OK I want you guys to know, I came into this with the assumption that it was going to suck. Essentially that it was going to be a worse elder scrolls game than the cell phone games. That it was going to be such a betrayal that I was going to rage for EONS about it, like I did with Oblivion.
I came out startled, it's mediocre, but that's really all the Elder Scrolls games ever were in comparisons to the true giants. They never had the balance of character development that Might and Magic had. Were never as addictive as Wizardry. They lacked the depth and philosophy of Ultima. They didn't have as good of stories as Fallout or other Black Isle/Troika/Obsidian(Disregard the lack of Bioware, it's a rant that would probably get me banned for it's vehemence.) games. They were just moderately amusing sidetracks generally in between major releases. In that regard, as relatively pointless wastes of time, they excelled.
I find in retrospect, that the pain I found on Oblivion's release, wasn't actually all that related to Oblivion, but offense in that this and Bioware were really all we had left at that point. Obsidian hadn't really released much beyond KotOR 2, which I hadn't played at that point. Troika had just folded not for lack of a good product but for lack of exposure and publisher relations. Black Isle was long dead. Microprose was longer dead. Sirtech would likely never release another game. Interplay was a company of just Herve Caine, who had liquidated the Fallout franchise for a pittance. And HoMM was being put in people heads as the only Might and Magic franchise. It was a depressing time for RPG gamers, when your choice was between Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights 2. Neverwinter Nights 1 being the game that started Bioware's decline.
As it is, Skyrim is excelling, in the same way Daggerfall and Morrowind excelled, providing me something to do while I wait for something better to come out. For Morrowind, it was Icewind Dale 2, for Daggerfall, it was, god that was so long ago I can't recall, maybe Ultima 7. Maybe Saints Row 3 or Amalur will serve that games purpose in regards to Skyrim.
As for my thoughts on the actual game and not just mindless speculation on my own inner thoughts.
Combat system is better than oblivion, at the default difficulty things don't seem to have much HP bloat, and the enemies seem to hit decently hard in return. Duel wielding could be improved in a few ways, more animation variety, less lag time, and a decent parry, as it is you can't parry at all. I initially had this problem where when I tried to strike, I was expecting hands to correlate correctly, IE right click to use right hand, left click to use left hand. That's been sorted now. I did like the lack of tutorial beyond, here this is how you move and loot.
Magic seems to have been massively downgraded, you now can't make your own spell effects. Alchemy can only be done at alchemy stations and seems to have been depowered slightly. Magic itself is completely potion dependent, with no real way to quickly recharge bar that. I'd love it if as a pure mage, I didn't expend magicka with my base spells, like fighters don't expend fatigue when they just spam click without power attacking. But that would likely be the overpowered solution provided spell effects stayed the same.
Shouts are viseral and seem to add some variety to combat, I just wish there was a quick way to switch between them. I still don't know if I can chain a whirlwind step with a force bolt. I'd like to find out, it's just the menu systems are clunky as all hell right now.
Menu systems, the menu systems suffer massively from the fact that this is a 360 game. And are thus meant for a screen that is high def and somewhere in the range of 40 inches of screensize, played on a couch 2 metres away. As it is, I play in the decidedly non high def res of 1440 by 880, and the screensize of 21 inches, played from 2 feet away. Text is massively large, and books read hilariously like facebook posts. 1.2 paragraphs left click to read more. 1.3 paragraphs, left click to read more.
I just realized I don't post anything other than walls of text do I?
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Topic: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Read 1600372 times)