The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Date: Monday, November 28 @ 15:51:37 EST
Topic: RPG Reviews
So the next Elder Scrolls is out and considering the fuck up that was Oblivion (I hereby rescind my old review score and change it to a six, the game has to be the worst aging game in the history of games), Todd Howard comes back lying better than ever and releases the next Elder Scrolls game. I can say that it is a huge fucking improvement upon Oblivion from the graphics, animations, environments, city design, as well as quests. It, however, has some major problems too with balancing and RPG elements which, of course, Bethesda fucked up and now we have to wait for mods to fix the game again. It is a good game that is marred by some glaring flaws which could easily be fixed by PLAY TESTING THE FUCKING GAME FIRST. Anyways, read on, faggots.
The game starts you off with the tutorial portion where you ride on a cart and eventually a dragon comes and fucks up a small village. Right off the bat, the game looks like absolute dog shit, and the textures are somewhat appalling bad on the walls and such. However, once you move outside of the beginning area, the game looks pretty damn good and is a huge improvement over what we have seen before. I have no idea why the hell they would want to create first impressions of diarrhea but they did, however, the game takes a turn for the better as soon as it is all over. Anyways, the game still plays like Oblivion for the most part but does experience some welcome changes and improvements to the game. The easiest way for me to do this review is to categorize the good parts, the mediocre parts, and the bad parts.
The Good:
Vastly Improved Dungeons and Exploration: Now of course Dungeons are still loot hells like always but that is typical of this style of game. The dungeons in oblivion were all the same boring shit which resulted in you just wandering into a generic looking area, getting some shit, and then walking all the way back and leaving. This time, it seems like they actually put some more effort into create completely unique dungeons to explore eveywhere you go. Some of them will leave you feeling pretty imrpessed at how good some of the areas look, or just the sheer variety in design that we now get to explore really helps to make me want to continue looking into new areas to explore and just see what there is to find. The effort put into these hugely helps the game when doing quests too since you feel like you actually want to discover what it is inside, instead of doing the 92nd fucking Fighters Guild quest where you wander into another shit fucking cave doing nothing. Huge improvement in this area.
The Graphics (In Some Places): The graphics in this game can be pretty fucking good looking whether it is an impressive looking dungeon with a huge waterfall, or just the large city, the game can be pretty fucking nice looking. It also helps to provide nice atmosphere that actually makes you feel part of the world and something worth being in. There is actually variation in the environments and the large craggy mountains in the background can be pretty impressive with the clouds floating around them. Huge improvement from Oblivion which didn't have shit except for BROWN GRASS and GREEN GRASS. So interesting.
Plenty of Quests: The game is filled with tons of NPCs that actually have something for you to do now. There are many small miscellaneous quests which you can do for some extra gold or items, but the game also has large of amounts of normal quests to do which coupled with the nice dungeons can be fun to do, explore and discover what is going on. The faction quests are also way fucking better than Oblivion, such as the Companions lets me become a fucking werewolf, or Thieves Guilds give other various perks as getting out of jail and has much better missions. There is plenty to keep you busy for fucking hours.
Enemy Design: Every enemy design is better in this game when it comes from fighting Bandits, Dragons, Giants, Trolls, or the dwarven machines coming back to life. They are much more fucking interesting than the pointless and NUMEROUS Daedrea that you killed one billion of in the last game which were really just generic humanoids. They also need to include more Sheogoreath in the game since he is literally the best fucking character they have ever written and makes a nice cameo in the game. The enemies in general are a huge improvement and actually nice to do battle with.
Overall the game has many strong points, mainly being the overall design of the maps and dungeons, and quests which is the largest portion of the game.
The Mediocre:
The Combat: The combat is pretty much the exact same fucking thing as Oblivion, they really didn't improve much at all. You basically either attack or block if you are a melee character. They did add the ability to dual weild which can be fun for a little but until you realize that it is just the same thing that you were doing before, left clicking a lot, and then healing. It is nice to cast a spell while smashing someone with a hammer, but the gimmick wears off pretty fast and you realize the combat is the small weightless whiffle ball bat combat from before. I want it to feel like I am SMASHING someones fucking skull in when I hit them with a 2handed sword. Why can't they just steal the combat from Dark Messiah?
