Posted February 02, 2018
Skyrim: Legendary Edition (PS4)
This is the 3rd version of Skyrim I've been given as a Christmas present, I wouldn't have picked it myself but I thought it would be good to have another playthrough. I've only ever brought graphical remakes if their easier to get a hold of than the original versions (Okami for example) as graphics don't really sell a game for me. To be honest I don't know how better the graphics were in this version, I didn't see a noticeable difference. The back of the box tells me the game has 'Remastered Art and Effects, Volumetric God Rays, Dynamic Depth of Field and more'. I have no idea what a volumetric god ray is, and what I had hoped the 'and more' meant was they fixed the major bugs that was in the PS3 version, which was the worst version as far as I'm aware and was the first version I owned.
One thing they did add was Quicksaving, which I didn't think it needed, until it got it, especially on the harder difficulties having to start from a dungeon beginning is a nightmare, I abused it like hell. Loading screens were also about 3x shorter than in the PS3 version, I rarely saw the loading screen be on screen long enough for the text on the bottom right to change. Theirs also something called Creators Club, which I considered using but decided against it as I wanted to get all achievements and wasn't sure if that would affect it, also when I saw in the top right of the start screen "Things in the Creators Club now 50% off" I refused to even look at it.
My goal in this playthrough was to get 100% of acheivments, including the DLC ones, and have the last acheivment completed to be the one for completing the Main Quest. Now... if they removed 1 certain acheivment, I could have done this in a week, instead it took 2 weeks, that acheivment being 'Kill a Legendary Dragon' which requires you to be Level 78. By the time I had finished every dungeon (Save Skuldafn) and unique side quest, I was level 73, and that included time spent casting magic while walking around. A day after that a friend told me that block was the best skill to train to raise levels, and it proved right, was a boring few hours but I got there in the end. I even changed the difficulty to Legendary for the last Quest just to say 'Yeah I beat Skyrim on Legendary' (Even though it was either on expert or adept most of the way through). The funny thing was, on Legendary difficulty, Alduin is pretty easy, the gatekeeper is much harder.
Now the main reason I played, bugs. Having had playthroughs ruined by bugs (My 1st playthrough Esbern froze and I was locked out the main quest, plus the infamous water freezing bug) I wanted to see what had been fixed. I had played the original PS3 version only a year ago, so bug from the previous version was still fresh in my mind. The 2nd part of the White Phial quest can now be started, you can also start the windhelm murder mystery quest the correct way now, without having to break into a house. The Malacath quest is also startable without you needing to wallrun along the side of a cliff.
I was hopeful that the most well known bugs at least would have been fixed, like how if you visit Castle Volkihaar before starting Dawnguard then the gate wouldn't open when you arrived the 2nd time. My friend had this happen to him years ago, and I forgot about it, but that bug is still around... must be 4 years or so since it was known about, had to run at the gate with a wooden tray to noclip through. Civil War Questline is still buggy, with invisible enemies and Commanders refusing to give quests. There are still 3 shouts called Drain Vitality for some reason. There were also several minor bugs that were new to me. THe new gildergreen growing while the old one was still there, underforge was inaccessible after Companion Questline. A rather frustrating bug, was that the epic soundtrack that normally plays in the last 2 dungeons of the main quest, didn't play, it was either silent or the standard exploring theme. That was one of my favourite songs in the game and I didn't get to hear it. D:
While I did enjoy the playthrough, I think this will probably be my last one... for a few years at least. It astonishes me that certain major bugs were still around 5 years later. It also astonished me that Dragonborns main quest is only 4 quests long, I could've sworn it felt longer when I last played it. My recommendation. Get the PC version, you get an unofficial patch and a command console.
This is the 3rd version of Skyrim I've been given as a Christmas present, I wouldn't have picked it myself but I thought it would be good to have another playthrough. I've only ever brought graphical remakes if their easier to get a hold of than the original versions (Okami for example) as graphics don't really sell a game for me. To be honest I don't know how better the graphics were in this version, I didn't see a noticeable difference. The back of the box tells me the game has 'Remastered Art and Effects, Volumetric God Rays, Dynamic Depth of Field and more'. I have no idea what a volumetric god ray is, and what I had hoped the 'and more' meant was they fixed the major bugs that was in the PS3 version, which was the worst version as far as I'm aware and was the first version I owned.
One thing they did add was Quicksaving, which I didn't think it needed, until it got it, especially on the harder difficulties having to start from a dungeon beginning is a nightmare, I abused it like hell. Loading screens were also about 3x shorter than in the PS3 version, I rarely saw the loading screen be on screen long enough for the text on the bottom right to change. Theirs also something called Creators Club, which I considered using but decided against it as I wanted to get all achievements and wasn't sure if that would affect it, also when I saw in the top right of the start screen "Things in the Creators Club now 50% off" I refused to even look at it.
My goal in this playthrough was to get 100% of acheivments, including the DLC ones, and have the last acheivment completed to be the one for completing the Main Quest. Now... if they removed 1 certain acheivment, I could have done this in a week, instead it took 2 weeks, that acheivment being 'Kill a Legendary Dragon' which requires you to be Level 78. By the time I had finished every dungeon (Save Skuldafn) and unique side quest, I was level 73, and that included time spent casting magic while walking around. A day after that a friend told me that block was the best skill to train to raise levels, and it proved right, was a boring few hours but I got there in the end. I even changed the difficulty to Legendary for the last Quest just to say 'Yeah I beat Skyrim on Legendary' (Even though it was either on expert or adept most of the way through). The funny thing was, on Legendary difficulty, Alduin is pretty easy, the gatekeeper is much harder.
Now the main reason I played, bugs. Having had playthroughs ruined by bugs (My 1st playthrough Esbern froze and I was locked out the main quest, plus the infamous water freezing bug) I wanted to see what had been fixed. I had played the original PS3 version only a year ago, so bug from the previous version was still fresh in my mind. The 2nd part of the White Phial quest can now be started, you can also start the windhelm murder mystery quest the correct way now, without having to break into a house. The Malacath quest is also startable without you needing to wallrun along the side of a cliff.
I was hopeful that the most well known bugs at least would have been fixed, like how if you visit Castle Volkihaar before starting Dawnguard then the gate wouldn't open when you arrived the 2nd time. My friend had this happen to him years ago, and I forgot about it, but that bug is still around... must be 4 years or so since it was known about, had to run at the gate with a wooden tray to noclip through. Civil War Questline is still buggy, with invisible enemies and Commanders refusing to give quests. There are still 3 shouts called Drain Vitality for some reason. There were also several minor bugs that were new to me. THe new gildergreen growing while the old one was still there, underforge was inaccessible after Companion Questline. A rather frustrating bug, was that the epic soundtrack that normally plays in the last 2 dungeons of the main quest, didn't play, it was either silent or the standard exploring theme. That was one of my favourite songs in the game and I didn't get to hear it. D:
While I did enjoy the playthrough, I think this will probably be my last one... for a few years at least. It astonishes me that certain major bugs were still around 5 years later. It also astonished me that Dragonborns main quest is only 4 quests long, I could've sworn it felt longer when I last played it. My recommendation. Get the PC version, you get an unofficial patch and a command console.
