How good is Morrowind?

I loved Oblivion and am thinking of getting Morrowind. I know the graphics wont be as good, but how good is the gameplay compared?

The combat isn't as good as oblivion, although everything else (bar the graphics, like you said - but some mods still make it look rather impressive to me) is superior.-Feath-

Theyre fairly similar as far as the basic premise goes, but Morrowind leaves you almost completely lost in the first 10 minutes of the game. You get off a boat and literally are given this vast world to explore with a few vague objectives.

Also my biggest dislike of the game is the TERRIBLE combat. Read a few reviews and they ALL will complain about the hit detection and clunkiness.

Other than that though its a great game that any fan of Oblivion should at least try.

Everyone else has pretty much told you what its like, But Morrowind is my favorite game of all time...... So, to sum up what everyone else said, starting off in Morrowind your pretty much lost and just have to go around talking to people to figure out what to do, I think peoples biggest complaint would be the combat it the game, although it doesnt bother me at all, someone such as yourself who has played Oblivion first, might take bigger issues with it. Personally, I think those are going to be the biggest turn-offs for someone new to the game........ but if you do decide to get it, and take time to play it, it is one of the greatest games of all time.

There is so much more oyu can do in Morrowind than Oblivions even several more skills you can learn, plus when you come across an area with monsters/people that easily kill you, run around and play the game some more to level up, than you can go back to those monsters/people and destoy them instead of running back only to find that your precious leveling time was pointless like in Oblivion which just made a tougher enemy appear.

Theyre fairly similar as far as the basic premise goes, but Morrowind leaves you almost completely lost in the first 10 minutes of the game. You get off a boat and literally are given this vast world to explore with a few vague objectives.

Also my biggest dislike of the game is the TERRIBLE combat. Read a few reviews and they ALL will complain about the hit detection and clunkiness.

Other than that though its a great game that any fan of Oblivion should at least try.

Ok thx all!

Will get it and give it a go.

Pros:

It's a very huge, very deep game. A hundred-plus hours of gameplay, easily.

It's got an epic story.

It gives you absolute freedom with no hand-holding.

Cons:

There's a bit too much reading of b-grade fantasy for my tastes (how many unpronounceable names with apostrophes do I have to read?)

The game is a bit too slow-paced, it's one of the few games I've played where I literally fell asleep at the keyboard.

The challenge of the game is easily broken with spell and potion creation.

It has horribly ugly character models by any standard.

The character leveling system is terrible and completely counter-intuitive (see Oblivion).

The challenge of the game is easily broken with spell and potion creation.

It has horribly ugly character models by any standard.

The character leveling system is terrible and completely counter-intuitive (see Oblivion).

The worst thing about Morrowind is how easily lost you can get in the game. You don't have a compass to guide you to where you need to go and as a result you need to rely heavily on NPC directions written down in your journal. Unfortunately these directions are often vague and in their worst form actually tell you to go in the wrong direction. Sometimes an object you needed to find for a quest is small and hidden in a dungeon, and you can waste a lot of time looking for it. If you don't have a lot of patience/time to waste then I highly suggest you buy the strategy guide if only because of the map it has and the fact that it will tell you the correct direction to head off in, thus saving you a lot of frustration. However, if you prefer the feeling of having to discover everything for yourself then forego the guide, but just be aware that there will be quests in the game that you will have a hell of a time completing without outside help.

Other than that the game is great. The art direction is far superior to that of Oblivion's boring world and enemies. Items are far more interesting both because they're unique and have deliberate placements in the world which makes it worthwhile to explore everything you come across since you never know what you're going to find (plus the items are often creative. For example, one quest rewards you with the "boots of blinding speed". The boots do indeed make you run extremely fast. They also make you completely blind). The story is much more gripping and actually has one of the most unforeseen plot twists in gaming. Speaking of the story it's completely possible to bypass it and still beat the game because unlike Oblivion, Morrowind allows you complete freedom to do whatever you want. This means you can kill any NPC in the game...even the ones that will render your game unbeatable if you kill them. And while the graphics in Morrowind are outdated (it was released back in 2002) you can still get them looking pretty good with a few mods (most notably the Morrowind Graphics Extender which can introduce widescreen resolutions, HDR, anti-aliasing, and infinite draw distance to the game depending on the settings you use).

As long as you can get past the annoying combat and the sometimes frustrating journal entries, Morrowind is a much better game than Oblivion.

Thanks for all the replies, I appreciate it.

Going to pick the game up today...its really cheap as well

everybody speak about elderscroll

hope they would make more of this great game

As others have noted, Morrowind is more of an RPG than Oblivion is. Your stats play a great role in determining how powerful you are in Morrowind. Contrast this to Oblivion, where your combat experience in a dungeon at Level 5 will be much the same as your combat experience at Level 25.

It should be noted that Morrowind is not as user friendly as Oblivion. I'm highlighting two features here, the "magic compass" and fast travel. You actually have to follow directions in Morrowind, like "Go up the trail to the big rock, take a right, go for a bit, then you'll see the cave." This does add an element of reality to the game, but at times it can be very ****ing annoying when you can't find something. Like I mentioned, you also can't fast travel anywhere in Morrowind, which when combined with the lack of horses and the fact that running drains your stamina, makes getting from place to place quite a chore or adventure, depending on how you look at it.

