The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Presentation: An elegant menu system and a huge amount of story content to dig into.

Graphics: Stunning environmental detail make exploring Skyrim all the more rewarding. Some character models and animations look unnatural.

Sound: An incredible soundtrack and great sound design help make Skyrim feel like a real place.

Gameplay: Though the up-close weapon combat is still a little awkward, customizing your character and conquering all Skyrim's challenges is consistently satisfying.

Lasting Appeal: A game of staggering size and filled with content, so there's always a reason to return.

The game is amazing and you will spend hours upon hours finding every mystery of Skyrim, the guys behind the Elder Scrolls series are the true masters of open world RPGs, so you can't go wrong when you buy one of their games.

It's been the better part of a year since they first announced that 'Skyrim', the sequel to The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, was in production. I was pretty darned hyped, because I absolutely loved Oblivion and thought it was a great game, despite some problems it had.

But as the release date for Skyrim neared I grew a bit apprehensive... I've played enough games from Bethesda that I knew it was gonna be great, but I started to worry it wouldn't live up to the massive expectations I(and many others, it seems) had for the game. Everything I had seen, from trailers to game play snippets to early reviews from those lucky enough to try the early demos all fueled my expectations, and I know from experience that even if a game turns out to be pretty darned good you can end up somewhat disappointed if it's not the masterpiece you envisioned it would be.

Well my friends, three and a half weeks after launch, and some 109+ hours of time spent playing it I can safely say my fears were unfounded. Skyrim is easily one of if not THE best games I've ever played, and I've played hundreds.

I will note that it is not without fault.. like pretty much all massive sandbox games from Bethesda it does have some bugs and glitches, but so far in my experience they are few and far between, and nothing that has distracted me much from the immersiveness and incredible scope that the game has to offer. I debated whether to give it a '9' rather than a '10' because of the very minor issues that have arisen, but I finally decided that the problems with the game are so tiny compared to the positives, that I would be nitpicking if I deducted a whole point; But to be fair, if I could score it out of 100 I'd give it a very solid 98.

Todd Howard may be a genius, but he has some serious work ahead of him if he plans on eclipsing his own high water mark with this work of art. I for one wish him the best of luck. ;) In my 25 years of gaming I've found that it's easy for a well made video game to keep your interest level high enough to be more enjoyable in hour ten than it was in the first hour of playtime, but it's a very rare game indeed that is more fun and more engrossing in hour 100+ than it was in hour 50. Skyrim is that game.

"I'm not really into all that wizards and dwarfs nonsense" I told a friend when he talked about the new Elder Scrolls game, a series I had no interest in and even less knowledge of. The connection to the Fallout games though meant that I knew the basic gameplay would appeal to me since I like the idea of RPG but not the incredibly detailed stats packages that most come with – selecting equipment, taking notes and digging in menus I'm fine with, but too much detail I'm not. As a result I picked this game up, still not totally sure that I would like the loss of guns and dark comedy that I got with Fallout 3 and NV.

Very quickly I was into the game because I love getting caught up in the exploration, getting quests, finding stuff, building up my character and so on, all to the point where I really didn't progress the story very much until I had already played about 100 hours. The amount of quests is ridiculous and most of them do actually give you something to do other than just travel somewhere and come back. There are quests like that (the Thieves Guild "job" quests get tedious before you complete them) but they are the minority. The actual story is probably too short (ironic complaint for a game that I put down after filling the last few months and eating well over 100 hours); I left it at the end of Act 1 and when I returned to it I was surprised by how quickly I moved through the remainder of it to the end. I was also a little bit disappointed that the story did seem to stand alone and that it was easy to lose the plot if I spend ages doing lots of side-quests which rarely seemed to connection. Fallout NV got the mix better in terms of the storyline as so many side quests supported the story. It still engaged me because the vast majority of the quests were really enjoyable and provided lots to do and experience, just that they did fragment the story a little for me.

In terms of the gameplay, it is accessible to the majority, which means lots of fringe players will be upset. So, for example, I would have liked the dungeon puzzles to have been harder, but I know they were still OK so as to be fun for me but not frustratingly hateful for those that don't like puzzles! The levelling up system makes a lot of sense to be – if you keep doing something, you'll get better at it – works really well as an idea and in practice. I know it upsets "proper" RPG players who prefer limits on who you can be and lots more stats, but I felt it worked – I didn't pick who I was at the start, my character grew based on how I played – so my magic stayed weak because I never used it, unlike other games where you just assign points to a skill to make it better. The gameplay is varied but well balanced – so yes there is trading and making potions, but there is exploring, battles, talking to others, puzzle-solving etc – nobody seeking just one thing to be perfect will be happy, but again this is why the game is accessible and enjoyable to more players.

