Rating: 
Summary: Bug City
Review: This should have been the best RPG of the year - and may still be if a patch comes out fixing all the bugs.While not encountered by all, there are some major bugs in this game. Since the day of it's release the game has been plagued by stuttering music in the opening movies and inexplicable crashes at various points. The majority of people posting on bethesda's tech support boards are complaining of dwindling frame rates as the game progresses, possibly due to a massive memory leak.
The bugs do not seem chained to one sound card or video card or slective as to wether or not the user has a high or low end system. The fantastic graphics, interface and storyline would be a more exciting focus for this review, but getting dumped to the desktop every 20 minutes sort of makes the game hard to focus on. Bethesda has dropped the ball here and needs to patch this soon. I for one am not playing it until it is patched. I would suggest that any one interested check the Bethesda page for the patch and then buy the game when it is released. Until then, this is a $50 excercise in frustration. Shame on you Bethesda. This product is a technical bomb.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent game for the non-linear RPG comeback
Review: WARNING: This game requires some pretty powerful hadware to run smoothly. The first reason why I love this game is it's incredible flexibility. Be anyone. Do anything. Be the hero or the villan. Side with the corrupt imperial swine, or fight with the bloodthirsty resistance. The whole game is very open-ended. The random encounters with monsters while traveling moves up with your level, however many of the explorable interior areas are pre-set at a particular level, so you may have to hold back before wandering in there. Overall, the game is very detailed, down to the pots and pans in the pesants homes, with almost everything stealable. Each of the different races have their own accents, though I'm not sure why the bestiary races (Khajiit, Argonian) sound Eastern-European. The game also comes with The Elder Scrolls Construction Set. The creators used this tool to make the entire game, and it's very flexible. This little puppy is the second reason why I won't be leaving the house for a while. My only complaints are the lack of werewolves and werewolf curses (I certainly miss them from Daggerfall), but I'm sure a faithful end-user will code them in. Also whenever entering and exiting towns and buildings and parts of the landscape, the entire game freezes so it can catch up with you. This is merely due to my weak hardware, and the lower your system specs the worse it'll be.
Rating: 
Summary: Sometimes frustrating, but still remarkable
Review: Before writing a review for a game, I usually either finish it (for the good ones) or deem it unplayable (for the bad ones). These people who write reviews before ever having played the game sort of boggle my mind a little. Anyway, I was all set to buy this game for my Xbox as I knew it was going to be a resource hog, one that my aging PC was unlikely unable to push. To make a long story short, I ended up getting the PC version for three reasons; 1. It came out weeks before the Xbox version (weeks mean years for those of the short attention span), 2. it has a massive campaign editor and construction set, 3. because of 2., there are going to be lots of official and unofficial add-ons and plug ins, one of which I've already downloaded. Always give bad news first: This game is the resource hog I feared it would be. If your running anything less than the best, prepared to either upgrade or lag. My PC has a 1 ghz processor, 512 megs of RAM, Soundblaster Live Platium, and an old 32 meg Geforce2. I was able to play the game reasonably well at 1024 x 768, but it was nothing to write home about. The performance was poor at best, especially in the out of doors. The graphics look pretty lame at this "low" resolution and those sophisticated textures look like poo-poo at anything less than 1600 x 1200. Fortunately, I found a 64 meg Radeon 7500 video card a couple of days ago REALLY cheap, and decided to go with it. This has helped immensely. I can now go as high as my monitor will allow (1600 x 1200) and the graphics look much better. I still experience some lag outside, but the performance is MUCH better. If you don't have a beast, can't afford to upgrade and own an XBOX, I advise you to get the Xbox version and save yourself a lot of headaches. More complaints: Morrowind has some very irritating little glitches that cause you to get stuck behind stuff, on the sides of hills, between objects, etc. The movement is pretty clunky to begin with, which is further hindered by your characters attributes. There have been several instances where I've had to revert to a previous save because of this whihc can be absolutely maddening. Save often and be prepared for this one, it's one of my biggest complaints. Ok, a few more random complaints and then I'll get to the good stuff. The interface as a whole will take some getting used too. I still don't like the inventory menu with the teeny tiny little items that you couldn't possibly tell apart if not for the pop-up windows. Also, be prepared to do a lot of wandering around aimlessly to find certain buildings and items. When a NPC sends you on a quest, he updates your journal with text based instructions (if you think to ask for them) and doesn't update your map for you. The map is so huge, that it can take awhile to get where you're going. Also, I tried walking from one city to another with my first character: big mistake. It took forever and I never did get there. The scale on the game is huge, this is a good thing and a bad thing. Get attacked, start running for your life, and the next thing you know you're lost. There are signs posted here and there, but somtimes you can get way off track before you find a new one. Also, no multiplayer, 'nuff said there. Ok, now for the good stuff: this game boasts what may be the largest, most detailed simulated world ever created. Just wandering around gives you a sense of awe an immensity unlike any game I've ever played before, including Everquest. The rich textures, huge mountains and detailed terrain must be experienced in the finest detail possible, or quite frankly, you aren't getting your money's worth. While games like Baldur's Gate rely on strong story to create a compelling world worth returning too, Morrowind doesn't really have too. From the moment you step off the boat, you're there. Fortunately, Morrowind's beautiful world is supported by a strong story. Like any RPG worth its salt there are hundreds possibly thousands of quests, mini-quests and hidden details that make the most mundane walk through the swamps worth your while. The style and look of the game is just breathtaking, and honestly like nothing I've ever seen before. It is equal parts weird and amazing. Bottom line: it's an incredible world worth exploring which will be directly affected by your actions (unlike those Everqust type games). One of the things I liked immediately is the character creation process, which you can do one of several ways. First, you pick a race, some of which are fantasy staples, like elves and orcs, but also includes a race of cat people and lizard men that look really cool. Once you've chosen your race, you can choose class by either answering a few simple questions that will determine your class by gaging your (or your characters) personality and preferences; you can choose a class from the list (there are lots of classes); or you can create your own custom class. These options really provide a lot of diversity. I test drove a couple of characters from various methods before settling on the one I use now. It takes a while for the game to get going, but once you build up some momentum, it is incredibly fun. Save often in the beginning as even the peons will be taking you out, or so it will seem. Finding a character that fits your playing style is almost as fun and challenging as the game itself. There is so much variety between races and characters it is unbelievable. I'm so glad I bought the new video card and didn't give up on this game after the first couple of days. If you've got a system that exceeds the recommended requirements and are patient, you will be rewarded. With all its flaws (hopefully a patch will remedy most of them) this game is worth your while. It is a true achievement.
Rating:
Summary: Best game I've played in a long, long time....
Review: You wanna know just HOW good Morrowind is? The day that I bought the game I had gotten up WAY too early, and it had been a VERY long day. Nevertheless, I started playing at 10:30 at night, and didn't stop until it was lunch time. And I picked it up again right afterwards, playing late into the night. I EASILY put in sixteen hours of play within the first day that I owned Morrowind. Incredibly immersive, the game grabs ahold of you from the very start with the finest character creation setup I've ever seen. EVERYTHING in the game is free for the taking, so long as you can run fast enough... bowls, spoons, weapons, gold. If you think you can defeat the guards, you can try right ahead. I know of at least one instance where a shopkeeper had an item I desperately wanted but could not afford. It was a fairly isolated area, so I killed him off and ransacked his shop. After I hid his body, no one was the wiser, and I never got caught. (of course, when I tried the same trick in the Mage's Guild, every mage in the building threw down on me, busting out with spells, swords, and summons. I was dead in seconds.) This open-endedness extends throughout the entire game. You can literally do whatever you want in a beautifully rendered world that reacts realistically to your behavior. Stop reading. Now. Buy the game. (One caveat: have a good system. I have an Athlon 1.3 gHz, with 256 MB RAM and a GeForce 4, and I have to run in 800x600, with choppiness still noticeable in some places. Fair warning.)
Rating:
Summary: imparcial review from a RPG lover
Review: I have the game just instaled in my computer:
Gforce 4 Ti 4400,256 Mbytes, pentium 3 800, windows 2000. **The game is the greatest atempt of RPG in last years*** You should spend a lot reading carefully and trying to figure out how to make a good(best) character. I would like some hints in Bethesda Home Page( there arent, not even in the manual). Best way by now seems to do a character more or less what you want, taking care of initial abilities numbers, then play five hours, and see, how your abilities has changed, the most increased abilities are the ones you should choose for major and minor ones, so you can level at a comfortable speed. Although the samll information on manual, there is lot of information inside the game,(I think Bethesda wants you to get informed inside the game) .Information on the manual doesnt look very good and doesnt give you enough Hints. Indeed is the smallest guide I have ever seen for a game of this kind. Bethesda must think We can travel with our computers evrywhere because there are not interesting stories to read in the manual, in the way BLIZZARD does. Collectors Box figurine is a bit disappointed and small.
Also I wonder Why I can not have a cloth map?, like ultima, not just a paper one. Now for the visuals they look very good but not awesome( if you have played Unreal). Water is pretty, you can see the waves of the rain falling in the water. But reflects to much light so sometimes is just a well iluminated surface, (in RL sometimes that happens, but not so often), makes me wonder if that was the best they could do or it was for hidding some underwater places, or for technical performance reasons. Fire of tree logs is shamefull, looks awfull, but in candles looks great. All other things in textures , sky, clouds, stars , and buildings looks better than ever. Especially the sky is magnificent. Must see to believe them. Where is my camera!!!!. Fog is a major complaint, sometimes with maximum distance view in options menu, all you can see in the horizon are shades and shadows of mountains and trees. I have seen somedays with high air contamination when that happens in Mexico City, and Morrowind has a big Volcano spitting moxius gases, so maybe that not so unrealistic, HAHAHAH. Character faces options for your Playing Character looks simplistic I would like more options. About gameplay the best I have seen in years, but characters Who like to jump around here and there can get easily stuck, becuase of technical problems with clipping surfaces. Better to save the game frequently, but in a case of hurry you can use almisivi intervention or recall to get you out of the place you got stuck. WOOOW, must things that you can see are usable and sell(able). There are to many items and armor, etc etc. But there are so many items that one would like more filters on inventory. Although managing inventory is better than other games. 3D sound does some wierd things, when moving around some times it give you very bad position of things creating the noises. The gameplay looks very promissing as soon as Bethesda corrects the bugs. The game is very HUGE, HUGE, HUGE, sometimes you stop playing, look the sky and wonder ,uff, I have not explored but the 0.5% or less, of the game and it looks complex and big, it should be so much bigger. There was(is) to much hype on Morrowind Visuals and every one one to say that buying their gforce 4 Ti was worth. Well Yes and not, gameplay is smooth but visuals seems to lack from the high status of the hype. Nevertheless this wame is the better looking I have seen and is also the best RPG game around there. The guide on Collectors package is more a spoiler book than a guide. Few pages are worth for one that want to be guided but not spoiled. Although not even is this biblical tome are there all the places, inside the game. What is very fortunate. This is the kind of game thats is so huge and carefully detailed. thats is going to be hated for people who just wants to hack and slash,( I can not say that is good hack and slash but there are better ones in that area), because they are not going to read all the information on the game, getting the subtle and comples story, that want it ot not is the best part of this game. Hack and slash people are going to complain about anything just to hide the fact that the world is so large that they felt lost. I just hope Bethesda fix the clipping surfaces problems so people dont get stuck, though is very interesting to kill a flying netch and see him trapped inside a big rock. I would really like to give them 6 stars but I cant, be warned that games that ask this much of computers ussually dislike bad configured computers so if you doesnt care about drivers, system updates, etc , you will crash a lot. Final word graphics are incredible but this game is not about graphics is about story, and sometime in the future it will deserve a better graphics engine.
