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.

One of the most expressive and satisfying level curves in any game. Extremely good worldbuilding, main quest, and themes. My current favorite game of all time.

Three primary flaws:
1. The game is bad at explaining itself. How stats and skills work, how enchantment works, and so on are poorly elaborated on. I have 100+ hours and still get blindsided by the particulars of magic at times.
2. Jank. It's an old game. OpenMW helps, but there's some things you just can't fix.
3. The expansion content leaves a lot to be desired. Given that both expansions are meant to be played after the main game, the enemies' damage is cranked so far through the roof that you can be swinging an ancient blade of the gods, forged in the heavens by the immortal deity of war and enchanted with the most powerful magicks in the realm, and do maybe 1/5 of a sewer goblin's healthbar. Then the goblin one shots you. And unlike the base game, these expansions are heavy on combat. You will be in those sewers a lot. The stories of the expansions are good and continue on with the main game's themes well, but console commands get extremely tempting.

If Skyrim had an alternate title, a natural choice would be “Dragonborn”. The narrative surrounds the return of the destined hero, who follows in the footsteps of a mythical figure at the center of a religious conflict. Oblivion’s alternate title would be similar, with something like “Hero of Kvatch”. The quests focus less on the destiny of the hero and more on their heroic role in a variety of events. What I consider to be beautiful about Morrowind is that there isn’t a title that works nearly as well. Morrowind’s story is actually about Morrowind. Progressing through the main story slowly unravels the history of the land, the values of its people, and the goals of the organizations they created. I don’t want to give any spoilers past that, because I consider it to be the gold standard of story presentation in an open-world RPG. The only caveat is how dated every other element feels. The movement is incredibly slow, which makes the sparse map features feel even more spread out. Even in the later games the combat is lackluster, so the primitive implementation here feels especially stiff. It took me three or four tries to get past how dated some of the elements of this game are, but I’m glad I was eventually able to push through. If you’ve bounced off this game in the past, I recommend doing yourself a favor and trying again, even if that means installing a couple mods to smooth things out. Get the interface and movespeed just how you like it so you can appreciate a classic.

Whether you think The Elder Scrolls 3 is a good game or not will depend a lot on how willing you are to engage with it on its own terms. The learning curve for this game is a sheer cliff face by modern conventions, and if that kind of investment is off-putting that's a completely reasonable response. The game does very little to hold your hand, and once you get past that first big hurdle of figuring out the basics of the gameplay itself, that philosophy works to make Morrowind one of the most immersive and rewarding RPG experiences out there.

I haven't "beaten" the game yet, but with 35 hours I can safely say this game is fucking awesome.

Edit: I beat the main quest, also did some quests for other guilds and became archmage. I am bumping this to a 10 from a 9

Edit: Moved review to goty I fucking hate editions

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.

Is this game perfectly made? Absolutely not.
Is this game perfect anyway? Absolutely it is.

My all time favourite game that I still play and replay more than 15 years later, no other game that I've played blends the alien and the familiar in this way, has a depth of choice this granular, or a fully fleshed out experience with such a broad scope that puts Oblivion and Skyrim to shame like this so I'll put up with needing a mod to make certain systems like stealth work correctly because even if you didn't this game is fantastic.

Oi Bethesda give us a damn remaster or anniversary edition already and stop shovelling us Skyrim, PLEASE.

