Is Skyrim Actually a Good Game?

[Mentora]

Is Skyrim a good game - YES. Is is a great game - Maybe.

Before commenting on the game now in 2019, please note that this game came out in 2011. RPG was slowly dying as new generation gamers prefer shooters, MMORPG, MOBA's and mobile game. Skyrim showed the world in a big way especially to the western gamers what an RPG is all about. It has it's flaws, weakness and short comings. But it's a game that is good enough that it manages to shine despite these negative traits.

[gbullock32]

While I preferred Oblivion I did really enjoy Skyrim and put about 800 hours into it between PC and Xbox; RPG games, and especially open world ones, always hit a sweet spot for me.

[IcedViking]

I did not enjoy Skyrim but I rarely enjoy western RPGs.

[ryvrdrgn14]

I never enjoyed the Morrowind/Skyrim games. It's not for me.

[Binmaniac]

Skyrim was my go-to Fantacy/RPG for a long, long time; right until the Witcher 3 came along.

[baboon]

So, beyond the clickbait styled title, what is everyone's opinion of the legend that is Skyrim? I for one have played the game since it's release in 2011. I was instantly infatuated with the game; however, as time goes on, I do not particularly enjoy the game. It tends to feel like a chore more than anything. I believe the only reason the game has survived thus far is on the back of the modders (definitely not Bethesda's doing). I watched the linked YouTube video today of a reviewer's opinion, and I more or less agreed with a lot of his takes. Any thoughts? Does anyone think this is insane or know how to make the game enjoyable again?

Brilliant, I was going to post something similar myself.

OK Skyrim. It is probably useful to give a short background of my gaming history.

I started gaming in 1988 on the Amiga 500. Then moved to Genesis and I guess PS2 when I came home from university (on that note there was a fantastic rental section for games in our local petrol station, I should really do a post about those PS2 games some time but games like The Getaway and The Thing were AMAZING).

Anyway, life got in the way, I moved to various countries with work and had girlfriends, gaming wasn't really an option as there weren't enough hours in the day.

I got back into gaming in 2014 when I had a bit more free time and got a PS3, then a PS4 in 2016.

I bought the PS4 specifically to play Uncharted 4 and also got the Witcher 3 since it had so many good reviews on Amazon. I had no idea what the Witcher was about. After completing UC4, I ended up completing Witcher 3 three times, buying and playing the DLC on the third playthorugh on Death March for the plat and 100% completion of the DLC.

Then my brother sent me his copy of MGS5 and I platinumed that. I thought I would hate that game but it ended up becoming one of my favorite games ever.

I'd completed that in December, so bought myself Skyrim Remastered in the PS4 winter sale as by now I loved open world games. After taking an age to download, I played it for thirty minutes and was so DISGUSTED by how shite it looked, for the first time ever I had buyer's remorse and didn't play the game again for six months, when I thought I would give it another go.

What was so abhorrent was the character models. After playing Witcher and MGS5, I was just like "how can you remaster a game and leave the characters looking so diabolically terrible?" It left a terrible taste in my mouth, and I just felt no connection to this game at all (it should be obvious from reading this that I had/have never played another Bethesda game before).

"But how could this game have so many great reviews?" I kept asking myself.

So eventually I jumped back in again, deciding to ignore the disaster of the characters and the terrible voice acting.

Well, what do you know. I got completely hooked.

I think the main reason is that I am what I would call an "imperfect perfectionist". I know perfectionists and they never get anything done. I engage the 80/20 rule and am willing for something to be 80% perfect so I can *only* be 20% disgusted with myself.

I think Skyrim appeals to the OCD/perfectionist gamer. Which is the only reason why I got so obsessed with becoming a master at everything, the only two skills I didn't max out were two handed and archery (I think i got Block without actually trying), because I thought they were useless.

Staying up to 4am to craft dragon bone armour whilst wearing a godknows x enchanted ring whilst drinking a god knows how many times enchanted potion, then having to play the game on the hardest difficulty was just crazy fun.

The combat is terrible. The plot is, in general, terrible. The fact you could screw up the Daedric quests and fail the trophy immediately (I failed the very first one) was terrible. The character models were terrible. The voice acting at times was diabolical. The "puzzles" were a joke. I abused the fact that Frea and Serana couldn't be killed so had them follow me for the whole game as I like to have companions. Except they kept fighting each other. At first it was hilarious, but then it just got tiresome.

One time Frea started attacking me for no reason saying "I can't believe I trusted you". After ALL the shit we had been through, I actually felt depressed.

My biggest gripe was the fact that, when a dragon attacked a village, if ANY of my spells hit a guard or villager, they would turn on me. I'm like, dude, I'm trying to kill the dragon that has already murdered most of the NPCs in the village....can you not prioritize here????

