Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Xbox 360) Review

Posted by Adam Larck on 11.12.2011

The long-awaited sequel to Oblivion is here. See how it plays inside.



Title: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Publisher: Bethesda
Developer: Bethesda
Genre: Action-RPG
Players: 1
Rated: M for Mature

You can kill dragons.

Seriously, that’s all you need to know. You want more of a review? Fine.

Since releasing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Bethesda has been keeping busy with the Fallout series before finally releasing Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

The work shows, as Skyrim features some of the best features from both games.

Like prior games in the series, the game starts you out as a criminal, this time going for execution. After making your character from one of 10 playable classes, a dragon interrupts your execution and allows you to escape.

After escaping, the world becomes yours. Sure, you can follow the main quest if you want. Or, you can pick up a few side quests at Riverwood, the first village you encounter. Or, you can just wander aimlessly, finding various landmarks and things to see on the way.

Personally, as much as I love just wandering the area, I say at least do the side quest at the Riverwood trader and a few main quests first. The side quest gets you your first Word of Power, along with an item needed for the main quest, while the main quests can let you fight your first dragon and start having them randomly spawn.

Dragons are what really makes this game amazing. Each time you face one, it’s a huge battle that always makes you feel amazing after you kill it. Besides looting the body, you also get the dragon’s soul, used to let you learn Words of Power to use.

There are quite a few words to use with varying abilities, such as freezing enemies, a force push, fireball and more. Each word also has three words to learn to make it more powerful. While some spells will be learned in the main quest, of which there are about 20, most are found in caves you do various side quests in.

Like in Oblivion, there are various guilds to join, such as the Companions or the College of Mages. There are plenty of quests to do in the guilds, thanks to the new quest system they put in the game. After beating all the “actual” quests they give you, random quests will form, such as just killing a group of bandits or finding certain items.

There is also one of two different warring factions you can choose to join: the Imperials or Stormcloaks. You can join either side, but it doesn’t really affect the main quest a ton, which is more based around the dragons and yourself.

Now that I’ve talked about some of the quests and guilds, let’s talk about the changes from the last game, shall we? Leveling is a lot more streamlined now. You still have to level up skills to get an overall level up, but it doesn’t have to be three distinct skills. You can level the same one multiple times to level up if you want to, meaning you don’t have to force skills you don’t want to use to level.

Sleeping is also no longer required to level. You just have to go to the menu and hold up to start the process. After choosing magic, health or stamina to add points to, you can then put a point into a perk of any skill you want. The perks can increase damage or defense, make levels of lockpicking easier and more. There’s a wide variety of perks in the constellations here, meaning you can shape a unique character each time you play.

Another big change is with the battle system. Sure, you could dual wield weapons or shield/sword in the last game, but now you can dual wield spells and spell/weapon combos. I found myself sometimes using fire/lightning combos, or healing with one had while attacking with the other. Unfortunately, when using spell/weapons, I found that there is no blocking, meaning there’s a good reliance on the favorites menu here.

The favorite menu takes the place of the radial wheel. Instead of only mapping eight items to the D-Pad, you can mark whatever you think you’ll use the most as a favorite. Then, you just have to hit up on the D-Pad to see all your favorites and select what you want to use with what hand (LT or RT).

It should also be noted that, while fighting, you can sometimes get a finishing move that will instantly kill whatever you’re fighting. I found it to be random, but was also nice to get these short scenes of stabbing death.

Weapons and armor no longer deteriorate either. Instead, you can now focus more on making and enchanting items. To enchant an item, you must first destroy an enchanted item to learn the enchantment. One of the first enchanted items I found, water-breathing on a necklace, I destroyed and made myself onto a new necklace by using a petty soul gem.

In addition to these changes, some changes from Fallout were added as well. I felt like the quest directions were a bit easier to follow in Fallout 3 than Oblivion, and it feels easier to follow here as well. Plus, multiple quests can be followed at once if you want to.

In addition to this, the enemy leveling system from Fallout is here. Enemies still somewhat level with you, but it also depends how far in the world they are too.

Finally a new graphics engine, called the Creation Engine, has been made for this game. The engine helps some of the problems that Oblivion had, mainly, that NPCs look a lot better and the environment looks even better. The non-human races also have a unique look too, and don’t just look like reskinned humans.

Unfortunately, while the game took the best from Oblivion and Fallout, Skyrim also took the worst too: the glitches. As of this review, Bethesda is still working on a fix to let 360 owners install the game to their hard drives without graphical glitches.

Even without installing, though, I had spots where entire parts of a river or lake would be gone, but I could still swim through it. I also had a few glitches that stopped quest progression, like NPCs getting stuck on doors or spinning in circles. Thankfully, it just took a load from a few minutes before to fix, but I have also heard reports of other game-breaking glitches as well. Honestly, it’s a major Bethesda game, is this any surprise?

Pros

Plenty of quests and a huge world to explore.

New leveling, battle systems are great.

Killing dragons offer great level of fun.

Cons

The glitches that Bethesda is known for return.

Sometimes dragons just want to fly around, not attack.

Easy to become over-encumbered quick.

The 411:

Like I said at the beginning, you can kill dragons, that’s all you really need to know. Skyrim is a worth addition to the series, and is a must have game for gamers. Definitely a top game-of-the-year contender.

Graphics	9.0	The graphics and people look great, there’s just some glitches along the way that bring this down.
Gameplay	10.0	All the systems in the game have been streamlined, making this an excellent experience.
Sound	9.5	The music is great, and it’s exhilarating to hear the chanting start when going up against a dragon.
Lasting Appeal	10.0	Even after you explore the world, find every landmark and do every big quest in the game, there’s an infinite number of quests and dragons to slay after.
Fun Factor	9.5	I had a blast exploring the world. I just had to take down a bit because of the glitches that popped up from time to time.
Overall	9.6   [  Amazing ]