Their ambition paid off with the even more systems-driven world of Daggerfall, a diligent update of Arena that revealed their knack for unusual quest scenarios. Visual upgrades (to towns, overworld, dungeons, menus, NPCs, etc.) match functional (movement and command shortcuts) and QoL upgrades (town maps, mounts, storage), while surrounding mechanics (from character creation to dialogue systems) evolve into far more sophisticated features. But its best evolution is perhaps the least visible one. Use-based EXP - that previously only refined spells, expands FFII's weapon-oriented approach to many aspects of gameplay (e.g. running, climbing, conversations, mercantile, and others beyond combat and magic). While prone to repetition & exploits, this is perhaps their most significant idea, a gradual leveling system that treats gameplay's habits like a muscle: The more you use it, the better it gets. Its effect was to instill a new, parallel sense of purpose to decisions. For example, Arena's overworld doubles as a training ground here, as its vacant, prop-y layout helps build movement skills while random encounters (on rest) hone others, adding impetus to open-world roaming that the original lacked. Dungeons also deserve mention for incorporating seamless staircases, monster closets, underwater sections, teleports and many other additions from the classics, while remaining lengthy, dense, maze-y networks.

Much like their debut, though, the main quest could benefit from some editing, although one admits that the side content (the collective moments and not the journey/destination) forms the lifeblood of the game this time. Incidentally, one feels a lot more 'immersed' in this land as a mercenary trying to make profit than as a venturing hero.

An improvement over The Elder Scrolls: Arena in every way, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall is an entertaining game, but not at all what I expected.

Before I played this game, I had heard how it boasted the largest video game map, equivalent to the size of the UK. I also heard how much possibility this game offered you in your playstyle, with a deep character system and a larger variety of content. However, I found this game to primarily be a dungeon crawler with HEAVY procedural generation, and it has very little in common with the games that popularized The Elder Scrolls, starting with Morrowind.

Although understandable for the age of the game and its ambitious scope, I found the procedural content, particularly the quests and the ridiculously large and complex dungeons, to be uninteresting and at times frustrating. Also, being an old game, there are a lot of difficult and straight up broken mechanics that necessitate cheating to get through it. And despite the game having quite a lot of complex systems for its time, a lot of it is not fully functional due to the amount of cut content, from what I've seen.

While the most talked-about aspects of the game didn't hit for me quite as hard as most other people, I still appreciate the heck out of this game. It's got a great vibe with its music and environments. It's got a surprising amount of interesting loot, from weapon types to magical artifacts. Most surprising of all, it has great lore that carries forward to the other Elder Scrolls games, such as characters and events that are still referenced in the series today. This is a very ambitious game for its time and it's impossible to not see that.

Like I said with Arena, Daggerfall is a must play for fans of The Elder Scrolls series who want to see how the series evolved over time. However, unless you have literally nothing else to play, I wouldn't recommend spending too much time with this game as most of it is procedural and lacks the handcrafted care that later titles are known for.

Daggerfall Unity might be the most grateful I've been for a piece of software. Daggerfall is such a lovely and realized fantasy-life sim imbued with enjoyable dungeon crawling and incredible scale! It still stands as one of the few games that evokes the sensation of being a small, insignificant inhabitant of a vast world and lets you make your own story. This flavor of game hasn't ever been replicated, even by it's own successors. It's such a relief for it to have a feature complete and accessible port after all this time.

Even more heartwarming than the unity port is the plethora of mods that followed! Daggerfall's promise of a massive world was more than fufilled, but said world is kind of empty and a little shallow. If you visit the nexus page, you'll find dozens of projects to decorate, terraform, and liven up the Iliac Bay and they're all pretty easy to install too! I don't know, it just brightens my eyes to see so much excitement for a game that felt completely left behind by it's successors.

Play Daggerfall!

Its only a good game depending on what u want.
The good:
- Cool character build creating system which allows for higher replay ability and customization.
- More polished combat, stats, and spells/spell making compared to arena (no bartering system/worse dungeons suck though for daggerfall)
- Solid role playing elements like the stats, classes, adv/dis created for ur character in creation, joinable guilds.
- Modding support.
- Ridiculously massive world, there is always something to do (though extremely repetitive so why wud u)

The bad:
- There is pretty much no tutorial and you need to do ur own research/read manual before making a character to not make an abysmal character.

- Ridiculously massive world that feels dead even though its filled with filler npcs that are only used to ask for directions. Way too big many of the cities/towns look exactly the same so not much substance there.

- The quests from npcs are quests mostly revolving dungeon crawling or delivering items to npcs around the world. I felt like a dog doing errands for nobles, scholars, and peasants. It is quite strange how everyone is ok giving u quests even if u have a "bad reputation" among locals. Like why are u trusting me to deliver this item to some random person who even has bad rep lol.

The gain from quests (like barely any money and some reputation) is very little compared to the time spent so it doesnt feel good doing quests. Quests are extremely repetitive and boring this mainly includes side and guild quests. Guilds seem only relevant in what they provide and u do the same 5 repeatable quests in random locations around the world to gain access to other services with reputation gain (even though u cant actually see ur reputation so u cant know what other specific quests/actions impact ur reputation).

Although I havent gotten very far in the main quest, it seems very difficult to get into/motivated to do due to the dungeons (getting to it) and due to how convoluted, time consuming, and downright confusing it is. So there isnt much direction u get regarding the MQ and quest descriptions arent very detailed. U have to wait multiple in game days at a time to receive letters not to mention reputation and level requirements as well as some quests not being available if u did MQ in a different order. When I was going through the story there wud be usually a large delay between quests and I'd pretty much forget all about the whole MQ and think why am I even doing this. Its very difficult to really follow the story and understand the confusing politics of the world that u r thrown in between of and it makes more sense as u go on I imagine but I honestly didnt care for the quests due to the dungeons and how confusing it all was. Apparently it becomes even more confusing with different quest paths and 7 potential endings?

- Dungeons are fucking awful. They are even worse than the first game (arena's) dungeons and as some redditor described "like exploring someone's lower intestines". They are randomly generated and even if not are extremely long even with short dungeon option enabled and just an overall horrible experience. Each dungeon can take u like 2-3 hours at a time so it feels so draining to even do them for ur quests and u are barely rewarded after. Each one is a labyrinth and extremely frustrating to do, u visit the same places multiple times and it is a MUST to have some key spells like water breathing and recall to even navigate through dungeons even if u want to role a character who doesnt use any magic.

Overall the game can be fun for a person who is interested in elder scrolls lore even though its likely quite different compared to any of the newer titles, a person interested in the role playing elements and those who enjoy creating/testing different game builds. However due to my issues with quests in general and dungeons that are the main aspects to the game, it is difficult to recommend this game especially to a newer audience.

It is a much more cohesive game than Arena. I admire what it tried to do, with a world map that has still to be topped in size and its attempt at making a living, breathing fantasy world simulator. The problem is it's just not fun to play. The story is irrelevant. Even if you beat the main story, the game goes on like nothing happened. Nothing you do feels like it has consequence. And don't even get me started on those controls, which make System Shock 1's controls look efficient in comparison. If you can get past all the jank, there is a worthy game here. I just can't be asked to do it, especially when I have other games to play. Maybe the Unity remake fixes the problems I had.