Day 1. Life is rough as a Nord even amongst Nords. I escaped a double death at helgen from dragon and exeuctioner. Politics be damned I will have my revenge against the imperials one way or another. May Talos guide me.

Day 5. I kind of like this Riverwood. Nice people. The blacksmith shares everything freely. I never want for food and I do what I can to help out. I found an artifact in the ruins for the shopkeeper. He loves me.

Day 10 Whiterun. Everyone has problems. I will see what I can do.

Day 50. Skyrim is screwed up and nobody can take care of themselves. Everyone is so demanding. I have all these houses and homes, (I think I have a wife?) But all i do is wander caves and look for clutter people lose. What am i doing with my life. Talos guide me!

Day 100. I've had enough. I decided to join the thieves guild and dark brotherhood. maybe i can find some satisfaction through this kind of quests.. I've also been visiting some Daedric shrines...

Day 150 I did not wish to but I accepted my duty and I saved the world from the Dragons. I wonder... Why did i do that? I hate the world. It only takes.

Day 300... I can't take it anymore. I've become a vampire. and I've started using console commands to delete people from existence after sucking their soul out. I've cheated hacked and picked my way through this world, but it's not enough. I must have more.

Day 400. I realize my mistake. Now I live only to destroy. To feed upon these NPCS to rip out their hearts, erasing them and their quests from the world of Nirn completely. Sithis Incarnate!

Day 420. Ulfric is dead. Tullius is dead. The thalmor Cell has been erased from this world. The Greybeards and Jarls are no more. All mortals will soon their join their leaders. I feast upon NPC flesh and drink of their PRID I torment Molaag Baal in my basement and force him to wear the TS gimp hood, and do unspeakable things with his mace...

Day 500. The world has gone cold. Few remain. So Empty. The daedra themselves fear me, flee and hide. But I have looked up their PRID IDs and I summon them now to me. They will do my will or be deleted from Nirn!

Day 500. The daedra are gone... Only I remain. I am the last of the last and I spend my days dwelling in a voidspace between the material world and my console. Timscale slows to eternal night and references to the moon sun and stars are null. The world drifts dead as I wait to be contacted by the ruinous powers of chaos in the expecatation of conquering a new realm. Hail Sithis!

current mod review:

SKSE and the nexus loader. hard to imagine playing a bestheda game without these things. not sure what the unofficial patch resolves but it seems most 'veteran' mods are designed with it in mind (fomod/installers), therefore i use it.

SKY UI I was partial towards two of the FNV UI mods available but thats not the case here. between the way it works and can be fiddled with the integrated MCM that everything seems to use, and the nice style of the icons theres enough to keep me using it exclusively.

Smart looter. I got Jaxonz version because i believed it to be the most current update. This is maybe the most important part of gameplay: spending less time in menus! IT works well enough to keep but it doesnt work right 100% mods that add items sometimes dont trip it. unique NPCs quite often dont trip it. Certain locations it doesnt work at all. This can be due to the way (i'm guessing) items are categorized. I reccomend giving yourself a billion carry weight and ticking categories for each item you want, and having a 1:5 stone to gold ratio (yes you can do it with this mod) you can also just set the stone to gold ratio higher and just 'window shop' regarldless of how you use it or how often it works or doesnt, you'll still be clicking less, so however you play it's going to be helpful in some way. tip: If you loot a lot it will slow the game down. So you'll have to flush every now and then. Caution: It's hard to kick a smart looter habit once you pick it up... Fair warning... I've been using one of these scripts since F3 and i can't imagine ever stopping. a few bugs:
-Magic traps powered by soul gems. books on pedastels, bodies to have their ingredients harvested from other mods, etc. There are a few instances in the game where you wont trip a script that requires you to actually press the activate key to result in an action. Mainly these two i mention, you'll learn to identify them and anything your mods require of you that is similiar in this regard. the enable disable hotkey is very helpful and its not too annoying unless you forget, or you have the radius set way too high (...cheater!)

