Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Masterpiece"

Skyrim is indeed two things, epic and buggy as hell.
While the epic can mainly make you forget about the buggy as hell part sometimes it is just hard to let go a glitched quest that you really wanted to complete, or keep you from being able to further into a dungeon.
Since there are infinite quests, a few glitched quests out of literally unlimited quests isn't too bad.

When you first start up Skyrim you will see your character being loaded onto a cart, this is where you can choose from one of the games many different races such as the lizard like Aragonian, the tough as nails Orc and many others.
Choosing what race is mostly cosmetic although each race has a unique ability the majority of them are not very useful.
Riding along in the cart with hands bound I could not help but marvel at the scenery. Though it does not last long since you eventually arrive in a small town to be executed by the Imperials who currently run most of Skyrim.
Your quest begins as a dragon attacks burning everything in sight with only you and a few others alive.

As you reach a small town after escaping this is where the game truly begins. With a handful of quests in the small town alone you will quickly become busy, doing things like stopping a thief and retrieving what was stolen, and then receiving a reward for returning it to it's owner.
Most quests are broken down into four categories: Main quests: the main quest line where you discover your destiny. Miscellaneous quests: usually the shortest and easiest quest type in the game although some can turn into full fledged quests. Side quests: can be just as long as main quests if not longer and can range from killing falmers (freakish looking creatures that used to be elves) to discovering an ancient dwemer ruin.
Faction quests, Skyrim consists of four different factions, The Dark Brotherhood who are basically assassins for hire and specialize in killing figures of authority. The Companions are the noble group of mercenaries who unlike the Botherhood have limits as to what they will do.
The college of Winterhold, a place where magic users can learn more spells and go on quests for the good of mages.
And the thieves guild, who tend to have a lot in common with the Brotherhood except for the fact that the thieves guild avoids killing.

Completing the faction questlines are as fun as they are rewarding, not only that but they will also build up your skills in different types of combat. The Brotherhood love to sneak around while taking enemies out from afar or getting close to get a one hit kill. Companion quests mostly consist of "go here kill this", which is all fine and good but they are most definitely the more boring faction.
The college of Winterhold has quests filled with puzzles and winding dungeons. While the thieves guild is just in it for the money, and they gain it by sending you on quests to steal things from different citizens who may or may not owe the guild money.



During your travels in Skyrim you will encounter many enemies types, ranging from harmless mudcrabs to deadly dragons. Fighting dragons at first can be fun but after a while it just gets really tedious and quite frankly, really easy.
Sometimes traveling around in Skyrim can be rather frustrating, but not in a bad way. You may be on your way to a certain quest but all of a sudden you see a unexplored dungeon and you just have to explore it. And then it turns out it is a hour long dungeon, and you get frustrated because in that hour you could have completed your current quest and maybe more.
But I guess you could say that's the best kind of frustration that this game will deal you.
Frustration can come in many ways in Skyrim, whether it be a quest giving NPC getting killed by a Dragon attacking the town you are in, or the quest just bugging out for some unknown reason. The very first Miscellaneous quest I received became glitched because the NPC I was trying to help escape from a cave full of Frostbite Spiders (giant spiders almost as big as bears) got stuck in the entrance/exit of the cave, and because of the way the cave entrance worked I couldn't even get close enough to talk to her. So I decided to try and attack her seeing if maybe she would try and run up to me and attack. But alas I ended up killing her and the quest has yet to be removed from my quest log.
Not only do glitched quests not get removed from your quest log. Some quest items even if you have completed the quest will not get removed from your inventory and you can't remove them yourself. I will say that it is a good thing that most quest items don't weigh any thing at all, otherwise you would become over encumbered pretty quickly.
It's not just Misc quests that can get bugged, it's also some Storyline quests, faction quests and sidequests. Having every type of quest being glitch-able can be annoying. But as long as you play the game without just going around killing random NPC's most quests should remain fine.
Character locations can be bugged as well, for instance I was told to go talk to a certain NPC character about her daughter being kidnapped. Only to find out that when I get to her house the quest marker was pointing at the floor.

This is an unfortunate part of most open world games, but despite all these faults the game may have, I found it easy to look past the majority of them.



Looting is a big part of Skyrim, killing any person, animal, creature, demon, or a dragon for that matter will allow you to loot them. Or if you prefer to not kill them you could just pick pocket them. But of course for obvious reasons you can't pick pocket animals/creatures for obvious reasons, it's not like they are going to just stand there and let you skin their hide without noticing.
Most enemies have pretty crappy armor and weapons especially when they are low leveled enemies and they tend to only have a little bit a gold on them. For the most part enemies in dungeons will just have iron or steel weapons and fur or iron armor, while the boss at the end of the dungeon may have steel plated armor and a enchanted weapon or two and a decent amount of gold on him.
Weapons and armor range from iron and steel, to ebony and the powerful Daedric level weapons and armor.
At a low level you will mainly find and buy Iron and steel armor/weapons, but the higher the level you are the better equipment you can find on enemies or in chests and shop keepers will also have better gear for you to purchase.

Not only can you purchase weapons and armor from shop owners you can also buy different types of metal ingots to make armors, weapons and jewelry to level up your Smithing, buy different ingredients to make poisons and potions, which in turn will level up your alchemy.
Most towns have at least one of each type of shop: Armor/weapons, alchemy, general goods (which sells a little bit of everything just about), and then the towns wizard who sells soul gems and spell books. But some towns only have two types if that, which means if you are a low level then you will have to travel all the way to a different town.
But traveling from town to town can be made easy if you have already been there before. Such is the same for any already discovered location in Skyrim, whether it be a temple or a dungeon you can just fast travel back to it instead of having to walk (god forbid).
After all having to walk from one corner of the map to the other would be a quest within it's self, since there is no telling how many enemies/dungeons/random events you may encounter during your long walk. It's not that you have to go in every dungeon you see, you just feel like that maybe there is some awesome loot at the end of the dungeon.

