The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)

I got Skyrim for Christmas the year it came out and played it straight for months. As usual I play a male high elf paladin. I put the difficulty up to Master right after finishing the intro part with escaping Alduin. Then I explored more or less randomly while doing any quests that I came across. My focus was heavy armor, shield, one handed swords (I prefer quicker weapons so I can better time blocks), restoration for healing and alteration for defensive buffs. I also used conjuration for better weapons and summons to help me fight. The destruction shield spells work well with melee and I did a lot of sneaking and archery.

Typical combat situation would have me start by sneak sniping with a bow to do as much damage as possible until the enemies find me. Then I laugh at them because my focus is being a melee tank not an archer. Save stamina for blocks and hit with sword and cast spells as needed. I did not use a whole lot of consumables, preferring to fall back to cast healing or cast it between blocks. By the end game I had every skill except restoration and conjuration at 100, and only because I saw no need to practice those when I use them fairly regularly. Heavy armor maxed out naturally while I spent time letting giants hit me to max shield and light armor; I used my vast stores of looted food for that. I summoned ice atronarchs and killed then with a 2 hander to max that out. I went around as a destruction mage for a while to max that, complete with full archmage set. I had been using mostly archery to kill dragons, which does not work so well when they are in flight. Lightning bolts though do not have to worry about ballistics and leading the target. Speech, pickpocket and lockpicking all maxed out naturally while exploring and looting, while the remaining skills I had to grind. I ended up with a ton of crafted potions and preferred poisons. I ended the game at level 81 and could kill most things using archery before they could find me. I rarely needed to use magic or melee. When I did, shield perks made most enemies trivial; arrow and magic resist combined with charge and knockdown wrecked archers and mages, while the stun and disarm from power bash wrecked melee. I sided with the Imperials in the civil war.

I used god mode and no clipping liberally to save time. Typically I would kill everything, then put on god mode to loot everything not nailed down and bring it all back to town to sell. My base was my house in Whiterun and I had each container there dedicated to storing specific things. I never used followers unless they were needed for a quest; I find they get in the way and cramp my style, not to mention make the game even easier. I eventually decided I should get married after I had been to every town and met all the fine high elf ladies only to go online to see that only 1 high elf lady was eligible and that she was ugly. Well I was not having that so I got a marry anyone mod and married Nirya from the mage guild. Up until then the only mod I was using was female nudity and I later got the official improved textures. I then decided to make ultimate gear. I was aware of the ridiculous exploit of using fortify alchemy, enchanting and smithing potions to break the game and refused to do that. Really, those skills should never have had usable fortify effects, or at least not allow those to affect the power of items.

I did most content in the game and stopped playing for many years. In 2020 I went to play the dlcs. I started off getting used to the game and finishing up some radiant quests and side quests I had not yet completed, mostly with the Dark Brotherhood. I joined the Thieves guild and completed that arc. I normally stay away from underworld type things as a paladin character, but this was the 1st Elder Scrolls game where I felt the story and atmosphere were interesting enough to experience them. I noticed a higher Legendary difficulty and put that on, and found out about making skills legendary to level up more. I did archery, since that was not my main combat skill but was the one I used the most. I also did conjuration to respec the perks because I got all the necromancy ones and after realized I would never use them. I got sick of the limited gold merchants have and installed a mod to give them infinite gold. I do not know how I managed it years ago because I have a ridiculous amount of gold and no backlog of stuff to sell. I then did Dragonborn followed by Dawnguard. Dragonborn was very nostalgic, reminding me of Morrowind. I sided with the Vampire hunters and let Serana follow me around for most of it for story reasons. I never became a vampire and never wanted to. The last thing I did was finish the Companions arc because I did not want to be a werewolf either. I also used Mirak's book to refund the perks I put into enchanting. There are still places I have not been and I am sure sidequests I have not completed, do I might do a location or 2 occasionally. My cousin gave me his xbox version though I do not know if I want to play that. At some point I will play the entire game again from scratch with a ton of mods.

All of the main Elder Scrolls games are 9.5/10 masterpieces to me, though I think Skyrim might be my favorite among them. Oblivion and Morrowind annoyed me with the metagamey level up system where in order to get the best attribute gains, I had to keep track of each skill up and grind minor skills just before leveling up to make sure I got max gains each level. Daggerfall and Arena have too much randomized dice rolling and Daggerfall's dungeons are excessively tedious, though they are the only games in which selling loot is not an unnecessary pain in the ass. Skyrim manages to find the best overall balance between the amazing world building, immersion and combat, and the annoying bits. I do like the simplified attribute system and way in which frost and shock magic interacts with those. I do not care either way about the loss of the spell maker. The most annoying parts of Skyrim include: limited merchant gold, essential characters recovering to full health after a few seconds from going down and how easy it is rise in ranks in the guilds.

My end game stats are: level 92, 620 health, 340 stamina, 300 mana, 1.3 million gold

Most used magic: summon dremora lord, summon frost atronarch, summon storm atronarch (for dragons), close wounds, flame cloak, lighting bolt/thunder bolt (for dragons), marked for death, slow time and elemental fury.

Current stone power is The Mage to max out conjuration again, then The Warrior for max archery gains for level ups.

