Ok so the day I got the Elder Scrolls V Skyrim I was very excited. My experience with Bethesdas previous offerings was very positive, I would say Fallout 3 was maybe the best experience I have had this console generation, so to say my expectations were high would be an understatement. I had no previous experience with the Elder Scrolls universe until the second I put this game in my 360 and played.

The opening 2 hours of the game display exactly what this game is going to be great at a huge open world punctured with detailed dungeons and an ever open and expanding story with many layers of detail that you may never touch upon. To those that have played the game I completed the companions guild, the thieves guild and even started on the mages guild. I saw a lot of the open world and what the game had to offer, I spent over 40 hours in my experience with this game and played the main quest up to the Aludins bane quest.

My opinion of the game began to sour roughly 20 hours in, I had really enjoyed the companions guild and suffered the second half of the thieves guild (the reward was well worth it), the main quest started interesting, your first dragon fight is a fantastic and exhilarating experience. That said the story became convoluted and confused and much of the characters and areas in the Elder Scrolls universe names were dropped but never expanded upon.

My main gripe is with the gameplay, I had spent my first 20 hours focusing on the two handed and archery sides of the combat, but began to hit a brick wall. I changed things and started to bring magic in, I invested a lot of time in levelling up my magic ability and for a while this helped. The fact that the combat was clunky and not perfect was a major frustration, maybe I'm spoilt by the fps generation that I am now used to with instant and rapid responses to the press of a button or trigger. With a number of combat options now available I believed the game would open up even more and I would be able to progress where I have struggled previously to this.

Unfortunately this wasn't the case and this where my journey ends, a convoluted world and story that was hampered by its own size and the team that created it ambitions. The gameplay's lack of skill and responsiveness hindered my experience and led to a lot of frustration. That said I would recommend anyone try the game and this was just my experience.

i liked it

@picko19: None of your reasoning goes anywhere. The story being convoluted, well, the story was not the part Bethesda put their charms in. It's good enough to hold the Skyrim universe together, and the abundance of side quests and guild quests that have pretty good characters and story twists, I'd say they did more than enough with the story.

About progressing where you've struggled before, I don't understand, are you saying your character is too fragile and weak in many confrontations?

And about the gameplay, I am someone who'd rather have good gameplay than anything else, and I tell you the wonders of exploring Skyrim are too great to describe. The combat is supposed to be slightly slow, that's where the skill lies, you have to know when to wave your sword and how to aim the shot because the AI is pretty good at sparring. You have to learn the speed of each weapon, including the drawing of the bow, and once you master it like I believe I have, not to mention going for some diversity by mixing the abundance of weapons, scrolls, spells, shouts and poisons you have, you end up enjoying the combat real nice.

I realize it is your opinion though and I respect it.

I liked it a whole hell of a lot.

I think this game is amazing. don't know where your getting any of this.... well maybe the story is a little weird but aside from that....

246 hours later, I still love it and cannot wait for Dragonborn.

I put in around 200 hours, that games alright. But its no Fallout: New Vegas right guys? Seriously though, if you want great story in that type of game, and you like Fallout 3, New Vegas is your dream game. It is my favorite of Bethesda's published games.

Also, you say you hit a brick wall in the combat, but you didn't expand on what that meant. Was it a brick wall of boredom? Frustration? Ambivalence?...Bricks?

I sank over 200 hours into Skyrim, so I obviously disagree. Sure, It's not without flaws, but remains a fantastic game despite all of them. I'm sorry to hear you're not having fun with it, dude.

The amount of backlash and people trying to prove that this game is not good is proof enough that this game is fantastic.

I played it for a long time but when I look back on the time I spent playing it I feel really bad about myself. Skyrim is kind of just empty calories. For a while it makes an interesting hey-look-at-this-pretty-picture engine, but the characters are so bad and the quests are all basically the same and just yuck.

The biggest Bethesda-related thing I'm looking forward to now is the game Obsidian makes using whatever Bethesda makes Fallout 4 on.

The story did suck. But nobody ever claimed it was amazing. I don't know how you can complain about the fighting when you liked falllout 3, the fighting in that game is so terrible, and its even easier to compare to modern day FPS.

I thought it was great.

I liked it as well, but anyone saying the gameplay in Skyrim is good is a liar and a cheat. For a game focusing on alot of melee-combat it does it incredibly poorly. Just check Chivalry or Mount and Blades combat, it requires actual playerskill both when it comes to timing and twitch-play. Dunno what skyrim requires, depth perception and high smithing? :D

Exploring is what makes the game for me.

Great first post.

