...but nowhere near as good as everyone makes it out to be.
The writing is boring, the game holds your hand at every turn, the animations feel stiff, the magic system has been dumbed down into the stone age, and the guilds are unsatisfying.
You play as the mythical hero - Dragonborn - which you are revealed, and universally accepted to be ten minutes into the main quest. Yet despite this, all of the npcs still treat you like a little fool even when you've beaten all the major adventures, gotten all the godly artefacts, and walk around with endgame-tier gear. Morrowind made you work for the recognition, Oblivion too (to a lesser extent), but in Skyrim the recognition system is just broken.
The game world is beautiful, this much I can agree with, and I love the verticality, but the horizontality is so scaled down that you can't take two steps outside of a major settlement without running into a cave, an old fort, or a "lost" ancient ruin. While it was the same in Oblivion, it just didn't feel as crammed.
But the game can be fun. You've got crafting, you can turn into a man-bat and a werewolf, and the companions are a major improvement over the ones in prior games (I particularly like how they comment on the places you visit, yes, it gets repetitive, but is still nice).
The game's major problem was being pushed out the door in a raw state, and you'd think with all the re-releases and remasters, Bethesda would actually bring back the cut content and finish the unfinished one to make this game truly great, but no, because the people will eat it up anyhow, and modders will do all the hard work for free. And don't even get me started on the Creation Club, which is just a rip-off (pay money for stuff you can get for free from modders?).
Overall, I stand by what I've said: a pretty game that can be fun, but was crippled from the get-go, and the developers are more concerned with money than with actually fixing it. Thanks, Todd!
