Morrowind is a fantastic, sprawling game with hundreds of quests, and a storyline that reels you in, not letting go.
User Rating: 9.5 | The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - Game of the Year Edition PC
There are so many things you can say about Morrowind, like how engaging and expansive the world is. You can also say a lot about the few bugs that plague Morrowind, so let's get down to it. Morrowind is a fantastic game. Right off the bat, when I first played it, I felt a wave of imagination spread over me. From my first steps out of the prison ship in Seyda Neen, to my level 52 spear wielding Argonian, I have felt immense pleasure in my journey throughout this game. Now that two more Elder Scrolls games have come out (Oblivion and Skyrim), it's easier to point out the mistakes that Morrowind made. However, looking back it's hard to believe that the folks at Bethesda managed such a feat. The massive open world, the lore, the main quest and story. Everything ties together in a nice package. The only problem is, this package tends to crash a lot. As expected with a game as big as this, there are going to be quite a few glitches. Many of these were fixed for the Game Of The Year edition, but there are still many that plague the game, such as crashing after long periods of play (You'll be playing this game for hours at a time, trust me), shifting NPCs, quests unable to be finished. Yet, when you look at Morrowind as a whole, you see the huge world and the freedom that a lot of gamers crave, and others are a little afraid of. Morrowind is tough for beginners, as the enemies don't level to your skill (As in Oblivion), and fighting a vampire that you found randomly wandering into a cave at level 5 is not a great match. But Morrowind does start you off very well, easing you into the game via a tutorial as you walk through the town of Seyda Neen. In this particular town, you'll find multiple quests, a shop to sell loot, and a cave nearby to explore for early levels. The combat and magic are not executed so well. In combat, your swings depend on your direction, and you hit more and do more damage with a higher skill level in that weapon and vice versa with a lower (As opposed to Oblivion where you do more damage, but you always land a blow). The combat seems tedious at times, and AI can get stuck in terrain. As for magic, there are tons of very useful spells that add an incredible layer of depth to the game. However, magic in combat is not the easiest. You have to sheath your weapon and pull out your hands to cast magic, then put your hands down and pull out your weapon to attack again. While this is not the best system of combat, it is the best out of the past games (Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire, Redguard), and Bethesda has improved on it tenfold in their newer games. The immersing world of Morrowind is a godsend to those who crave freedom and adventure (Such as myself), yet to those who like to be put on a path and follow it to the end, this game may be a little too much at first. Playing more and more, you may start to feel that this world is too big, or that there's no clear objective, as in Morrowind you receive a quest and it's back into free roam. You can put off that quest indefinitely if you choose, but the reward is usually worth doing the quest soon, because as you level, you'll find certain rewards to be useless. Overall Morrowind is an Incredible game, a game that has provided me with 100+ hours of nonstop fun, and still continues to impress. The graphical glitches and bugs are a nuisance, but they rarely break your immersion, and are even fewer in the Game Of The Year edition. This game is a personal favourite, and one that will stay on my shelf forever as one of the best RPGs ever made. 9.5.
