Huge amounts of content and freedom, but more quantity than quality at times. Other than the main quest, most things feel a bit bland, repetitive and uninspired.
Most places feel a bit lifeless, like the taverns, which are nearly empty and where next to nothing happens. Compare that to the taverns in, say, The Witcher games, which are bustling with activity. The terrible interface is built around the limits of consoles and their controllers. Level design is linear & restricted due to console hardware limitations. There is after all only so much you can get out of the Xbox 360's 500mb of system RAM! Most characters are still so 2-dimensional and a lot of voice acting is not convincing. There is also the usual lack of voice actors (kill a villain, then talk to quest giver who has same voice and tone).
If you liked Oblivion, or just about any other Bethesda open world game, you will like this too, but in many ways this game is not a big step up from Oblivion. That is, the devs are resting on their laurels. I hope 2015's The Witcher 3 will be better than Skyrim, as that might kick Bethesda into trying harder to innovate and make the next game even better.
The mod scene is very vibrant and there is a mod to improve on just about every weak aspect of the base game, but sadly, there are no huge seamless total-overhaul mod compilations, and getting lots of small mods to work together seamlessly is time consuming, and can be a total pain.
Don't get me wrong, this is a decent game, and you could easily sink 100s of hours into it even if you don't like it that much, but it is certainly not worthy of most of the hype. While I would recommend buying this in a sale, it is still arguably worth the full price.
Most places feel a bit lifeless, like the taverns, which are nearly empty and where next to nothing happens. Compare that to the taverns in, say, The Witcher games, which are bustling with activity. The terrible interface is built around the limits of consoles and their controllers. Level design is linear & restricted due to console hardware limitations. There is after all only so much you can get out of the Xbox 360's 500mb of system RAM! Most characters are still so 2-dimensional and a lot of voice acting is not convincing. There is also the usual lack of voice actors (kill a villain, then talk to quest giver who has same voice and tone).
If you liked Oblivion, or just about any other Bethesda open world game, you will like this too, but in many ways this game is not a big step up from Oblivion. That is, the devs are resting on their laurels. I hope 2015's The Witcher 3 will be better than Skyrim, as that might kick Bethesda into trying harder to innovate and make the next game even better.
The mod scene is very vibrant and there is a mod to improve on just about every weak aspect of the base game, but sadly, there are no huge seamless total-overhaul mod compilations, and getting lots of small mods to work together seamlessly is time consuming, and can be a total pain.
Don't get me wrong, this is a decent game, and you could easily sink 100s of hours into it even if you don't like it that much, but it is certainly not worthy of most of the hype. While I would recommend buying this in a sale, it is still arguably worth the full price.