The first time I played Morrowind was in 2018. I had finished Skyrim for the second time at that point and Oblivion once. I was a massive fan of the series and naturally wanted to move on to Morrowind. I hated it, I played for maybe an hour or so before just giving up. Everything about the game was clunky and unnerving. I felt claustrophobic trying to make my way to balmora without realising that I could take the silt strider but I also felt bare and weird, the same feeling you could get when going out of bounds in a game I just felt out of place. It was my first venture into a truly old and aged game such as this. about a year or so later just before the summer of 2019 I decided to try it again. I gave it the benefit of the doubt and really tried my best to just enjoy it and let it run its course. I got a few quality of life mods and watched the same beginner tips videos I always watch before stumbling into an RPG game and started. Of coure you saw the 5 stars that I'm giving it and can guess that I fell in love with this game. I remember the beginning of summer after finishing my first year in a new school around new people in a new house, waking up home alone with the bright sun pouring through my lazily draped curtains while I connected my phone to a bluetooth speaker and loaded up my save on Morrowind. Everything about the songs I would listen to and the quests I completed during that time which in retrospect was probably only over the course of a few weeks was pure magic. the summer of 2019 would go on to be a time that changed my life forever both for the good and very very bad. I got sucked in to a very bad online community and was starting to question my gender and was overall going through the teenage mental health struggle. I think the reason that short time of when I first properly played the game is so special in my head is because looking back it was the calm before the storm. It was me, an innocent care free young teenager playing her new favourite video game and talking to herself while wandering around the island of vvardenfell as if she were really there. Since that first playthrough I have had 2 other big playthroughs and have about 400 hours accumulated. I only play the game once every year and a half or so and I am due a replay soon enough. Those other 2 playthroughs also hold special places in my heart but I just wanted to talk about the first because it is the one that I believe captures the essence of Morrowind best. I was a young teenager who was suddenly cast into the deep end of life and I feel like Morrowind kind of does that to you aswell but in a more positive light. If you ignore the negative emotions surrounding all of that questioning and confusion growing up it is a journey that keeps you on your feet and never stops to amaze you. Everytime I play morrowind that sense of remarkable intrugue never leaves its side and I don't think it ever will.

I'm too stupid for this game. I really like what I was able to get through, though. The navigation especially, with no waypoints and just directions was really awesome.

Unfortunately, I can't stand the combat. Essentially, if your skill isn't high enough, you won't hit enemies, which makes sense, but the only way to improve skills is to train with experts, and that's far too expensive, and the only quests that I found I could get money for involved killing people, which was impossible to do with my skill (which was 35, by the way. It was my highest starting skill.)

It's very advanced, and great for a true role-playing experience, but I couldn't enjoy it, hence why I say I'm too stupid for the game, and probably won't be going back to it. Bethesda should really look into adding options for the Morrowind style of exploration, because that part is really awesome. I know they won't, because it's Bethesda, but they should.

Writing: 4/5
Gameplay: 5/5
Art Design & Visuals: 4/5
Voices & Sounds: 5/5
Atmosphere & Immersion: 5/5

This is the best open world game of all time. It ruined the genre for me. I've tried other open world games—Grand Theft Auto IV, Oblivion, Skyrim, Marvel's Spider-man, Horizon Zero Dawn—and none of them even come close to this game. This game is alien. The world feels alive. Everything is hostile. There's depth to every character. The factions are interesting. Learning as much as possible through the in-game resources is not only rewarded, but how to play the game. I love this game with my whole heart and will always love it. There will never be anything like it ever again.

The third elder scrolls game! I finnnnnally got into it, 15-odd years after trying it! I played the game on PC and it is modded a moderate (eheh) amount so let that be said - no normal first playthrough bullshit for me. I first played the game at a friends place and he showed me his insanely OP Khajit wizard who could fly everywhere and fireball shit and I thought "man this is cool and nuts and I have no idea what is going on". I first played the series proper on my Xbox 360 with the release of Oblivion which I thought was pretty awesome, then of course loved Skyrim because who didn't and mods are amazing.

