Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Mixed reactions"

In the wake of Oblivion, the components of Skyrim remain relatively the same. Enter a town or city, immerse yourself with the locals, obtain a quest that takes you to a dungeon, clear the dungeon or obtain the item required, then return to the quest giver to receive your reward. Rinse and repeat endlessly until you somehow manage to complete every objective offered by the game. With the overall massive scale of the world, you will have to invest numerous hours in the game to complete such a task.

Caves and abandoned fortresses/dungeons are scattered throughout the world and provide the player to explore. The main improvement made within Skyrim when compared to Oblivion is that all of the dungeons end at a location near their entrance. Instead of forcing the player to backtrack throughout the majority of the dungeon, there is usually a ledge or secret passage that opens up to enable the player to reach the exit in a timely manner. As with previous installments, every single dungeon has a unique layout and enemies associated with its location.

Meanwhile, cities and towns contain their own unique portrayals and NPCS that make them stand out from the others. Some of them will spur your interest while others will wish you could avoid them completely. Quests are never in short supply when you enter a highly populated area. The main quest of the game will have you travel to numerous cities, but some will not even be involved.

Without getting into too much length here are some other improvements that I really enjoyed:
-Transportation system outside gate of main city that takes you to other cities for a price of gold (so you don't have to travel yourself all the way across the world in order to be able to fast travel there).
-Combat is improved
-Guilds provide immersive and fun quests with unique NPCs
-Loved the Dwemer dungeons and lore
-Houses gained customizable features
-Skill set and leveling up was greatly improved
-Inventory is no longer a pain to use
-Enemies scale with your level and items so you no longer have to fight difficult enemies that out-level your gear.
-Daedra Lord interaction is usually extremely fun and provided some hilarious quests

However, despite the improvements I felt that the main quest of the games lacked some of the epicness of the previous installment. After completing the last quest, I couldn't believe that the NPCs of the world didn't recognize the accomplishment that I completed and outside of a few interactions with some important figures the game just sort of shoves you back into the normal world. So I ended up feeling let down after leveling up and spending numerous hours with the game to only have it not show some sort of recognition within the game world. Where was the awesome cinema ending or the populace cheering for me for saving their lives? Overall, the lack of post-main quest activities was extremely jarring and a main letdown of the game.

Additionally, over time I came to recognize that cave and dungeon exploration got extremely dull over time. The same enemies tend to inhabit the same types of dungeons throughout the world so I found myself fighting the same bad guys over and over. Add to the fact that loot and dungeon layout was recycled repeated tended to produce some deja vu factors. The main letdown occurred with the main Dwemer city. The place was massive and filled with enemies but outside of that there wasn't much unique about the place.

Some additional dislikes:
-Random bugs and freezes forced numerous saves
-Dragon encounters become tiresome and are rather disappointing outside of the first occurrence
-Wasn't really into the ice/snow environment
-Fetch quests occur too much

Overall I enjoyed the world of Skyrim but just felt like the game was lacking some things to make it fully enjoyable. I ended up investing a ton of time into the game and enjoyed exploring the lay of the land. If you enjoyed Oblivion then go ahead and give Skyrim a go.