Elder Scrolls V Skyrim Review

Finally, the long wait has ended for me and all the other hardcore RPG fans. The most awaited Role-Playing PC game of the year – Elder Scrolls V Skyrim has been released as promised on 11.11.11 🙂

Some of you must have pre-ordered Skyrim and I can definitely tell you that this is abso-fuckin-lutely the mother of all RPG games. This game is by far the best offering that has come from Bethesda Softworks. It does away with all the ugly fluff that was present in the previous Elder Scrolls game – Oblivion.

As usual with the Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim involves the traditional open-world exploration and going nuts in more than 150 hand crafted dungeons all over the Skyrim land. This time there is an added element to the game – Dragons. Oh yes! Dragons. Let me tell you that many of these dragons are tied to the main storyline, but there are also randomly generated dragons who are going to whoop your ass if you are not at a good level or well armored.

The dragons are simply epic and very challenging! If you try and outrun a dragon to avoid the fight, it will chase you until it sends you to hell :). So don’t even try to run (You can run but you can never hide!). This is where your skills come in which you can develop by progressing through the main quest. Throughout the Skyrim land, you will meet NPCs who will give you quests, train you on certain skills that will come in handy when fighting the badass dragons.

If you are someone who wants to be a little girl and doesn’t want to fight, you can take pleasure in alchemy or cooking aspects presented in the game (no one in Skyrim is getting you out of the kitchen). Actually, you don’t have to pick a class for your character when beginning the game. You can just start doing stuff and your skills will upgrade based on how often you use those skills. For example, you use one-handed weapons too much, your one-hand fighting skill will improve and if same goes for other things like heavy armor, light armor, alchemy, magic, etc.

As far as the combat is concerned, it feels a lot less clunky this time (compared to Oblivion). There are many spells that will feel familiar like, Conjuration, Destruction, Illusion, Restoration, Alteration, but there are also new ones like the dragon shouts (since you are dragon born) that will help you defeat foes. You can combine melee combat with your magic spells which are very useful in the later parts of the game. You can dual-wield anything in your hands, for example, you can have a fire spell in one hand and a restoration spell in another to heal yourself (or maybe fire and ice – burn someone – freeze someone – burn! freeze! burn!). In Skyrim, your character also regenerates health. COD fans will love this, but hey! Do COD fans play RPG games? Actually the question should be – CAN they play RPG games? :). Jokes apart, the health regeneration can be a very helpful aspect when you have just killed a dragon, are almost dead, have no potions, and suddenly another dragon wants to make love to you.

The perks/skills that you get during the game are represented by a brand new streamlined constellation system which is pretty neat to navigate in every way. Goodbye to the stupid paper-like Oblivion skill tree. As you level up during the game, better skills open up for our character. Every time you level up, in addition to picking a perk, you also get to add 10 points to three main attributes – Magicka, Health and Stamina. More POWER..Yeah!

The worse thing that used to happen in Oblivion was that you had to sleep in order to level up. It always pissed me off! I always thought that it made sense in real life where you sleep to rejuvenate and gather your strengths, but this is a freaking video game! Why would you sleep in a game? Won’t you just play the goddamn game?? But Skyrim improves all that shit, and now you can level up as you go about exploring or doing other tasks in the game.

The Lock-picking technique has been improved in Skyrim and a new system has been implemented, just like the Fallout games. A minor change though 🙂 – its a bit tougher to pick locks this time. So, all you thieving bastards can rot in hell!

In Skyrim, you can also craft your own armor or weapons. Every town has a forge and tanning raft that you can use to smelt metals or turn the adorable little animal pelts to make fine leather goods. The pelts can come from a wide variety of animals that you hunt in Skyrim (so much for PETA). You can also harvest different types of plants and sell the produce to make money (Farmville.. anyone?). For alchemy, you can combine various items to make potions – the usual stuff.

The graphics in Skyrim are incredible. Pure ecstasy! From a design standpoint, this is the most aesthetically pleasing game I have every played. The natural scenery that unfolds when you take a walk through the Skyrim lands is purely breathtaking. You can see the red skies, the falling autumn leaves, the full moon.. I mean anything that nature has to offer, Skyrim has it. The inventory menu is also visually appealing. You can see every item in your inventory in full 3D, which means you can rotate it, and view it from all sides. The only downside I found is that some of the textures look a bit low-res in closeup.

Concluding this review, I just have to say that Skyrim fucking rocks! You will spend hours and hours into this game without realizing what time of the day it is. If you are a gamer and have any respect towards good game development companies, this is your chance to prove it. Go and buy this game! You won’t regret it 🙂

Here are few more review links from other websites :-

Skyrim Video Review by Gamespot.com
Character Creation Guide by Gamespot.com
IGN Skyrim Review