Like a true curates egg though, some of it was excellent. The Blackreach was amazing. The DLCs were unbelievably great, although Dawnguard bugged out after I got the last trophy so that was my cue to stop playing the game completely. One time, Serana told me she wanted to be alone and she stopped being my companion. I was wandering around and she randomly saved my ass with some magic. That was cool, but there was no amazing dialogue for that like there should have been.

Another time, I was randomly walking around and a dragon dropped a giant out of the sky. There was a degree of randomness sometimes and I liked that very much.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Thieves Guild questline and my favorite city was Riften, I enjoyed going there as much as I enjoyed visiting Novigrad in the Witcher 3. The Dark Brotherhood questline was quite good too.

The music was probably the best thing about the game, it was AWESOME. The guards were hilarious.

My biggest gripe conceptually was: I'm the Chosen One. Now I NEED to become the Thane of each Hold, become a master at all skills, Head of all Guilds (screw the Bards Guild, I gave up on that as there wasn't a trophy for it and I stopped caring) and generally be the greatest being of all time. That was just garbage. Witcher did it much better, Geralt is amazing, multi-talented (mostly) but humble and people hate him for what he is not who he is. That's a much more satisfying character to play.

So yeah. I actually ended up loving Skyrim but will never play it again. Bethesda with Elder Scrolls VI REALLY needs to up its game but based on Bethesda as a company and their %*!?%$£ engine, I'm not really hopeful it will be any good. Honestly, there are PS2 games with better character models than Skyrim and I just foresee it being a meme on PS5 it will be so behind the competition when it comes out.

[baboon]

Addendum: I actually think Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is a better game than Skyrim. If Bethesda could shoot for that level of quality (minus the cutesie JRPG stuff) in their next game, it would be amazing. Since I have no hope of Bethesda releasing something as good as Witcher 3, maybe they need to focus more on quality, not size of the world this time around.

It's clear that the DLCs were of such a higher quality than Skyrim as a whole that they may be better off concentrating their talents into a smaller project. Of course, I shouldn't be saying this about one of the richest game developers/publishers in the world but it is what it is I guess.

[Ram'n]

Dragon's Dogma's combat system is what Skyrim should have.

[MakeGamesGreatAgain]

It depends on two things -
What System are you playing it on, and do you love spending 100s of hours adventuring?

If you have a PS3, no, it is so buggy, the game will start to sprodically and even consistently freeze, requiring you to unplug your PS3 and restarting it! Also, they have so many effed up crap, it’s just not worth any amount of money.
I know it worked on the XBox 360, and probably works just as well on the PS4 and Xbox One.

[twidget]

... long list of grievances ...

I completely agree with Garrett.

That said I also have 3655 hours playing the Legendary Edition and 818 hours in the Special Edition.
And it's not even my favorite TES game.

A couple of survival play through.
Other play throughs with different companion mods.
Used the S.T.E.P. guide to mod it up a couple times.
And many okay variations made possible with mods.

I modded the crap out of it.
Overhaul mods, textures, quests, game play, perk trees, leveling, UI, ENB/shaders, weather, lighting, enemies, combat, etc, etc, etc.
You get the idea.
Mods make this, imo, mediocre, typically broken Bethesda game into, for me, a compelling game with many ways to mod and experience.

[RetroRex]

I greatly enjoyed the game, though I can understand why some are disappointed by the simplification.

[TheLividOnager]

Skyrim is a good game but not the best Elder Scrolls game. While I like the different builds and play styles that can be created, if it weren't for plethora mods I probably wouldn't play Skyrim nearly as much as I do.

[Sohzu]

If most of the community has to mention mods it makes me think the game can't really stand on its own without it. I tried the game when it came out and it really wasn't for me but I would assume its at least decent with the amount of times they've repackaged the game and ported it. Thinking about trying it in VR soon though, might be fun to me that way. However I like to look at a game as it sits without mods, shouldn't need mods to be a good/bad game.

[Erebus]

It's an overrated game that has inexcusable bugs at launch and to this day. It's a 4 out of 10. I really tried to like it but that amount of bugs shouldn't be in triple A game that was made by a veteran dev team/publisher.

[danskmacabre]

I keep coming back to playing it every now and then.
Yeah it has problems. The UI is a bit *meh*, but overall, it's a great fun game.
Generally the mods I have added are graphical improvements, not really gameplay changes.

I'm in the middle of getting back into Skyrim these atm actually.
Well, when I'm not playing X4, Hellgate London and Surviving Mars

[thenicknash]

Is Surviving Mars worth picking up at the current price?

[danskmacabre]

Yeah, Surviving Mars is great fun and worth it IMO. Still, I've seen it go on sale fairly often, so you may as well just put it on your Wishlist and wait until you get a sale notification.
Another decent and cheaper game is "Planetbase" a sort of cut down game similar to Surviving Mars.