Retro's Elder Scrolls Review I-V
Hello, all. Here I will be posting my reviews based on the series THE ELDER SCROLLS 1-5.
I will only add or remove based on if I find something new or different to append. This is a casual review, so take this as my experience, not as a serious rating. These are my thoughts on what I think are the highs and lows from each game as I have now had the chance to play them all.
Background. I didn't really play RPGs growing up in the golden era of gaming. 90-2000s, but I do enjoy them as an adult. My RPG journey started some time in 2013 when I decided to catch up on videogames and buy a used PS3 after being mostly gone from the 360 and PS3 era. I walked into Gamestop and decided to buy a game and noticed a few RPGs on display -Dragons Dogma, Dragons Origin, LOTR, Oblivion and Skyrim. So, I just took a blind pick and chose OBLIVION, since I assumed Skyrim was the later sequel.
That was when my gaming life began to love RPGs.I went from Oblivion to Skyrim to Arena to Daggerfall and then to Morrowind.
TES I : Arena
So I love Arena. It's everything a solid 90's CRPG aims to be. It might not be as refined as traditional CRPGs of its time, and was made fun of for being new, but man did Arena have a ton more charm than your traditional CRPG. It was truly the underdog. Arena evolved into a passion project by the devs in what can only be considered a wholesome tribute to the RPG genre.
Pros: 1.Enjoyable world, 2.charm of just getting lost into an RPG fantasy, 3.sense of progression through dungeons, stat building, magic.
Cons: 1.Very dated graphics. The CRPG games of this time truly did not age well on today's monitors. Arena was much more complex in its overworld sprites with the amount of art on screen, thus it has aged kinda bad in pixels.
2.The other con is the combat. I've never really had a problem with the combat, I found the swinging enjoyable. Others may feel different. The further lack of game depth can easily be excused as this was the first game and depth really came with Daggerfall.
TES II : Daggerfall
Daggerfall is easily the staple of what Elder Scrolls aims to achieve, but sadly most can't because of the ever-growing resource of bigger and bigger gaming assets. Daggerfall could pull off one of the biggest maps in gaming because of its bit design. Try that on today's tech and most consoles won't even be able to install a Daggerfall-like game.
It has a grand, grand open world in countless amounts of places to visit, shop, get quests, roleplay and so forth, alongside an interesting main story, interesting main dungeons, and an enjoyable day to day combat.
Daggerfall is the type of game that even on the new UNITY version, people are still having fun with the core gameplay, dungeon crawls, quests, and roleplay builds.
Pros: 1. Endless amounts of towns, 2. lots of choices in content i.e. guilds, temples, side quests, main quest; easily the staple of how much content an RPG can be. 3. Never ending opportunities for random dungeon diving. 4. The best most straight forward custom spell crafting and magic system. 4. personally loved the movies and being able to even buy houses.
Cons: 1.Biggest fact to be humbled on is that not every dungeon can be completed. You just have to make peace with that and learn to adapt and move on to another one. Some dungeons, not connected to main quest, will be VERY VERY VERY long. Just fail the quest, get out, and try another dungeon. Easy.
2.Another con is that some directions can be too vague like Morrowind. You get sent to find a house in north east, unable to find a house because it doesn't even stand out, and thus have to check every house in north east. This reason alone is why I'm not so much quest enthusiastic often.
TES III :Morrowind
Morrowind is a love-hate relationship. It truly feels that way. Sometimes I want to place this as number 1 and recommend it to my non RPG friends, other times I want to forget about it because I become annoyed by its slowness, lack of fast travel, lack of map markers, useless filter quests, small text-heavy design, and combat. The only time I'm truly enjoying Morrowind is when I'm either playing a pure vanilla run, or a heavily modded freeroam. It's hardly when I receive a quest to do. That's because the quests in this game are LONG, tedious, and downright too vague for its own good. I love Morrowind's enormous scale of content that makes Vardenafil feel like the biggest modern Elder Scrolls' open world. I hate the direction the devs went in designing their user-end experience through vague quest directions, lack of map markers, and the fact that the main quest really begins at the Ald'ruhn Ashlander. This, while putting it lightly that I'm not going into depths about smaller problems in Morrowind like the size of objects, stamina, not being able to rest in towns, etc. That said, the most I enjoyed were side quests and parts of the main quest like fighting dreamers and like the tribe quests in which each was unique and reflected the tribe.
