With the release of daggerfall unity, this game changed for the better by fixing glitches,better graphics, way better mod support and options that make the game more accessible to modern gamer.
Ever since I played this game I was fascinated, spending countless nights on it. The music lost it's color after hours and hours of playing, but the first time I heard it, I couldn't stop listening to it.
The gameplay is pretty repetitive, esspecially the quests, but with the addition of easy modding, the gameplay can change a bit. (for example quest packs adding more depth to quests with skillchecks and such)
It has been my favorite game ever since I first tried it out, I give this game a 10/10.
(The box art didn't lie, you really will experience your new obsession)
This is where it all started. The lore we all love. The Daedra, The Temples of light, the nine Divine. Tamriel...
In the first 20 hours of Daggerfall: I became a werewolf, learned how to infinitely fly with levitate, stole my way to infinite gold, Summoned Sheogorath, and cured my Lycanthropy so I wouldn't be hunted down the entire game by a Lycanthrope hunter.
Yep, it's all here. All of the Daedra and their artifacts. Azura's Star, Molag Bal's mace, Wabbajack. The Guilds are all here. The Dark Brotherhood included will contact you after you've killed 3 innocent people. The Thieves guild will contact you after stealing.
It's just incredible to discover your roots.
The drawbacks: UNITY is basically required to make this game playable in 2023. You need Unity, and the dream mod. There are at least 20 other mods that boost the quality of life, but UNITY and DREAM are a must.
Dungeons are so confusing and with that, the gameplay is super dated for today's standards. You have to understand, this pioneered all modern FPS RPGs. Look at it from a historical perspective, not a modern-day Skyrim.
A memorable game that is still played and modded till this day with Daggerfall Unity. Enjoy climbing up walls, shooting magic spells and dressing up your hero with different pieces of armor and clothing. Daggerfall has a lovely charm which set a lot of the elder scrolls lore into the ground to grow over the coming years with interesting characters and a complex plot, but enjoyable story.
Major Points listed:
1. Love the combat system, honestly its better than the combat system in Skyrim.
2. Extremely difficult to understand tasks at hand, Quests are hard to complete because the world is so large and you are given too little information to find anything. especially with very bad controls and a terrible camera. I understand that this game is very old and outdated, however this only makes up for graphics. The maps could have easily been split apart by separating dungeons, Instead maps are extremely difficult to interpret due to elevation and leave you lost the majority of the time retracing your steps for hours. I also hated that dungeon maps would reset after exiting a dungeon and that everything was randomly generated, felt the same and was too large - with a very small render distance.
3. Dungeons were fun (yet repetitive), and challenging.
4. Annoying system for crimes in which guards are invisible and randomly arrest you regardless of if anyone can find you.
5. Races are somewhat unbalanced.
I thought this game was pretty fun but it's flaws prevented me from enjoying nearly everything to any major extent. I will give this the highest neutral score instead of a 6/10 in which it deserves because it is worth your time (only because it's free).
Enemy AI: 7/10 Good
Camera: 3/10 Atrocious
Controls: 5/10 Poor
Replay Value: 8/10 Very Good
Content: 7/10 Good
Gameplay Tools: 0/10 Game hindering would actually prefer nothing
Combat: 10/10 Excellent
Dialogue: 6/10 Average
and for the fun of it
Size: Seriously Too Much For It's Own Good
Pros: Biggest and most realistic in scale fantasy game world I've ever seen; fun first-person combat; great roleplaying mechanics; keeps things unpredictable and fresh; the dungeons were always terrifying and ominous to go into; very deep gameplay, mechanics and story.
Cons: Bad graphics by modern standards; some of the music is annoying; hard to figure out controls; steep learning curve.
Score Breakdown: Horror 10/10, Loading Screens and Frame Rate 9/10, Plot Development 9/10, Gameplay 8/10, Replay Value 8/10, Background Story 8/10, Voice Acting 8/10, Game Stability 7/10, Realism 7/10, Sound Effects and Music 3/10, Graphics 3/10, Total Score 7.3/10
Conclusion: A good game if you can get past the obsolete graphics, sometimes annoying music, the controls and the steep learning curve. This is a much better game than Bethesda's modern offerings, despite the bad graphics in this old game. Bethesda should take notes of what they've forgotten from here instead of trying to disguise worse games in fancy graphics.
SummaryThe Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall is the second chapter in the highly acclaimed Elder Scrolls role-playing series. Its predecessor, TES: Arena, won over twenty Best Role Playing Game of the Year awards and set a new level for computer role playing. TES: Daggerfall is the most ambitious CRPG ever created and surpasses the high standard set in...