[QUOTE="Almighty-mints"]

Also my biggest dislike of the game is the TERRIBLE combat. Read a few reviews and they ALL will complain about the hit detection and clunkiness.

smerlus

also the combat is based on stats more than oblivion was. there was no bad hit detection, it was your characters stats weren't high enough to hit the enemy

Correct.

The challenge of the game is easily broken with spell and potion creation.

Dire_Weasel

That shouldn't be taken as an indictment of Morrowind, as you can create wildly imbalanced spells and items in Oblivion as well.

It's good. The combat is different than Oblivion in that you actually have a "chance to hit". Even if your sword smacks a guy in the face, it might not do damage if your character sux at using a sword. Some ppl like this because it is more like a traditional RPG. Other people prefer the more real-time action-based battle method.

As for the graphics, there are some awesome mods out there that tweak the 3d graphics settings and also some that will provide much better looking heads, skins, meshes, and... well pretty much everything. After I installed a bunch of these add-ons, the graphics were actually quite good. Not AS good as Oblivion, but still pretty decent.

The only thing that bugged me about Morrowind a bit is that it seemed almost like it was in slow motion compared to Oblivion. In Oblivion, everything seemed to go faster. I'm not talking about game performance. My machine ran it really well. It was just that even with a lot of speed upgrades to my character, I still could not get from one place to another nearly as fast as I could in Oblivion. I felt like I spent so much time just walking in town even though I knew how to get to where I wanted to go. It just took too long to get there. Fighting also seemed longer and more drawn out a lot of times.

Also note that most all the talking in the game is done via text, not the actual recorded voices you are used to in Oblivion. This makes the game seem a bit less animated and alive in my opinion, but it may be a minor detail to most ppl.

If you are concerned about the cost, don't be. The game of the year edition you can pick up super cheap ($20 maybe?) since it's old. If you are thinking it might just suck... it doesn't. It's a very good game especially for the time period it came out. I'd say give it a go if you really liked Oblivion, but DO expect it to be a bit different.

The only thing that bugged me about Morrowind a bit is that it seemed almost like it was in slow motion compared to Oblivion. In Oblivion, everything seemed to go faster. I'm not talking about game performance. My machine ran it really well. It was just that even with a lot of speed upgrades to my character, I still could not get from one place to another nearly as fast as I could in Oblivion. I felt like I spent so much time just walking in town even though I knew how to get to where I wanted to go. It just took too long to get there. Fighting also seemed longer and more drawn out a lot of times.

df853

Graphics are the only issue that game has but if I remember correctly there are mods, but yeh apart from graphs top notch.

I'll be honest when I first played Morrowind I couldn't work outhow I was supposed to deal with enemies with the fatiguesystem which kept me missingand so I left the game for two weeks.

But I am th type of guy that will replay any game just to make sure that it wasn't because I am rubbish at it or just for the sake of completing it.

And I have to say after the two weeks I got into it and its one of the greatest games i ever played, huge, epic, brilliant, so damn much to do, the freedom and customisation, the magic, the weapons and monsters, the lore, the land and all the cities, caves and ruins. It didn't matter how much I explored the game it just ended up getting bigger and bigger and that seriously impressed me.

I was very much absorbed by the game, then I got the Game of the years edition which added Blood Moon and Tribunal expansions...and when I saw how much they added I almost shed tears of natrual joy...besides that I love blood moon expansion for the icy climate...I do very much enjoy rain and snow effects which Morrowind has quite a bit of.

And yeh I pretty much rate it one of the best games ever made, as I said the only real issue some people would have is the graphics apart from that its pretty much superb.

IT IS JUST AMAZING!!!!!

It's hard for me to describe both games in ways that do them justice.

As others have said, Morrowind is much less action-oriented. The more stat-based gameplay means that "hitting an enemy" with an axe may not actually mean that you hit the enemy. Same for spells. Lockpicks and probes have to be used multiple times until they work, since, unlike in Oblivion, their success is completely independent of the player's skill--rather, it is completely stat-based. While these facts can be frustrating at low levels, it gives you a strong incentive to level up your skills.

The game's environment is more varied, and pop-up won't be as noticeable (think of Oblivion's grass).

Cities are completely open, as opposed to being closed off from the rest of the game world as in Oblivion. Levitation was taken out for Oblivion probably because of this.

Talking with other characters can be more tedious, since it's all text, but at the same time, the entirely text-based nature makes for longer and more meaningful conversations, with more information able to be imparted at once. You can scroll up and down within the dialogue box, so most of the time you won't have to ask a person to repeat something if you forgot it. Also, there is no problem with there being only a handful of voice actors, as in Oblivion.