loot and degradation is the best addition to these games i've yet to see. your armor and weapons wear down and do less damage or protect less over time and their chacne to break on crti hits increases as they get gradually worn down. I max out the break rates because i like living by the seat of my pants. Now there is reason to pick up that damn iron sword time to time, or carry extra weapons and armor. and nothing lasts forever. love the way that makes the game feel. a true feeling of impermanence and snagging a new set of tempered armor that never breaks seems way too OP imo.
There are two bugs i'm getting with it though
-Selling normal items or perhaps just 'messing with them' can APPEAR to cause your tempered (item quality) weapons to get reset to normal untempered. This isn't true. I'm not sure what's going on here but you dont lose items. If you fiddle with a weapon rack your equipped weapon that is a high temper might not wind up on the rack. Similiar issues with enchanted (elemental damage) weapons going on the rack. My guess is they are in the bottom of the stack and you just dont see them, and that its somehow tied to the tempered menu lists. this can result in items moving around and you can potentially sell something you dont wish to or make other mistakes until you get the hang of it.
-stuff doesnt stack and looks very messy if you have no carry weight.
-not fully comaptible with smart looter, since SL will require you to loot all weapons, or loot very small values, since armor doesnt really trasnalte into a 1:10 stone ratio. Solution is to have a strict stone ratio, pick up all weapons, or not completely rely on smart looter. This means your going to be cheating with carry weight, or you're going to not be relying on smart looter with bodies (and really you dont need to)
-cheating and smithing crazy powerful armor will break almost instantly. (found taht a brawl will always destroy my armor if i cheat too hard) solution is to not have smithing skills in >1000% it would seem that tons of creatures do get crit unarmed attack bonuses though and that puts stress on the balance here (depending on your tastes)

dance of death. i have kept the settings for death animations low, and run this out of the box as is for second playthrough with exception of the option to enable it so i can't take damage while doing a finishing move (some of them are lengthy lol). they are pretty cool and basically make the game look a bit like a true VATS kill cam. There are a lot of deathmoves and some of them are pretty satisfying when they roll. Some of them are a bit buggy, (you can do a death dealing finishining move that will cosmetically clip into walls if you alreay have someone pinned into a corner) and sometimes i just dont like it when they happen (i'm not a big fan of arrow killcams for some reason)

bandolier is great. It is real sweet to combine with a follower mod and change the look of your crew with it, even with armor that gets destroyed (using L&D) the mod is compatible with L&D. but also some bandoliers function as enchantable slots, which is quite nice also the backpacks dont look right with cape and cloaks. if you have a rag tag bunch of NPCS this and cloaks adds a lot of flavor in a really easy fast and dirty way to make them look interesting.

cloaks is nice too. another enchantable slot and some have slight enchants already, they also give your companions a nice look. nice how this works with frostafall

campfire, frostfall, Realistic needs and diseases are really nice, and designed to work with each other. this also expands your food list quite nicely, and used some cool textures. food has some use now. instead of food being used to heal spam, you have hunger, thirst, warmth, illnesses that food addresses. and there are often subtle stat buffs. (This of course makes the game harder for those reliant on gobbling down all that food to heal.) there's a lot of food mods that might be more your thing but i just keep it simple with RND

bathing in skyrim, goes great and is a similiar OCD kind of mod if you like primary needs, campfire and stuff like that. I was a bit nervous about trying this due to the few extra steps to get it running. but it just sounded cool. it's a bit of micromanagement but there's just something about being a dirty, unbathed pirate vamp who takes from the homes of landlubbers and stinks that i could not pass up on. the trouble is there are no bathing facilities in cities or homes (its amazing what bethesda missed sometimes) so they must be modded or you must find running water. some cities do have running water areas or fountains but it's quite suprising how in some cities you have to head to the ocean to take a bath (solitude) weird glitch with primary needs and diseases if 'bathe anywhere' is on (cant fill up bottles with water) I havent tried any of the add ons such as those that let you use the fountains or adds/edits a bathhouse 'basement' to each inn.