Plus, Morrowind purists ALWAYS gloated about Morrowind RPG freedom, but you can't even kill essential npcs and fail main quests! You're always forced to finish the main quest and become the Nerevarine! And they got mad at Skyrim for the Dragonborn, lol! You can fail quests in Skyrim too! But in Skyrim there's often a chance to appeal your bad decisions.
Pros:
1. Huge Open World that feels like a truly diverse region.
2. Amount of content in guilds, side quests, mainquest, houses, DLCs, daedra dungeons, dwemer dungeons.
3.The freedom to travel anywhere with dangerous enemies, The lack of property ownership is fun to sell stolen items.
4. The Music.
Cons: 1. The Mainquest has way too many filler side stuff that can easily be taken out, but if you do then you lose daddy Caius, plus if you cut half of the main quest all you have is the Ashlander quests and an uneventful series of last fetch quests (convincing houses, going to vivec, going to defeat dagoth).
2. The combat. It's a huge eye sore to ignore. The misses suck in a 3D action rpg. It worked on Daggerfall because Daggerfall had better combat sounds. So when you miss in Daggerfall you feel like you actually miss and or landed a hit that was parried. In Morrowind, it's just frustrating to miss a rat when it's slowly chipping away your health. To put plainly, if you DIDN'T play Daggerfall or know how DnD works, then you won't understand Morrowind combat and what stats mean or how vital AGILITY is, which is most people. Like, they literally give you a Dagger as your first weapon, and if you don't have shortblade as a main or minor then you're probably going to be missing a lot and leveling slower (assuming you didn't steal imperial loot to buy a weapon or know yet that you can just buy a weapon in shops).
3. Too vague for its own good. Never mind that traveling is a pain to get around with your only options being silt strider ports or some mage teleportation, most of the game map is hidden by default, like where can I go to buy a dang roadmap? I don't want Skyrim-like map markers where I can just click and travel to dungeons, no, but I want to at least see the dungeon on my map if I am being sent there for a quest! How can Npcs give you detail information like "go left at the bridge" and not be able to just mark the location on my map? The devs did this because they approached a more -journal important-game design. But the journal is a flawed quest manager with its only good use is the options -quest. If the name of a dungeon is on my journal, then why is it not marked on my map too? Or, how can you be sent for a job when the person sending you doesn't know where that job is? It's annoying. The BIGGEST proof of how BAD this game design is was in the Ashland Initiation Quest. The Chief tells you go "NORTH, EAST AT A CAIRN, THEN SOUTH EAST" but the tomb is literally just SOUTH of the camp. Or when finding Azura's cavern, they tell you to notice the "teeth" of the valley, but the whole region has sharp spiral rocks and many valleys. Sorry, but this is a huge problem that bothered me. This is what Morrowind Purists called "peak RPG"??? It's horrible. Too vague for its own good. So vague that it borders closer to horrible. There is such a thing as "too much hand holding markers" but now I know "too little markers" doesn't mean better either. A good RPG is based in the middle. Show me where the damn dungeon is on my map, I will go there at my leisure. I don't need to fast travel there, I don't need a mini compass, just put it on my map, thank you.
3. Vague Npcs & Objects. Often I spent more time just looking for a dang Npc because no one told me where I could find them. I liked in Skyrim locations improved like "this is the winking skeever, oh that's where the guy said they'd be" or "this is the seven thousand steps, people say the greybeards live at the top." In Morrowind, you are told to join the imperials by going to Gnisis, when you get there, the commander isn't even in the fort, he's in an "imperial" cornerclub downstairs. He sends you later to find x dunmer for cure blight scrolls. That dunmer is in his house but his house is only seen by his last name. In Daggerfall, I loved that I could at least ask normal npcs "do you know where x person is," in Morrowind, most of the time that wasn't an option and you just had to look in every corner. When it comes to Objects, like the dwemer puzzle box, the objects are not just small, but you can easily miss them since they don't even stand out. Put a simple glow and finding important items will be a lot more fun.
