The Elder Scrolls: Chapter II: Daggerfall

"The best and the buggiest RPG ever made!"

TES: Daggerfall is simply one of the most amazing RPGs of all platforms available. It's just as complete as a computer game can be, but, unfortunatelly, it is also one of the games with the biggest number of bugs ever released - just like Ultima Online. Daggerfall is a first-person solo RPG with a good storyline. You are in a secret mission given by the Emperor himself to you, with the objective of investigate and exorcise the hauntings of the City of Daggerfall, where the ghost of the former King of Daggerfall screams "Vengeance!" every night. Also, the Emperor has sent a letter to the former Queen of Daggerfall years ago, and he wasnts you to find out if it was ever delivered or whatever happened to it. Nice, isnt it? Then you are sent in a boat to the Kingdom of Daggerfall...but a strange storm sinks your ship and you end up in a dark cave, from where you have to get out and then resume your mission.

The game system is another great point. You can choose your class among many pre-made classes, like Warrior, Knight, Mage, Wizard, Thief and Assasin, or create your own class, mixing all habilities if you want to. You also choose yor race, and each race has its atributes, like being good fighers or natural swimmers. Thenn you chose your name, adjust your Atributes (Strenght, Wisdom and so on) and get to the game. When you get out of the Dungeon, you discover the biggest map ever created on a game. There are more than 100 cities and almost that number of dungeons to explore. Did I mention you are free to go anywhere and do anything? Altought there's this main quest from the Emperor, you don't need to solve it if you don't want to. If you want to be a mercenary warrior and travel city by city looking for wealth, you can. If you want to be a great mage, learn all spells and be recognized by the NPCs as divine, you can. If you want to be a wicked psycopath and kill every citzen you see in the streets, you can too! Just don't expect to be receive a nice treatment from the city guards.

The NPCs are very well tought. The ones inside houses and castles give you quests, and if you suceed, they will hold you in great regard and talk about you o their friends, who will also like you then. Also, you can turn into a member of various guilds, like the Mages Guild, the Thieves Guild and The Fighters Guild, and become a devot of any of the temples dedicated to the various gods. All those factions of society have their own allies and enemies, so you'll have a hard time geting information out of the nobility if you are a proud member of the Dark Brotherhood, for example.

You can create your own spells. There are basic kinds of spells, wich you modify, increasing or decreasing damage, efficiency and range or adding special effects, making it completely customizable. The amount of magic necessary to cast a spell is determined by your proficiency in the magic skills (Destruction, Alteration, Restoration, Misticism, Thaumathurgy and Illusion), so it takes you some practice untill you get to cast everything you can. The leveling system, by the way, is very intelligent: Instead of getting experience from defeating monsters like in other RPGs, your skills improve with use. When they grow enough, you raise one level. This way, a Thief doesn't need to kill anybody to level-up; he can do it by doing thieves' things, like picking locks. Quite fair.

There's more. You can summon demons, called Daedra, to give you powerfull artifacts as reward for quest they'll ask you. You can be infected with vampirism, die and become a Vampire. Notice that you'll be damaged by sunlight and will suffer in holy places. Or you can be infeted with lycantrophism and become either a werewolf or a Wereboar. The monster AI is pretty poor, unfortunatelly. They get stuck on walls and are too dumb to run away when they can't win.

The downsides of the game are also big. It's full of bugs. You'll be walking around in a dungeon and, all of a sudden, you'll penetrate the floor and won't be able to come back! Or you may notice some items disapearing from your inventory with no explanation... the list of bugs go on. Many paths have been released to solve them, and most of the logical bugs have been fixed (like not being able to spleep inside of your own house) but the problems with "falling to the void" like mentioned beffore remain, as well as random crashes. Also, Bethesda Software didn't keep their promise on all the features they said the game would have, like the clothes your character is wearing influencing NPC reaction. Anyway, if you can live with the bugs, you'll love the game as much as I did.

Gameplay: 10
Couldn't be better! Or maybe I'm being too enthusiastic? No, I'm not, you'll forget about the world outside your room completely when you start playing Daggerfall!

Graphics: 5
Another downside. They were poor for the time the game was released, and look even worse after you play Quake. Not that I care.

Sounds: 6
Sound effects are good, but repetitive. Music is a little boring. They fit to the atmosfere of the game tough.

Replay Value: 10
This is another strong point of the game. Many things are ramdomly generated every time you start a new game. Besides, there are so many different classes to try, quests to solve and itens to find that you won't ever get tired of this game. The closest to Infinite Replayability a game can get.

System Requeriments: The game runs on a 486 with 8MB of RAM, but A Pentium with 16 MB or more is recomended.

That's it, get it if you can!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99