It is exceedingly easy to find the highest praise for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim online. I don’t believe that Metacritic is the be all and end all of video game journalism, but it’s notable that Skyrim for Xbox 360 is sitting at a 96 right now, nonetheless. Frankly, it completely deserves the praise. I personally feel that it’s one of the best video game experiences that I’ve ever had, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have my own qualms with the game. This is an article expressing a few of the complaints that I’ve had during my first week with the game.

A Difficult Task

Bethesda has constantly had to deal with complaints regarding the difficulty of their games. The studio has never wanted to punish players for exploring and experimenting throughout their rich game worlds. In order to be as unrestrictive as possible, they employ a sliding difficulty system that will adjust the enemies and loot of quests relative to the level of the player. While I agree with this sentiment, I don’t think that they’ve perfected this method in Skyrim.

Run away immediately if you want to live.

At points in the game, I found the difficulty of enemies to be very sporadic. It’s expected that the difficulty of the main quest would slowly escalate as the player progresses, but this really didn’t seem to be the case from encounter to encounter. Immediately after clearing out a dungeon of relatively easy combatants (I focused on one handed melee combat, and most my foes dropped dead after a few hits), I was tasked with climbing a mountain to engage in the next part of the story. On the way up, I came up against a brutally difficult Frost Troll. His strong defense, deadly attacks and regeneration ability were unlike anything I had seen in the game up to this point. He was many times more difficult to defeat than even the Dragons I had faced. After many unsuccessful tries, I was able to trap the troll in the geometry of the mountain, and slowly hack away at him until his life was depleted. Now I know that it’s quite simple to either run past the troll or push him off the mountain, but it was still an event that broke the pace of the game for me.

Even within specific areas and dungeons the difficulty curve can be nonsensical. I witnessed this in a quest in Mistfall Keep of the Eastmarch hold. The middle level of the keep had a fight against three bandits that was moderately difficult. It took me three tries to figure out the right combination of archery, magic and melee to defeat them. At the top level of the keep, the boss was incredibly easy to defeat, and only required a generous mashing of the right trigger to repeatedly slash my Orcish sword. I understand that surprise and mystery are essential elements, but they shouldn’t be emphasized over the flow of the game.

Speaking of Problems…

Another thing that angered me was the complete tear down of both the Mercantile and Speechcraft skills. They have been united into a single, less satisfying Speech skill. In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,players hoping to persuade somebody to take their side had to engage in a speechcraft game involving rotating a disc of pie pieces. While it was kind of strange and very unrealistic, it at least added a small level of challenge and interest to persuasion. Rather than improve upon this, Bethesda has completely removed it from the game.

It's kind of sad that I miss this. [Oblivion Speechcraft Mechanic]

There are Persuade and Intimidate dialog options, but they are simply pass/fail based on your current speech skill. The primary way that this skill is leveled is buying and selling goods. This system is very unrewarding, and still doesn’t make very much sense. I would have much preferred a separate mercantile skill, as well as a more advanced speechcraft system.

Bugsy Malone

When Bethesda Softworks ships one of its massive games, it’s now almost expected that it will be packed full of amusing bugs and glitches. The release of Skyrim has been no different. Much of the Skyrim reddit has been devoted to posting these hilarious bugs.

The proper way to sleep in Skyrim. [via YouTube user MasterRiion]

I think that they’ve done a fairly good job of keeping serious game breaking issues out of the release, but the amount of visual annoyances is staggering. It’s no easy task to track down and find all of these, but I think Bethesda should be better than they are at it. It’s been over 5 years since the last game in the franchise was released. That should have been ample time to create a product that was at least a little bit closer to being bug-free.

Simplicity over Complexity

Lots of RPG style games are significantly scaling back their complexity in order to appeal to a broader audience. In countless series, like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and The Elder Scrolls, each of the iterations removes some skills and mechanics in order to streamline the experience. In Skyrim, this generally improves the experience, but I feel they’ve gone a bit too far in a few categories.

Skyrim character creation has less depth and more face paint.

For starters, I don’t like that they’ve completely removed player attributes. As a result, your character begins as a completely blank slate that can branch in any direction. The openness is nice, but it destroys some of the believability of the world. You’re supposed to have a past shrouded in mystery, but this isn’t that interesting when you realize it has no effect on your future. I like being gently guided towards choosing a specific style of character to play. It makes the experience more plausible, and makes playing a second time with a different character more unique and interesting.

When levelling, you can choose between upping your Magicka, Health or Stamina, as well as choosing a single extra perk to add to your character. However, these decisions are not at all affected by what skills you improved during that level. By grinding your alchemy skill, you can increase your character’s stamina and grant a heavy armor perk. It doesn’t feel at all like the reward is tailored to your experience at all. In Oblivion, the player could choose to enhance any aspect of their character while levelling, but was awarded bonus points if they chose attributes that were associated with the skills they had improved. I liked this system, and felt it was an appropriate award for what you had accomplished.

Companions

On paper, companions seem like a good idea. Having a loyal follower along for the ride to lend a helping hand is fantastic! However, I have found them to be a bigger frustration than a help. They seem to always be blocking the doorway that you want to walk through. In battle, they almost always seem to be standing between you and the guy you want to swing your sword at. They also constantly shout repetitive dialogue, and have a bad habit of fainting early on in combat. It’s a neat addition to be able to pick and choose different ones, but I really feel that the feature is lacking overall.

It's not the nicest place for a wedding, but the price is tough to beat.

Another new type of companion is a husband or wife. For the first time in the Elder Scrolls series, you can engage in the vows of eternal love with a partner. In my opinion, this feature was seriously half-baked for a franchise that prides itself on a deep and engaging world. Video game series that I consider to be mediocre in comparison to The Elder Scrolls have presented much deeper and more satisfying marriage mechanics. For instance, marriage in Fable II involved wooing a prospective partner, buying them gifts, making love, and even having children. In Skyrim, you can win the love of your partner simply by wearing a special amulet, and once you are wed, they serve as a glorified general goods merchant.

Although I have all of these problems with Skyrim, it is still one of my favorite games of all time. The sheer joy that having a new Elder Scrolls game brings to me vastly outweighs any issues that I’ve run into. I can’t wait to explore the rest of the game world, and see what DLC and mods will extend my experience.

Looking for more Skyrim content? Check out our Skyrim Podcast Special and other Skyrim articles!