4. Text-heavy. No audio, but boy does Morrowind have too much text. Dialogues should be short. That's how most games use npc dialogue. In Morrowind, they just drag on and on with a ton of reading just to skim for important detail that often won't be mentioned in your own journal. I say, leave the long text for the notes and books, not npc dialogue. And if you do want to make a dialouge-heavy game, do it like Daggerfall and make it bigger with a better backdrop, not small and rambling. Yet, even then, these days I am slowly moving away from favoring long text in videogames. Like, who has time to read a 20 page journal about an npc quest in games anyway? Plus the text in conversations are long, with little RPG gameplay responses. Instead of user engagement, long text dialogues simply have CONTINUE. If you think, why not click the side options, if you click those out of order you get information out of order. Thankfully the wonders of modern AI voices have given these text heavy dialogues some justice.
In Short, Morrowind's pros are VERY good, but it also has extreme lows. Morrowind on your 2nd playthrough is not the same as it is MUCH more easier now that you know who to look for, what the item is, and where the location is. Where as in Skyrim it's still challenging to be on your next playthrough run outside of exploiting potions, in Morrowind it's bad because you already know where the puzzle box is, where you can loot the best gear, and you know what it takes to progress with an npc. Half the subjective fun and challenge in Morrowind is spent in your first run when finding a certain npc or item might be half of your 8 hour game session.
TES IV :Oblivion
My first experience in Oblivion that made me love RPGs is I remember leaving the sewer, having horrible gear, being low level, and having to survive in an open world where I knew I was at a noob disadvantage. Being led into an Open World really made me feel like I was a small fish in a big ocean. Everything had me on alert. I would look over my shoulders ingame just to check if no one was approaching for an attack. This experience really grounded into me the awesome appreciation for survival-base gameplay.
My first hours in Oblivion I spent them like I was playing GTA. I would attack random npcs, take their loot, and run away. I didn't know what bounties were, how RPG stats progress, I didn't even know or cared about doing any Quests. I simply enjoyed the sandbox free roam. One image I always remember is being night-time, and killing a knight standing guard in front of a bridge just to acquire HIS nice armor and weapon for myself.
That said, I will say Oblivion is the game I now have least progression in with its Quests, so I will be continuing this review as I play more Oblivion this year on my new Modded List.
Pros: 1. A fun action combat game in first person with either weapons or magic. I love that I can just press 1 button and be able to cast a spell. I enjoyed this so much I always make the C key mapped as my magic set up. The combat is also nice. I really enjoyed bows and arrows, swinging, and how tense some fights can be in first person melee.
2.The Lore. If there's one reason to play Oblivion and not Skyrim, it is to dive deeper into a game that has much more to say about Lore, factions, and daedra than any other Elder Scrolls game. Oblivion skyrockets as being the best Elder Scrolls when it comes to narrative quests. In Skyrim, the main quest feels like a play being told in real time as npcs move into positions. In Oblivion, the Npc interactions really move you to feel the main story and understand the themes of betrayal, irony, justice, corruption, and even comedy. Oblivion starts out with a nice little movie. It goes on to further deliver with a very engaging story-rich focus.
3. The Music
Cons: 1.Oblivion's graphics have not aged the best. Just like Morrowind, Oblivion is a bit cringe to come back to as Npcs are aging badly. Oblivion is in the middle, between Morrowind and Skyrim. And the graphic attempts really show they tried to at least move in the right direction. That, and while I love Oblivion's interface, it's also beginning to show its clunky look even for a paper aesthetic.
2.Combat. 1st person is fine, it's amazing. Third? Well, we don't talk about third. It's fun and fast and MUCH MUCH better than Morrowind, but go play Oblivion for yourself and you'll see why 3rd pov is not the best.
TES V :Skyrim
Before I played TES 1-3, I said Skyrim was the best game in the series. After playing 1-5,.....I still say Skyrim is the best in the series. It's the BEST. It's time for everyone to admit it and take off your Morrowind nostalgia bias. Skyrim alone does better in everything that the previous games introduced. Combat? 1st and 3rd are fun. Graphics? Everything looks consistent and aging nicely as it went for a more art environment over just graphics. Dungeons? They are much more detailed and fun to explore. Quests? They are much more memorable and less filler. Music? It's like Morrowind, but it's EVERYWHERE.
