Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Don't believe the hype"

I'm not going to get many fans over this, but it's been a while since zero day so let's finally be honest about Skyrim. Oh and for the record, I'm a level 13 Wood Elf Archer/sword and board fighter at the time of this writing. Yes, btw, I was basing him on the LotR elves.

The Good:
The world is huge and there are plenty of things to do and places to explore. There's a new quest around every corner.

Lockpicking: though it can be frustrating, with a massive supply of picks you can amuse yourself for quite a while breaking into chests and other locked cabinets.

The Bad:

Combat; whatever you thought you were going to use in this game, forget it, you are going to be a battle-mage with either an enchanted two handed weapon,a sword and magic, or dual magic. I've tried to play as a non-magic user, and it's nigh on impossible to do. One novice mage with sparks will kill you in five seconds flat, all a shield will do is give the mage something else to sell after they kill you. The enemies level up with you, so the bear you slew so easily as a level 1 is now a level 10 bear, because you're a level 10 character. This was done to keep fights challenging, but it ends up frustrating to no end as every encounter is potentially lethal, even if it's something as small as a rat, but it's a level 13 rat, in my case.

Leveling: Enemies level up with you as previously noted, this is annoying to no end. Each of the 20 or so skills that players have a base value based on the player's species, then as players use that skill, archery in my case, you gain points, but those points do not seem to increase your damage or ability in any way, for that players must purchase perks from one of the constellations, then and only then can you expect to deal more damage, or change the difficulty of doing anything. What this means in practical terms is that players should really pick a specialty and use it exclusively. This way, when perk points become available, they can take full advantage.

Audio: Yeah, there are a few big name actors, big in the US, name actors in here, whoopie. The rest of the NPC's are pretty generic, the scripts are recycled over and over, either that or someone is kneecapping every soldier in Skyrim. Shopkeepers say the same thing, and you have to listen to it over and over and over to purchase or sell the loot that you accumulate.

Graphics: Really not much better than Assassin's Creed, just spread out over a wider area with more of them to distract from the low quality, it's a neat trick, but does not work long term.

Menus: These get cluttered up with all your loot and favourites and weapons, and become unworkable messes. All the more reason to pick one specialty and stick to it, adding categories would have been nice up on the d-pad for weapons, left for magic, right for potions, down for shouts. How about some overlays, like roads, holds, place names, shops.

Mining,chopping, fishing: These are just 3rd person sequences, why not more involving.

Conclusion: Not the greatest game ever made, not 10/10 material, but compared to recent releases like LotR War in the North and the unfairly maligned Fable 3, it does rate well, but on it's own merits, it is not worthy of half the praise it receives. To be fair, on the Consoles this is probably close to the limit, and on one disk, which was probably the subject of much discussion at Bethesda, maybe I'm expecting too much. I just cannot help but draw comparisons to old PC games like "Mount and Blade," and MMOs from ages past and think, you know...they looked a lot like this does. Sure, less to do, but more solid games. 6.5