapon is rather limited, it is impractical to carry around 50 or so that you'd need for an extended quest. Like you said, it's much more practical to pack 5 or 6 and pick and chose when you use them.

[Death Rabbit]

Gave it a 4. Would have given it a 4.5 if that were possible.

My biggest gripes are just about the followers and the loot. The followers as they're so lifeless and dumb. And the loot because everything looked the same and nothing felt unique - minus the Daedric items of course, but - they were so few.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Couldn't agree more about the followers. In fact, other than the quests that required you to have a follower, I soon stopped using them entirely. Now that I'm playing a stealth character again, followers get downgraded from "non-essential", to "detrimental". I cannot defend that which is indefensible, and so I won't bother to try.

As for the loot and items, it all depends on what you look for in a game. Sure, the item list is tiny compared to the Diablo series. There's basically three types of melee weapons in the game - sword, axe, or mace. Take you pick between a one or two handed variety, and the different grades are the same graphic with a different color. At least the armors look different when equipped.

But then I got to thinking that even though the item list is fairly light, more doesn't necessarily translate into better. Sure it was cool finding those super-uniques in Diablo, but it only directly contributed to enjoying that game because you couldn't get through the game without the uber items. Skyrim is designed in such a way that you never are in a position where you need item x, y, or z, before going to area a, b, or c. And due to that, having more items wouldn't necessarily be anything beyond frill material.

The driving force behind Diablo - it was an item-finding game. Finding items WAS the game. It was also completely linear in how you proceeded through the game. So if they skimped on items, it would be completely dull. Skyrim is not focused on items, because you can only do each quest once. Once an area is cleared, it's cleared, except for an odd random encounter if you return. You can't run areas repeatedly so it can't be all about the loot, because it would destroy the non-linearity of the game. (I guess you could play it linearly if you wanted, if you never diverted from the main quest line.) If it were an item centric game, people would find a set way to do all the quests in an exact order to optimize their character as early as possible. The point behind Skyrim is to be open-ended and done in any way that you'd like.

[Ryginar]

I personally can't attest to how good or bad it is because I've never played it. I pretty much only rate games based on story and character depth, lol.

So how is it? I might consider getting it if you guys give it a good rating -- obviously you're experts on this xD

---------- Added 0 hours, 0 minutes and 54 seconds later... ----------

And by that I mean I'd like one of you to review it for me.

[DarthMuffin]

I'm giving it a 4, mostly because I think everything that has something to do with questing feels very rushed, not to say downright badly done. I don't like how linear the dungeons are, and how nearly all of the quests (not just the radiant ones) involve looting that random item at the end of a long string of corridors. The guild storylines are also ridiculously short and not particularly engaging.

The rest of the game is incredible and it's definitely one of the best I've played in years.

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

Originally Posted by Ryginar

I personally can't attest to how good or bad it is because I've never played it. I pretty much only rate games based on story and character depth, lol.

Then you'll hate it, because the actual story - like the conversations you have with people, all of whom want to tell you their life story before telling you anything meaningful - are probably the worst part of the game.

One of the few complaints I have with the game is that the conversations are dreadful. Now, you'd think that Bethesda would realize this, and thus attempt to minimize the amount of conversations you had with people. But they went the other way. They took what was quite possibly the worst aspect of the game, and completely immersed the player in it. I mean, if that's your thing, OK, but seeing as how much of the story involves talking, and 90% of what characters say add little to no value to the actual story, well...

The good part of the game is that your character is completely customizable. 18 skill sets, over 250 perks, can only reasonably hope to get about 60 of them, and an unlimited number of quests (although only 5 or 6 "big" quests, other than the main storyline), give it immense replay value, especially if you RP it.

My first character was a fighter, so I stuck to the fighter related quests, like joining the Imperial Legion, and doing the Companions quest. My second character was a thief, so I did the Thieves and Assassin Guild. My third character is a mage, and I'll do the mage related quests.

But combinations are certainly possible. You can be a fighter/mage, and fighter/thief, or a mage/thief. (Although you probably can't do all three effectively - not enough skills to go around.) But seriously - you can play through this game 10 different times with different characters, and assuming you concentrate on different skill combinations, it will be a different experience each time.

[Jestor]

I'm gonna give it a four. Be about 3.8 if the option was there. Mainly due to afew gitches.
I am only playing the xbox version so I don't know if it relates on PC.
IMHO of the 3 recent Elder Scrolls efforts, the story/side quests/replayabilty of Morrowwing (GOTYE) was by far the best. Oblivion was extremely lacking in this department however the grafics made everyone just stop and look around from someplace high. It was a huge moment graphically for the series.
Skyrim basically negates the downsides of the other 2 thoygh I myself have run across afew glitches that make certain quest impossible to complete.
Still a great game and if they change their minds and release a patch inclusive hard copy for xbox I will upgrade. I won't download extra content from xbox live though.