Morrowind Purists, ranty gamers, and neckbeard keyboard warriors ALWAYS profit from bashing Skyrim because of X petty reason that they don't bash on other games. Skyrim? Oh, Skyrim is the game they come to rant about the SMALLEST of things. Anything, anything in Skyrim you bet there is someone that will find a way to rant. But other games? Oh no, just Skyrim.
Something happened post Fallout76, that attracted so many trolls to bash on Skyrim and the studio as "Bugthesda."
Yet, now that Starfield is the new game on the block for ranters to profit on, now people are beginning to slow their rants on Skyrim and beginning again to praise it....because it's an open world and it's not Starfield. I say, it's too little too late. So many hated Skyrim, but the fact remains, GAMERS love Skyrim. Twitch streamers today can be found playing vanilla Skyrim with 0 mods and be racking hundreds of hours and having fun. Skyrim is a Masterpiece of enjoyment when it comes to video games. Everything is well thought out. Npcs matter. I can name Npcs that live in Riften, but I can't name 1 Npc from Morrowind Gnisis that isn't Darius the Legion Commander.
Skyrim has shorter quests than Oblivion, but that's not bad. What ever happened to short sweet and to the point? Skyrim aimed for Quality over Quantity and we should acknowledge that. 1 Quest in the mages guild may be short, but it's much more detailed with voice acting, quest progression, quest objective, and things to find. I would rather have a smaller dungeon that's detailed, with corners that have nothing but able to find treasure, than have Daggerfall-like dungeons that are huge, but empty, maze-like, and overwhelmed with repeated mob respawns.
I think now is the time that people are beginning to acknowledge that Skyrim is a great game again, something that hasn't happened since launch, and before the rise of Youtube Clickbait ranters.
Modded Skyrim
Here's what I've always said about Modding. Great-Games create Great-Mods. It's not the other way around. Rarely is a Mod the sole reason why people go and play an older game. That is RARELY the case. Like, "the only reason people are re-downloading this x game is because x mod came out and thus people are playing x mod instead, not the x game." No, that may be the case with variety streamers, casual gamers that don't play Skyrim outside of following mod trends, etc. But it's like saying people only play Stardew valley when a new mod is released. Or the only time you're playing Morrowind now is because AI voices have just been uploaded.
No, we all know mods are mostly made to COMPLIMENT A GAME, not to say it's replacing x game. Like more mods have been made for GTA San Adreas, but few have been made as a replacement like GTA Alien City or GTA underground. That said, why do ranters LOVE to insist that mods for just Skyrim are the reason people are still playing Skyrim? It's a lie and you know it. Mods are made to compliment Skyrim. Mods are made because Skyrim is a good game and because there IS a fanbase. I know, it's a shocker. Bethesda having a fanbase? Say it ain't so!
I love Bethesda's Elder Scrolls. Clearly I'm not the only one. But I am the few that dare to say it in Public. I don't fear the ranters. I don't hide it. I don't make insults to Bethesda or devs. I appreciate their games. I'm a fan. Plus, as a Modder, I make mods BECAUSE I love Skyrim. I make mods for myself, but I share them online. And yet people have the audacity to say mods like mine are made because I think base Skyrim is inferior. It's not. Skyrim base game, pure vanilla is not only MORE stable than a modlist, but it's fun even on it's own core. I'm tired of all the liars that say Skyrim itself is bad and only Modded Skyrim is good. Oh, but when you talk about supporting mod authors, people switch again and say stuff like "it's a hobby, give me the mod, how dare you charge for it, mods should all be free, I deserve this mod you made it's now our mod, i hate creation club because I have to pay modders."
Anyway, as you all can tell, I am the most passionate about Skyrim, because quite frankly it's been bullied so unfairly out of ALL the Elder Scrolls games DESPITE the fact that Skyrim does better in categories where Morrowind and Oblivion failed. But gamers aren't ready to acknowledge Morrowind flaws. Gamers will rant about Skyrim flaws first and fall silent on Morrowind or Oblivion. It's pathetic and socially bias.
