last year I posted a slightly pissed of article entitled "Morrowind is overrated". Don't remember? Don't worry, you didn't miss much. For those who do remember, don't you worry either. This isn't another angry rant. But as I went into Morrowind on hype that it was a million times better than Oblivion (One of my first "grown up" games and still one of my favourites) and found anything but I want to talk about some of the reasons why I'm a little underwhelmed.

b]Please don't tell me "There's a mod for that" when I make a criticism. I don't care. I rarely use mods. And mods never factor into a game's score from professional critics So should it here? You could probably Mod Big Rigs into a good game. But if I judged it solely on those mods you feel cheated out of a critique of the real game. So no. Please let's ignore the porn and Star Wars mods that probably exist and focus on Morrowind as it is. Not what fans have made it into. Thank you.

Morrowind is certainly harder than Oblivion. To me this is neither a good or a bad thing. But the game's difficulty curve is odd. It starts out hard as an adamantium wall in alternate universe where everything is 20% harder. Then by the end nothing expect the gods can hurt you. While it gives a strong sense of achievement at first after a while you're left with is a world of infinitely respawning enemies that spoil what should be a good walk are a chore to fight. To misquote Zero Punctuation "I feel like I'm running a failing pest control agency". The game seems t want you to use fast travel. As I hate using fast travel and also hate spending gold It don't need to spend I feel at times like the game is giving me the finger.

I played as a Battlemage Orc. While at the beginning I found I needed magical aid to take out bigger foes as time went by I found using magic was just a waste of time as magic often fails where cold steel never does.
I found the magic tree and systems very cool. But as magica doesn't regenerate unless you take a six hour nap. So if you cast a spell and it fails you'll loose most of your magicia. You now have two options: 1 go back to bed and hope it doesn't fail tomorrow. 2 Load previous saves until you get the result you want.

I'm sad to say this but even with a magic class and maxed out intelligence I doubt I'd have ever made any progress on the magic front without a lot of savescuming. I wanted to branch out from my normal choice of 'Brute with sword' but I'm glad I went with battlemage because from what I've seen if you speichelze in magic, and you don't have enough cash to buy ingreedents form restore magicia potions (And those ingreedents do cost a pretty peny) you're fucked.
I may sound like a casual console player saying this. But I'm glad they put regenerating magic into Oblivion. The fact is only dedication to my role kept me using magic in a game where by my halfway-point magic was almost as much of a hinderence as a help.

Many people say the combat in Morrowind is terrible (one of the few flaws it's fans will admit to) It's certainly no Metal Gear Rising. but even as an inexperienced gamer I've seen worse. Combat can be fun when your forced to think tactically (EG when to use spells and potions, making arrows count, invisibility never gets old) but near the start tactics don't matter as everything can murder you easily.
I think the reason for this (I don't have any proof though) is that a lot of the ideas in the game come from turn based RPG's where stats and dice rolls determine whether your attack is worth a damn. There is a lot of stuff in Morrowind that feels like it would be of more use in a turn based game. "I could use a potion that reflects 30% for 8 seconds and try to cast a spell that will give me a grade 1 lightning shield for 15 seconds. But both this things will have no effect on the out come of the fight with this necromancer and just serve to slow the fight down. So maybe I should ignore all these spells and potions that at best will lessen the amount of damage I will take by a minuscule degree and just focus on crushing his skull with an axe"....... :/

A lot of the less direct branches of magic seem to have little affect on combat except to slow it down. Something that would be less of a problem in a turn based game instead of a real-time one.
Also while this has been well covered before the stat-based hit or miss system for melee attacks is no fun. at the beginning it feels like a bad joke to be flailing a weapon in the other guy's face and to only "hit" once every 10 times. And when you've gotten your axe skill up to 80 (something that will happen soon with no effort required as stick to one weapon) you never miss, making the dice system redundant. Once again it feels like something from a turn-biased RPG brought into a real-time RPG because it was fun in table top Dungeons and Dragons.
But that's just my theory. If you know any reason why I might be wrong then feel free to tell me

So yeah, combat can be fun, fustigating or tedious. How's the Story?