I first REALLY tried to get into Morrowind 7~8 years ago but bounced off of it repeatedly due to some design issues: not only is the game old it is clunky as shit. It came out only a year before Vampire the Masquerade and it is a hot mess compared to that game. Melee attacks rarely hit your enemies at the start of the game, mana is very limited and spells frequently fail, you can only see like 50ft ahead of you at all times because of the memory constraints of the Xbox, there's a million people to talk to but they only respond to keywords rather than have real conversations with you unlike other RPGs so it is kinda hard to give a proper shit about stories/characters because they 99% just exposit dialogue at you.. Okay so mods were able to fix a LOT of these issues for me but this last one. With mods I could actually see a good distance away to spot landmarks and get the lay of the land, cast a few spells and just wait a bit for mana to come back and level up, changed the to-hit formulas so I could actually HIT things... 'twas nice! I made actual progress during play and I was able to ease myself into the world a bit even if its cheating. PC gaming is just great.

I played a proper Paladin of the Empire who, as a dark elf, was sent back to her parents homeland to try and figure out what was going on with the secret Dunmer cults. I played her because I'm on a bit of a "melee fighter w/healing & utility" kick right now + I thought that would be a solid character to actually try and follow the main quest to completion! I did not succeed at that goal because I hit a REAL boring wall of trying to get people to like me and not kill a bunch of guards to get someone out of prison... Which I think is bugged? I can't sneak in, I can't persuade anyone to let me in... So I just have to kill a bunch of guards? Ehhhhh. But I did play a chunk of the game (nearly 40 hours) with a bunch of other quests finished so I do feel pretty good at having my feelings on the game locked down. While overall I did really like the world and many of the quests the mechanics and workings of the dialogue system are genuinely bad. Like I know dialogue trees were pretty old even when this game was release but they WORK. It is having a conversation and a real chance to ROLE-PLAY in the sense other than just deciding what things you say "yes" to or whether you steal shit or not and that is pretty lacking in this game though in fairness it kinda always is in the Elder Scrolls series. I really like the setting of setting up the Dunmer and their weird yet magical yet even more fucked up all at once society. They're chafing under the rule of the Empire and have historically very much been their own people (Yay freedom good!) but also are big believers in slavery and the Dunmer supremacy over the other races, beastfolk especially (freedom... not so good?). This along with the "Ashlanders", the dunmer who said "fuck all this" to the empire and the Houses that allied with them and just went to the uninhabitable parts of the island of Morrowind who hate everybody. The main bad guy is essentially somebody who just wants the Dark Elves to be their own people again! So yeah, this is a damn solid setup for political drama and tension between our main factions and I dig it. Just the actual 'moment to moment' of the story and dialogue with characters is lacking and that's usually my bread and butter in RPGs - character! I can't say I really remember a SINGLE particular moment between my character and another, positive or negative. Except maybe when I made fun of Dagoth Ur and he sent a bunch of power devils after me...? Good times.

So yeah, the game mechanics are clunky and it looks ugly and while it has good writing - said writing is DUMPED on you in the most inelegant and awkward way possible that prevents you from actually connecting to a single damn person in this world. The leveling system is weird and requires manipulation to properly function while progress comes in big stops and starts. But past that is a great setting, superb atmosphere as you roam the hills and crags, creative and fantastic art styles for the enemies, characters and locations - a magical place where you always are curious about what else you might find over that next weird hill in the distance..

Probably a mushroom tree and a cliff racer.

Final Grade: A-

P.S. Even I've heard of Cliff Racers, apparently the most annoying/frustrating enemy in the game... I had no actual problem with them? They died pretty fast, though they do have a very weird shriek...

P.P.S. This game was composed by Jeremy Soule, and after replaying KOTOR & NWN that he also did - holy fuck this dude just writes the same song over and over!! At least 5 times during the game I'd hear a song and say to myself: "Did I accidentally put in a KOTOR music mod?" Arrest this man for plagiarism.

