I appreciate the efforts that Blades goes to make this a comfortable adaptable experience on mobile like being able to play it either in portrait or landscape as well as being very easy to put on pause and come back to later, but it's also astounding how fast it pulls the rug out from under you compared to most other mobile games with the excessive timers and paywalls. I think Bethesda themselves know how much of a failure that aggression ended up being considering how infrequent updates are, and how the PC and console ports beyond Switch are essentially cancelled at this point. A shame because I think there was potential with this here, at least a tier better than just another gacha game at least.

Playtime: 8 Hours
Score: 6/10

The dreaded Elder Scrolls mobile game no one likes to talk about. Its no secret this game was terrible at launch with its awful monetization tactics and how it handcuffed you most of the time until you paid up. Thankfully Bethesda eventually did fix this game and remove the timers on chests so now you can open them instantly without having to wait hours upon hours. I originally couldn't even play this game as I previously had an Huawei phone which couldn't have Google Play on it, but now that I do have a phone that can play it, I wanted to give it a try.

As someone who enjoyed Fallout Shelter on PS4, and that's big for me since I play almost no mobile games, I enjoyed this one as well when it actually ran smoothly. I was surprised at some of the RPG depth the game has as you can create your character, pick your race as they all have certain perks just like in a traditional ES game. I also like the leveling system even though it is similar to Fallout 4 in that its just a big skill tree. You can pick abilities from either a magic tree, a stamina tree which are your weapon abilities and then a more general perk tree which is handy. You can also build up your town with houses, as well some service places like a blacksmith or alchemy shop to make you potions. That is where the timers for this game come in, but it honestly doesn't bother me. I only ever sit down and play 20-30 minutes before setting something to build and logging out.

I was also just surprised at how generous the game is with gear, as I was constantly picking up good weapons and armor to swap out, or I would just improve the gear I had at the blacksmith. I also love the music of this game even though its a shorter OST. They can't really use Jeremy Soule anymore for reasons I won't get into, so Inon Zur composed it who works on the Fallout games and now Starfield. I do love his music but I don't think he's the best fit for Elder Scrolls. However, if they got him to do this mobile game I imagine he will probably do ES6, but that's just my speculation.

As for combat, its decent for a mobile game, however I definitely would have preferred to play this on a Switch if I had one, as I am not a fan of the touch screen to use your weapon. It can be very unresponsive at times, as your character will cancel their strike rather then execute it. I do hope they bring this game to more platforms as right now its only on mobile and Switch. A PC port on steam would be way preferable in terms of performance which I will get into shortly. The graphics are decent and I do love how in most levels you can find secret areas for extra loot.

To quickly touch on the story, its okay and some of the missions in the quests tab, are very cool with me recently doing one where I had to clear spiders out of a village and then take on their queen. They can be fun at times, and since this game is set in Cyrodiil your character was formerly of the Blades which I loved. You also get to explore Aeylid Ruins which was a nice call back to Oblivion. Overall though, the story is average and nothing that really kept me playing, or want to finish it before writing this review.

My main issue was the performance. I don't know if its just me having a lower end model phone, but this game ran really bad most of the time. Sometimes it would run super smooth and I would really enjoy my time, others the framerate would drop to like 5 frames a second when in combat or even when just walking around. It made getting through a lot of quests very unenjoyable even though I enjoyed the gameplay loop. Either way, if their putting this game up on the Google play store, then it should run well for everyone regardless of what model of phone they have. Thankfully this game is free to play, because otherwise I would deduct more points.

Overall, this is a solid Elder Scrolls mobile game when it runs well, but the bad performance brings the score down for me. Still its free and I do recommend Elder Scrolls fans at least give it a chance.