Not too bad. Morrowind has a distinctly differnt world, but looking past that the story of the main campaign is very typical post-Tolken "You are the chosen one who must save the world from the big bad over there" type stuff. Generic but tested and true. The stuff in Morrowind's narrative(s) that's truly interesting is the political struggles taking place in the background. Seeing the struggles between old conservative ways of thinking that involve slavery and xenophobia and newer ways from abroad, and the often sad fallout these struggles have on the ordinary people of Morrowind.

The sad part is the static nature of this political turmoil. outside of who is alive or dead and the grand campaign I never felt like I could have any impact the world (Despite doing some huge things in Tribunal you still end up leaving Mournhold pretty much as you found it). It's a shame because I genuinely wanted to oppose slavery in Vvardenfel (I regret never finding the Twin Lamps. Don't tell me how in the comments). It's good that the game got that reaction from me. It's bad that for all it's claims of openness and freedom the only changes you can make are with a sword.

Also, the natives of Vvardenfel are dicks. Dumb ones two. Are you really dumb enough to call all Orcs "Half-men" to the giant orc in ebony armour with a huge battle axe? You're just asking for trouble at this point.
So in closing Morrowinds story and characters lack depth but have interesting aspects that could have been explored further.

Posted accidently before it was finished. The rest is down below as the editing system seems to have an invisible chatter limit.

I must play Morrowind again sometime. I can't remember much of the specifics but I played as a mage and didn't have as much trouble at the beginning as other people seem to. However, I did really carefully research my character creation so that might be part of it.

Also if you just want to train magic there is an obelisk thing that restores it to full. I think you need to complete a quest first to use it for free.

This is all from memory though, I really do need to replay it.

.....(continued)


Morrowind's world is one of it's more highly prised features. It's certainly different. Vvardenfel feels more like an alien planet than a traditional fantasy world. Giant Mushrooms, flying jellyfish, wizards towers that require flight for proper navigation and T-rex like animals that act as livestock all help to make Vvardenfel stand apart from most generic fantasy realms. But it doesn't seem to function as more than window dressing.
While an author like Diana Wynn-Jones creates weird worlds with fittingly weird characters, Morrowind's characters feel entirely disconnected from the land they inhabit. It's a shame as the political landscape, as I said, is one of Morrowind's best features. The fact that it doesn't feel more connected with the physical landscape seems like a missed opportunity.

And this brings us to one of the biggest problems with Morrowind, the land itself. For the first 50 hours of my playthrough where I stuck mostly to the wet southwest the game had an eerie beauty to it. The score made me feel like I was about to find many new and exiting places. Then I started to explore the rest of the island.
I'm sad to say this but most of Vvardenfell is a boring, ugly, featureless wasteland. At least a third of the map is taken up by a mountainous, ash-blighted scar with no people living there (except a few miners) and nothing to do except fight fucking cliff racers. There are no stories to be found there. The few quests related to it always come from outside it. Navigating it, even with flying spells is a chore. And without them it's a cruel joke (and did I mention manna doesn't re generate? Suck to be you if you use all your manna on a flying sell that fails). An RPG should be like J M Barry's Neverland, with adventures not widely spaced but nicely crammed. But if you really want to have this large open space free of story and NPCs could you at least make it beautiful? Not cram it full of enemies that make traveling a grind? And make navigation simpler, please?

That brings me to another point. When I realesed my first post and complained about vanishing dungeon loot someone told me that I wasn't playing it right (something I expect to be told again) that I was "playing it like a Diablo game". Well the thing is it kinda feels like a Diablo clone at times. Once you leave a town an go into the country side There is a monsters that needs killing every 5 feet. I would like to drink in the scenery but I have 9 Cliff Racers, 2 kigouri and a fire elentital all queing up to be killed. And I only left Molag Mar 5 minutes ago.
If as I've been told the "point" of Morrowind is to immerse yourself in the world couldn't they have made the countryside feel less like a map from Torchlight?