As someone whose favourite game has been Oblivion since I first played it back in 2006, I always said to myself "I'll get around to Morrowind at some point". Well, I finally had the opportunity to get around to it and decided to research the best way to play the game for the first time. It was recommended to play the game through OpenMW with a small mod list called 'I Heart Vanilla' that just added some nice quality of life changes and some polish here and there. Anyway, I have a lot I want to say but if you can't be bothered reading it all, just know I loved playing this with all my heart and soul. So, here we go.

Going into Morrowind, I wasn't really sure what to expect but I had heard nightmare stories about the combat and I was a little worried that being spoiled with fast travel in so many other open world games that I would struggle to get invested. Boy was I wrong, big time. Seyda Neen is an excellent introduction to Morrowind, giving you plenty of space to get your feet wet, learn the common systems of the game and get some easy quests under your belt. It's very similar to Goodsprings in New Vegas, another great introductory Tutorial Town, so to speak. And before I knew it, I was completely immersed in the world of Vvardenfell. I kept catching myself stopping in the early hours of my playthrough to admire the aesthetics of the foggy swamps, the lush Grasslands and barren Ashlands on my travels. The games visuals have seriously aged like a fine wine. I got completely enraptured by the world, that I found myself eventually exploring nearly every nook and cranny of it before really digging my teeth into the quests of the game. The map of Vvardenfell made me realise that a big problem Oblivion has, is that by letting the player fast travel to any major city right from the get-go, it completely removes the incentive to walk the world and explore it. And in turn, actually doing that in Oblivion is a lot less compelling than it is in Morrowind or Skyrim dare I say. Their worlds feel a lot more intentionally designed. Speaking of Skyrim, another thing that stuck out to me that I loved about Morrowind was that it does such a good job of making you feel like just another inhabitant of the world, like a character in a book, as opposed to the main character of a Hollywood movie. In Morrowind's story, when you arise to become the Nerevarine sure, but in Skyrim, within an hour you've slain a dragon and people are chanting "Dragonborn! Dragonborn!"

So actually getting to the meat and bones of the RPG, first of all, I will say that I genuinely prefer the combat of Morrowind over the happy-slap fighting of Oblivion or the cumbersome slogfest of Skyrim. Morrowind made me feel like I was actually improving at a skill, the more consistently I could hit my opponents, the better I was getting. And NPCs would say to me, "If you aren't good at something, get Training first, or you'll be wasting your time" which makes perfect sense to me. I also greatly prefer the Long Blade/Short Blade split as well as the Axe/Blunt split, I think these should make a return. Just because you're skilled with a dagger, doesn't mean you're skilled with a claymore as well, y'know? Now when it comes to the quests of the game, the amount of content available feels nearly endless, so to stop myself getting bogged down, I focused on the Fighters Guild, Thieves Guild, one of the major House questlines and then the main story afterwards. The actual quests themselves in the game are never anything more than glorified fetch quests, which I think comes down to technical limitations more than anything. But what I loved most was talking to NPCs about anything and everything. As a huge nerd for the Elder Scrolls lore, the sheer amount of it here is breathtaking, I was loving it. Everything from the cultures, histories, belief systems and anything else in between, if you wanted to find it and learn about it, Morrowind would give it to you in spades. I have so much respect for RPGs letting you just stand there and talk with people for 20 minutes at a time, or read a book on a topic that interests you, we need more like it nowadays. And what can I even say about Vivec and Dagoth Ur? Absolutely fascinating characters. I was hanging off their every word in my encounters with them. Both very compelling, bewildering, frustrating and powerful beings. I'll be honest, as of the writing of this review, I have finished up the main questline in Mournhold and haven't even been to Solstheim yet! I decided to put the game down for a short while before tackling the second add-on so I don't completely burn myself out.

There's so much more I want to say but I have to cap it off somewhere and I'll end on the note that Morrowind is nothing short of a beautiful masterpiece that fully respects your time as a player. I was very unprepared for such an excellent RPG, it's hard to believe this is the same studio who made Skyrim and Fallout 4 honestly.