Pros: 1.The Day to Day Enjoyment. Skyrim has the best free-roam experience out of ALL the Elder Scrolls so far. Skyrim is the game that made me love daily gameplay MUCH more than long quests, long dungeons, or long complicated stat builds. I've noticed about myself that what's most important to me as a gamer is the amount of fun I have in one session. In Skyrim I could start in Riften, plan to do x quest, and spend all my time pathing my own adventure as I go doing other stuff along the way. The Adventure matters more to me than just the Quest objectives itself. Frankly, when I'm just doing the Thieves guild or the Mages guild in 1 session, I begin to feel burnt out. But when I stick with 1 quest from either guild as a goal, and do more adventuring, I switch to having fun. In fact, so many praise Morrowind as a Quest RPG, but Morrowind's long and filler Quest lines always burn me out. I love Quality over Quantity. I love day to day over x amount of quests to do. Plus the Skyrim Mountains are the best LOD atmosphere out of the previous 3 games.
2.The Combat. Now that we have Darksoul games at the front of gaming news, most gamers become upset when their RPGs don't mimic the lock on souls-like combat. Some games now are made WITH souls-like combat because they either fear criticism to do something different, or they fall into tunnel vision mimicery to repeat what FromSoft is doing. When it comes to Skyrim, I was never bothered that it wasn't lock on based. Combat is a simple static camera, fight the enemy infront of you, turn left, right, even walk backwards. It's fine. Let's remember that Skyrim is an RPG first. Studios like Bethesda never go for the arcade fighting system. Elder Scrolls games aren't meant to be a fighting game in it's core, aside from the background of Arena history. You're not going to get a Batman Arkham City fighting when playing Elder Scrolls. I've always said, judging ElderScrolls combat for being bad is like judging Call of Duty vehicles for not being like Forza. It's just a part, in the whole of its RPG development. Skyrim, as it stands in TES series, has the BEST combat. It might not be as focused like Yakuza 0 beat em ups, but it acts as a decent place holder for combat engagement. There's 2 things you can't argue about Skyrim and that is it has the best TES graphics and best TES combat. It's the latest, it's a no brainer. Just look at Skyrim Stealth Archer or advance potion+magic, it's a gaming artform. TES games regardless have the BEST 1st pov experience.
3. The Music.
4. The detail. Unlike Morrowind where I said I can't name anyone beside Darius in Gnisis, in Skyrim I can name and or know of many Npcs all throughout each city and village. You can argue that "Skyrim settlements are smaller" but I can EASILY say that the Npcs that Skyrim does have leave a bigger immpression than in any other TES game. Where as in Oblivion you might remember what a npc does, in Skyrim you can remember more who that NPC is and says. In Daggerfall and Morrowind, you can remember who the main Npcs are, in Skyrim you can also remember who is the famous smith in Whiterun, Who is the man in Riften that says "feeling light in your pockets," whos the bride in Solitude, whos the kid in Windhelm that did the black ritual, who the arch mage is in Winterhold College, whos the vampire woman in Morthal, whos the snobby Redguard in Whiterun, even what the name's of some shops are. That's what makes Skyrim rich in much more detail. Places and people mattered more. You ask where x tomb is in Morrowind on a map, I won't be able to answer without looking at a journal or the wiki. You ask me where x dwemer dungeon is in Skyrim, I'll know what map marker to look for, and when I find it, I'll even know how to get there without checking my map. Forgot that I even have the bonus option of fast traveling there or using clarvionce. Just knowing where it is is good enough to get there by heart in the wilderness. Speaking of landscape, every corner of Skyrim is a work of art. I've come to the point where I see someone fish on a river and I know where that is. I go to Morrowind, I won't know what part of the dead mountain they are wandering in without a map.
Cons: 1. Skyrim's cons that many call out is that it's not as "lengthy" as Oblivion Quests. I agree, but then again, Oblivion is the most narrative out of all the Elder Scrolls games, though I also wouldn't mind a bit more content. So it's not really a con, more like yeah Skyrim does not have the extra 2 hours of the mages guild that it does in Oblivion's mages guild. But whatever, it's not the end of the world and there's plenty else to do in an RPG besides sitting down for hours in a single quest progression. In fact, games like Dark Souls don't even have much quests at all, and games like Witcher 2 have linear quests. "But they give you RPG options in Witcher 2" yeahhhhh, but they also redcon your RPG choices in Witcher 3. So let's just move on about nitpick questing.