Hunterborn. Great mod lots of compatibility. Adding this be careful with autolooter mods as they need to be temp disabled when approaching a slain animal to interact with it. Several intersting perks and spells that add some flavor but the 'meat' of this mod is in the scavenging for goods to trade and ingredients to use. The improvised cooking (walk up to a torch or anything 'hot') is a plus, but there are in essence going to be three crafting/cooking menus between this, campfire and the regular cooking pot system. bon apetit. Came across Hunterborn through reading the install instructions for bathing in skyrim. its a cool idea but the balance seems a bit OP. then again, large animals would have a lot of meat on them. can skin and cook most animals they missed the hawks, i think hawks are the secret critter of the game nobody knows about. Pretty involved and really cool idea.

better vampiresi'm still getting used to being a vamp, kind of a learning curve with lots of abilities and i've not even done much with mage as i prefer direct approach but some of the abilities here (such as invisibility) make for excellent options for a truly powerful rogue type character/sneak/assassin. I like this mod despite breaking a a whole lot of the point of immersion mods that give you needs like campfire, frostfall, realisitc needs and diseases (And even bathing in skyrim) because it really is tailored in a way that gives you several vampiric powers based on the style you play with or your role. I find that being able to bite and feed is excellent for sneak characters, because of the invisibiility ability. you also can unlock the vampire abilities and get new abilities the more you feed. the mod also has different settings and philosophies about how to go about vampire progression, strengths and weaknesses. I have a slight compatibility bug with...

Sneak Toolswhich is an old mod, and various people report different success and failure with it. I have not tested most of the features but the rope ladders do work. throat slitting is the reason i got it and it certainly makes the g ame much more interesting as a stealth character. you can dispatch city guards effectively. or patrols on roads. you can take down high level enemies regardless of equipment, and i like this. However, the attempt does not always work, and it's not clear why the roll doesnt work. higher level enemies (or a sneak level that gets detected by them) results in failure. Still persistently trying can result in a successful roll. The 'use' key while sneaking will also attempt to feed as a vampire (using better vampires) so sometimes you will either feed, or perform a throat slit, and sometimtes you perform both simulataneously, which is unintended but quite nice. You can perform Mr Sandman styled sleep kills as well. One annoying aspect is you cannot assssinate people who are unconscious or in bleed out state from...

NPC knockout Overhaul Essential NPCS will go on the ground unconscious rather than enter that stupid bleedout state, so you can end combat, and loot them. You can also sneak behind an enemy and clonk them with fists or mace. You can also set your own Followers to Essential 0 and they can be knocked out as well. I've noticed slight incompatible bugs with this and some others but nothing that annoys me more than that stupid bleedout state. as an alternative...

Heartbreaker pull out the hearts of essnetial NPCs that enter bleedout state. This is probably the best solution to the problem and it puts a lot of power in the hands of the player who likes a direct approach. You collect the heart as an ingredient. pretty cool, if you like that feature... You'll like

All Races Drop skulls/Droppable Skulls i love this mod. creative idea. it fits skyrim so well. i love collecting the remains of what i kill in this game whether it is pelts or dragon bones, so now you can collect skulls of any humanoid. special NPCs have unique skulls. you can keep them or sell them. I like to take them and using jaxons positioner place them in the walls. some skulls arent worth anything and some fetch high prices. The mod is slightly buggy, as there are various lists of skulls that don't seem to wind up where they should. (various forms of regular 'skull' and an 'unknown skull' list that i think comes from named NPCs not specifically addressed) works ok with auto loot with some tweaking. With jaxon's renamer you could rename every skull you get to fix this problem for RP purposes if you wanted to...
-no animal/dragon skulls or spectrals (there are skull for trolls, and draugr, which are humanoid)-No Animations/sound effects/blood spritz/ragdoll decap for harvesting (such as heartbreaker)
-needs a necromancer sister mod expansion where you consume skulls via alchemy/potion, craft them into necro armor, or somehow use enchanting to use them. would be cool. (Scrimshaw expanded is too overpowered but goes along with this idea)
-needs quest line where Chaotic Evil cahracters go head hunting or lawful evil characters go head hunting.

traders of skyrim mod consists of three parts i've found so far.

