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cover-The Elder Scrolls Online

Thursday, February 13, 2025 4:58:08 AM

The Elder Scrolls Online Review (Nuubi)

ESO is one of those games where people either love it or hate it; And after 2000 hours I would say I fall in the love it camp but can definitely acknowledge there is flaws within the game.
One of my favourite things about ESO is the freedom to play the game as you wish, pretty much whatever content you enjoy doing can be your endgame whether that be: questing, dungeoneering/raiding, PvP, crafting or trading; These systems also flow into each other very well to create a cohesive flowing gameplay experience.
Combat in ESO isn't really one of it's strong suits, combat can feel very unresponsive and floaty with not a lot of impact being shown on enemies beyond the enemies being dazed when you either block or interrupt a heavy attack; The combat is fun at first but after a while it does just become "A thing you do". I do appreciate how gear in ESO is handled with horizontal progression, a piece of gear from the base game will have the same base statistics as a piece of gear from the latest expansion with only the set bonus of the gear changing the effectiveness of the gear; That might make you assume that the gear from the latest expansion has the best set bonus and will be the most optimal thing to use but you'd be surprise, different classes and builds can make use of sets from numerous different sets from different expansions. I very much dislike when gear is made redundant by a new expansion and the hip new thing on the block becomes all people use.
Visually ESO is very impressive, even zones from the launch of the game in 2014 have a lot of visual depth and flair which only improves as you get into the expansions with some particular highlights for me being Apocrypha and the Clockwork City, if eye-candy is your thing ESO has you covered.
ESO is filled with a gargantuan amount of quests, you can't kick a rock in a zone without hitting a quest giver and their cat (who is also a quest giver). These quests can range from the grand main story about fighting Molag Bal's Planemeld to save all of Nirn from being consumed by his thirst for power; To a guy who's trying to get away from his overbearing wife an we hand him right back to her unknowingly, I do love the variety in stories but from a gameplay perspective they could be better as most quests are just "Go here, kill this, interact with that" not all but a good majority. There are other types of quests thrown in like where you follow people in Assassin's Creed-like sections, solve puzzles to progress forward or even some quests that are collectathons requiring you so search far and wide for specific things across Nirn. I like the little sprinkles of variety but just wish that the philosophy wasn't "Break up the safe quests with a more unique one" and instead focus more on all quests having some flair and draw to them which I do understand is easy to ask for but in practice is tough.
Think that about wraps it up, gonna go play Tribute and get Law of Sovereign Roosted.