I've really deep dived in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in the past week. For a 14 year old open world RPG it still holds up remarkably well. Clearly a tonne of work was done by Bethesda to make the game run well on the Switch and it shows. Clearly you'll have the best visuals on a beefy PC but being able to play the game in handheld mode is so convenient.
I have some thoughts so far:
- The game is just ridiculously large, almost to the point of being overwhelming, the map is massive, the amount that you can do is crazy
- The controls feel so clunky at first, you feel slow and you don't know how to access basic things like items, magic and the map, it eventually starts to click after a few hours of play
- The level up skills tree was also confusing at first but I'm starting to understand it now, you really have to grind to level up, the game makes you work for it
- The weapons based combat is really basic, where things get interesting is using magic, I'm starting to get better at taking down enemies using different variations of magic
- Some of the quests and combat weirdly reminds me of playing the Star Wars: Jedi Knight games, especially when I started dealing with enemies who used lighting I was getting a real Star Wars vibe
- You go from killing a dragon feels impossible to it being relatively manageable
- The story is pretty interesting, Bethesda must have had a lot of excellent writers on their staff at the time
- The ties to Lord of the Rings is pretty clear with dwarves, orcs, elves and men
- Hogwarts Legacy clearly takes inspiration from Skyrim, the mechanics and general RPG style gameplay are similar