The RPG Elements(leveling): They change the leveling system to get rid of all stats and experience, and built it so that you get a perk every time you level up. The perk then gets spent in a tree of your choosing to give you some sort of benefit. In all fucking honestly, it barely makes a difference at all as it still feels exactly the same as Oblivion, level up your skills from doing them and it makes you stronger. That is about the only thing that matters.
The Bad:
Unbalanced: This is the single largest problem with the game and causes it to piss me off so much that after sinking 40 hours into it, I don't want to finish everything and simply wait for mods to actually fix the game. The game is so fucking unbalanced and broken that it makes it stupidly easy, and the wrong enemies are too tough. The first problem with the balancing is leveling up your skills such as Enchanting, or Speech, or Blacksmithing, which causes you to level, and your enemies to get stronger. But your character really doesn't have any more weapon damage or armor, it simply makes the enemies tougher. This is fucking stupid and is why games like this need XP systems and stats. It helps to differentiate from what type of character you are making. No one wants to just make a fucking enchanter character who does his enchanting and then gets stuck fighting super high level frost trolls and bandits and cannot do shit because he didn't level up his 1hander ability. The other major problem is that the game also gets too fucking easy to the point where I am invincible. I leveled up blacksmithing to 100 by making 5 billion iron daggers, and then got the best armor, upgraded it all with blacksmith potions and such. I now have so much armor that I am a god in the world and I am only level 25. Nothing does any sort of damage to me, and I pretty much kill everything including dragons and giants with one or two swipes. Which leads to the next unbalancing problem. The dragons are too fucking weak in this game. They are supposed to be the BIGGEST THREAT TO SKYRIM. I distracted a dragon long enough that my fucking horse FROST was able to kill the dragon. I've seen random mobs of Giants or Bandits run up and take out a fucking dragon. Which also leads to the next problem. gone is the problem of leveling up and seeing Bandits all wearing ebony armor. Now all the bandits are pushovers at level 25-30, but the BANDIT LEADER has fucking ebony armor and a steel plate greatsword and does huge amounts of damage, and has a huge amount of fucking health. The fucking stupid broken level scaling is there but now it is all focused on one enemy instead of the whole fucking group. It is really retarded and makes no sense. They seriously need to fix the balancing in this game as it all falls apart around level 18-20.
The RPG Elements(Speech): The speech skill in this game is fucking useless in all forms. It reduces your prices at stores, but I have so much fucking gold already that it really makes no difference at all. In actual dialog sequences it doesn't even matter unless you Intimidate or Persuade someone, but all this is incredibly superficial. You cannot actually roleplay your character. You CANNOT. Typically there is really only one or two responses that you can make to any person and it is typically just a generic OH ILL DO IT. You cannot roleplaying being a sarcastic asshole, or being the tough-stern but lawful good guy. Nothing. Nothing at all. The dialog sucks fucking balls in this game. You cannot be who you want to be in dialog situations.
The Quests: Because of the nature of the leveling up system, some quests are fucking rewardless. Some quests give you bonuses to your skills, gold, or unlock special skills which is awesome, but sometimes you do a quest and get nothing but a fucking shitty bow. What good is a fucking bow if I am a mage? I basically got nothing but the 50 gold that i will get for selling that hunk of shit bow. There was literally one quests in the game where you have to find out what happens to someones daughter in the war. You do, and tell the woman, and she says you can't reward her. You literally do a quest where you get fucking NOTHING. NOTHING AT ALL. It doesn't even develop your character by forcing you to use your skills. There is just absolutely no point at all.
Overall the game is pretty fun, good to explore, can look quite pretty and be engaging, but the lack of rpg elements in the dialog and the fucking terrible unbalancing cause some major problems with the game overall.
8/10
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