I generally agree with your assessment of the game. Combat with magic is like holding a fire hose down, the melee has no particular feeling of impact, timing or skill required, it's just get your whacks in till monster dies. Dungeons and caves are repetitive. Interface is slow for the sake of looking stylish. I could take it or leave it with the lore. I don't remember one quest that was better than the Dark Brotherhood stuff (in particular) from Oblivion. Not enough desirable loot in the chests at the end of long-ass winding dungeons/caves.

@picko19 said:

Ok so the day I got the Elder Scrolls V Skyrim I was very excited. My experience with Bethesdas previous offerings was very positive, I would say Fallout 3 was maybe the best experience I have had this console generation, so to say my expectations were high would be an understatement. I had no previous experience with the Elder Scrolls universe until the second I put this game in my 360 and played.

The opening 2 hours of the game display exactly what this game is going to be great at a huge open world punctured with detailed dungeons and an ever open and expanding story with many layers of detail that you may never touch upon. To those that have played the game I completed the companions guild, the thieves guild and even started on the mages guild. I saw a lot of the open world and what the game had to offer, I spent over 40 hours in my experience with this game and played the main quest up to the Aludins bane quest.

My opinion of the game began to sour roughly 20 hours in, I had really enjoyed the companions guild and suffered the second half of the thieves guild (the reward was well worth it), the main quest started interesting, your first dragon fight is a fantastic and exhilarating experience. That said the story became convoluted and confused and much of the characters and areas in the Elder Scrolls universe names were dropped but never expanded upon.

My main gripe is with the gameplay, I had spent my first 20 hours focusing on the two handed and archery sides of the combat, but began to hit a brick wall. I changed things and started to bring magic in, I invested a lot of time in levelling up my magic ability and for a while this helped. The fact that the combat was clunky and not perfect was a major frustration, maybe I'm spoilt by the fps generation that I am now used to with instant and rapid responses to the press of a button or trigger. With a number of combat options now available I believed the game would open up even more and I would be able to progress where I have struggled previously to this.

Unfortunately this wasn't the case and this where my journey ends, a convoluted world and story that was hampered by its own size and the team that created it ambitions. The gameplay's lack of skill and responsiveness hindered my experience and led to a lot of frustration. That said I would recommend anyone try the game and this was just my experience.

This post doesn't really explain why you didn't like it in anyway that anyone can really understand?

Elaborate?

I can imagine a situation where not understanding how this sort of game works i roll a character wrong and put my energy into strengths that i don't feel are rewarding i guess? I've had the situation a couple of times where i've fired up an acclaimed game and had an absolutely terrible time seemingly through just bad luck and playing it wrong.

As far as the story stuff the thieves guild stuff and companion stuff are some of the weaker story stuff i have followed so far, in fact i lost patience with the game at about 80 hours ( a great deal of side tracking and exploring) with the thieves guild missions in particular.

That said... see below.

Bishna said:

I put in around 200 hours, that games alright. But its no Fallout: New Vegas right guys? Seriously though, if you want great story in that type of game, and you like Fallout 3, New Vegas is your dream game. It is my favorite of Bethesda's published games.

Also, you say you hit a brick wall in the combat, but you didn't expand on what that meant. Was it a brick wall of boredom? Frustration? Ambivalence?...Bricks?

Ugh, i love elder scrolls series, but i fucking hated fallout new vegas. I really have no comprehension where all the love for it seems to come from. Poor mans stalker.

The problem for me is that the combat requires neither skill, nor strategy, it boils down to very simple resource management. You need to balance your 3 bars without letting them go empty, while simultaneously trying to deplete your enemies bar, and if you failed then it's not because you executed the encounter poorly, it's probably because you didn't craft enough potions or something. I would be willing to forgive the games combat if I found the story interesting, but the characters in that game are shallow, and boring, the way the game is designed makes a coherent plot nearly impossible, and the world itself is just derivative fantasy (and I love fantasy, it's just hard to care about a world that doesn't feel like it's trying anything new.) Which is really a shame because if the world itself were better than at least the exploration part of the game might be more interesting, but between the boring world, the clunky movement, and the randomly generated map, I couldn't even have fun with that. Honestly I don't understand what people see in this game, it's been very annoying not getting what's so great.

I do love that it's an rpg that sold a shitload though, I'm optimistic that could have some very positive repercussions for the industry.

@Rowr said:

Ugh, i love elder scrolls series, but i fucking hated fallout new vegas. I really have no comprehension where all the love for it seems to come from. Poor mans stalker.

Sorry to hear you didn't like it. I really like the Stalker games as well, but for completely different reasons than for why I love New Vegas. For Stalker it was the atmosphere and shooting, but for New Vegas it was for the story, characters, and choice.