Graphically the game is beautiful. The load screens when entering a new area are fine until you're doing lots of rapid travelling, but in the open world of Skyrim you can walk for hours and hours and hours without ever seeing a loadscreen. The world ranges from snowy mountains to open green pastures and it all looks great. I did miss the humour of Fallout with this and the rather worthy talk of gods and kings didn't always win me over, but it still worked. The voice work is good and I accepted things like "all guards have the same voice" because such compromises makes room for more detail in other more important ways.

Overall Skyrim has good variation in gameplay and is engaging. The world is full of quests and experiences, with so much to do and explore that you will be playing this for days, not hours. Perhaps not for everyone and perhaps not as perfect as the hype suggests, but this is still a very good and very engaging and once you get into it, you'll be playing it for a good long time.

Long have I wanted to write a review for this game, but it's such a great game and it deserves such an in-depth review that I've been avoiding the task. Finally, I decided to write a review in two different aspects of the game; first what it represents as a video game and secondly its gameplay.

Video games, in the past, had been something that were not taken seriously by the general public. Although some people still ridicule video games, they are now a new form of art and a giant industry. People who are not interested in video games will often tell you that ''it's not real'' and they'd rather experience something real. And I can relate to that. I'd rather have a ride on a real roller coaster than experiencing it on VR. But that doesn't apply to everything. It is really so much fun operating a battle tank in a video game, but you would s**t yourself in real life if you were in a tank and a shell hits your tank and makes a sound like a thunder! And reality comes with its limitations. There are no dragons in real life! And human body is so boringly fragile. Video games liberate us from these chains of reality. I remember reading a story in which there was this character who sits on a log or something in the wild and watches the scenery and wishes he was free from human needs like eating, sheltering, etc. So he could enjoy that scenery as long as he wanted. Video games do that, removes the limitations of reality so you can do whatever you want. If you are a non-gamer, think of games as dreams. While you are dreaming, it feels so real and intense, in fact, as far as the person who is dreaming is concerned, it is very much real at that moment. Then you wake up and you go on with your life. That's exactly how my relationship with games is. As long as you have your priorities straight and maintain a healthy balance, video games could be a most rewarding thing in your life and on some occasions, they may even make some improvements in your life! The only reason I can type this review in English right now is the video games. That's how I learned English, by playing games. I can clearly pinpoint some critical milestones in the past that have helped greatly advance my English. One of them was a meticulously detailed and thorough walkthrough of Fallout 2 which I had to refer to hundreds of times, obsessively, I'll admit. And the other one was reading unit descriptions in various games' wikis, as a sort of ASMR, the most notable of these was Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, I'd go to the wiki page and pick a unit from the 'complete unit list' and read about them. I digress, the point is video games are not that bad and they are about a kind freedom that you cannot possibly experience in real life...

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the pinnacle of the sort of freedom that I was talking about. Right at the very beginning of the game, like a doctor might put his patient under hypnosis just in a second, you awake in this new world. Aptly named and beautiful 'Awake' from the soundtrack starts playing, then you first hear horses walking and slowly open your eyes, you realize you are a prisoner being taken to somewhere. Soon, you create your character race and physical appearance and after a short series of scripted events, which also serve as the tutorial of the game, you emerge from a cave and you are amazed by the world in which you are now. Jeremy Soule's(composer) music is just perfect and I can't even describe it, I'm not eloquent enough, all I'll say about his music is that thousands of people, including myself, go to sleep every night, while still listening to this game's soundtrack, after all these years, even if not playing actively at the time. It's magical... You are now free to do any quest in the game, in any way you'd like, in any time you'd like and in any order you'd like; except the main quest line, you need to do those in their order, but even those give you a lot of freedom in terms of your pace and choices and they are independent from the many side quests of the game and they won't intercept or interrupt with each other and you can delay or pause and continue whenever you want. You can now slowly become a warrior or a mage or an assassin or something in between, and with enough time, you can be all of these things at the same time, while going from one place to another in one of the most beautiful open maps of any game. Really, you'll love this open world so much that you'll travel on foot most of the time, even though you have an option to fast-travel there, even more freedom... The open world is so detailed and full of surprises and easter eggs and stories that do not necessarily effect anything in the game, but they are just there to make the world more real and interesting. You'll come across a skeleton in some cave and there is a letter or journal next to it, so you can read his/her story. I don't want to put a spoiler warning on this review, so, I'll not talk about these things specifically, there are so many of them anyway, nor will I detail any of the quests. All you need to know is that you can slay dragons and only you can absorb their powers. And if games intimidate you because of how much other people are good at them, you are not in competition with anyone, do whatever you want on your own pace and difficulty setting, for example I turn the early game into hell by playing at the legendary difficulty from the very start, but you can start at 'easy' and you'll be a bully. Sorry I had to brag there for a second, it's a thing gamers do. But seriously, play however you want. You are gonna start over a lot of times anyway, so, don't be afraid to make some ''mistakes'' in your initial character. There are no rules; I always play as a noble hero, I don't steal, I don't attack some poor peasant for no reason, etc. But if you want to do that, you can! You can sneak around and assassinate poor innocent people, you can steal and bribe the guards if you get caught or even intimidate them! Play the game as a true role-playing game and be whatever you want to be and enjoy and explore that beautiful world...

