"Best Old-School RPG Ever."

Now, as many of you well may know, I am a hardcore RPGer. Almost 80% of my 100+ game collection (pc and consoles) consists of RPGs, from all the Final Fantasies to Suikoden, Wild ARMs, Septerra Core, and even the oldies like Breath of Fire 3 and Fire Emblem. So, as the year is now 2003, I was running out of new games to get. So i decided to buy a boat load of older pc games, like Daggerfall and Unreal. Now that all 10 of those games are in, I have no even opened one of the boxes except Daggerfall, which I have been playing religiously. Why? Because it is part of one of the best yet unknown series of all time, The Elder Scrolls. (I have Daggerfall and Morrowind, not Arena).

Storyline and Characters
This is a toughie to make the game sound good, and still tell the truth. Fans of this series will know what I mean. Basically, there is no story and hardly any characters save yourself and people you are interacting with in the quest you are taking at the moment. So, sounds bad, right? Not really. The world of Tamriel is so large and so real, it is just like real life. What do you mean? I mean you are do whatever you please in the game. You can become an assassin, and kill people for money. You can become a master wizard and fry everything that moves to crisp. You can become a legendary guard and protect the royals. You can even be a common path of a quest-taker, and just take any job offered to you in the hopes that you shall receive money and fame for your good deeds. Aside from the main storyline of helping out your king, there are hundreds upon hundreds of quests. I actually did not do the major story until about 50 quests were completed, then I just blew away the opposition I faced. I had fun struggling my way through the Assassin's Guild, only to find out I wasn't liked at the end and I was fired from my job, so to speak.

Graphics and Sound
Ach, this is going to sound bad too since DaggerFall is just an older game. Graphics are a little better than DOOM. No...don't leave yet, just listen to me. The graphics are great for what they are. The towns are very well done. The dungeons are excellent. Everything is good as it should be, just remember that this game was made in the mid 90s. Sound is great too, when you can hear it. There are a few great tunes that I still listen to. Just search for them on a search engine to find out. If graphics really, really turn you off, then you might want to do some research on this game, because it is dated. But trust me, after playing for a few hours, you will be so engrossed into this game that it won't even matter.

''Should I buy it?'' and Lasting Appeal
The infamous question of any gamer: ''Should I buy it?''. If you like RPGs and/or liked Morrowind, Arx Fatalis, or any of game of that genre, then by all means try to find this rare gem. If you hate RPGs or a game that doesn't lead you around to everywhere with no exploring, then you might not want to pick this up. I was just like you and really put off buying this game because it is dated, but now that I have it, I regret it as much as I regret buying FFVII; not 1%.
Lasting Appeal?! You want to talk about lasting appeal, talk about this game. It has so much crap to do in this game that you could play it all month, and you still would want to do something that you haven't done yet. I'd like you to find anyone who likes this game that says this game needs more to do. The ''Lasting Appeal'' catergory should be replaced by ''Does it have as much stuff as Daggerfall?''. There might even be too much lasting appeal, I don't really know. I'm still trying to find out.
Get this game now before it becauses forever lost in video game greatness.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/05/03, Updated 03/05/03