And now The problem that made me fall out of love with Morrowind. The Path-finding
If I remember right Fenixp told me very passionately that manual pathfinfing is one of Morrowind greatest strengths. If you're reading this Fenixp Then I'll say that you're right, kinda.
When it works it feels extremely immersive and give real satifaction having gotten to the right place without the game holding your hand at all. But the Problem is that half the time the instructions are misleading, overcomplicated, horribly vague (Go west or go north east. That seriously happens), Non-existent sometimes, and worst of all sometimes straight up wrong! Like the time you're told to meet a hunting partly at the lake shore only for it to turn out they're not at the lakeshore, but deep in the woods. Or the incident that killed my love for the game where you are told to go west to find a shrine that's actually north!
A lot of the time it just feels like the devs were just being lazy rather than having any agenda to create an immersive travel experience.
Couldn't they have just used quest markers instead? Making your game "idiot proof" isn't just about stupid players. It's also protection from stupid devs. (and don't try and say that it's my faut for being stupid. Try to find your way to my house only on the info that "it's in oxford". Then tell me how easy path finding on instructions like that is to my face).

But there is one thing even worse than Morrowind's unreliable instructions. CLIFF RACERS!!!!
If there is a hell then then there must be a special circle for evil games where you are forced to play a game that is noting but Cliff Races for all eternity. I hope I don't have to explain why I hate these things so much. We'd be here all year. I don't mod my games much (it gives me a headache). But if I ever play Morrowind again I might just try to download a mod to make those fucker leave me alone!

I loved Morrowind for the first 80 hours, hated it for the next 40, and spent the remaining 200 just mostly liking it hopping that the Masterpiece that wipes the flaw with Oblivion and Skyrim to turn up. It never did. I ended up largely using it as a background game while listing to Peter Hamilton.

There seems to be a pattern to my gaming life that I play the "Worthless remake" first, EG Oblivion, Bioshock, Half-life. Then I play the "Infinitely superior original" EG Morrowind, System Shock 2, Quake. And then find out that the Superior Original is far less fun and nowhere near as intelligent as the old gamers say they are. (Note to self, Play Fallout 3 before Fallout 1&2, see if this pattern holds true).

I can't say that I regret playing Morrowind. I can feel nostalgia for it developing already. But if you take one thing away from this make it this. Don't shit on games people like to make them play your old favourites. All it does it hype your game up to a point were it can only be a disappointment!

Morrowind is one of the few games that I keep replaying. Sure, it has flaws, but what game doesn't? Another my favourite games, Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines was flawed to the point of being nearly unplayable. Thief, Deus Ex, Silent Hill -- all the great masterpieces have their flaws.

Oh, and here's one of the videos that's destined to crop up in an Elder Scrolls discussion, so let's get it over with... TUN: The Elder Scrolls VI - Youtubia

Indeed. I love games like Undying, Bioshock, Crusader: No Remorse, Age of Mythology and of course Oblivion. They all have there faults but for me they're now just part of the charm. Like The bad voice acting in Symphony of the Night. :3

I...would argue that one of the things which I found most interesting about Morrowind's story was that it wasn't quite that. It was "You are the current chosen one who can save the world from the big bad over there, if you choose to. Do you want to?" Within the main quest, you're actively given the option to stop, and say that you don't want to take up the burden. That alone differentiates it from most such stories. (Of course, as it turns out if you refuse then the tribunal's power will probably fade sufficiently for Dagoth to get out, but...that's not something you're aware of at the time, normally. I found that that choice drastically enhanced the quality of the story from then on, as I had chosen to follow this path. Must be the different paths our characters took and how much we were willing to imagine the consequences of our actions. Personally, I felt that my kajiit thief had had a large effect on slavery, freeing all that he came across and drastically hurting the centre of the slave trade by stealing the Telvanni treasury :P That continued to be supported into Oblivion where the mysterious disappearance of the Nerevarine ("on a trip to Akavir...") and the war on slavery which his house had just started...suggested to me that he was still active.

