I've always written this game off for what it did to interesting elder scrolls lore (especially with regards to the Nords), lack of meaningful choice, short and abruptly ending questlines, and how everything eventually begins to feel very samey. Well, all of that is still true, but I recently gave it another go with a different frame of mind.

I'm always looking for games which give me the feeling of exploring a living breathing world. While there are many things this game could have done to give the player that feeling that it either doesn't do or simply fails upon, it does the job well enough to get me to keep going. There's simply not many games that do this sort of thing; like, here's this whole nation that you can explore and learn about the people who inhabit the land and their culture and history. The drive to play a game that does this well enough brought me back to Skyrim, and after exactly ten years I finally could say I pretty much finished the bulk of the content.

It's alright. Play Morrowind.

Note: I played this on Switch, and being able to undock and play in handheld mode is a big part of my being able to finish it, that said this game is worth it solely for the modding community on PC. So much hard work and passion for stuff that will end up being available for free, it's great. Some mods could be their own fully released games themselves, such as Enderal.