Best Game ever made.
The emperor has been killed as well as his off spring been killed, except one illegitimate son...you must find that son. Along the way you will find over a hundred side quests, and dungeons and caves and anything in between to help you make money, find weapons and everything in between.
The experience is one you will never experience in any other game...at least not yet.
GRAPHICS: The visuals are beautiful, especially once you enter a dungeon then leave the lighting effects and contrast from light to dark really show and work beutifully. Shadow effects are great, textures are awesome, some would say Gears is better, I will argue they are different.
Water effects are ok at best. There just not done properly in my opinion. The forest looks AMAZING! The absolute best landscape ever PERIOD end of story.
The detail put into this game is/was amazing, and for its time was the best looking game ever. From the rocks, trees, plants, fire, characters, monsters, everything is perfect.
GAMEPLAY: Control's are much better than morrowind, not half as cluncky, and seem to fit the controller well. Gameplay is were this game excels. Sure main quest is 30-40 hours but throw in side quests, Deadric quests, and others you are looking at 200 hours of varied gameplay, on top of exploring and finding and selling items, weapons and enchanted items and weapons.
Oh there are also the Guilds, the fighters, thief's, mages guild and the Dark brother hood guild quest's, that provide a lot of cool weapons and cash along with respect and fame.
With all of this in mind my biggest gripe is LEVELED ENEMIES! NO NO NO NO NO! NO NO NO NO NO NO! You never feel truly powerful with leveled enemies, and that sucks. You can lower the difficulty but then it becomes cheesy and not fun. Loading times can also be long and the Frame rate can get ugly at times, but not enough to ruin the game though. Updates have helped these problems a bit.
Over all in my opinion Gameplay is near perfect.
SOUND: Sound is ok. From the swords clanging to monster growls, it sounds semi-muffled and ok at best.
VALUE: Were do I begin? Excellent visuals, Huge world and awesome gameplay with hundreds of hours of quests to do, this is my perfect game. Doesn't need online, its perfect the way it is. To many things to do in this game before it becomes boring. A must have if you enjoy RPGs or fantasy worlds: