Rating: 
Summary: A (*giant*) "wax apple"
Review: I can't believe so many people are so shallow when it comes to crpgs. Yes, the graphics are great (10 out of 10 easily). Yes, the world is HUGE (no, really, unless you've played a lot of EQ, you might get a bit freaked out). Yes, the non-linearity is impressive and expansive. HOWEVER, there is one flaw that utterly destroys the entire experience: this is the most horribly balanced game I have ever played! It's beyond stupidity, and the frustration for a role-player is beyond compare. It's especially depressing considering the beautiful giant, non-linear world that has so much lost potential. Among many other things, here is a short list of the terminal problems:
1) At any level, fighting classes beat the holy [...] out of magic classes. There's absolutely no comparison. Magic is *useless.* The spells are too expensive, too weak, too slow, and can easily be attached to items that fighters can pay to have enchanted, usually with MUCH better results than casting can ever provide. It's not just the skills and effects that favor fighters, either. All of the good equipment is for fighters, and fighter stats have MUCH better and higher payoffs. Thiefs are also a kind of class, but more geared towards supplementary skills for fighters or mages. On the nice side, you can be all three if you want, without really suffering, but once you can fight worth a [...], you'll feel silly building up your magic skills...
2) Powerleveling is not only easy, but pretty much encouraged. This means that very early in the game, it is easy to train your character to god-like status. If you are a fighter, you can get to level 30 before you even embark on the game, and you are easily powerful enough to demolish whole towns and any combination of bosses without even a scratch. No matter how you pursue your character-building, you will find NO challenge from ANYTHING once you get to higher levels. NOTHING takes my level-40 (easy and quick to achieve) more than one hit, and he never misses or gets hit, not even the final boss (a demigod) or divayth fyr (a 5000-year old super-sorceror), with the difficulty bar raised to +100! How frustratingly anticlimactic the one-hit last fight was!
3) Money is cumbersome and worthless, and the mercantile system is beyond horrible. Everyone on the whole giant island carries tiny amounts of change, which means that you can only sell your 125,000-gold daikatana for about 500 gold, since no one has more than that. Of course, to make things even more pointless, they stuck in a single merchant who has 5000 gold (way more than anyone else) and he pays full price (up to his 5000) for anything (making all mercantile skills pointless). If you are patient, you can devise TEDIOUS systems of buying and selling back-and-forth until you are GROSSLY rich (a single daedric weapon or piece of armor is worth enough gold to train your character to maxes in everything).
4) MORE of the same, annoying, low-level creatures? MORE?! 99% of the creatures are embarassingly easy (even for low-level chars) and come in maybe 5 types, with no differences among them (except unnoticeably slight leveling), meaning you have to keep fighting rats and crap (tons of them), even if you're level 60.
5) This is somewhat off-topic (as far as balancing goes), but the fighting system [STINKS]. There's no chance for tactics or strategy, there are no special moves, or even multiple maneuvers at all. It's just stab-stab-stab-stab, he's dead, stab-stab-stab-stab, he's dead...
6) Did I mention there's no hope for ANY CHALLENGE? That is, unless you consider wondering around an island the size of Asia for a week of real time, searching for some flower or book for a stupid mage guild quest a challenge. I cosider it a mindless frustration.
So, in conclusion, go ahead and be impressed by the graphics and overwhelmed by the size, but it's little more than a very large screen-saver. (I called it a wax apple because it's perfect to look at, but provides no substance)
To be fair, I did play this game for something like 250-300 hours of gameplay. I completed every quest, maxed out every skill and stat, fully developed 8 different characters, and eventually turned my main one into a vampire and killed every single npc and creature in the game. I still think it [stunk]. I mainly did it because (1) in the first (longest) game I played, I did every possible side quest before the main one because I thought I might have a challenge ahead of me, and (2) I used the (wonderful) game-editor to tweak every aspect of the game for better balancing and challenging. I will probably eventually release my patches for the game, but if you are interested, you may want to check out the Adventurer's patch, a very good patch for raising the difficulty of the game (it gave me the idea), mainly incorporating some AI changes that make for slightly more tactical combat.
otherwise, just don't buy it.Oh wait -- one more big complaint: NO MULTIPLAYER COMPONENT?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? What year is this?
