January 2012

I finally beat The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim last weekend, and by beat, I mean I finally completed all 50 achievements in the game. I had already beaten the main storyline a few weeks ago. My total time played to complete all 50 achievements was 150 hours.

I did enjoy this game quite a bit, which is why I sunk 150 hours into it. But for me, Skyrim had a steep learning curve. I enjoyed the game more at the end once I had everything figured out than at the beginning of the game while I was still learning. I was also disappointed that I often had to rely on information from Skyrim websites to figure out where to go, or how to get particular achievements.

I think the following areas of the game could have used improvement:

Early gameplay. I was literally dying after almost every fight. This meant that in order to not lose much progress, I'd have to save after each and every fight, which was extreme. (Rob started making fun of me at the number of times that I would save my game.) It got better later in the game as my character got more powerful, but the early game was frustrating. Dying so often also meant that some dungeons would feel like they took forever to complete -- 2-3 hours, I'd guess.

Equipping spells. It felt very limiting to only be able to equip two spells at a time -- really only one spell, if you wanted to cast that spell at maximum capacity.

Inventory management. I would have liked to have seen my character's equipment separated by helm, neck, gloves, etc so that it would be easier to determine what pieces of gear I wanted to keep and which pieces I wanted to vendor. It also would have been nice to save certain gear "sets" such as a "plus to vendoring" set (prices are x% better and that kind of thing), a lockpicking set, a pickpocking set, etc.

It would have also been nice if vendors started out with more gold. Vendoring got very tedious as vendors would run out of gold quickly, and then I'd have to "wait" in game for time to pass so that the vendors would re-stock their gold. I would have also liked more inventory space, but I did learn to deal with the limited amount of inventory space, so this one wasn't as big of a deal. But I would estimate that I spent about half of my in-game time (so half of those 150 hours :P) on vendoring, which is a wee bit rediculous.

The in-game compass. I had to find a guide online just to find out what all of the different symbols on the in-game compass meant. Why wasn't this information in the game's manual?

Quest management. I was taken by surprise to find out that the game has unlimited quests, which I think should have been made more apparent to the player. I was trying to clean up my quest log by completing all of my "Miscellaneous" objectives. Imagine my surprise when I was reading a webpage online and found out that those "Miscellaneous" objectives are essentially limitless, and that the game will keep generating new quests even if you run out of quests. So I essentially wasted some of my time trying to clear out the log, because it will never be clear (unless you're careful to not talk to NPCs to start new objectives).

Bugs. My character in particular was hit by -- not sure if I want to say "game-breaking" bug, but essentially, my character is stuck as a werewolf due to an in-game bug. There's supposed to be a quest that lets me cure the werewolvism, but that particular quest is bugged for my character, so I'm unable to cure my character. This wouldn't be a big deal except that after learning about vampires in Skyrim, I really wanted to make my character a vampire, and if you are a werewolf you are unable to become a vampire. So again, calling it "game-breaking" might be a little extreme, but I was disappointed.

Companions. Somehow I killed Lydia, my first companion, without ever noticing it. By the time I noticed she was gone, I had saved over any save files with her still alive. I picked up a new companion, but as a destruction mage, it got too annoying trying to aim spells so that I wouldn't accidentally blow up my own companion, so I eventually resorted to playing the rest of the game without one. I didn't miss my companion, except for the extra inventory space that I lost from not using one.

Lest this review only be full of complaints (because why would I have spent 150 hours on a game I didn't enjoy?), here are some things I liked about the game:

I loved the vastness of the game world. Also, being able to instantly fast travel to locations I'd previously visited was extremely convenient.

I loved that none of the quests felt grindy, irrelevant, or boring. Each quest felt as if it were part of the main "storyline," even if it wasn't.

I loved the inclusion of professions in the game -- both crafting and gathering.

I loved blowing stuff up as a destruction mage, and that I could also dive into different trees. I ended up playing as a "sneaky mage" for part of the game, but by the end of the game, there was really no need for me to sneak because enemies would mostly die instantly.

I liked the quest tracking system. I liked that an arrow would show on the compass showing you the direction of your current quest objective. I also abused the daylights out of the "Clairvoyance" spell to show me where I needed to go.

What else to say? It's a really fun game, and I would recommend it to any RPG or fantasy game fan.