read the manual before playing

a fascinating setting with unique history and excellent political worldbuilding, and you get to experience it all entirely through gameplay.

cutscenes are sparse and info dumps are all mediated either through your own interest in digging through books and conversations or by quests directing you to go figure out how to properly converse with natives without making an ass of yourself. it plays like shit and looks like shit - that's part of it's charm, of course - but if you have a taste for that and haven't touched it yet it's absolutely worth digging into. a nerd game for nerds. i'm glad i finally got to sink my teeth into it after bouncing off multiple times

Note: I'm coming at this with Skyrim as my relative baseline for Elder Scrolls since prior to playing this I had only played Skyrim although haven't finished it yet. Played via OpenMR and with the I Heart Vanilla modlist.
Gameplay
-Played as a pretty standard Sword n' Board with the prebuilt Rouge class
-While it took a little bit to get into I quite liked the kind of momentum based swinging for weapons and don't recall it being a thing that much in Skyrim (although its been quite a while since I've played it).
-The skill and associated attribute affecting the ability to hit is something my brain understands but I don't think it feels good and leads to an awkward feeling first few hours. Its weird how it affects me in this game negatively versus Alpha Protocol which basically uses the same system and I don't mind it there at all. I imagine its due to the melee focus.
-This skill system does lead you to feeling like a god by the endgame though since at the beginning you walk at a crawl basically and at the end I was moving and jumping like a boomer shooter.
-Even though I never saw need to do it for anything but the map its pretty cool that you can pin any of the menus to your screen so its still active while you're running around
-Speaking of the map I don't understand why they have tiny square map in the corner when the map isn't pinned to the screen. Felt way too tiny for anything other than showing me what direction I'm looking at.
-Also I wish more locations showed on the world map/were added to the world map when someone points you to that location and seems to know exactly where it is.
-While I like the limited style of fast travel done in the game by the last third I was kind of wishing for a more modern fast travel system with all the back and forth I'd have to do for some locations although the Mark/Recall spells remedied that a bit
-I find the dialogue system pretty meh. While it's interesting how you can talk to basically everyone about a ton of different topics most of the time it didn't too important or interesting unless it's with a character related to the main quest or a faction leader. Also all the topics really clutter up the menu and some topics stay after I've dealt with the associated quest.
-The trigger for npcs to say something to you is way too sensitive
Atmosphere/Environment
-Really dig how strange and alien the land feels compared to standard fantasy and its cool having weird ass Jellyfish and Dinosaurs being the standard animals
-Pretty creepy ambience in some of the spookier areas
-Speaking of, the ambient noise can be pretty great overall but I often found it too loud and it's controlled by the effects bar in the sound menu so if I turn it down I also turn down most other sfx aside from things like footsteps
Story
-Main Quest
--Pretty engaging main quest of becoming/falling into being a "chosen one" depending on your perspective. Dig how the first third is done while your in service to the Blades and you slowly find out more and more about the prophecies and sinister undercurrents going on in Morrowind and then the next third has you become a sorta war leader for the three great houses and 4 major tribes of Ashlanders and the last chunk directly dealing with a couple gods.
--I like how during the beginning chunks of the main quest you're encouraged to do faction quests as a kind of cover story for your character.
--It does a great job naturally sending you to basically every corner of the map.
Major Faction Questlines Done
-Most of the specific goals are nothing special but they are enhanced by the surrounding elements.
-Fighter's Guild
--Kind of has two different routes where in one you basically become a shake down thug for some of the members or you can work with some others to cut out the corruption in the guild
-Morag Tong
--A Morrowind specific version of an Assassin's guild but with a focus on killing honorably and is a completely legal and known entity. Has a neat undercurrent of stemming the tide of the Dark Brotherhood. Its interesting that after the main quest is done and you're at the highest rank in the guild you get assignments to kill fairly plot important NPCs
-House Hlaalu
--One of the three great houses with this once having the greatest ties to the empire and the most cosmopolitan makeup and being more focused on money than the other houses. Generally you're doing quests to help your house or hinder other house but there are some more interesting bits like where you can setup one of the quest givers for a fall by report their actions to another quest giver or go on a few quests to free some slaves from across Morrowind.
--Probably the most interesting of the faction quests in the base game that I did.
-Misc Quest Stuff
--Also I like how there is a decent amount of intermingling between the guilds like the fighter's and theives' guild have the potential to knock heads several times and even get quests to kill the head of the opposing faction.
--Some weird parts to some quests like having to buy a slave for an Ashlander to marry during a main quest or having to strip for Crassius Curio to be sponsored into House Hlaalu
Tribunal Expansion
-Main quest works as a solid epilogue for the main quest proper since you get to interact with the other Tribunal members
-Like Mournhold as a large city much more than places like Vivec
-Non-Main Quests felt much improved to the base game
--More Interesting to do
--More obvious in regards to getting a quest other than just listening to rumors over and over
--Felt like there were more potential end states for quests
-Wasn't expecting quite as much of a dungeon delving focus for this which wasn't super interesting to me given that about half of the delving is in a sewer but it gets better when you go into a large dwemer ruin and a clockwork city although they are fairly empty but environmentally they were pretty cool
Bloodmoon Expansion
Environment
-Really liked the change of pace from Vvardenfell and Mournhold to a more forested snowy area.
-Reductive but I liked how it basically felt like a mini Skyrim demake.
-Looked particularly lovely during the sunset hours
-Main Quest
--Again it does a good job sending you throughout the land
--Dug all the little missions you do for the Ritual Stones
--I did it as the Skaal but its cool that the main quests has a small branch where you can either become a Blodskaal or stay as a werewolf and you get unique quests for both until meeting again in the for the final quest.
--Cool to interact with another of the Daedra
--Overall neat but I was left wanting a little something more since this feels more like a cool adventure versus being a good endcap for a character.
--With this expansion and Tribunal there was a nice difficulty increase after basically steamrolling the last third of the regular games and I never felt too overburdened by the difficulty but the werewolves in the Great Hunt were fairly annoying to fight as they felt pretty damage spongy
-East Empire Trading Company Quests
--Nothing too too special but it's cool that once again you get 2 seperate routes that you can choose between
--Nice to see the mining town slowly build up as you keep doing quests
-Misc Quests
--I only did a few of these but I felt like they kept up Tribunal's trend of having more interesting regular quests.