Dungeons can come in three types, small, which are usually only a couple different rooms, almost never have any decent loot to speak of and very few enemies if any. Medium, sometimes have good loot some enemies with a boss at the end (usually a bandit chief or a arch mage). And then the large dungeons with it's winding tunnels and sometimes huge rooms, large dungeons have a lot of enemies, there is always good loot... After a boss fight of course, meaning you might fight either a dragon priest who are long since dead cult leaders who worshipped the dragons as gods. a Wizard, who are masters at magic and always have the most powerful spells, and some dungeons have you fight several draugr (Skyrims version of zombies) death lords at once.
While most dungeons are in the small and medium types and don't last more that ten to 20 minutes each, the larger dungeons can last an hour if not longer. Some dungeons have puzzles that you must figure out 'til you can progress, others have deadly traps that you must avoid tripping or stepping on and then some have secret doors that can be a pain to try and locate. Most dungeons with puzzles, traps and secret doors have a way showing you how to get past them without just outright telling you, which may mean finding a book and reading it or looking around at the room for clues.
There is a downside to some dungeons, and by that I mean quest related ones. Some dungeons won't let you go past a certain point if it is related to a quest you don't yet have and some won't even let you in. But there are the few where you can go in kill all the enemies, collect all the loot and clear the dungeon, which may or may not screw up the dungeon in the future when you actually get the quest related to that dungeon.


Out of the seventeen settlements in Skyrim nine of them are major cities, and the remaining eight are small towns which usually only exist because of a mine nearby or something of that manner. The placement of cities pretty much means you will always be close to one of the seventeen cities/towns in the game, which is nice since you may have a ton of loot you want to sell or need to buy some potions and/or better equipment.
In the beginning of the game each city/town is under the influence of one of the two groups known as the Stormcloaks and the Imperials. The war began after the Imperials banned the worship of Talos, one of the nine deities that are worshipped by the people of Tamriel. And the Stormcloaks are vying for ultimate control over Skyrim, but since the Imperials are trying the same thing a civil war began. Ultimately in the end you decide who takes control of Skyrim, whether you side with the Imperials views or the Stormcloaks. But in the end you discover who the real enemy is and why they are fueling this civil war.
About half the major cities are walled in and therefor not susceptible to dragon attacks, but those that are not walled can be attacked by dragons and lead to some very frustrating moments.
The majority of quests can be found in the main cities with some in the small towns, so talking to everyone in each town can lead to a full quest log pretty quickly.


Leveling in Skyrim makes it so that if you want to get to a high level that you will not just stick with one of the three skill types, Warrior, Mage and Thief. Warriors will prefer the One-handed skill, Two-handed, Heavy armor, Archery, Block and Smithing. Mages, Alteration which allows you to put special wards around you to deflect damage or take from your health and turn it into magicka which is the source that allows you to cast magic. Conjuration allows you to conjure creatures and raise dead to fight for you, Destruction spells like fireball or lightning bolt. Restoration, which is the art of healing, Illusion spells can calm enemies or frenzy them into attacking one another and Enchanting to make robes and weapons more powerful. While the thief type may prefer Alchemy to make poisons that can be put on weapons, Light armor, Lockpicking, Pickpocket, Sneak and Speech.
Most of these skills are pretty straightforward in how to level them up, like One handed, Two handed and Archery where just using weapons of those types will in turn level those skills. But skills like Light armor, Heavy armor and Block require you to actually take damage in order to become more skilled with them.

Gaining a certain amount of levels in any of the eighteen skills will allow to level up your character by putting ten points into either Health, Magicka or Stamina. You may also put a point into one of the games skill trees (one for each skill) which will allow you to do different things with that skill. For instance putting a point in the One handed skill tree may allow you to do more damage with One handed weapons or give you a small chance to decapitate enemies,.While putting a skill point in Destruction magic with allow you to do more damage with a fire spell or makes destruction spells cost less magicka.
You can also gain levels in skills by reading skill books or paying a trainer to train you in that specific skill.
Since leveling is not the same as it was in Oblivion it is much easier, in Oblivion you could pick major skills and minor skills, meaning that whatever major skills you picked and leveling those up would level up your character. You could still level up your minor skills but they would not count towards leveling up you character.
This makes leveling easier and lets you actually want to experiment with different skills, and more than likely your Warrior will become a Battlemage or your Stealth based character will use also spells like invisibility and muffle.
Dragon shouts are a sort of skill in Skyrim but in order to get a dragon shout you must first find the shout, which are sometimes at the end of a dungeon. But in order to actually use it you have to of killed a dragon and absorbed it's soul. Then you may unlock the shout and use it as you please, though there is a cool-down timer of course to keep you from being able to use the more powerful shouts too often. Some shouts are useful some not so much, the Storm call allows you to summon a lightning storm and will strike any enemies around you killing most enemies instantly. Other shouts like the Whisper aura are useful in dungeons since using it allows you to see enemies through walls for a short time.
And there are those that are just plain fun, like the Unrelenting force shout that can blow enemies quite a distance away from you. Shouts can be useful as long as they are used at the right time, otherwise you will be waiting a while to use them again.

Skyrim is a one of a kind game, with literally hundreds of locations dozens of enemy types, outstanding character leveling system and tons of loot for you to claim as your own I can see no reason to not visit Skyrim for yourself.