I liked Skyrim a lot but I had some issues with it, but not the ones you point out. My main problem is with the depth of the game, of which there is none. I love RPG's where I have to lay out my strategies and carefully prepare before I do anything. In Skyrim, if you focus on one path in the skill tree, you'll do fine, even on harder difficulties.

But that's not what those games are about and I was happy to just spend time in that world for about 100 hours.

Bethesda's strength has always been lore and world-building. Sure, you can knock the narrative if you want, but it's sort of like saying the complimentary car wash you got with that tank of petrol was shitty. It's not what you're paying for in an Elder Scrolls game. It just comes along with the rest of the package.

Though, to be fair, Morrowind's story, I thought, was pretty great. And the Elder Scrolls lore is at points more interesting in Skyrim than it's ever been.

But there are so many great mods for Skyrim that you have yet to have fun with. High resolution pillows, dynamic snow, lush grass, FF7 mod, furry mods, boob mods, Skrillex mod, chesthair mod, come on, you are really missing out here duder! Stop messing around in Skyrim and mess with Skyrim itself. It's not scary at all. It's fun. Everyone's doing it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it.

Sorry PS3!

The game is awesome but lets just say next time they need to seriously focus on fixing the combat and the stealth. We can't ignore that even Skyrim made strides but it still can go further.

@algertman said:

Sorry PS3!

:(

WHY THIS POST ISN'T THAT GOOD

Ok so when I opened this thread I was very excited. I had never read a picko19 thread before but by about the second paragraph I hit a brick wall. I guess I'm spoilt by the blogging generation but I am used to the word "convoluted" not being used twice every sentence and arguments actually making sense. This was just my experience though and I would recommend anyone to try it.

This reminds me of the very similar Half Life 2 thread. New account, one post disliking a popular game, never post again. Then again, I don't know if the other guy replied, but I doubt it.

300 hours and 5 characters later and I still think this game is fantastic. But to each his own I guess.

@picko19:

Balancing is definitely its weakpoint, albeit the general consensus on the internet is quite the opposite of yours in this regard - the game gets gamebreakingly easy and devoid of challenge, even on the highest difficulty, once one's character is properly built, especially if the player did a bunch of crafting.

That's definitely what Bethesda has to figure out and get right in their games, how to build character and gameplay progression to keep the game challenging and interesting, whilst avoiding ludicrous difficulty spikes. I hope they'll nail it one of these days. I think Kingdoms of Amalur went an interesting route, taking cues from character action games like God of War, even if it wasn't completely successful in what it did. Making RPG combat more about player skills, rather than attribute sheets, could alleviate much of these problems - at the risk of alienating their core audience.

I'd love if Elder Scrolls would adopt some kind of lock-on targeting in the vein of Metroid Prime, which would allow for much tighter and diverse first person perspective combat mechanics and enemy/encounter designs. I was disappointed when Skyrim didn't follow that route.

Play some Kingdoms of Amalur, you might like it. It's pretty much Elder Scrolls with action combat.

I don't agree with your points, but you're damn right to have an opinion. I don't think Skyrim is that good either; it's a game for simple gamers with very little standards. People who enjoy AC, CoD and Halo usually love Skyrim. I don't mean to generalize, nor to take the merit of these (great) games, what I mean is that it's such a mainstream experience that everything about this game is very plain, dull or colorless. Plain combat, plain soceries, plain storyline. And also, Bethesda can't figure out how to make third person animations work properly.

Well that's just like...your opinion man. But it does get boring after awhile, unlike Torchlight 2.

It's a pretty shallow game, IMO. I completed it and did all the quests because of the completionist in me, but that's not saying much because I did the same with Two Worlds. There is nothing to the character development and it's way too shallow for my liking. That, and there is NO DAMN LOOT. Everything you pick up is a variant of some basic weapon/armor type, the only good weapons are recieved by quests and even then you can make better ones.

I agree that it's not that great a game but for completely different reasons - my main gripe being with how typically for a Bethesda game its extremely lifeless. All Bethesda titles while sprawling and massive in scope feel like they were made with some advanced version of RPG maker. Things just happen, NPCs stand around or walk in mindless circles with their thousand yard stare. I'm in the vast minority of course, but standing around in Skryim I never felt like I was in a living breathing world but rather inside this combination of elements that sometimes came together and sometimes didn't. My favorite example being Patricks criticism of how in Dragon's Dogma when you climbed a mountain, unlike Skyrim, there is nothing to do, you're just there. Well thats how Skyrim felt for me whenever I strayed off the beaten path - just forest and mountain and very little variety in landscape. Some areas did look quite stunning, but mostly it was just a hill, or a forest, or a stream and what else? Unless you had a quest then most caves were just empty. Worse yet was going to a cave, making your way through it killing a stray wolf or something, only to receive a quest to go to that same cave you just explored except NOW it's full of bandits that have been making camp in for weeks it seems. I won't even get into my whole problem with how absurd the fact that I, as a wood elf, was the dragonborn, and how mono thematic the entire experience felt with a gigantic emphasis on Nords while all other races were basically cast to the side.

