izigame.me

TL;DR
* Once your initial amazement wears off (after playing for an hour or so), you realize the game is an absolute bare-bones VR port that Bethesda phoned in as a cash grab. So, that's a down-vote
* Game modded with something like Wabbajack + FUS RO DAH that makes it actually feel more like a real VR game turns it into an upvote
* However, getting the game modded is an ABSOLUTE TIME WASTING NIGHTMARE, and makes it a down-vote again, especially with all the bending over backwards using third-party tools, tons of mods, tons of waiting at blank screens not knowing if something froze up or if something's compiling.. everything feels touch-n-go and trying to "chewing gum & bailing wire" things together. I literally wasted a whole weekend getting this going. And that required a lot of reading guides, googling issues, etc, and I almost gave up on it.
* When the game is finally modded and working right.. it's really quite nice and starts to feel like an upvote again.
* But then you're dealing with Bethesda's usual jank of random CTD's, SteamVR randomly locking up, and other junk. So, it swings to a down-vote again.
If you just want to play vanilla Skyrim in VR.. which basically feels like flat-screen Skyrim UI slapped over VR... ok. That works fine out-of-the-box with SteamVR. Buy it when it's on sale, b/c they did the bare minimum to call this a VR game.
If you want the super-cool VR modded glory.. be prepared for several wasted days/nights, lots of frustration, four-letter-words, googling, ... and the possibility you might not get it working! (Some folks can't!) So, again, BUY IT ON SALE, and brace yourself for the absolute slog you're about to wade through.
!!! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED !!!
I'm enjoying the fully modded experience, but I don't feel it was worth it getting there and Bethesda should have done more of this work themselves. As such, I'm giving this an overall down-vote. They already got my money, so they don't care. But, I'm voicing a negative opinion about this garbage. I'm tired of Bethesda phoning stuff in, and the modders having to pick up the slack. And, in the case of Skyrim VR, there was a TON of slack.
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Skyrim VR is basically the epic RPG adventure most folks thought they'd find in Blade & Sorcery or other VR games when they first get a VR headset. Then they find out most VR games are just glorified tech demos, arena brawlers, short adventure games or early access abandonware. When you get tired of it all, and go "wish I could play something like Skyrim in VR", that's when you come get this game and play Skyrim.. in VR.
And that's both good and bad.
The bad is that it's still just Skyrim. We've all played Skyrim a thousand times: on PC, Nintendo Switch, Oldrim, LE, SE, AE, etc, etc. They've sold us Skyrim a thousand times, and we've paid to upgrade to it over and over and bought it on multiple platforms. It's skyrim. We're sort of sick of playing skyrim by now.
But, once you fire it up in VR... it's like .. BWOOSH! .. mind blown! ...at first.
All the old places you remember on the flat-screen. Now you're there! You're in the game! It's flipping amazing!
But, then all the jank that Bethesda does crops up, and you start to realize they absolutely bottom-barrel phoned in this VR port.
- Game doesn't leverage typical VR controls. IE: most VR games give you real hands you can grab with, etc. Skyrim gives you floating hands that do nothing. They don't interact with anything. Want to grab that item? You don't grab it with your VR hand like you do every other VR game. Instead, you hover over it and press "A" button. You press a button to unsheathe weapons that magically appear in your hands. You press another button for them to go away. It's not very VR intuitive, b/c it's basically the old flat-screen control scheme shoe-horned into VR without taking advantage of any modern VR UI / controls.
- Your weapons have no weight, and are "ghostly", IE: they pass right through walls. In VR smash-n-bash games I like to bash my weapon against my shield to taunt enemies. Even if it doesn't do anything in-game, I still get a thrill out of it. It's the little things like that which make VR so fun. You feel like you're holding a real weapon, it has weight and substance, and it interacts with the rest of the world. Here, the weapon goes right through the shield. The weapon and shield go right through walls, floors.. even enemies. When you "connect" with an enemy, they stagger and take damage, but it's not like Gorn or other games where you see the weapon connect and they react. It's just you flailing at them, your weapon going right through them, and then they yell, stagger and die. It's not satisfying.
- Magic & Bows are more fun. You wield your spells like pistols, and can blast enemies. You whip out a bow, and can snipe enemies. The problem is spells are still under-powered like they've always been in Skyrim. So, you'll need a mod or something to beef up your wizard. Bows are a bit hard to aim, so you'll need a mod to make that better, too.
- And that... as usual.. brings us to modding Skyrim. There are VR-specific mods, but since VR is so niche, a) there's not as many as other editions, b) it feels a bit more janky than other editions. Some of the key VR mods: VIKR, HIGGS, etc, require SkyUI. SkyUI has a VR version, and it requires SKSE VR version. My initial foray into modding Skyrim VR was to use Nexus' Vortex Mod Manager. I follow instructions to install things, but SkyUI complains that SKSE VR isn't running/installed. All these other cool mods require SkyUI, so I'm stuck unable to use them.
I finally went with Wabbajack / FUS RO DAH / Mod Manager. This required UNINSTALLING EVERYTHING (including skyrim), and following an absolute slog of instructions and downloads to get a ton of stuff I didn't want in the first place. Then it was a weekend of starting the game, it freezing, shutting things down, starting again, waiting, is this blank screen meaning something is compiling or am I .. oh, ok, I get out of Steam VR and there's an error message saying things locked-up. Great. UGH! THIS SHOULDN'T BE THIS DIFFICULT! AND BETHESDA SHOULD HAVE BAKED MORE OF THIS INTO THE BASE VR GAME!
- Graphics... we need to address this elephant in the room, b/c the vanilla graphics are supposed to be SE version, but are toned-down to handle the extra horsepower VR requires. So, they look about on-par with Oldrim when it came out. That is until you look at LOD stuff on the horizon. Woof. There is a surprising lack of detail of things way out in the distance. I'm running Skyrim VR on a beefy gaming rig with a beefy graphics card, and turned all the settings up.. and the PS2 level graphics in the distance are the best it says it can do. Like.. really? All you're doing is piping frames from the gaming rig to my headset. It's not like my headset is doing the heavy lifting. The gaming rig can handle Skyrim SE on ultra settings. But, potato quality seems to be the "high" settings for Skyrim VR. It basically underlines how Skyrim has NOT been optimized at all by Bethesda. They just ported to VR and called it a day.
I'm continually back-n-forth with being impressed by this game ("holy cow, I'm actually here!") and annoyed ("holy cow, they really phoned this in")
Folks that just want to play Skyrim in VR can get this, and experience a bare-bones VR experience.
Folks that want a great VR experience are going to have to suffer. Getting it modded will feel like a full-time job of tech support and aggravation. And, once you have it all setup, you feel like if you sneeze wrong it will stop working. IT SHOULDN'T BE THIS DIFFICULT.