The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Never before has anyone been able to craft an RPG of such exquisiteness and depth. I picked it up 3 years ago, and after first playing it, I was not the same person, and it continues to waste weeks of my life time and time again. No wonder I haven't been laid.

The game is completely open-ended. You could avoid the main quest entirely if you wanted, racking up wealth and treasures in the countless sidequests featured. When creating your character, you can pick your gender, pick out of 10 races to play as, your class, and your birthsign. Their are dozens of skills to choose, all representing either Combat, Magic, or Stealth. But the way you level up is especially interesting. Instead of gaining experience points, you develop your character by actually developing their skills, similar to Final Fantasy II. If your fight with a Long Sword, your Long Sword skill will increase. When enough skills have increased, you level up, and raise attributes. You could conceivably create a dagger-wielding berserker with an arsenal of stealth spells, or exactly the opposite. It makes the most sense out of any role-playing system I've ever experienced, and it allows you to create any type of character you want.

While playing, you can really become immersed into the game world and your character. I often make up backstories in my head and play out scenarios and ramble dialog to myself, truly playing the role of my character.

But enough about character development. I haven't even gotten started on the game world itself. It is 8 square miles big, and so richly detailed you can feel like your in it. According to many sources, the developers would hire "clutter monkeys" to decorate the interior spaces with useless junk, like plates, cups, bottles, torches, vases, and thousands of other different types of clutter, all of which can be freely manipulated. The terrain is varied, with mountains, rocks, trees, and towns with unique architecture dotting the landscape, all rendered in beautiful graphics. The towns are populated with NPCs, most of them uninteresting, but sometimes you come across unique characters and unique oddities.

Obviously, there is an endless variety of equipment to be found. Weapons range from basic weaponry like Spears and Steel Daggers, to exotic weaponry like Glass Longswords and Ebony Warhammers, all free to use at any level you wish (good luck finding stuff like that at level 1 though).

There are several different factions and guilds to join, including the Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, Thieve's Guild, 3 vampire factions, and 3 great houses, House Hlaalu, House Redoran, or House Telvanni (you can only join one house at a time).

But what really makes Morrowind have endless replay value is it's customizability. Shipped with Morrowind is the Elder Scrolls Construction Set, which lets you modify just about any aspect of the game you wish. Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy to use. There exists an immense modding community, with mods fitting just about any purpose. The mods are THE reason to buy the PC version and not the Xbox version.

The game is not perfect. The combat can sometimes be boring, and unless you have the Tribunal expansion, your journal will become an unorganized mess. Some reviewers noted that the graphics can slow the game down, but I never had a problem, so I cant complain. These errors are in general overshadowed by all the positive aspects of the game itself.

As I'm sure you'll understand by now, Morrowind is possibly the greatest game in recent memory. Even if you don't like games like this, Morrowind will draw you win like a black hole and never let you out.

It has been joked that during every Elder Scrolls game produced by Bethesda Softworks, they've never repeated the same mistake twice in games - they've invented *new* mistakes with each one. Before Bloodmoon, there was Morrowind - considered an excellent game, despite serious performance issues. Before Morrowind, there was Battlespire, a game considered good, despite an aging engine that should have been replaced. Before Battlespire, there was Daggerfall - commended but considered the buggiest games in history.

Bloodmoon, the second expansion of Morrowind, continues this trend.

Like most Bethesda games, Bloodmoon hits on so many positive notes, you want to love it. Essentially, Bloodmoon is more like Morrowind than Tribunal was. Whereas Tribunal consisted of essentially a series of small indoor buildings (even the 'open air' areas are indoor areas), Bloodmoon consists of a fully-designed island, off the shore of the main island.

In Tribunal, you feel you're being lead from Room A to Room B to Room C. In Bloodmoon, you're given an entire island to play with. A player can choose to do the Plot Quest, or aid the construction of a mining town - which takes roughly as long as the Plot Quest to accomplish. If none of those strike your fancy, there's enough non-plot quests to keep a player far busier than they were in Tribunal.