The gameplay of Skyrim, just like its quests and story, gives you a lot of freedom, to the point of breaking the balance. But in a game like this, it's not necessarily a bad thing. In most similar games, you choose a class such as a wizard or a warrior; in Skyrim you can be both and more at the same time. There is no level limit, so you can continue picking perks in all masteries and eventually excel at everything! This ''lack of balance'' is really not an issue in my opinion, for several reasons: It fits the story of the game, you are the mighty Dragonborn after all, it gives you freedom and it takes time and effort to get there anyway. The controls might be confusing at first; activating spells, equipping swords in both hands or equipping a spell in one hand and a melee weapon on the other, accessing your consumables, etc. But once you get used to it, it becomes alright. Now, here in 'gameplay' section, I'll have some slight criticism of the game. Even though I've talked about how much I love the open world, it is not big enough(I can't get enough of it). I don't know why I had not realized it initially, but after some time, one realizes how ridiculously small Skyrim is. You go from one village to another in mere minutes, and I don't mean fast travel, I mean on foot. You climb the highest mountain in Skyrim in a few minutes. This is actually a general thing about video games and most of the time for a good reason. For example, you can't make your tanks shoot at a few kilometers or miles in a strategy game, gameplay would have become so impractical, to the point of unplayable. But in a game like Skyrim, making a mountain really big would be to the benefit of the game, everything would have felt more epic. Imagine a High Hrothgar, the mountain I was talking about earlier, at the size of Mount Everest! Instead, you have something so tiny... It might not look so, but you realize it when it took you 5 minutes to climb to its summit. I'd rather have a real size mountain that would take real life hours to climb. This same criticism about the size also applies to the other games by Bethesda, namely Fallout games... Everything's so tightly packed, there are no spaces in between. Although it may be a good thing in the short term for a more active gameplay, I think it's to the detriment of the game eventually. And even though the game has a lot of replay value, I think that mostly comes from things that are not related to the size of the map; like people's choices, different races, etc. I would love to have a Skyrim in which I could discover some new things and places after years because of the size of it. Imagine if it was the size of Siberia or something like that. But I guess it would be technically too difficult to have such a big map and attention to detail at the same time. Maybe someday... I haven't talked about the mods because I never use any mods in my games, but that's an OCD thing of mine, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of good stuff in mods that I am missing out on. And because it is one of the most popular games of all time, there are plenty of people making mods for it. But still, the vanilla game alone is rich enough and it has several good DLCs on top. Good enough for me anyway.

Despite this has been somewhat of a lengthy review, it cannot possibly cover everything about Skyrim. Buy it and play it. By the way, it is really a timeless game, if you are thinking that it's a thing of past or something, they have just released a 10th anniversary edition. And people still play and make YouTube videos about Skyrim and even the previous Elder Scrolls game Oblivion. Escape from reality's chains for a moment, it's not a bad thing...

I have been playing video games for almost 20 years now. I have played games in every category imaginable and have had countless favorites over the years.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim surpasses all of these with flying colors.

It is a giant play place. A beautifully crafted sandbox filled to the brim with HUNDREDS of hours of action, dialogue and epic quests. You will climb the highest mountains, crawl the deepest dungeons, wield the greatest weapons and fight the mightiest creatures.

The game is gorgeous. It's landscapes, cities and towns are lush and vibrant with detail.

Skyrim features professional voice acting talent by greats such as Michael Hogan, Joan Allen and Max von Sydow.

Skyrim's main storyline is but a mere fraction of its content and you will easily find yourself enraptured in it's fantastical world; unable to break away as you pour your time into it almost unwillingly.

It is simply marvelous. Words do not do it justice.