Perks:

Heavy armor: all

Shield: all except quick reflexes

One handed: max armsman, max bladesman, fighting stance, savage strike

Archery: max overdraw, max critical shot, eagle eye, power shot, quick shot

Sneak: all except assassin’s blade

Conjuration: expert, dual casting, summoner, atromancy, elemental potency (going to get twin souls at 100, and maybe master if I have enough mana to use it)

Destruction: expert, dual casting, 2 augmented shock

Restoration: adept, respite, regeneration, dual casting, recovery, avoid death

Alternation: master, 3 resistance, stability, atronarch

Enchanting: max enchanter, insightful, corpus, extra effect (I reset these at the end of Dragonborn)

Gear:

Daedric bow (legendary): 278 damage, soul trap, 15 fire damage, 42 shock damage

Daedric sword (legendary): 288 damage, no enchantment

Staff of daedric command and staff of paralysis

Aetherial crown (with lover’s stone)

Full set of archmage gear

Daedric armor (legendary): 304 armor, +70% mana regen, +35% stamina regen

Daedric boots (legendary): 130 armor, +45% damage for one handed, +35% stamina regen

Daedric gauntlets (legendary): 130 armor, +45% damage for one handed and bows

Daedric helm (legendary): 147 armor, +45% damage with bows, +70% mana regen

Necklace: +45% damage with one handed and bows

Ring: +45% damage with one handed and bows

Daedric shield (legendary): 88 armor, +45% block, +28% magic resist

Otar (+25% all elemental resists) and necklaces with 60-70% resist for each element, which I needed to survive anything using elemental damage

With every Elder Scrolls game, I have a similar experience. I love exploring the world, I enjoy learning some of the game play and NPC stories, and I usually get very invested in one faction's story, but once I finish their quest line, I end up not wanting to play further, as I did the story that grabbed me...

In my current playthrough of Skyrim, I picture my character as a hunter/bounty hunter, so I naturally gravitated towards the companions. I flew thru all their main quests. I have some side quests and can pick up missions thru the companions, but after the investment I had in their storyline, I find myself struggling to want to play more.

I think I am going to take a brief break and come back fresh to the game, try to find another city or storyline to pursue. There are plenty more bandits for me to hunt down still, and maybe Kraven can finally start taking a stand with or against the Stormcloaks.

I have a love/hate relationship with Bethesda's open world RPGs. The scope and exploration is exhilerating. And I often enjoy my initial 1-2 week dives a lot; however, after that time, my interest tends to wane and fizzle and I move onto RPGs with focused stories.

Despite these struggles I love, LOVED Morrowind, finding the world and stories fascinating. When Oblivion came out, I was less then impressed. In the years since, I sporadically play Skyrim, in the hopes of catching the enjoyment I had with Fallout 3 and Morrowind.

This means I own Skyrim on PS3, PC, and now Switch, despite only investing 10-15 hours in each version.

Welp, I am taking the dive again, this time on the Switch. The lacking of modding is a bit disappointing, but overall the port has been nice. Portability, particularly to play while laying down in bed, has been amazing. I am trying to play a character more based on a concept, then on a guild, storyline, ect.

My character is Kraven, a Wood Elf Hunter, who is looking for jobs as bounty hunter, hunting beasts, and with the Companions. 10 hours in and I am enjoying it.

Okay, I’m out. This game is no fun anymore. There are lots of things wrong with it and I have tried to get into it but have decided the actual game part is just bad.

First off, I am playing it on Switch. What I have heard from everyone is “you should play it on PC for the mods”. I eventually realized the reason for this has to do with real problems that others are fixing. Inventory management and UI leave a lot to be desired. Part of this is the dated nature of the game and how much developers have learned over the years with how to create open world games. Part of this is just bad design.

Inventory management. Nobody likes inventory management. It can be a decent mechanic used to challenge the player of a game but you must use it sparingly. Skyrim is an old school encumbrance system, which completely blows. There is a reason you don’t see this system anymore. One of the big issues is ingredients and miscellaneous crap. I can’t tell if these things are useful or not. Should I keep them? Should I junk them? I would have to look at a FAQ to know anything. Even if I want them for crafting one day why make it a burden on me until then? Why not have a loot box or make this minor stuff weigh zero?

When I first started, I thought it was cool to wander around and there was so much to do and see. Now I am stuck in part of the game, Soltsteim, and this is like a tiny fish bowl compared to the rest of Skyrim. Open world games are great because you can wander from place to place or quest to quest or just explore. They did something wrong with this section of the game and yet it is mandatory. Further aggravating me is that the monsters here are extremely powerful and difficult to beat. I contrast this section with Eventide island in Breath of the Wild. That was a completely optional part of the game and could be difficult. I ran into it early on and had to give up and come back later. That was fine, there was plenty of other cool stuff to explore.

Skyrim has so much cool story going on and certainly has lots of systems to play with. Unfortunately I am tired of dealing with encumbrance and getting destroyed by high-level bad guys.

Wohoo I did it! It's been a long journey but I did get to a sort of "end" in Skyrim. I am certainly not done with the game, there is still plenty more to see and explore. However, I think this could be a good spot to pause the game and try to work on finishing some other games.

In this playthrough it took me 68 hours 8 minues and 52 seconds to finish the main questline in Skyrim, and I finished a lot of side quests including finishing the main quest line of both expansions. Total playtime as of right now 6/14/2018 on the Nintendo Switch player profile it says 105 hours of more, because of course I made multiple characters in Skyrim before settling on one.

Really great game and it worked well on the Switch.

Been playing through Skyrim on Switch. What a deep, enjoyable game. The style is a bit different than modern open world games like Assassin's Creed or even Zelda Breath of the Wild. Part of that is the lack of level indicators on enemies or quest markers on NPCs. It is nice and sparse and leaves me to just enjoy the world and all its characters, politics, and intrigue. There are lots of storylines with great freedom to choose whether to align with thieves, rebels, or imperials.

The big downside is the ton of systems and difficulty in determining what to improve based on my own playstyle, which I have yet to discover. I try not to worry too much about builds and just do what I like. There is always a deep knowledgebase on the Internet if need be, given that the game has been out for 7 years.