The level scaling is much better than in Oblivion, IMO. In Oblivion, you and your enemies are always at "the same level", pretty much, while Morrowind is much more realistic. This means, of course, that you can't go just anywhere or do just anything from the get-go, which some people will dislike, but I'm fine with it. In this way it can give you more of a sense of progress than Oblivion can. You won't reach high levels and find everyone from petty bandits to tough opponents wearing super rare and expensive armor. When everyone in Oblivion started wearing Daedric armor, I knew the leveling system stunk. Don't get me wrong, there's level scaling in Morrowind, but it's barely noticeable in contrast. The only time I really noticed it was when a new type of enemy appeared in an area I hadn't seen them in before.

Navigation and moving around the world are harder and take longer. As has been said, there is no fast-travel system, though there are boats and things that can take you places in the blink of the player's eye. Two spells, absent in Oblivion, are also in Morrowind: Mark and Recall. This is another travel feature, since you can teleport (via Recall) to wherever you cast Mark at.

While running, the fatigue guage drains. I like how it doesn't in Oblivion, but in Morrowind this fact just gives me incentive to increase the stats that control how many fatigue guage points I have (it's best to include Athletics in one's list of major or minor skills if one wants to run everywhere). Also, it makes enemy encounters more realistic if you're a person like me who runs everywhere--you have to stop and take a break or walk before engaging the opponent.

The PC version of the game has a far more user-friendly menu interface than the PC version of Oblivion. For one thing, you can have all your menu windows open and viewable at once. They're also expandable and contractable so you won't have to scroll as much. Oblivion is hellish when it comes to scrolling in menus. The mouse fits in with the PC version of Morrowind great.

Another gripe many people, including myself, have with Oblivion is that it got rid of so many weapon and armor types and tokens, and merged or eliminated some skills. In Oblivion, there is no medium armor. There are far fewer types of armor. There are no throwing knives or shurikens. And there aren't independent skills for short blades and long blades, for example.

In Morrowind, since things are determined more by the character's stats than by the player's skills, persuasion doesn't work the same (there is no persuasion minigame). But I think that bribes might be more effective.

There are also far more cities and the dungeons are more distinct.

There's probably more I could say, but that's probably enough. I hope you enjoy the game! Don't let the graphics or combat phase you too much. It's a superb game, so just give it a go!

I couldn't stand playing it because of all the dialouge it forces you to read. I've never played a game that requires more reading than actually playing, and not only that but the dialouge isn't exactly very good either. Dry as jerky. I'm a slow reader though, but I could not get into it at all because of that. That and the awful combat.

I hated Morrowind. I liked Oblivion and all but when i played Morrowind...I was like WTF is this. The Graphics sucked and the Hit dectection with my weapons were horrible. It took me forever to hit an enemy.

I hated Morrowind. I liked Oblivion and all but when i played Morrowind...I was like WTF is this. The Graphics sucked and the Hit dectection with my weapons were horrible. It took me forever to hit an enemy.

Ikouze

It has nothing to do with hit detection. Whether or not you affect an enemy depends on your character's stats, the enemy's stats, the weapons, armor, and whatever else in use, and a pseudorandom number.

It took you forever to hit an enemy because your stats were low. Do you honestly think so many people would love the game (a LOOOOONG game) if the hit detection were crap?

I played Morrowind for like 350 hrs, others have played it more than that. There is just much more to do and accomplish... and you really feel like a god by the end of the game. Its really cheap at this point so I definetly give it the reccomend, you should be able to snag it for $10 or less.GodModeEnabled

Theyre fairly similar as far as the basic premise goes, but Morrowind leaves you almost completely lost in the first 10 minutes of the game. You get off a boat and literally are given this vast world to explore with a few vague objectives.

Morrowind is excellent. Compared to Oblivion, besides the graphics, I think the one are Oblivion did better was in quest tracking. Having the marker to tell you exactly where to go was maybe a bit too much hand holding, but quests tended to get lost once you got too many other journal entries going. But Morrowind was a ton more fun to get out an explore. Mostly due to the lack of the level scaling in the way Oblivion did it. Many of the better items don't drop off of random enemies as you level up. You have to go out and look for many of the items.

As others have said, Morrowind has more skill options, as well. Medium armor was completely removed for Oblivion.

That's not to say Oblivion was horrible. I enjoyed it enough to put in close to 100 hours between the original game and its expansions. I just probably lost considerably more than that in Morrowind getting out and exploring before even touching on any of the main quests. Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood quest chain is probably one of my favorite experiences in gaming. I'd love to see something along those lines used for a more open world Thief type game.

It's significantly more open and doesn't push you down the story path at all.andy_lyall

Theyre fairly similar as far as the basic premise goes, but Morrowind leaves you almost completely lost in the first 10 minutes of the game. You get off a boat and literally are given this vast world to explore with a few vague objectives.

Mmm all this talk of morrowind makes me want to recreate it on the Cry Engine 2, man now that would be epic. Seeing how oblivion mod got shut down however, a morrowind mod would probabaly share the same fate. Guess if i want to play it again it will have to be the old school way :D . Which is still amazing.

I loved Oblivion and am thinking of getting Morrowind. I know the graphics wont be as good, but how good is the gameplay compared?

warriorsq