The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind GOTY Edition

I guess one must be a fan of fantasy to appreciate this and other titles like it. I've played Morrowind for 3-4 hours and find it tedious and hard to read the tiny text even when a low resolution is set to make the visuals larger. And on my PC (11th gen Core i5) it crashes without warning. Clearly the game is highly detailed for fans of this genre who enjoy spending dozens or hundreds of hours roaming around and taking on missions. But, it's just not for me. I've given RPGs a shot and it's back to Far Cry.

Scripts and quest system is barely there. I don't care if "I can kill final boss right from the start". I care when I can't go through a main quest line since devs didn't bother to link them up properly. It is shamefull when a basic (fan-praised) ingame feature fails to work and leave me a Quest to track in my journal. Homogenous mesh of writing. Topics are mostly coming from stock library (not a problem IMO). Character-specific chunks of texts are a blocks of average graphomania. Writer can't get to a point. Soldier can't report to me like a soldier. That's just lame! Someone on forums also noticed that MW* uses crappy font that is inconvenient to read. Topic system would be somewhat convenient. It's not hard to suspend my disbelief. It's hard to do immersion-breaking google searches every time my journal or any dialogue forgets to leave a reference to some quest related name\location I forgot. Or when I had to click the same topic twice to trigger some needles script. Or when I can't ask locals about basic quest-related stuff like "where is X guy of house Y". Directions and fast-travel are not so bad when you get used to it. And when it's not the case of another forum search. In some way it even feels better than Skyrim. And sometimes you just wish to know what is that "tall pillar with stone on top" they're talking about. Also, as a Dune reader I neither really care nor appreciate thematic references/similarities between it and MW*. Even Dune was not original in itself so it's like a wannbe of a culturally misappropriating wannabe. "Game is broken and it's fun" thing. After a certain point it becomes just playing with cheats on. Lessens your pain for a first playthrough but not nearly as fun as it was in X that fans of MW* compare it with. There are lots of other fundamental X's feature that are lacking here also. I would recommend using alchemy exploit for your first playthrough. You don't want to suffer this chore that deeply. *MW - short for Morrowind

I just LOVE the Morrowind. I played it for years. I have bought it several times over the years as CDs get damaged or lost. In my opinion it is the best RPG game ever. So my current rating is not for the game itself (which I gave a 7 out of 5), but for the GOG distribution. I bought the game again because I wanted the original English version, required by some mods. Unfortunately the game does not start, a message appears that a CD is required. The end. Theoretically it's a matter of Windows settings, but it doesn't work. The bottom line is that when I pay for a game - I want to have fun. I'm not paying to spend days and weeks trying to get the game to work. The upshot in this case is that I had to buy the game again - used, for terrible money in an English language CD edition.

Really poorly picked screens, seems made in max. 15 min after start game. Especially in Gold Edition, there is possibility to take some nice screens... so I don't understand, why Admins didn't take more effort to encourage people to buy this game. Also, price is bit too high imo, in other stores it can be bought for max 10 Euro (personally I bought original, gold edition for 5 euro =) ). But I can understand they want earn some money with this title + those 2 "free" games somehow may count to final price.

I haven't written many reviews, but sometimes it's warranted. Morrowind is a decent game, I won't lie. But it's not the object of worship many make it out to be. I'll stick to some of the "bad" aspects; any of the other gushing reviews can fill you in on the rest. The game is characterized by so much sameness, everywhere. If you're a casual gamer (buying a title almost 20 years old?), you might not notice or be bothered, much. But if you're a modder, a serious gamer, or even just launch the editor once, the curtain will come down, the world of Morrowind will crumble before your eyes. Everything is static meshes glued to more static meshes. These vast dungeons they speak of are nothing but cookie cutter corridors glued together, often in the very same (or at least very similar) configuration you just saw in a dungeon an hour ago. Buildings, dungeons, boulders--all meshes plunked down on a convex world mesh, over and over and over, it's always the same thing. The art is quite bad. The animation is terrible (you realize this is a Bethesda title). Gameplay balance, you say? What's that? This is honestly the worst aspect of the game. Touted as 'freedom', Morrowind has almost no direction. Yes, there is a plot, and you should follow it. Because if you don't, the game is little more than a solo wander-kill-repeat fest through sameness. The (ab)use of leveled lists is offensive. That you can kill a god within twenty minutes of starting is shameful. That you can craft weapons and armor that permit you to leap across the entire world, become essentially immortal, and stun-hack anything (even a god) to death is laughable, disgraceful, ridiculous, game-ruining. That Bethesda keeps doing it going forward... well, that's a different discussion. There's a lot more to say, but I'll summarize with: if you want to try it out, by all means do so. But wait for a really deep sale. That, or just wait for the next "graphically enhanced" re-installment of the same game from you-know-who.