Theres more but obviously I'm not trying to convince anyone that they shouldn't like it. Merely stating that this guy isn't crazy, and I too wasn't very impressed with it - although I did finish the main quest.

why do i see all these threads about people who say "hurr i spent 90 hours in skyrim but after hour 91 it began to suck so...SKYRIM SUCKS!!!!!"

its like every day there is another person on the internet making this claim, seriously, if you spent that many hours obviously you enjoyed it. if not why were you even playing it in the first place? trying to rationalize your purchase? move on, stop crying.

played over 300 hours of it... but the whole time i was thinking about Fallout 4....

Even if you CAN play a game for hundreds of hours and love it (WHICH I DID NOT SAYING YOU'RE WRONG OR ANYTHING BUT YOU MIGHT TOTALLY BE.), If it took you 20 hours to not like a game, I'd say you got your sixty bucks worth. Just saying.

@Rowr said:

@picko19 said:

Ok so the day I got the Elder Scrolls V Skyrim I was very excited. My experience with Bethesdas previous offerings was very positive, I would say Fallout 3 was maybe the best experience I have had this console generation, so to say my expectations were high would be an understatement. I had no previous experience with the Elder Scrolls universe until the second I put this game in my 360 and played.

The opening 2 hours of the game display exactly what this game is going to be great at a huge open world punctured with detailed dungeons and an ever open and expanding story with many layers of detail that you may never touch upon. To those that have played the game I completed the companions guild, the thieves guild and even started on the mages guild. I saw a lot of the open world and what the game had to offer, I spent over 40 hours in my experience with this game and played the main quest up to the Aludins bane quest.

My opinion of the game began to sour roughly 20 hours in, I had really enjoyed the companions guild and suffered the second half of the thieves guild (the reward was well worth it), the main quest started interesting, your first dragon fight is a fantastic and exhilarating experience. That said the story became convoluted and confused and much of the characters and areas in the Elder Scrolls universe names were dropped but never expanded upon.

My main gripe is with the gameplay, I had spent my first 20 hours focusing on the two handed and archery sides of the combat, but began to hit a brick wall. I changed things and started to bring magic in, I invested a lot of time in levelling up my magic ability and for a while this helped. The fact that the combat was clunky and not perfect was a major frustration, maybe I'm spoilt by the fps generation that I am now used to with instant and rapid responses to the press of a button or trigger. With a number of combat options now available I believed the game would open up even more and I would be able to progress where I have struggled previously to this.

Unfortunately this wasn't the case and this where my journey ends, a convoluted world and story that was hampered by its own size and the team that created it ambitions. The gameplay's lack of skill and responsiveness hindered my experience and led to a lot of frustration. That said I would recommend anyone try the game and this was just my experience.

This post doesn't really explain why you didn't like it in anyway that anyone can really understand?

Elaborate?

I can imagine a situation where not understanding how this sort of game works i roll a character wrong and put my energy into strengths that i don't feel are rewarding i guess? I've had the situation a couple of times where i've fired up an acclaimed game and had an absolutely terrible time seemingly through just bad luck and playing it wrong.

As far as the story stuff the thieves guild stuff and companion stuff are some of the weaker story stuff i have followed so far, in fact i lost patience with the game at about 80 hours ( a great deal of side tracking and exploring) with the thieves guild missions in particular.

That said... see below.

Bishna said:

I put in around 200 hours, that games alright. But its no Fallout: New Vegas right guys? Seriously though, if you want great story in that type of game, and you like Fallout 3, New Vegas is your dream game. It is my favorite of Bethesda's published games.

Also, you say you hit a brick wall in the combat, but you didn't expand on what that meant. Was it a brick wall of boredom? Frustration? Ambivalence?...Bricks?

Ugh, i love elder scrolls series, but i fucking hated fallout new vegas. I really have no comprehension where all the love for it seems to come from. Poor mans stalker.