All this is great, but (as I alluded to) Bloodmoon continues Bethesda's history with their games. Bloodmoon amplifies the already-shaky performance issues with Morrowind. For some, the myriad of trees on the Bloodmoon island will lower performance. For others, the snowstorm effect will do it. Many others have reported that even installing Bloodmoon has lowered performance significantly.

Overall, Bloodmoon is like most of the Elder Scrolls games - the execution of a very good idea hampers the playability and enjoyment of the game.

Bloodmoon has a completely different feel and tone than Morrowind (or for you folks who worry about these kinds of things, the island of Vvardenfell in the Morrowind Province), which is extremely refreshing after hours spent in the tribal wastelands and swampy coasts. After the fanciful culture and creatures in Vvardenfell, Solstheim's real animals and realistic area and buildings hit closer to home. Home being this world we live in. Taking you character from a make believe world into something so real (and I'm not talking graphics) makes what you do seem more important and the enemies more menacing and the people deeper, even though they really aren't.

I won't give any spoilers, but take my word that even the bosses are better because they are their own characters. They aren't just a stronger version of the same things all around them. They have motives for what they do that you learn through the quests and encounters with them, and are not just told that they are smugglers that need to be killed or an outlaw that has killed a friend of your employer or an evil deadra. Morrowind only has one of these kinds of bosses, whereas Bloodmoon has many.

The new weapons and armor are truly awesome. Powerful weapons and armor can be found there. Relatively great armor can be bought without questing, and the weapons you quest for are some of the best in the game.

Quests are difficult and they aren't all just going out and killing someone or retrieving an item or escorting an NPC.

My favorite part of what Bloodmoon and Tribunal both offer that I am willing to tell you so as not to spoil anything is that you are able to participate in a few battles. Not all one on one or one on multiple, you can fight alongside many friends against a great many foes that you would not defeat alone. This is a truly great expansion that is worth more than it costs.

The guys at Bethesda have always had great story lines and Bloodmoon is no exception. Unlike Tribunal, Bloodmoon's plot does not involve game impairing ninja's around every turn. It adds another dimension to the game, werewolves. Werewolves have more too them than vampires did. They have their own movie when you transform, they can jump high, and attack well. Another bonus are the new movies. The original Morrowind had about 3 movies. Bloodmoon has a movie for about every quest. Bloodmoon opens up a whole new region with new opportunities. The only problem I noticed was how hard it was to get there. You can not take the standard silt strider and there is only 1 boat to get there. Along with the travel problems, with the exception of Raven Rock there is not Inter island transport, which means that you must walk every where. Then again, this give you more opportunities to explore the beautiful, fulfilling Bloodmoon experience.

This game for me is one of the most addicting singleplayer-games I have played. This installment of The Elder Scrolls has a particular fantasy-realm setting that will immediately draw you into the world from the minute you hear the epic theme-song. And the best part is: you can do whatever the hell you want. Want to explore dungeons and raid them for gold and treasures? Go ahead. Want to increase your magicka by learning new spells? Go ahead. Or do you want to follow quests in the main story line? Why not. The possibilities in this game even to this day are astounding, and the large environment is always fun to explore.

Unfortunately, this game does have a few flaws though, and a few of them have been addressed a lot by critics over the years. The game is hard to get into if you are not familiar with Roleplaying games (especially since the first-person perspective can fool you into thinking its a hack & slash type of game at first), but once you spent some time figuring out the game you will have everything under control. The fighting in this game is weird, although you get used to it. Depending on your character's progress, you will either hit or miss the enemy with your weapon even when you are standing right in front of him/her. Obviously "behind the scenes" the game 'rolls the dice' to see if you hit or miss, but its still weird. When you level up you will obviously hit much more though. Some people also complained about having to read so much, but I never had any problem with that.

The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind is a game that shows how epic RPG's should be. If you can look past the glitches and bugs then you have a classic game that can easily entertain you for weeks, months even.