Stella Brando
Arcane
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Elder Scrolls Best Elder Scrolls game?
- Thread starter Stella Brando
- Start date
Daggerfall. Though I've played Arena more, its atmosphere is superior.
TES for me basically ended in 1996.
TES for me basically ended in 1996.
deuxhero
Arcane
Morrowind is the clear winner.
Daggerfall's uses of its vastness are all either literally non-existant, broken, or extremely shallow. What does the world's size and thousands of proc-gen towns/dungeons actually do for the game? Aside from being able to commit crimes in a minor region without issue in the others (itself really only having a point if you want to do DB/werewolf/vampire stuff), there's literally no reason to go anywhere but Daggerfall, Sentinel, Wayrest, Balfiera, Dragontail Mountains, Orsinium area and Wrothgarian Mountains (and those last four are only for a single dungeon). DF is nothing but an incomprehensible main quest (break into someone's castle because someone asked nicely, kill loads of guards, then talk to the owner as though nothing happened because you need their quest too to reach the end) and randomly generated content that's exactly the same in every region. Wide as an ocean, shallow as a puzzle.
Daggerfall's uses of its vastness are all either literally non-existant, broken, or extremely shallow. What does the world's size and thousands of proc-gen towns/dungeons actually do for the game? Aside from being able to commit crimes in a minor region without issue in the others (itself really only having a point if you want to do DB/werewolf/vampire stuff), there's literally no reason to go anywhere but Daggerfall, Sentinel, Wayrest, Balfiera, Dragontail Mountains, Orsinium area and Wrothgarian Mountains (and those last four are only for a single dungeon). DF is nothing but an incomprehensible main quest (break into someone's castle because someone asked nicely, kill loads of guards, then talk to the owner as though nothing happened because you need their quest too to reach the end) and randomly generated content that's exactly the same in every region. Wide as an ocean, shallow as a puzzle.
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TheHeroOfTime
Arcane
Skyrim
With the proper mods, that is
Morrowind followed by Daggerfall.
Morrowind is an enjoyable experience to this day even without mods, the same cannot be said about Daggerfall however. There’s literally no reason to play the original DOS version anymore now that Daggerfall Unity exists. Loaded up with mods it becomes a great Elder Scrolls sandbox experience. At its core it is still the same procedurally generated repetitive game that it always was, but with enough quality of life enhancements applied it’s more than worth playing.
Morrowind is an enjoyable experience to this day even without mods, the same cannot be said about Daggerfall however. There’s literally no reason to play the original DOS version anymore now that Daggerfall Unity exists. Loaded up with mods it becomes a great Elder Scrolls sandbox experience. At its core it is still the same procedurally generated repetitive game that it always was, but with enough quality of life enhancements applied it’s more than worth playing.
Picked Morronwind, but really they're all crap.
Lemming42
Arcane
All of them are busted in some way, and all of them have something good in them too. None of them are totally irredeemable (even Oblivion), and none of them really ever coalesce as complete and satisfying experiences.
Picked Daggerfall as my favourite because the scope of the world never gets old, the weirdness of the setting is always bubbling just under the surface, the main quest is the most interesting of all the games (in terms of the backstory and the characters you meet, if not necessarily in terms of the player's own actions), the soundtrack is superb, and the game is a lot of fun to play when you ease into the loop of explore city/clear dungeon/return to city/travel to new region.
Otherwise: Arena is good for what it is. Morrowind presents one of the most deeply fascinating worlds ever in a videogame, but it's totally static and there's fucking nothing worth doing in it. Oblivion is mostly a terrible and frustrating mess saved only the occasional interesting quest idea. Skyrim is a competent action game that sadly reveals its shallowness and lack of ambition every step of the way.
Redguard is really good, one of those games where you're willing to struggle through truly abominable controls and mechanics just because the experience is so unique and exciting. I actually think instead of making TES VI, which they'll just fuck up completely, they should look to Redguard and make a new third person puzzle-heavy action-adventure game like that, casting you as an interesting and likeable pre-defined character and crafting a plot that takes you on a wild ride through some of the most interesting bits of TES lore. It'd be a hit.