Ludomedia non consente di scrivere la recensione di una mod giustamente, a conti fatti però è una mod quella che ho giocato, una mod chiamata "Morroblivion" che permette di giocare Morrowind in Oblivion, più precisamente inizierete il gioco a Vvardenfell anziché nelle prigioni imperiali, e potrete poi giocare tutte le quest di Morrowind compresi dlc. Ho optato per Morroblivion anziché per Morrowind perché ritengo personalmente che il titolo originale sia invecchiato troppo e sia a dir poco tedioso da giocare quindi questa soluzione permette di apprezzarlo di più. Adesso però sorge un elenco di problemi riassumibili essenzialmente in: come si recensisce una mod? quanto bisogna parlare del gioco base? quanto bisogna essere critici verso determinati aspetti? Ci sono poi altri interrogativi ma anziché scervellarmi ho deciso di fornire una sorta di raccolta sintetica di opinioni. Innanzitutto i meriti di Morrowind: questo è il capitolo dei tes 3d che presenta, a mio avviso, la main quest più intricata ed affascinante, i concept più eterogenei ed originalined una cura generale per la scrittura che non ha euguali né in oblivion né in skyrim. Di contro Morroblivion riporta tutta la struttura narrativa di morrowind con pochissimi miglioramenti quindi avremo difetti pesanti nella scrittura che riguardano più che altro i limiti del tempo: npc tutti uguali, risposte generiche ed insensate da parte di determinati npc, quest confusionarie che spesso fanno ricorrere a guide online in quanto poco chiare nello svolgimento ed un senso generale di finzione che non permette l'immersività totale che si trova ad esempio in Skyrim, il quale ne fa il punto forte. Il gameplay è stato decisamente migliorato rispetto al quasi ingiocabile titolo vanilla, aggiungendo fast travel, un combat system almeno guardabile più tutte le caratteristiche di oblivion, titolo tuttavia anch'esso molto invecchiato e che presenta dei picchi di difficoltà insensati, dei perk rotti come la paralisi e in generale un sistema di combattimento giocabile (a differenza di morrowind) ma comunque artificioso, ripetitivo e sbilanciato. Esteticamente non si può dire che sia propriamente una gioia per gli occhi, stiamo parlando comunque dell'engine di un gioco del 2006 che adotta modelli e texture ricostruiti dai fan e basati sugli elementi di un gioco del 2003. Una volta che ci si abitua al basso livello tecnico si riesce comunque ad apprezzare quel miracolo estetico che è Vvardenfell e che meriterebbe decisamente più giustizia, giustizia in parte avuta con eso che però a causa della sua struttura da mmo non è proprio un toccasana per tutti i fan di tes. Il problema principale di questo titolo/mod come si può ben intuire sono i bug. Già Oblivion presenta un quantitativo abnorme di problemi tecnici (non sono mai riuscito a finirlo su 360 perché mi si buggò la main quest) poi ci si aggiunge un progetto mastodontico fanmade e questo porta a tenere sempre i codici sottomano per risolvere situazioni problematiche continue. Purtroppo proprio a causa dei bug non sono riuscito a finire Bloodmoon, espansione ambientata a Solstheim, la stessa isola del dlc Dragonborn di Skyrim ma con un salto temporale di 200 anni. Il dlc non mi stava piacendo granché ad essere onesti e Solstheim in Morrowind è davvero brutta quindi non rimpiango granché la cosa se non per il senso di incompletezza. Non sono riuscito nemmeno a concludere la quest della gilda dei guerrieri sempre a causa dei bug, vi sconsiglio di usare i codici per terminare direttamente le quest in quanto senza gli script dei dialoghi non potrete comunque proseguire e finirete solo per distruggere tutto come ho fatto io. Con il dlc tribunal, decisamente più interessante di bloodmoon, invece sono riuscito a risolvere diversi bug che mi bloccavano l'incedere mentre con la main quest non ho avuto particolari problemi. Insomma i problemi tecnici possono essere decisamente una piaga ma secondo me è un prezzo da pagare per un lavoro mastodontico fatto per pura passione e che permetterà di giocare morrowind in maniera almeno apprezzabile nel 2021, la mia speranza però è sempre skywind, sperando che un giorno esca e che mi permetta di finire Bloodmoon in una Solstheim si spera un pochino meno orripilante. Vorrei infine aggiungere che Cyrodill è ancora esplorabile, basta inserire un qualunque codice di trasporto per giocarci, in più tramite un altro codice potrete iniziare la main quest di Oblivion e come nel mio caso questo vi permetterebbe di fare una run roleplay in cui L'eroe di Kvatch è proprio il Nerevarine