2.Interface. I have NEVER liked the base vanilla UI. As someone that started with Oblivion, I much prefer using SkyUI even if SkyUI will be the only mod I can use. Skyrim is the first game that was exclusively catered for console, thus console controls. SkyUI is what I prefer as both an RPG fan and a pc gamer. Plus, you KNOW the Skyrim Interface was a mistake even when ESO itself uses a "SKYUI" mimic in its official mmo. I also hated the modern font, but as time passed I don't mind anymore. I also enjoy the Skyrim dialouge box look, as well as cursors, crosshairs, etc. It's just the main HUD I hate.
3. I hate Delphine. Can't stand she's a main npc. She breaks lore and treats you like she doesn't serve you. She should be testing if you are the Dragonborn, not if you can do x thing for her that's in her own best interest. Caius never sent us to kill or spy for our enemies, Delphine does. She's a disgrace as a blade, plus isn't the emperor done with blades post Oblivion and post Great War???? Why does she act like she serves the emperor or the Dragonborn. She doesn't even side with the Imperials in the grey beards table! The Blades lore is based on being the emperors exclusive guards, not some mythical self party of ancient relics.
4. Lack of Argonians and Khajiit. Even in Morrowind they showed up as slaves. Are they less free in Skyrim?? Skyrim is home of the Nords, yes, but Argnonians own houses in Morrowind. Lack of beast folk is a shame. There should be more in Riverwood, Whiterun, Solitude, Markarth.Yall acting like Skyrim is a perfect nord-only region.
5. Too Easy. I'm drawing a blank on more points, but I'll just say Skyrim is not hard. At first you feel like you're playing survival mode stealth archer, but mid game with shouts, the only hard enemies become ice wizards. darn you!
In short, people mistakenly lie about Skyrim that it is a reflection of Bethesda "dumbing down" or "watering down" the series, but clearly it's not. In fact Skyrim refines much of previous Elder Scroll features and prioritizes Quality over Quantity in many cases. That and let's not forget each Elder Scrolls game deserve to do something different or exclusive than the last. I'm sorry you can't use levitation in Skyrim. Boo-hoo. Go and enjoy using Dragonshouts to bend time, or using conjuration to spawn an etheral weapon, you know, stuff that you couldn't do in Morrowind.
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Thus, if I had to personally rate them now based on what I like the most, it would be Skyrim, Morrowind, Daggerfall, Oblivion, Arena.
If I had to rate based on world content it would be Morrowind, Daggerfall, Oblivion, Skyrim, Arena.
If I had to rate based on friend recommendation, it will be Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall, Arena.
If I had to rate based on beast folk love, it would be Oblivion, Morrowind, Skyrim, Daggerfall, Arena.
If I had to rate based on lore faithfulness, it would be Daggerfall, Oblivion, Skyrim, Morrowind, Arena. (Yes I know, people could say "skyrim doesnt even nordic pantheon, but lets remember most new lore came with Morrowind's retcons).
If I had to rate to not anger Ranty gamers it would be Morrowind, Morrowind, Morrowind, Morrowind, Oblivion.
If I had to rate while being on Skooma, it would be Arena, Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall, Skyrim.
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Elder Scrolls are an unmatched RPG series. Bethesda has my respect because they KNOW and have been proven to deliver in each game. If GTA San Andreas is good, Bethesda has been making GTA grander content since Morrowind. They honestly don't get the love they deserve. It's a shame. I love Bethesda because they not only give us the creation kit for free to modify their game, UNLIKE NINTENDO OR MOST CEASE AND DESSIST COMPANIES, Bethesda SUPPORTS their fans and SUPPORTS our mods. That is why I respect Bethesda even more as a game studio. They not only make the BEST open world RPGs, they are amazing as a game studio.
IT IS A SHAME what the internet has done to bully the devs and the ceo. Outright shame. Among all the ranty clickbait, we have turned our backs on a Game Studio has always supported their fans. They even support their own modders so much they give us an official platform to legally support us on Creation Club. BUT THAT TOO gets bullied and manipulated by Gaming Influencers. It's such a twisted, horrible reality in my years of gaming that rather than praising Bethesda, we live in a reality when gamers today would rather say "Bugthesda" and bully their games for far less than they dare to criticize other games.