In terms of combat I think my main frustration was probably that I felt I was managing the health and Stamina bar initially more than I was In an actual fight, also I am impatient with it and that is 100% my fault, but it does sour my opinion on the game. Because combat is "slower" made it feel more clunky especially as I chose to go in with the two handed approach. Admittedly Magic did speed the whole combat process up slightly. The fact I love action games probably made me more bias against the combat.

@Seppli has suggested Kingdoms of Amalur which sounds like a good shout, as I do enjoy fantasy as a whole.

@punkxblaze: I defiantly got my moneys worth I cant argue with that.

I think it is still by far (leaps and bounds even) the best Elder Scrolls game. There are things that could be better.

they just need to focus on the combat for the next one and it will be amazing.

I was left with a dull impression of Skyrim too after a while. Still a phenomenal game though. I think Oblivion was a better game, but Skyrim was still really great.

I like the game but there is too much repetition for me. I just...I just can't see any Draugr any more. That's why the Dragonborn QL was so disappointing.

Still, I spent about 100 hours in it (and you know what? Repetition after 100 hours isn't all that bad now that I think about it)

Skyrim is great. My favorite things about it was the world and seeing the new areas and generally exploring. By the time I finished that game I would bored of the combat, still a big improvement over oblivion.

I don't agree with your points, but you're damn right to have an opinion. I don't think Skyrim is that good either; it's a game for simple gamers with very little standards. People who enjoy AC, CoD and Halo usually love Skyrim. I don't mean to generalize, nor to take the merit of these (great) games, what I mean is that it's such a mainstream experience that everything about this game is very plain, dull or colorless. Plain combat, plain soceries, plain storyline. And also, Bethesda can't figure out how to make third person animations work properly.

I didn't like it either.

@HistoryInRust said:

Bethesda's strength has always been lore and world-building. Sure, you can knock the narrative if you want, but it's sort of like saying the complimentary car wash you got with that tank of petrol was shitty. It's not what you're paying for in an Elder Scrolls game. It just comes along with the rest of the package.

Though, to be fair, Morrowind's story, I thought, was pretty great. And the Elder Scrolls lore is at points more interesting in Skyrim than it's ever been.

Morrowind had the best story in the series, I agree. Skyrim is flawed and does feel a bit shallow compared to MW, but still brings the joy of discovery and exploration that makes ES one of my favorite series. Just getting back into it with Dawnguard/Dragonborn and having as much fun with the game as ever.

Flawed? Sure. Still, I'm over a 100 hours into the game and am still having a blast. I hardly touched the main quest stuff and still discover a ton of new areas. Also, there are a ton of mods that really add to the game I'm only just now getting in to. I love this game.

@Klei said:

I don't agree with your points, but you're damn right to have an opinion. I don't think Skyrim is that good either; it's a game for simple gamers with very little standards. People who enjoy AC, CoD and Halo usually love Skyrim. I don't mean to generalize, nor to take the merit of these (great) games, what I mean is that it's such a mainstream experience that everything about this game is very plain, dull or colorless. Plain combat, plain soceries, plain storyline. And also, Bethesda can't figure out how to make third person animations work properly.

You don't have to be insulting.

When you can have a decently long thread where people talk about just one specific character build, then there must be something to it. And there is. The combat and gameplay is less about how to do stuff in the heat of the moment and more about how you want to build your character and sticking to that idea. No, it is neither stupid nor simple, it just makes itself accessible to stupid and simple people.

Maybe you just don't like it not that its bad, its ok to not like some games no matter how popular they are

@MariachiMacabre said:

@Klei

I don't agree with your points, but you're damn right to have an opinion. I don't think Skyrim is that good either; it's a game for simple gamers with very little standards. People who enjoy AC, CoD and Halo usually love Skyrim. I don't mean to generalize, nor to take the merit of these (great) games, what I mean is that it's such a mainstream experience that everything about this game is very plain, dull or colorless. Plain combat, plain soceries, plain storyline. And also, Bethesda can't figure out how to make third person animations work properly.

You know, I don't know if you've figured this out yet. It's pretty difficult, but you can not like a game without straight-up insulting the people who do like it. It's pretty easy, you just don't include stupid generalizations like "it's a game for simple gamers with very little standards." The game is pretty universally liked. It has faults, as all games do, but saying that the people who do like it are "simple" is just stupid and completely undermines your argument.

It's also completely false since many fans of more complex RPGs like the Infinity Engine games also happen to love Skyrim. Myself included.

Too bad you didn't like it. I'm one of the people who do, I think Skyrim is incredible and I can't wait to play Dragonborn, having switched from the PS3 to the PC version I don't even know how many hundreds of hours I've spent at this point.

Same goes for New Vegas and Fallout 3.