Okay... that's all :)
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful
Review: The specification debate is probably true. Although the issue on what is acceptable graphically and frame rate wise is a personal one. I'll get it over with. My system is a 1.8 AMD Athlon processor with 512DDR ram and a Geforce 2 card running the game at 800x600 res on medium detail. It looks stunning and runs fine. There's not much noticable difference between medium and high detail to be honest. The scenery has a haze to it anyway which can be increased or decreased to help your processor but this 'fogging' really adds depth and atmosphere to everything. Now to the game...
Morrowind is a true rpg that requires time and patients. It's like a good book. There are moments when you can't put it down and there are times when you just want to finish the chapter.
A detailed map of the 'world' comes with the game (like all true fantasy books)and this really helps in immersing the player into a believable fantasy world. You can pour over the map and look at all the different areas and places that you'd like to go to. To get anywhere you can walk (yes, there are no boundaries!) or, more sensibly you can magically transport ther with the help of various mystics or you can pay to ride the 'silt strider' which is a massive insect type thing. The further the distance , the more you pay.
Wherever you go there are people to meet. stories to hear, money to be made. There are so many different tasks to complete and things to do for others that at times you forget what it is you originally set out to do!! It's a good idea to complete certain quests in an order and not get side tracked!
The graphics really are gorgeous. And the way the sun sets and night time slowly evelopes the sky is quite breathtaking. Some nights there can be a light cloud cover and others the sky is crystal clear with nebula clouds and outlines of strange moons.
There are area where dust storms suddenly spring up, amazing to behold!
Morrowind is for true rpg gamers. The game world is completely open to exploration and there are no invisible barriers. You can be who you want and join any guilds to receive training and so increase your level and experience. You decide what you want to do, not the game! You can sit under a bridge and eat frogs all day, or dwell deep in a forest with the trees as your friends or join the Legion at a Fort and train to be a Captain of some army, the list is endless. All this freedom can be overwhelming at times so it's important to have some focus on what you want to do or achieve. Beautiful graphics aside, Morrowind is NOT for casual gamers and doesn't pretend to be. But, like a great novel, it's something you will go back to again and again.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for people with short attention spans
Review: A wonderful game. Beutiful graphics, decent gameplay, and lots of side stories. Now if one is looking for final fantasy level story telling go somewhere else. The story is very loose in this RPG. In many ways its like an enormous 3D version of diablo, a basic build up your character, while engaging in simple yet addictive combat. It is a world you get lost in, one finds oneself lost in the environment, reading the many books laying around, helping local denzions in the absurd number of side quests, uncovering the occassional secret plot against another NPC (non-player character). As a previous reviewer said one can ignore the primary storyline and still have loads of fun. If you have the time and patience and your comp has the right stuff get lost in morrowwind you won't regret it.
Rating: 
Summary: need a good system
Review: Elder Scrolls 3,is a very cool game.The problem is you have to go into your Task Manager and eliminate almost all your unneeded processes,then lower all your audio and video options for the game to run properly.Even then it still loads incredibly slow or crashes.You'll have to save every time it starts to get slow then quit your game and start again.You'll need a strong gaming platform this game to be any fun at all.Though I probly wont get the exspansion,I'm not going to stop playing anytime soon even with all the hassle.
Rating:
Summary: A great RPG for both older gamers and newbies
Review: To put it simply, Morrowind rocks! If you like video game RPGs, pen and paper RPGs or both, this game will [pull] you in! The only problem I had with the game was a few little qwirks, like while jumping on a bridge you may fall through ever now and then.
