that one of our crew (late teen) is hooked on it and thinks it is great.

Although you may need steam to register. I did in Oz but I don't know about US.

The good:
It's not as buggy as Bethesda games usually are, the world is huge, the main storyline is well done, the graphics are gorgeous, so many quests it's not possible to do them all.

If you played Oblivion, they fixed a bunch of the really irritating features it had. Monsters still scale, but not to the insane degree they did in Oblivion, which means gaining levels actually helps you instead of hurting you in this game.

It also supports heavy modding, so if there's a certain aspect of the game that bugs you, you can probably download a mod that will change it. The amount of modding also means fans will be making addons, some of which are nearly as large as the official ones. The ability to customize was one of the main selling points to me.

The bad:
Balance issues (Magic sucks while stealth is massively overpowered. Both fixable with mods).
Fewer bugs than Oblivion or Fallout 3/NV, but the bugs that are there are really irritating. (Fast travel crashes, invalid objects, non-loading textures, etc)
NPCs sometimes have pathfinding issues (You can kill giants, mammoths, and dragons at level 1 by kiting them around a rock if you're patient or bored.)
Some of the crafting sucks and isn't worth it. (Fixable with mods).

The stat system is completely gone, replaced with a talent system that's more like The Witcher than anything else I can think of. You no longer gain carrying capacity by increasing strength: Instead you use the skill (Pickpocket, IIRC) until you can spend a point on it.

If you're playing it on a PC, you're probably going to be enraged by the menu system. They didn't even bother to hide that it's a half-assed console port. It's easier to play the game with a gamepad, since that's what it was designed to be played with.

It's a mixed bag. Not the greatest game ever made, but definitely worth playing.

You're absolutely right. Spent way too many hours giggling and blasting people off mountains, and I think my brain melted.

I really hope they ditch it and go back to the skill-stat-leveling system that worked better in Morrowind and Oblivion if they do a VI. That was a better system allowing for superior character customization and could radically change gameplay from character to character. I feel dumbed-down for the idiot masses by some of these changes they made.

I think the balance issues thing isn't quite right, for the most part yes...but a well-developed high-level magic user is much more powerful, it's just way too easy to f**k it up and not be well-developed.

Other than that, the thing that peeved me was the massive time jump. For someone whose love of this series was the lore and interconnectedness/cohesiveness of the story (one game's plotline flowed into the next), jumping ahead a few hundred years after the first four games occur over the span of about 40 years (the last 3 over the span of about 15 years) was a serious piss-off for the people who were into the story. Now I concede that they painted themselves into a corner with the end of the Septims, but the aftermath of the Oblivion crisis would have made a more compelling storyline IMO.

and it looks crazy beautiful. I like the detailed character creation part - I can spend a lot of time making my character in games like these.

Hopefully I can rent a copy this holiday and take it for a test drive.

stand alone, no fees.

It's a single-player RPG. No subscription fees.

gonna buy myself a Christmas present today.

Sid

I hope you got the PC version.

and it's freakin' fantastic.

Level 19 Wood Elf thief / assassin. I love doing 30X damage on a hidden backstab.

Sid

I tried going for the "crafter" build for my first character (alchemy/smithing/enchantment) and didn't have as much fun. I missed out on all the good perks. You only get about 80 before you hit the soft level cap.

I killed a Blood Dragon with three hits with an enchanted Ebony Warhammer on Master difficulty.

so I didn't get the "meaty" weapons perks. It took way too many shots to kill boss creatures for the skill levels and equipment I was packing.

My Orc is level 49, and most enemies can only do a tiny bit of damage to him on Master difficulty due to an Armor Class of over 700. Wizards seem to be the biggest problem, so I think I will make a set of Dragon Plate with Resist Magic enchantments.

I use Alchemy to improve my Enchanting, and then Enchanting to improve my Crafting and Alchemy.

My first character was a High Elf Wizard who still only had 100 HP at level 42, and I never put armor on him. Basic traps in dungeons will instantly kill him. My wife, who loves Elder Scrolls, laughs and laughs at my poor wizard. I quit playing him because I made some poor choices when choosing perks. Destruction is fairly weak, except for the Rune spells, but Conjuration is really powerful.

Beware... I've already played about 190 hours on it...and it's only been out how long?

not nearly as buggy as Oblivion, the scenery is fantastic, storyline seems very good, and I absolutely love the leveling system, and the perks. I'm heavily involved with smithing, I am one armor/weapon making RedGuard....

I have put around 40hrs on the game, and I'm only level 17. And to boot, I just figured out I can quick travel to places, so no more jogging for this gamer...

There is just so much to do in this game...the amount of side quests, and other area's you can get involved with are very deep. I'm level 47 now, and I have put in at least 80hrs now, if not more. I haven't sunk this much time into a game since Diablo(ps1)....

I haven't even gotten that far into the main quest yet, I think I'm only on act 4 or so.

There was a week or three where I was home alone most of the day, and I spent that time playing skyrim.

I have two characters around 50th level, and one that is close to 30th level. They're all completely different from each other.

because some things are just perfect together.

"Fus Ro Dah" Benny Hinn

that's great. Thanks for posting.



Sid

Took me a couple days to acclimatize to it. At first I didn't have an HD plug for TV so that quelled my excitement a bit - when you can't read the darn 2 pt white type on snow thing. For 20 bucks I can now see.

It really feels different to me, in a very good way. It's leisure exploring and you kind of get caught up in the scenery like nothing else before. Just breathtakingly beautiful on hi def.

nice paper, colour pics.

Its just massive and beautiful and soft cover floppy.