Picked Daggerfall as my favourite because the scope of the world never gets old, the weirdness of the setting is always bubbling just under the surface, the main quest is the most interesting of all the games (in terms of the backstory and the characters you meet, if not necessarily in terms of the player's own actions), the soundtrack is superb, and the game is a lot of fun to play when you ease into the loop of explore city/clear dungeon/return to city/travel to new region.
Otherwise: Arena is good for what it is. Morrowind presents one of the most deeply fascinating worlds ever in a videogame, but it's totally static and there's fucking nothing worth doing in it. Oblivion is mostly a terrible and frustrating mess saved only the occasional interesting quest idea. Skyrim is a competent action game that sadly reveals its shallowness and lack of ambition every step of the way.
Redguard is really good, one of those games where you're willing to struggle through truly abominable controls and mechanics just because the experience is so unique and exciting. I actually think instead of making TES VI, which they'll just fuck up completely, they should look to Redguard and make a new third person puzzle-heavy action-adventure game like that, casting you as an interesting and likeable pre-defined character and crafting a plot that takes you on a wild ride through some of the most interesting bits of TES lore. It'd be a hit.
Stella Brando
Arcane
- Joined
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- 9,051
Stella Brando
Arcane
- Joined
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- Messages
- 9,051
Well I'm soldSkyrim
With the proper mods, that is
baba is you
Novice
This question is between Daggerfall and Morrowind.
Quests have been dead in The Elder Scrolls since Morrowind. All that remains is the graphics and sound effects.
Dungeons have been dead in The Elder Scrolls since Daggerfall. Morrowind still has some long dungeons, but I still can't get over the Daggerfall dungeon.
Therefore, I have to vote for Daggerfall. I know Daggerfall has its flaws, but it's the one I remember the most.
Quests have been dead in The Elder Scrolls since Morrowind. All that remains is the graphics and sound effects.
Dungeons have been dead in The Elder Scrolls since Daggerfall. Morrowind still has some long dungeons, but I still can't get over the Daggerfall dungeon.
Therefore, I have to vote for Daggerfall. I know Daggerfall has its flaws, but it's the one I remember the most.
I've played Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, plus expansions.
Best is Morrowind, no doubt. It has the best overall package, good exploration, decent quests, nice atmosphere and generally everything is good but one thing and that is shitty combat. Bloodmoon is a great expansion that adds an interesting area too.
Second, I know many will disagree, but I'd say Oblivion. It has much improved combat (although still average), still some decent quests, although a lot is silly, and exploration is screwed without mods with level scaling, worst of all though - the main quest is retarded. Radiant AI is funny but it's a huge improvement over static NPCs from previous games. Shivering Isles was an improvement in quests too. Overall, huge decline, but I still enjoyed it, especially after adding dozens of mods (Deadly Reflex mod made really enjoyable combat more akin to stealth and action games).
Third is Daggerfall. Huge world, kinda unprecedented at the time in this scale and with such graphics, but it's just auto-generated besides towns, same with side quests, so in general it's a mediocre game. Was mostly interesting at the time due to technical achievements rather than the gameplay. I couldn't get into it enough to finish the main quest.
Last one is Skyrim, which is basically sanitized Oblivion. Sanitized of everything good, only the average combat was left but less moddable so there could not be mods making it great. They even removed Radiant AI. There isn't anything good I could think about it because even mods are worse than for Oblivion: Somehow there are no real gameplay improving projects, which I assume after so many years that the toolset was not as good as in Oblivion, but it's just my guess.
EDIT:
Oh, and TES Online is an okay for a few dozen hours just to run around when you are bored, but I wouldn't really consider it a part of the series, only the setting is the same.
Best is Morrowind, no doubt. It has the best overall package, good exploration, decent quests, nice atmosphere and generally everything is good but one thing and that is shitty combat. Bloodmoon is a great expansion that adds an interesting area too.
Second, I know many will disagree, but I'd say Oblivion. It has much improved combat (although still average), still some decent quests, although a lot is silly, and exploration is screwed without mods with level scaling, worst of all though - the main quest is retarded. Radiant AI is funny but it's a huge improvement over static NPCs from previous games. Shivering Isles was an improvement in quests too. Overall, huge decline, but I still enjoyed it, especially after adding dozens of mods (Deadly Reflex mod made really enjoyable combat more akin to stealth and action games).
