One of the best games that I've ever played.
It was, and still is.
I've been playing this game for going on nine years, and it is by far one of the best games that I've ever played in my entire gaming career. I had never seen a game like it before in my entire life. Coming into the RPG, making my own class, choosing my abilities... it smacked of D&D on the computer. A plus for me.
The biggest feature about this game is its size - it's colossal. Absolutely overwhelming. The fast travel feature in game was an absolute necessity, as, given the playing field size, it could take you days to get from one side of the playing map to the other. I had never seen an electronic game as open as Daggerfall is. It was a dream come true.
Of course, this dream is armed with dangerous perils. It would be foolish to say that bugs don't exist in the engine. Now and again, the game would crash, and time spent not saving was time spent gambling with character development. At times, you would seem to find a crash bug and literally fall off the map - your character would somehow go between floor polygons and just keep on falling down and down and down... you couldn't see anything but darkness, and the only way out was to load an old save. It was very frustrating, but it didn't detract too much from my overall enjoyment of the game... I just simply found it too fun.
Now, of course, the game just doesn't seem that impressive. In 2006, with Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion out, Daggerfall doesn't seem that great. The graphics deparment clearly wins for Oblivion... and in Oblivion, people have schedules and move around and are all clearly voiced. You can't milk the Oblivion engine like you can the Daggerfall (no one really seemed to mind, for instance, if you broke into a locked house in Daggerfall; they could be walking right next to you, and it wouldn't bother them in the slightest). But, this is a totally unfair comparison. In 1996, when this game was developed, it was the Colossus of its time... the fact that it achieved so much was definitely a great point.
Besides, graphics have never been the selling part of games.
If you're looking for an excellent, open, huge game that is, in my opinion, one of the best RPGs ever made (better than Morrowind and Oblivion, I think), look no farther than Daggerfall. You may have to find special support today in the form of DOSBox in order to run it on your computer, and a special Windows installer to even install it to your computer if you're packing XP... but the work to get this great game running will most definitely pay off for you.
9.5/10.