Skyrim Review: Now Officially the Best Thing Since Jesus

Good day to those of you who could manage to pull yourselves away from the realm of Skyrim to read this review! I understand that it's difficult; why do you think it took me so long to write this for you? In any case, I do hope you find my review useful, and I promise to try to be fairly objective. But you must remember that this is the writer who has spent the better part of the year repeatedly and publicly proclaiming his excitement for a game he has compared to a certain religious figure. I said I'll try though.



First, I'd like to address some of the good things about Skyrim that really stood out to me.

"Now how do I get down from here alive..."

Right out of the gate I found the graphics to be great. Sure, there are the typical Elder Scrolls glitches and hiccups whereby characters spaz out or levitate or something like that, but that's more funny than detrimental and it doesn't happen too often to really hurt anything. Overall, though, the people look better (and can actually look, dare I say it, comely rather than hideous) and the landscapes are breathtaking. Just scale the nearest mountain and you'll see what I mean. You can effectively use the third person view, which is a huge step up from the days of Oblivion, and character movement, both yours and NPC's, is vastly improved as well.

The opening sequence does a good job of showcasing the game's graphics and of introducing players to the world of Skyrim without explaining everything, thus encouraging us to go out and explore and learn it all. It gets you on your feet and thrusts you out into a big open world and says, "have at it!" And that's exactly what we want from an Elder Scrolls game.

"MY MOTHER WAS A SAINT!!!"

Another thing that impresses me is the combat system. It is so much more engaging than Oblivion's relatively simple "click until dead" combat. Enemies are smarter in terms of combat, though they still like to yell inane things, and different enemies require different strategies. The ability to dual wield both one-handed weapons and different spells makes combat more fun as well. Finally, the "finishing moves" mechanic is fantastic; there's almost nothing better than getting to decapitate some stupid little elf who moments ago was taunting you and is now begging for his life. Nothing except skooma. Obviously.

"But why eat this when I have two delicious sweet rolls?"

Skyrim's menu system is great. No more scrolling through pages and pages of old keys, unless you really want to. Your inventory is streamlined, your magic menu is streamlined, and your journal is streamlined. I do miss having a complete journal log of what has happened thus far in a questline. That said, I really enjoy being able to tag my standard weapon and my most used spells and powers as favourites which can then be readily accessed via the D-pad. To me, it's a fair tradeoff.

Look at the pretty stars... Pretty stars of DESTRUCTION!

Next is the leveling system, which works differently than Oblivion's. No more of the whole deciding on a class and tagging major skills thing. Now you can level up with whatever skills you use, and you can spec into skill trees accordingly. So, if you spend your days smithing, you can spec into the smithing skill tree and learn how to make all sorts of cool armour. On the other hand, if you shoot people in the face with arrows all day, you'll level your archery skill and can spend your points in the archery skill tree so that you can shoot people in the face harder and faster. What fun! I like this system because it doesn't limit you to a career path from the get go. Instead, you can level by improving in whatever you want, which is great for people like me who have the urge to do everything.

This is Skyrim. It is huge. Any questions?

Finally, we get to what Elder Scrolls is all about: vastness. Skyrim is huge. Bloody huge. And not just in terms of map size, though that surely does not disappoint. I mean in terms of how much there is to do in Skyrim. Obviously, there is the main quest. But there are so many other things, too. You can make money in all sorts of ways, from smithing to alchemy to looting ruins to outright thievery. You can become a vampire or a werewolf, you can buy property, you can join up with various factions (the Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild, to name a couple), Hell, you can even get married. Sometimes guards will comment on things you have done or make sly remarks as to your secret lycanthropy. There are countless caves, ruins, forts, and the like to explore. And there are so many quests. One could suggest that this could lead to "quest overload," a theoretical medical condition suggested by a few leading physicians. But that'd be stupid. Too many quests is a good thing. Because duh.

And now, some of the bad things.

...

Okay, so the merchants could use some more money. I don't particularly enjoy standing for two days in somebody's shop until they replenish their money supply to buy more of my things. It's a little too easy to clean out a town of every last Septim, and that's a bit inconvenient. As I mentioned earlier, I miss having a journal with a complete quest log. That's also a bit inconvenient. But as far as any real, substantive downsides to Skyrim? Just one: It will devour your life.

So does Skyrim live up to my previous Messianic comparison? I believe so. My rating: An unsurprising 10 out of 10. Cheers!