But don't let that turn you away, because with its expansion pack Tribunal, these glitches for the most part disappear. Also, how many other games have you played in which you can pickpocket anyone, attack anyone, and even get your own house?!?!?
All I have to say is if you haven't done so already, go out and buy yourself a copy of both Morrowind and Tribunal. It is worth both the time and the cost!
Rating:
Summary: This game can run on almost anything!
Review: Besides being a great game, it can run on a 600mhz machine with xp, 256mb of ram and a 32mb video card perfectly.
Rating:
Summary: Something for many types and ages of people
Review: I can only agree with the reviewers who say that although not perfect (was there an ending? Where? Would you believe after becoming the savior of Morrowind, characters still wanted me to go fetch herbs and whack people? I had nothing more emotionally appropriate as a savior to do than walk into the sea until I drowned? Maybe there is a reality based lesson here?) it is MAJOR fun. I can only add that something I deeply appreciate is that the game is so full of various possibilities even my 11 year old daughter can enjoy the game - a unicum in the universe of complex, graphically violent roleplaying games. It is possible because this game goes beyond the usual. She plays relatively nonviolently - but experiences all the joys being an oversized cross between a kittycat and kangaroo, of buying and selling, learning magic, discovering hidden objects (and swiping them - there is a bit of moral problem here), impressing characters with her conversational skills,and developing her acrobatic skills to the point she can jump from the ground to the top of buildings. In other words, this game can be far more than killing most everyone and everything you see outside of town, although it must be that, to follow the main game line. And I suppose this is a criticism I have: after a while I got very tired of killing all the wildlife, but it got boring and is not easy having to go everywhere invisibly. Too bad there was not a 'friend of the fauna' characteristic for us environmentalists. However, overall, all you games developers out there, more like this, please!!
Rating:
Summary: Better games out there
Review: Morrowind is so huge its mind boggling with thousands of decision to make which some big time gamers may see as a plus, but i personally think it is overwhelming and gets EXTREMELY BORING! Plus it is bug written and the game crashes everytime i try to play it after about 10 minutes.
If you want a good single player RPG buy "gothic" instead. Its much easier to get into with equal to or better graphics and the requirements aren't nearly as huge. "Gothic 2" comes out April 17th and i'm literally counting the days until it comes out. So save your money and buy gothic and get to playing.
Rating:
Summary: Toonami
Review: Toonami made a review of this game. They said its complicated, but I dont think any more than Neverwinter Nights is. They said it would littterly take days to get some of your charicters on foot, and it would take so long to finish the game you might not care long enough to see how it ends.
Rating:
Summary: Ahhhh. So much to do, so little time.
Review: I have to say this is one of the best video games I've played. I've played a few RPGs such as Baldur's Gate, but Morrowind has more of an openended, do-what-you-want D&D feel than all of them. The graphics are beautifully rendered, character creation is fun and versatile, and replayability is HUGE. I intend to replay this game with different characters, various downloaded plugins, and with some of my own plugins (once I take the notion to start fiddling with the construction set that comes with the game). This game is certainly not for those who like structure and firm story-lines. There are simply too many things to do and see, and the game really entices you to get sidetracked, which, to me, is one of its strengths. In a nutshell, sound effects and music are good, visuals are state of the art (especially outside), gameplay is engaging (though on occasion some quests become monotonous and one does have to get use to being rather alone in a world of uninspiring NPCs), and the possibilities of the game, thanks to the construction editor, are virtually limitless. One warning: As many have said here, system requirements (that is, what you need to run the game smoothly) are quite high. This is a game made for tomorrow's computer. Also, many players will experience at least some technical issues with the game (such as crashes and freezes), especially regarding memory management and its over-sensitivity to certain hardware configurations and settings. If you know someone who has the game, it would be a good idea to borrow it and test it on your computer before buying it. Otherwise, this is a fantastic game that sets a new standard for the role-playing genre.
|