Third is Daggerfall. Huge world, kinda unprecedented at the time in this scale and with such graphics, but it's just auto-generated besides towns, same with side quests, so in general it's a mediocre game. Was mostly interesting at the time due to technical achievements rather than the gameplay. I couldn't get into it enough to finish the main quest.
Last one is Skyrim, which is basically sanitized Oblivion. Sanitized of everything good, only the average combat was left but less moddable so there could not be mods making it great. They even removed Radiant AI. There isn't anything good I could think about it because even mods are worse than for Oblivion: Somehow there are no real gameplay improving projects, which I assume after so many years that the toolset was not as good as in Oblivion, but it's just my guess.
EDIT:
Oh, and TES Online is an okay for a few dozen hours just to run around when you are bored, but I wouldn't really consider it a part of the series, only the setting is the same.
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I voted for Daggerfall, but between it and Morrowind it really just depends on which one I've been playing recently because I adore both games equally. I love Arena as well, but Daggerfall is so close to being a perfect game in idea and for the time was admirably executed. Even if mods didn't exist I would certainly still revisit the first three Elder Scrolls games regularly. In the base states I would say that Morrowind is the best game overall, while with mods Daggerfall despite having much less of them becomes for me the more enjoyable experience, especially with the mods that have come out over the past year and half or so. I am also fond of Battlespire and LOVE the art style of that game, especially the character creation models, but it doesn't even remotely compare to the main series games.
These days I don't think there is much left to be said that hasn't already been overstated about these games, but my enthusiasm for the early Elder Scrolls games never really dies, it just goes dormant periodically. Yet every few months a race and build combination I've never tried will come to me out of nowhere, and all over again I'll rediscover what makes them some of the most incredible games ever made. It helps that my memory is just completely fucked these days, I suppose that is one side benefit of having it slip away from me, because I get to re-experience many things as if they were almost unknown to me.
I haven't properly played anything beyond Skyrim, so Blades is something I'm totally unfamiliar with and ESO I only played the opening mission and once I got into the open world and saw what it was all about I gave up right away. I'm just not into MMO games, the entire premise is antithetical to the reason I play games in the first place. Redguard I've never beaten, and of the three mobile Travels games the only one I've messed with is the NGage one after getting a library preinstalled and ported into my laptop instance of LaunchBox.
Oblivions and Skyrim I have... mixed feelings about. I can no longer go back to Oblivion for several reasons, but it definitely does have some enjoyable qualities and interesting lore (Knights of the Nine especially). Skyrim is just, damn. With mods both games can be turned into thoroughly enjoyable experiences but the vanilla games, I don't know. I tried playing Skyrim on Switch at one point during a sale and I don't think I even got beyond Riverwood before going "Oh, right..." and moving on. They each have decent qualities but unfortunately for me the negatives greatly outweigh the positives.
These days I don't think there is much left to be said that hasn't already been overstated about these games, but my enthusiasm for the early Elder Scrolls games never really dies, it just goes dormant periodically. Yet every few months a race and build combination I've never tried will come to me out of nowhere, and all over again I'll rediscover what makes them some of the most incredible games ever made. It helps that my memory is just completely fucked these days, I suppose that is one side benefit of having it slip away from me, because I get to re-experience many things as if they were almost unknown to me.
I haven't properly played anything beyond Skyrim, so Blades is something I'm totally unfamiliar with and ESO I only played the opening mission and once I got into the open world and saw what it was all about I gave up right away. I'm just not into MMO games, the entire premise is antithetical to the reason I play games in the first place. Redguard I've never beaten, and of the three mobile Travels games the only one I've messed with is the NGage one after getting a library preinstalled and ported into my laptop instance of LaunchBox.