-you can spend on average around 25K to buy your local 'general goods' shop in each big town to automatically produce gold in a chest. it's something like 1000 every few hours.
-there are some stalls in the town square taht sell special resources, you can sell these to other stall traders in other towns or certain khajit traders
-There are also special facilities (i wont reveal) you can buy that you might not think you could. These special properties produce resources instead of gold, a slower rate and are more valuable. The resources themselves are like jokes and easter eggs. its fun.
Bugs: has some stuff in french, renames name of some shops to french... its minor grievance. you can sell what you buy from stall traders one at a time in dialogue so its very time consuming and i dont like it, however buy some interesting properties to harvest resources or gold for income supply makes it worth having, and the easter egg bits are fun.

nudity mods. Wait it's not what you think, I can explain! Raiders and forsworn who transform into undewear after i steal their clothes just kills my immersion. Really! :D Breeze and Dimon were great in F3 as well.

notice board is unobtrusive and a nice radiant quest system. if i am not mistaken the actual board is from WoW. I haven't played with this one much but i have read it time to time. With other things there is so much to do already I dont have to consult the classifieds.

Jaxonz Positioner I'm still figuring out the Jaxonz mod collection. They all have TONS of controls. This one is a bit tricky but i basically am just collecting odds and ends i find in the game and 'stealing them' for when i build a house. I see a chest or a statue, a daedrice sacrifical alter? or a big rock sculture? I steal it. There are certain tricks with it. I've reloaded old save games and seen the game world still miss what i stole from it or moved and had to reload a few times or exit the game to bring that back.... So some caution is warranted. The mod is amazing and if you are into decorating your house and stuff this lets you go full blown minecraft pirate style with it. At first I was copying chests to have a wall of chests until i came across...

Functional HomesLinks all vanilla homes (such as breezehome) with chests and crafting stations. There is a script that lets you pick up and drop off most crafting material. Doesnt work so great with mods that add crafting material or modify the way crafting works but its stable and helpful. adn still facilitates inventory management. Make sure to clean up your homes before you install this as some things can dissappear if the mod replaces some of the furntiure/containers. The mod only affetcts the core houses, not hearthfrie homes, thats a bummer.

WoodcutterThis lets you cut down most trees in the game and do various woodwork with the results. I've mostly used the wood as crafting material to make charcoal, and to make chests using...

Jaxonz Storage Helpers The time spent learning to figure out these weird controls was worth it. I can craft anything into a container, including the bandoliers I wear from bandoliers. Rename feature is also nice. With Functional Homes I dont have much reason to use this though. But i can create networked containers and make as many as i want and put them anywhere, including on my person! Still figuring this out its pretty complicated and cludgy. Storage helpers is actually an amazing mod i've come to realize that has a steep learning curve. but i've been playing with it more... it does things i dont think you'd see in another mod and combined with mods like woodcutter and jaxonz positioner the imaginination is the limit of what can be done in the game of skyrim. it's most interesting feature i find is the ability to link crafted container inventories, including the ones you are carrying (you can create bag of holding style backpacks in the mod), and to be able to 'move' crafted containers around. (though positioner really is better for doing that) It is not a fast process to build this kind of infrastructure of shared containers across differnt locations but it is something worth doing to supplement the areas that functional homes missed. a great example is the northern cardinal pirate ship, or other custom player homes, or new lands mods... and you can do it at city gates, outside of shops, etc. to me this makes much more sense than the base building in hearthfire. really does work well with jaxonz mods (like positioner) and woodcutter.

Jaxonz Renamer rename chests/containers. careful with renaming NPCs, horses and doors. Great for RP and actually quite easy to use.

Immersive Music has options. Delete what you dont want. Most of it comes from The Witcher series. I've converted some various music to replace some of what i didnt like using a music conversion tool. The dungeon music is very extensive and really quite good and i like it as much as my own stuff i made for fallout 3 for personal use even. The temple and castle music not so much, and i dont like. the dragon fight music i find just too loud and epic.