I gave up on Morrowind fairly early in the game. I had progressed to Balmora, I think, and was scouting out the sewers and making overtures to the thieves' guild, foraging a lot in the nearby wilderness and building up a set of reference notes on index cards for alchemy. I like to explore better than I like to min/max, so I was having a grand time. Some NPC - I don't recall whom - was letting me crash in his room, and I was checking out the lay of the land ...

When I made the mistake of removing an item I had stashed in my buddy's chest - mi casa es su casa, he had said, more or less - and the city guard immediately arrested me for stealing. Because, apparently, when you put your stuff in your friend's containers when you're staying at his place, it becomes his stuff. Which was so not part of the deal.

What was in those chests? EVERYTHING. All my weapons, armor, books, supplies, everything that I didn't need to drag around the city with me. And I'd been in the city long enough that the single early save game I had kept would have meant replaying 20 hours, or something.

I decided I'd just start over with a different character, but I don't think I ever really did.

That's maybe the most concise and accurate description of the Morrowind combat problem that I have seen. Truth to tell, I prefer turn-based combat in rpgs, but I still prefer pure action over Morrowind's hybrid approach.

I know you said not to tell you that there's a mod for that. And your review is quite fair for what it is. However, one of the game's greatest strengths is the modability. Some game have flaws and you can't ever fix them. Those are worse than flaws you can fix. Modability does matter, even in a review. It doesn't invalidate any of your criticisms, but to me the reader, every game has flaws, I try to figure out how much a flaw matters to me, and if it is modable, some particular flaw might matter more or less to me.

I also think you're right on in saying that there is too much filler space in Morrowind. More content, story and quest, per square hectare would have been better.

Cheers.

Morrowind is probably my favorite game of all time and one of three games that pretty much define my taste in games: Morrowind, Deus Ex and Fallout. I can still admit however that it's a deeply flawed game. The combat is pretty boring, most early quests are simple fetch stuff, the thieve's guild quests don't feel much like thieving most of the time and personally I barely use magic outside of healing and transporting because it's too much of a pain in the ass.

Still though, Morrowind ties together great lore, a great game world and perfect atmosphere into something I personally love to death.

I never thought much of morrowind to be honest. I thought the combat was dull and just gave me a headache. Some nice area and creature designs though.

Oblivion was more what I was hoping for combat wise. It was more my cup of tea.

Ordinators also looks down upon you aswell provided you have no affliation with any non Morrowind factions like the fighters guild or imperial cult and if you are a Dunmer (Dark Elf)

Its supposed to be that because its to simulate natives attitudes towards being under the occupation of a foreign empire and the natives look down upon any outlander despite whether their are big, strong, and heavily armed.

Hey Johnmourby, you've grown :-P
Right, let's do this shiz! I don't think anybody is defending Morrowind by mods per se; it's more of the case of "Oh right, that bit of the game I disliked, here's what you can use to fix it". At any rate, Morrowind is the only game out of the entirety of The Elder Scrolls series where I don't need any actual gameplay improvemnts to enjoy it, I only install graphics stuff and fan patches. Oh, and turn down Cliff Racer agressiveness. Bloody Cliff Racers... Yeah, the difficulty curve is shit, and highly dependant on what you're playing. On the plus side, whatever you pick to play, fighting abilities of the game world will never outlevel you so you can take as much time as you want to train. At any rate, what I really hate are the difficulty spikes: Other things aside, Tribunal just shoots difficulty over the roof for no particular reason, and Bloodmoon has a level wall which has prevented me from ever actually playing it which sort of makes me sad. Morrowind is actually THE game if you want to feel like a god when picking a spellcaster. If you play it clever, during the endgame, you will be oneshotting absolutely everything with your magic, you will be able to jump across the entire island, you will be able to fly anywhere, do just about anything, survive any hit (while reflecting its damage back at your opponent) and sneak past anybody you don't want to murder. Morrowind is a perfect example of a difficult start when playing a mage and extremely rewarding endgame. As for savescumming, you don't have to - you just need to play systematically and reatreat a lot. Not the best option, yeah, still... It's quite playable, until you get some items to increase your max magica and raise your alchemy so you can brew pretty damn powerful restore magica potions (you get a fair bit free if you join the mage's guild tho)