Oblivions and Skyrim I have... mixed feelings about. I can no longer go back to Oblivion for several reasons, but it definitely does have some enjoyable qualities and interesting lore (Knights of the Nine especially). Skyrim is just, damn. With mods both games can be turned into thoroughly enjoyable experiences but the vanilla games, I don't know. I tried playing Skyrim on Switch at one point during a sale and I don't think I even got beyond Riverwood before going "Oh, right..." and moving on. They each have decent qualities but unfortunately for me the negatives greatly outweigh the positives.
I have only played Morrowind and Oblivion out of the Elder Scrolls games and out of those two Morrowind is an easy win for me. The atrocious level scaling robs unmodded Oblivion of any real challenge and character progression while making the world less believable as bandits, monsters and loot magically grow with your level. Instant fast travel is a mockery of the various transport options available in MW: silt striders, boats, multiple forms of teleportation to player defined or set locations, magical jumping and levitation. Combined with the quest compass and much more limited equipment slots Oblivion removes much of the complexity without replacing it with something else. I don't hate Oblivion (well except for no longer being able to exploit potions to become superman). In fact having played it long before Morrowind I have a lot of nostalgia for it and replayed it just a year ago - but it is undeniably a simpler game. Something that you can easily jump into after a long day and play until you fall asleep but nothing that will really enrich you. That said, Oblivion's non-magic combat - while still not good by any stretch - is a better fit for a first-person ARPG than Morrowind's dice rolls.
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This is the only part of your post that I in part disagree with, but I acknowledge that I am an outlier in this regard. See for me, the combat in Elder Scrolls games is so atrocious, that I actually prefer to engage with it as if the animated motions were tangential ornamentation instead of virtual kinetics in a poorly realized physics environment. The Morrowind system has the disadvantage that combat encounters can frequently go on for too long in the early parts of the game when the multipliers to hit chances are so low. But given how many variables go into calculating each aspect of combat, taking into consideration each body part and piece of armor, the weapon class and material along with the direction of each attack &c I prefer the dice-roll approach to the real-time one of Oblivion and Skyrim.
I do think that the Oblivion style is as you've said a better fit for a first-person action RPG if I consider it from a broader perspective, I just happen to prefer the other for personal reasons. Maybe it is because I grew up with Baldur's Gate and played Morrowind and Daggerfall first, and even though I'd played and enjoyed many other games with different combat mechanics I always felt most interested in that style. I can certainly see how going backwards it could be a jarring experience to play in first or even third-person perspective and see your blows visually connect with the target only to hear the sound of your weapon moving swiftly through air and realize you technically "missed", over and over again.
But you pointed to many of the things in Oblivion that were changed from the earlier games that I had in mind when I made my previous post. On top of all of that you can add the NPC faces design and you're talking about a major travesty. The faces in Oblivion are so grotesque, so awkward and absurdly malformed, that I simply cannot take the narrative of the game seriously. From the very first scene when you are exposed to the butchered face of the emperor, the same one who in Daggerfall was so laudably portrayed by a live actor, a feeling of dread and nauseous revulsion begins to rise from the center of your being. Then when you're out and about in the Imperial City, the capital of the entire Empire, the "City of a Thousand Cults" that doesn't even have a thousand people, and you start speaking with guards and that God awful minigame appears and their facial expressions begin animating in uncanny spasms, or the homeless people who not only alter their pitch, tone and mannerisms between lines but occasionally change voice actors, it begins to dawn on you that you might actually be dead and are in hell.
This is to what I was referring when I mentioned that I'm not able to return to Oblivion. I actually tried to a few months ago, and wasted so many hours perfecting a mod list with minimal environmental changes but with many changes to the mechanics and visuals, and had to try so many different things just to get it to where it was relatively stable and only crashed once every thirty minutes or so, yet even with mods that make the NPCs not only tolerable but in some instances even mildly pleasant, I stopped playing after only a few hours. I really tried to get back into it and had added many interesting looking mods to try out, got everything compatible and working about as well as can ever be expected with Oblivion, but I just couldn't maintain any interest.
Falksi
Arcane
Yeah, Morrowind is the winner for me too. For all it's faults, it just feels so fucking immersive. The fact that the world itself is so unique, interesting and full hand-placed brilliance just makes it *chefs kiss*
Wayward Son
Fails to keep valuable team members alive
Probably a tie between Daggerfall (with Unity) and Morrowind, for very different reasons.