Immersive Jewelry is a must have. This expands smithing out the wazoo with over 5000 recipes. It's very well made and works well with other things in conjunction. I did not install it with the reccomended crafting overhaul (because that is where I find I can get compatiblity problems and save game trouble) Not only do you get endless amounts of beautiful jewlry. But you can smith metals and make a slight turnover/markup into finished goods from the rings and jewelry. This also adds new slots such as earrings, bracelets, collar and what is supposedly a 4 ring system (i can only get two slots to work, left and right but still better than one slot, but that is probably because i didnt do it with crafting overhaul.)

Dovahbling Hold Rings add on only (with Immersive Jewelry underlying it)Not a big deal but it works together and it's nice to have custom jewelry granted to you and bestowed when you become thane. That just seems appropriate. and the rings look nice and make exceptional mementos if you like collecting things. I could not get current versions to work with my install of IJ, no matter how i arranged them to get a working and functional 10-ring slots. So I just kept this. Also if you like collecting things...

OBIS - Organized Bandits in Skyrim. It's largely unobtrusive. Every now and then bandit encounters are a bit tougher with unique clans with some weird backstory and power. The mod comes with the biggest book i've ever seen that outlines them all. (but you dont have to read any of it) They also have unique names and shield colors that make for nice collectibles. and there are tons of clans. The shields are really cool to look at and its worth having this just to get those shields to put them on your houses shield racks. (or jaxonz positioner)

Immersive Patrols Seems unobtrusive. I have a no battle/agressive version imperial patrol of two (no prisoner, unsheathed swords told me to back off just like bandits do.

Immersive Speechcraft video does a good job explaining it. Sometimes the dialogue shows up sometimes it doesnt depending on context. It's fairly nice, some stipulations require having weapons drawn or not wearing helmet for some trees. This is just a nice thing to have. Example: I got 'robbed by a thief/highwayman who demanding some gold. I intimidated him, said no way, so he ran off, then i chased him down and demanded HE give me HIS money using this mod. Note that you can't 'reroll' a speechcraft attempt after talking to someone. Interesting.

Dawn of Skyrim - Makes cities feel a bit more city like with small changes such as small special interst shops that give each hold a bit of an imperial city market district like feel. It feels slightly out of place but it's fairly well made and compatible for the most part.

Inconsequential NPCS more unobtrusive than i thought and just makes cities feel like cities. It's well planned and thought out. I got this mainly because vampires (probably my vampire mods I havent even explored yet) were getting really strong and annoying in whiterun and killing named NPCs who are out at night (like Amren) too much before I could even help them, and I got tired of ressurecting them. Now unnamed 'inconsquential NPCs' will maybe act as decoys.

Interesting NPCSThis is a must have. It's a huge download but absolutely worth it. Elaborate and seemingly endless dialogue trees with random people that are fully voice acted. and these people are everywhere. It fits perfectly into the game with the only unfortunate fact that any single one of these hunderds of random interesting NPCs become more interesting than major characters in the vanilla game, such as ulfric stormcloak, and just makes bethesda look lazy. There is a patch for iNPC wtih AFT my follower mod, but compatibility is not perfect as they add new NPCs. There are also unlockable quest lines if you actually talk. Very much like that classic RPG feel. You want to go into a tavern and find some interesting people to talk to or hear their stories, recruit them and learn about their whole life stroy on a special questline?

Coins of Tamrielseems subtle and unobtrusive. dwemer and ancient nordic coins in addtional to Imperial 'gold' coins. this gives dungeon looting a bit more flavor depending on where you are. All coins now come in classic Copper, silver and gold flavors. The textures are nice. I'm running the with the Coins of Tamtriel V2 and golden crossroads + IJ patch of Exchange Currency (patch03 and patch04) (somewhat suggested by IJ documentation) without the banknote seller plugin. I have done something so as to have lost the standard copper coin texture (i have low res 'cheap gold' septims and high res gold gold... Septims are... fools gold? lol). I'll fix it easily enough with manual replacement when it bothers me bad enough to do it. compatibility is good outside of that. only bug is that silver and gold coins from Exchange Currency will weigh nothing! Not that i mind :)

Exchange currency does have slight bugs with ingot sorting for blacksmithing and crafting mods due to the way it adds tiers of ingots. This is mostly frustrating with silver and gold since the smaller ingots are exclusively for jewlery, its not an issue for anything else but Silver and Gold 'bullion' which is essentially a stack of 10 bars now. This is minor but i find it annoying and it could be problematic in crafting mods that should be looking for 'bars' and it instead uses your bullion rather than the 'bar'. (good example is silver swords)

Market Stall is a nice little immersion mod. lets you set up shop with rest of the market to sell clutter and whatnot to passerbys. This was suprisingly fun little RP type of mod that feels like a minigame and fits right in with the game, despite it's impractical nature.

