izigame.me

Believe it or not, people who have not played Skyrim until 2024 even though they had it in their library for more than 10 years do exist and I am one of them. I finally got around to playing it, and by “it” I mean the OLD old version, the one from 2011. I even managed to get my hands on a few of the elusive DLC codes for that one. After 190 hours, I can confidently say that I can see where the hype comes from, even if it is not in my top 5. Skyrim is still a very entertaining game with its own personal magic. The question is whether that magic will outweigh its numerous flaws for you.

The Good

While the sheer texture quality of the 2011 version itself is nothing to write home about, the way these graphics have been utilized to create a world that looks authentic and believable, but still beckoning you to explore is simply amazing. The aurora borealis in the night sky made me pause on stream for a moment and just gasp in awe at the beauty of the skybox.

The music mostly stays in the background, except for the iconic main menu theme and its derivatives which will make you want to slap on a fur cape and some war paint while you run outside to wrestle a bear, but that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it contributes greatly to creating a very distinct atmosphere/vibe for Skyrim.
The worst thing a game can have is an identity crisis. For every part that is inconsistent, unfitting, the experience becomes a bit more tarnished.

Skyrim has NO inconsistent, unfitting parts. It has one very distinct vibe (rugged but beautiful cold homeland adventure) and it goes for it HARD.

The story, similarly, while nothing to write home about (it’s very cliché and predictable and all your choices in this story essentially boil down to “go the path the game wants you to go” or fight), fits into this world. Life in Skyrim is harsh. There’s a civil war going on and if you somehow manage to survive the cold winters and the dangerous wildlife and the murderous political and racial tensions, there are now dragons that will try to have you for a snack. Unless you are the player of course, because you are dovakhiin, the Dragonborn, an epic hero with the soul of a dragon who can use specific shouts to bend reality itself to your will, all so you can defeat the baddest of all dragons, Alduin, who has come to destroy the world.

Thankfully, most of the side quests make up for the lackluster main story. The daedric quests in particular are all quite fun and often come with great rewards. My favorite quest was Sheogorath’s, though I never ended up using his staff. Peryite’s shield on the other hand was with me for 60% of my run.

And run you will, because the second thing Skyrim excels at is encouraging exploration. Just pick any cardinal direction and go. I guarantee you won’t be able to walk a mile without finding some dungeon, cave, camp or random world event that will be worth your while, because loot scales with you, and even if you won’t use it yourself (e.g. a bow when you’re a melee fighter), you can still enchant it and sell it for lots of money. Tired of exploration? Wanna just chill for a bit? Feel free to chop some wood, mine some ore and cook some food, then continue building an amazing house. Heck, you can even play tag with the kids in Solitude.

Also, game let’s you turn into a werewolf, which negates your weight limit as well. All praise Hircine!
Mechanically, this game offers easy access to plenty of playstyles. Melee is mind-numbingly simple, so is archery (if you are in first person—in third person archery SUCKS), spells are also fairly easy once you know that you have them because the game never bothers to explain how they work, which leads me to...

The Bad

The game’s highly selective tutorial. There are some really important things that it just never bothers to explain to you, like for example HOW to use your spells and WHERE to get new ones and that there is a level cap after which certain spells stop appearing in shops or loot. This is especially egregious since the game features a literal magic COLLEGE, which would have been a great opportunity to teach the player, except all it gives you is a decent questline that requires zero magic (I did it all with a war hammer lol). Likewise, the game will explain to you how to tan hides for leather, use leather and ingots to make gear and then upgrade that gear. You know what it doesn’t explain to you? That you can MINE your own ore and how to smelt said ore into actually usable ingots. I went into this game blind and you do not want to know how long it took me to learn about ore smelting.

Secondly: This. Goddamn. Skill. System. So get this: you have skill experience and character experience. SE levels up whenever you do things related to that skill, use a trainer or read a relevant book. That’s great. I love that. But skill level ups won’t actually let you buy the neat little perks in the skill tree. That is done via CE level ups, which you can only get after multiple SE level ups. What that means is, you will find a play style that suits you, happily go along your way, until halfway through the game you realize that you have maxed out all the skills you commonly use, but you still have skills you want to buy! So at that point, unless you have the DLCs, your only option is to switch to using skills that you never intended to use, having to adjust to a whole new gamestyle mid story. That is BAD. Epically BAD.

Last but not least, a word about DLCs: Hearthfire is cool if you have it installed from the start. If you’re trying to get all your needed building materials at the end of the game, you’ll be in for a world of hurt. Dawnguard is so disappointing narratively and really hinges on whether 1) you would like to be a vampire (no for me), and 2) you like Serana (also a no for me, because she literally never stops complaining about every single damn thing including the weather). Dragonborn pulled a Mass Effect 3 and was excellent until the final mission which was WTF levels of lame.

The Ugly

This game has more bugs than a fallen tree in a forest. Some of them are hilarious (such as the iconic ragdolls upon death), others not so much (I encountered a handful of progress blockers, including in the main quest line, which I could only resolve through console commands). I had a handful of crashes as well and the game really, REALLY does not like it when you alt tab while in full screen. Still, it could have been much worse and it mostly ran fine on my rig (Ryzen 7 5800X + RTX3070).