Lemming42
Arcane
Redguard is great, it would have been so cool to have had more games in that style (with less abominable controls and lower jank levels). Really lets you explore the setting in a way that none of the main games do.
Could have had a whole series of games like that, casting you in the role of interesting characters and taking you to all kinds of whack places - a game where you're an Altmer ambassador to the Imga, a game where you're the lowly assistant to some High Rock noble with borderline-delusional political ambitions, a game in Elsweyr that makes use of all the different Khajiit sub-species and lets you meet the Mane.
At this point TES VI isn't too exciting a concept, yet another game of walking around killing shit and going through the same dungeon three times an hour in a world of dumb NPCs, but the announcement of a new Elder Scrolls Adventure game would literally make me cum. (EDIT: I didn't even realise I wrote this exact thing earlier in this thread months ago, lol)
Even the minor characters in Redguard are more memorable than the entire casts of the main games. "MY NAMES MARI-AAAH, WHAT CAN I DEWW FOR YEWW :3"
Could have had a whole series of games like that, casting you in the role of interesting characters and taking you to all kinds of whack places - a game where you're an Altmer ambassador to the Imga, a game where you're the lowly assistant to some High Rock noble with borderline-delusional political ambitions, a game in Elsweyr that makes use of all the different Khajiit sub-species and lets you meet the Mane.
At this point TES VI isn't too exciting a concept, yet another game of walking around killing shit and going through the same dungeon three times an hour in a world of dumb NPCs, but the announcement of a new Elder Scrolls Adventure game would literally make me cum. (EDIT: I didn't even realise I wrote this exact thing earlier in this thread months ago, lol)
Even the minor characters in Redguard are more memorable than the entire casts of the main games. "MY NAMES MARI-AAAH, WHAT CAN I DEWW FOR YEWW :3"
Cat Headed Eagle
Learned
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I've played almost all of these games for hundreds of hours but somehow I feel nothing about them 
Morrowind is the one I felt more engaged with, but they're always missing something to make them great in my opinion.
Morrowind is the one I felt more engaged with, but they're always missing something to make them great in my opinion.
- "TES is underwhelming"I've played almost all of these games for hundreds of hours but somehow I feel nothing about them
- continues playing for hundreds of hours
Cat Headed Eagle
Learned
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It's the proper way to do it.- "TES is underwhelming"I've played almost all of these games for hundreds of hours but somehow I feel nothing about them
- continues playing for hundreds of hours
LarryTyphoid
Scholar
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Daggerfall and Morrowind are the only real contenders.
Ryzer
Arcane
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- 5,553
Arena has the best dungeons in the franchise.
Lemming42
Arcane
Yeah, Arena's dungeons ported into Daggerfall (and adjusted a bit to make use of verticality) would be a dream come true.
Starting dungeon is boring but after that there's literally not a single weak link in the whole game - Labyrinthian, Crypt of Hearts, Crystal Tower (the zoo floor!), Halls of Colossus, Black Gate, Dagoth Ur all absolutely mint, and all placed perfectly to keep things feeling fresh. Even Elder Grove and Murkwood are cool for what they are. Every dungeon really visually and thematically interesting too.
Really wish someone would give Arena the full DF Unity treatment and let modders rework the mechanics (specifically rebalancing magic, reworking enemy AI so they don't mindlessly commit sodoku by spell reflect, and overhauling the loot system). OpenTESArena seems to be coming along at glacial pace.
Starting dungeon is boring but after that there's literally not a single weak link in the whole game - Labyrinthian, Crypt of Hearts, Crystal Tower (the zoo floor!), Halls of Colossus, Black Gate, Dagoth Ur all absolutely mint, and all placed perfectly to keep things feeling fresh. Even Elder Grove and Murkwood are cool for what they are. Every dungeon really visually and thematically interesting too.
Really wish someone would give Arena the full DF Unity treatment and let modders rework the mechanics (specifically rebalancing magic, reworking enemy AI so they don't mindlessly commit sodoku by spell reflect, and overhauling the loot system). OpenTESArena seems to be coming along at glacial pace.
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