Book Covers texture replacer. was over two whopping gigs but books look great. You like collecting books or have the library add on in the DLC? Get this. I thought it was worth it.

aMidianBorn Book of Silence (texture replacers) Armor and weapons. higher res versions in the spirit of the originals. Iron material is a bit darker. the changes are sublte and look better. no notice performance drop.

Maker Mark Ingots is another texture replacer i found, while it isnt perfect its nice and adds some flavor to the standard boring ingots.

blood, ore retextures some of the ore veins dont always light up for me in certain environments. i might have done something somehow. i suspect the blood patch to be a culprit that results in a weird lighting blood associated with dwemer light effects. (that or its something just native to the game) this is a common kind of issue that happens when you install these mods then run something else that tweaks weather or lighting or graphics. (shaders)

Take Notes is a little notebook and journal you can write in. handy to have. export and import options are nice as well with the FISS plugin. Crazy. You can have your console commands handy in game now.

Trade Routes. This is a interstng mod i have mixed feelings and still learning it. Essentially it creates prices that ebb and flow baed on supply and demand. It wasnt obvious to me how supply and demand worked at first. There are lots of books and notes in the game that give 'hints' on how to play with S&D. essentially certain areas have production more than others, and those areas have prices that reflect this. This is fairly minor game change for most players but the variety is nice to have.

I came across a lot of these through this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/42evs... some are also mentioned within the pages of the mods listed here within the core info or within the comments by other users who've played them. Reddit is apparently an excelelnt place to go look for reccomended lists of mods and find things fast and easy. I will be going to reddit when it's time to play Fallout 4.

I played Skyrim first several years ago but this time I had the dlc and used several mods. I had forgotten how much fun it is to just wander around Skyrim, investigating caves, picked up quests, getting better equipment. My aging computer isn't able for the Special Edition so I stuck to the legendary edition and I have to say with some graphics mods I think it still looks great.

This is just with Skyrim HD - 2k textures, Static mesh improvements and Realistic water

My favourite mod was Breezehome FullyUpgradable, I spend far too long displaying my books and weapons/amour there. It looks so much better than vanilla.

I enjoyed Dragonborn but I was very disappointed with Dawnguard, I wanted to play a righteous warrior that hated all undead but instead I had to keep telling people I trusted a vampire - I think Bethesda expected everyone to side with the vampires.

I also played with some follower mods. Kaidan 2 which was excellent, really good voice acting (aside from some static at times) and I enjoyed his backstory but he talks a lot so he ran out of new comments after a while and, much as I liked him, there is only so often I could listen to the same dialogue. Still I highly recommend him. Inigo was excellent, completely professional voice acting and a very touching back story, the best follower mod I have ever played with. I also tried Arissa but the beginning of the story made me a little cross so I killed her! I can't comment on the rest - maybe next time.

Interesting NPCs is an incredibly ambitious project but the quality varies a lot, there is a lot of excellent voice acting but there is also some that is of distractingly low quality. The quests were also a mixed bag, some were excellent but many were a little dull or felt forced and there were a lot of bugs, nothing too terrible but I had to reload quite a few times to get the next part to start. Still it does bring life to Skryim and I think everyone should try it at least once.

