The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

"One of the best games ever"

When I first saw this game, I thought it would be lame, a first person RPG? Come on. But for some unknown reason, perhaps the name, I tried it. At first it was a little slow, but I quickly got addicted and fell in love with it.

Graphics: 9/9
The graphics for the game aren't anything spectacular. They're beautiful, but some graphics are lame, and spell casting looks boring. However, the environments and landscape transition are done beautifully.

Sound: 10/10
The sound is wonderful. The sand storms raging, creatures shrieking, and sounds of battle are all great. Once again spell casting is boring. The sound of casting it gets repetitive after you've cast it a time or two. However, there's nothing I can really count against the sounds that greatly.

Story: 9/10
The storyline is almost non-existing. There's a story, you come to Morrowind and are set free from being a slave. You then have a free choice of how you play the game. You can join guilds and house, do missions for them and gain money aswell as prestige amungst them. Your reputation will also increase. However, you don't have too, you can choose to just go around and kill people.

Game Play: 10/10
Some of the best game play I've ever experienced. There are different classes, races, and signs you can be born as/under that makes your starting stats different, and skills. There are also a few different hair and facial looks you can choose between. Also, since you can join guilds, there are many many quests you must complete, including, if you join a specific house, getting your own stronghold. You can choose to go around and kill people, no wise because the guards are strong, or level up your rankings in guilds. There are a variety of weapons, armors, and spells of different qualities, glass being one of the best strangly enough, and makes it more difficult to fully optimize your character. There are quite a few different creature types that you can fight, some big some small. Enchanting, summoning, alchemy, mystic, illusion, and destruction are different types of magical powers you can get. With such a large variety of stats, a great deal of time is needed to master everything. It's more realistic than many games, also. If you fall you take damage, depending on how high you fall and your acrobatics. Also, killing people has dire consequences. If caught, a bounty is placed on your head. You can either, go to jail, or resist arrest. Guards don't forget your debts. If you pay then everything's ok, but you lose any stolen items. If you go to jail you lose those items and your stats are decreased, different stats (how much depending on how long you must stay). If you resist arrest, they attack you. Be careful, they're not as weak as the ones on Fable, these are actually pretty powerful. But with many hours of gameplay, you can enjoy this game for days on end. Unlike in Fable, commiting evil deeds doesn't change your appearance or anything, which is kinda lame. However, if you commit a crime against someone in your guild you'll be kicked out. However, you can contract diseases, including becoming a vampire. When you're a vampire, you take 5 damage/sec when out in sunlight, fire damage deals more to you, and you can't talk to anyone in villages. However, you get stat boosts (different ones depending on which race you are of vampire, there are three), and your vampire race's base has shops. You have three days to cure it, if you don't, you're a vampire forever.

Replay: 9/10
It's pretty fun to replay this game, with the different character archtypes you can have different characters each time with different abilties and weapon specialties. However, the missions don't change so that gets kind of boring.

Controls: 10/10
The controls fit the controller perfectly. You move and look like you would a FPS game, but you can switch between first and third person (3rd person looks kinda dorky). You switch weapons by hold X and pressing left or right tripper (same for spells except you hold Y). Attack with the right trigger and jump with left. To unequip a weapon press X, to switch to using magic press Y. Actions are preformed with A and the menu can be accessed through B.

Difficulty: 9/10
Some parts of this game are extremly challenging, and sometimes seemingly impossible. However, nothing in the game is too difficult to be conquered. The game of the year addition even has a difficulty setting.

Overall: 10/10
If you like an in depth RPG, with many hours of gameplay, then this is the game for you. It's one of my all time favorites. It takes D&D and a great RPG game and clashes them. I recommend this for any RPG fans. IF you already like this game, and you want more, get the game of the year addition. It has 2 expansions that add more gameplay, items, etc.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/03/06