Another thing to remember about Morrowind is that magic skills, as opposed to weapons, raise on successful use, not on successful hit. While you're exploring, you can just toss fireballs around and your magic skills will raise while doing so - of course, this is dependent on how much you're willing to invest into roleplaying.

Ultimately, meele + bows are the most efficient way to play trough the game as you will just get better performance out of those during levels 1 to about 20. However, Morrowind is not a game that should be played at the highest possible efficiency - as far as I know, most powergamers don't really like Morrowind all that much, as there's just so many ways of exploiting it. What's beautiful about Morrowind is how many options it presents to you, and vast majority of them are playable, albeit not be most efficient. Meh, I think it just draws from other, isometric RPGs which use dice rolls. Most of these things feel wrong because of first person view which give you a much more 'hands-on' feeling. At one point, the game tells you that's not actually true and has got a lot of interesting spins on it. But yeah, the basis for the story is quite cliché. As for the rest of your talk on story... Yes, the most intrique comes from political situation, as that's brilliant. Yes, Morrowind is static. That's a problem of all TES games and it exists for a reason, nonetheless - it's a problem. With complexity comes less content, and the reason why TES games work at all is the amount of content. This comes with staticness and shalowness in all there is - on the other hand, it gives crazy freedom and complexity. Frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way - there are loads of RPGs which don't have as many options, but are very thought out in the consequences department. Strongly disagree. Morrowind is absolutely stuffed with interesting content - you just have to look. It's one of the most prized features of the game and if you don't see it, I suppose you're not looking very much. It's definitely not 'filled with stories' - unless you're enchanted with the land itself, you probably ... Well, won't like it. Just as you don't. True, sometimes, instructions are flatout wrong - and those bits are terrible. Then again, I've encountered about 1 quest in 20 where that happened, and even then I have managed to find my bearings eventually. We've had this discussion already and the points I have made previously still apply, so I'm just going to skip it. Yup. Most of the time, when you play for that long, it means it's a game that has sucked you in. Are there issues? Oh yeah, sure. Can you like Oblivion more? Sure, I can definitely see why, there's a bunch of things that Oblivion just does flatout better. And if you like what Oblivion does more than what Morrowind does, inevitably, you will like Oblivion more. Oh god, agreed so much!

He meant the fact that the land is boring because of the fact that most of the land is covered by the desolate black Ashlands:

http://images.uesp.net/b/bb/MW-Map-Vvardenfell.jpg

And I agree because I often hate travelling there where its full of Cliff Racers.

I'm not sure who to reply to First so I just say thanks to every one so far for their understanding.

There are probably a few times when it makes sense to include mods into the consideration of a game, and Morrowind may be one of those times. It wouldn't be fair to review a game like, say, the original Thief without making mention of the (at the time) impressive application of a stealth mechanic; it's very truly part of the game. Shouldn't a game made especially with modding in mind be allowed to benefit in review - especially so many years later - from those mods? It was every bit as much a decision to provide for an easy modding experience in TES3 as it was to incorporate stealth into Thief.

I certainly don't care if you don't like Morrowind, and you've obviously given it a fair shake without mods. But you're literally not playing the same game that many of the people who keep going back to it are playing. It's hard to take someone's complaints seriously when for most of those complaints, the fix is out there and just a quick download and extract away.