Finally I tried three quests mods: Clockwork, The Forgotten City and Moon and Star. Clockwork and The Forgotten City were both brilliant, they had excellent voice acting, the writing was a very high standard and the gameplay was fun. The Forgotten City had a longer story and a more satisfying conclusion but Clockwork was more atmospheric and I enjoyed it a little more.
Moon and Star I found fairly disappointing, the village it added was nice and the voice acting was excellent, although the main npc's voice was too quiet, but it was really short and it seemed to rely on players feeling nostalgic for Morrowind. I played Morrowind for the first time last year and while I loved it, I'm really not nostalgic yet. Also there was an assumption made about the Morrowind playthrough that I found annoying.

Overall I really enjoyed my 156 hour playthrough, despite its flaws Skyrim is still an amazing game and in my opinion the best elder scrolls game. Hopefully I will finally have gotten around to upgrading my computer by the next time I want to play and I will be able to try the special edition.

The Good:

• Total immersion. This game can immerse you like no other. Sneaking up on your prey with the famed stealthy archer approach is awesome. Setting everything on fire as a mage is awesome. Bashing the head of your enemy in with your warhammer is awesome. Just walking around in the forest and chasing some deer is awesome. This game is an excellent tool for people who like to RP
• Great visuals. Skyrim looks just awesome. With the correct (official) mods and a powerful rig, it's just breathtaking to walk around the province of Skyrim.
• Content. Endless quests! This game is just an endless supply of quests, missions and stories. Some are more generic than others (Radiant quests), but they have always a nice touch to them. Maybe a funny left behind letter in a abandoned cabin. A selection of very creative quests (House of Horrors, A Night to Remember). Some interesting quest lines within the factions. The main quest or expension packs. It does not surprise me that the average player spends 75 hours on Skyrim. I know I could spend more if I wanted to.
• Freedom. Do anything. Be anything. Do nothing. Become a hunter and hunt deer for leather. Become an assassin/mage/vampire/werewolf/thief/bard/soldier and so much more. Or just chop some wood or something and build your own home.
• Modding support. Modding support is a cornerstone of the Elder Scrolls games. With it, all bugs and annoyances can be fixed and new adventures can be added. If you ever get bored from the vanilla content, modding will make you get back to it.
• Great expansions. Dawnguard and Dragonborn are great. I would not have payed for hearthfire, but it's still a nice addition to the Legendary version of Skyrim. Great if you want to RP.

• Without mods the GUI is aweful on PC. SkyUI is a blessing. This mod singlehandedly fixes and extends the whole Skyrim user interface.
• Without mods, starting new characters can be tedious. The first gameplay segment (Helgen) cannot be skipped and some other parts (Bleak Falls Barrow) are required to unlock some important features of this game. Luckily there are mods like Alternate Start to make creating new characters more fun. Also: shout out to Profile Manager for managing the save files of multiple characters.
• Without mods, leveling a pure magic user is very hard (no armor, i.e. glass cannon). Shout out to Better Magic to balance out the magic system without making it too simple.
• Without mods, other small annoyances (which can be very personal) can be fixed. After playing 150 hours I got extremely annoyed about the weight carry limit and merchant gold cap. In my opinion, running back and forth between dungeons and merchants is not fun and bad gameplay. So I simply got rid of them. This is not as overpowered as you think. It just eliminates spending hours on fast travel and sleeping (make shops restock).

Skyrim is shallow in the context of the phrase 'as big as an ocean but as deep as a pond. The world is large and quite beautiful with a rustic art style. The story is not particularly original. Typical 'chosen one' type stuff with characters who do not feel particularly deep, the writing can be cringy and the voice acting is a mixed bag.

But, I haven't come to the reason why I still come back to this game and why I have rated Skyrim a star higher than I probably should have done. The soundtrack. I have so many fond memories of traveling in this game, creating my own stories, all while Jeremy Soule's masterpiece plays in the background. The soundtrack alone is enough to transport me to another world and the game gives me the ability to see and explore this world without it being trapped in my mind.

This game is a sandbox above all else, and as that, it is fantastic. But due to it also being an RPG I feel I must judge it as one.

As a sandbox, this is a 4* possibly 5* game. As a story based RPG, this is 2* at most. So my overall rating falls in the middle.

PS. sorry if this was poorly structured and rambly, I have many conflicting opinions about this game and I have never attempted to put those opinions down on paper.