The best Elder Scrolls game ever, and my pick for the best game of the year hands down. Now read the review to find out why.
The second you start your journey in Skyrim you know your in for a treat. The feeling of immersion this game provides has never been replicated in any other game before. The depth of this game is apparent right off the bat, when tasked with creating your character the game provides the single best character building tool that I have ever used. You could easily spend a couple of hours alone trying to figure out what your character is going to look like. Upon completion of that heavy but enjoyable task your are thrust into the enormous story. You soon come to realise that the world is more hostile then one would like to think. If the dragons don't get to you then the legions of undead and other creatures just might. Though I won't spoil the story, it revolves around dragons coming back and generally ruing the mood of the locals. Speaking of dragons when one decides to ruin your good mood, its up to you to put down this fiery (or frosty) lizards.
This can be as hard or easy as you want it to be, depending on your character you build. You see I decided that I would be a Nord who specializes in Two-Handed weapons, Heavy Armour, and Restoration magic. With this set up I was pretty comfortable taking on dragons. Your character has the ability of gaining extra abilities in the form of shouts which fall out side of your magic cost. Meaning they will cost you no magic points to use but require a cool down before use again. All the shouts are cool to use with only a few being useless in my opinion but don't hurt to have. Though you can't have a good story without a great soundtrack, and boy is this soundtrack stunning. The orchestral music is wonderful and picks up when you go into battle. Delve deep into dungeons and the music changes to a foreboding dark sound that spells danger as you go further into the dungeon. Speaking of sounds all the items and weapons have a very distinct sound to them, especially when you go toe to toe with blocking opponents. Hearing the sounds of battle as my claymore smashes into my opponents shield was satisfying. Or going up against a large group of undead and coming out victorious was one of the delights that I have experienced many many times on my questing in this big world.
I can't tell you enough how much there is in this game, I simply would run out of words describing all the things that can be done. Which can range from mining raw materials to making weapons and enchanting the weapons to add special abilities. The controls for the game work surprisingly smooth and fluid never feeling off from the animation on the screen. Speaking of fluidity all the in game animations look natural the added bonus of finishing moves during combat keeps everything fresh as the animation happens when enemies are in certain circumstances. The enemy npc's although not incredibly intelligent offer up good challenges and variations depending on what enemy type you face. For example when you fight humanoid characters there are four different levels of them. Light, medium, heavy, and super heavy with each having a different combat role which is fun to figure out and ultimately crush their puny resistance. The friendly npc's and companion npc's seem really dull and will most likely run in front of you in the heat of battle. Sometimes this could be funny but most times it can be aggravating though companions can't die unless you deliver the final blow which is kind of weird but whatever this is a really good game.
Did I mention that this game looks amazing, now I'm not one that really cares for how a game looks I'm more interested in how it plays and if the story is interesting. The armour, creatures, and characters all look superb followed by the locals and landscapes. The items on close inspection have a lot of detail, but unfortunately when you look closely at the land you'll start to notice how flat a lot of the textures are. though again it doesn't really take away from the game it can be quite distracting if you notice it.
If you are a rpg fan then this game is one you must get, this game also shows western rpg's can be really great when people put the time and effort to make them so great. This is my game of the year and there is nothing that can come close to it period.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
10/10
+Big open, lively world
+Hundreds of Dungeons
+So much stuff packed in
+Depth of game is insane
-Companion AI is dull
-Textures can be spotty
-on occasion may freeze completely
I liked how you can either be a jack of all trades or develop your own Archetypes such as a battle mage, an archer, a warrior, a berserker or a combination of both if you choose to. You can gain certain perks that you can use to rank up certain abilities that will help you in battle and many other activities such as lock picking, or thieving. Once you gain enough skill points, you can level up to higher perks. These were some of the little things I noticed when I saw it being played at a co-workers house from DISH Network the other day. I’m really into RPG’s but never got into the Elder Scrolls games, but from what I saw, I had to add Skyrim to my queue using the Blockbuster Movie Pass. The Movie Pass makes it affordable for me to play games because I don’t usually have the money to buy them outright, and right now you can even try it out for free. It’ll be in my mailbox soon and I can’t wait to explore the lands, take on quests, join guilds, and ultimately save the realm.
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