200 years after the events of Oblivion, move to the province of Skyrim to once again live another life in the world of The Elder Scrolls. The king is dead and the region has descended into civil war. To make matters worse, dragons have suddenly appeared, destroying everything in their path. Grab your sword, don your robe and discover what is behind these troubling events.

Release Date:

Pros:

The graphics are fantastic. It is expected to be better being newer than Oblivion and it sure delivers. I was amazed seeing the game for the first time. Despite greater details in almost everything, the effect of the eyes adjusting to the different light levels impressed me the most.

The beginning tutorial, like Oblivion before it, is excellent. Everything is well explained and I would say very beginner friendly. It is a bit difficult for me to judge its beginner friendliness as I am very familiar with Oblivion.

To compliment the beginning tutorial is the in-game help system. It is very handy and explains things by topic.

The level of interactivity has increased since Oblivion. Forge weapons, upgrade them, cook food. You can also play hide-and-seek with children or brawl in a bar. Of course we did not buy Skyrim just to cook and play hide-and-seek. This is just some nice extras on top of a very well fleshed out fantasy RPG.

Dragons! Big, don’t mess with me, fire breathing dragons. I was especially impressed when I fought the first dragon at level four and the beast ate me for breakfast. Yup, not just breathing fire, it actually took a big bite and threw me off like a toy. I like!

Just like Oblivion before it, Jeremy Soule did a fantastic job composing the soundtrack for Skyrim. Being a big fan of the Oblivion soundtrack, I was happy to hear some “shadows” of Oblivion in Skyrim. Of course they could all be “shadows” of Morrowind. Most of the of music for Skyrim is new though.

Also like Oblivion, Skyrim provides a very large open world for exploration. I am not sure which game is larger, but the cities of Skyrim feel smaller to me.

I find the main story to be more interesting than that of Oblivion. I also find many of the side quests have quite interesting plots. The stories combined with the massive world really makes Skyrim an interesting place to lose yourself in, just like Oblivion but better.

You can get followers to join you on your adventures They will fight with you… or die trying. You can also ask them do things like pick locks. Only one follower can follow you at any one time so you cannot have the whole party of adventurers thing happening.

Just like Oblivion, Skyrim is moddable and has plenty of mods. Check out the collection at Nexusmods.

Cons:

The inventory listing looks cleaner than Oblivion, but it lacked the very important feature of sorting items by value, weight or damage/protection values.

The audio volume level is very low. I set everything at maximum and I can hardly hear the people talk. There are quite a few discussions on how to fix the audio, but nothing has worked for me.

It is possible to get stuck in places and not be able to jump out of it even though it is quite shallow.

There is a bug with the interface when selecting items to store in a chest or to sell items to a merchant. Each time I selected an item to sell or store, the highlight moves up one item and up the screen. Sell or store enough stuff and the highlight will completely go off the screen! Minor but annoying.

Other Points:

The combat feels a lot easier than that of Oblivion. With unmodded Oblivion I had to play on the easiest difficulty as I was dying so quickly. In Skyrim, I started playing on the hardest difficulty of legendary, but dropped back to master difficulty. At the second hardest difficulty of master, I found the game challenging without dying every few minutes.

More like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and less like Oblivion, Skyrim has done away with classes. All skill levels are raised by performing their specific activity and the class your character will develop into is pretty much what you like doing most.

In Oblivion you were a prisoner that escaped, because the Emperor had to use your cell to escape. In Skyrim you are a prisoner again. This time though you escape because a dragon came just when you were about to get your head chopped off. Is there something about prisoners becoming heroes that I do not know about?

The levelling up is very similar to Oblivion in that as you use your skills, they raise in value. Raise enough skills and you level up. What is different is, each time you level up, you select whether to increase health, magic or stamina. You also gain a point to spend on perks.

There are quite a few other things that have changed since Oblivion. Equipment no longer degrades, so there is no more repairing. You no longer have a mobile potion factory. Some of the skills have been merged. You must now arm your spell with your hands before you can cast them.

People can permanently die in Skyrim, including shop keepers. Once they are gone, that is one less person you can sell stuff to. It is good that the game has this level of realism but it is also bad as I always liked certain people to be immortal to make my own gaming life easier.

Biases:

Reviewed Legendary Edition with all released DLCs, version 1.9.32.0.8.

Initially I played the game unmodded. Later I installed the Convenient Horses mod.

I have not completed the main story of Skyrim.

I am a big fan of Oblivion, but I have never played Morrowing or any other Elder Scrolls game.

I liked Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.

DRM:

• Steam.

Minimum Requirements (as stated on box):

• OS: Windows 7/Vista/XP (32 or 64 bit)
• Processor: Dual Core 2.0 GHz or equivalent processor
• Memory: 2 GB System RAM
• Hard Disk Space: 9 GB free HDD space
• Video Card: DirectX 9.0c compliant video card with 512MB of RAM
• Sound: DirectX compatible sound card

Computer Played On:

• Windows 7 64 bit.
• Intel Core i5 2.3GHz
• 4GB RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce GT 525M 1GB RAM
• Conexant SmartAudio with headphones.
• Graphics settings are set to whatever I feel comfortable with playing on this PC. They are usually not set to the highest settings. All screenshots are taken with my settings.

Recommended Mods:

Convenient Horses – Gives a lot of options for horse management. The main thing I use this mod for is calling my horse. I seem to lose my horse a lot.