Rating:
Summary: I Love This Game
Review: I have played CRPGs for close to 15 years now. Like most gamers out there, I have been very jaded with the selection of games lately. They just seem like cookie cutter standard [stuff]. Morrowind, however, reaffirms my faith in gaming. If you enjoy RPGs, and are looking for something totally original, get this game! You won't regret it!
Rating:
Summary: Use the game editor to make this game more fun
Review: I've aborted the main storyline completely, and focused on tweaking the construction editor, which is sort of a glorified cheating system. God bless 'em for including it, but unless you have inhuman willpower and a conscience prone to guilt, you're going to be cheating. Not necessarily by using the editor either; the game has an in-game cheater that's only a button away. Having a problem with an enemy? Go into 'God mode' and never get killed. Character too weak? Give yourself a million hit points. With that kind of help, there's very little challenge. I quickly lost interest in playing fair (and getting killed), but there's still a lot of fun to be had with Morrowind. You don't have to walk around doing the boring quests and looking for certain people, then talking to them, then going on to find someone else in another town. Yawn! Use the editor to make a poison spell that affects the whole continent. Everyone comes after you at once. Or add the "Disintegrate armor" spell to a weapon, and watch as the guards' clothes disappear with each hit. You can get them down to their bras and barefoot. Or make yourself some darts with the "command humanoid" spell, and and fire away - everyone that's after you will start fighting each other. If you're going to cheat, have fun with it and don't feel guilty. Forget the main story, just focus on seeing how many people you can get to attack each other by creating weird spells. Guards fighting guards is fun to watch. Or match a Golden Saint vs. a Dremora for a good time. If you're in God mode, you don't have a thing to worry about. That's the fun of this game - it's always there when you want to spend a couple hours flying around naked and throwing darts at people. Unfortunately, the game runs pretty badly, even on top-of-the-line systems. People are rushing out to buy new graphics cards and even that's not gonna help, sorry to tell you. And if you make even one small mistake with the editor, the game will crash repeatedly and it's up to you to find out what's wrong. Actually, the crashing is not too bad - in fact it's fairly rare, if you have a high-end PC, learn how to use the editor, and don't go nuts with it. The main problem is the loading times. Every time you walk a few steps or turn a corner, you've got to sit there patiently while the game view catches up with you. Frustrating. Hard on the eyes too. Compared to Daggerfall, it's worse in some ways and better in others. Daggerfall was much "scarier", for sure, although it had a million problems with stability. There was no in-game cheater, you had to fight on your own. You could be killed at any time, and the atmosphere was dark and intense. Morrowind has lost that quality. There's no attics to crawl around in, no houses to build, no special holidays, no werewolves, hardly any vampires. Hand-to-hand combat is ill-conceived too. There are still dungeons and factions you can join, but as I said: with the ability to cheat only a button away, why bother? I get much more fun out of the game by wandering around, being a mass murderer and general antagonist, tweaking the editor then watching the results of my changes. Bethsoft did a fine job with Morrowind, but somehow they've lost the special quality that Daggerfall had. And they REALLY need to do a better job with the way it runs. Even so, it's been fun so far.
Rating:
Summary: A 'real' world.
Review: This game is not just role playing, but role _living_. If you just want some random hack'n'slash there might be better titles for you, because the world of Morrowind is so complete, that you start having concerns, obligations and delights in this computer world. The thrill when sneaking through an old tomb with a crossbow ready is excelent, but playing Morrowind is also about the joy of the sunset seen from a rock on the coast and a relaxing beer in your favorit pub in Balmora. No other game will in the same way take your thoughts away from the 'official missions' and into single player roleplaying. The manual with the game is small, why? Because if you want some information about the game world you should look in the bookstore _inside_ the game world. :) :) :)
Rating:
Summary: Great Game, but Hoping For Patch Soon
Review: Probably the best computer role-playing game ever. Everything about the world is interesting. All the cities are wonderfully diverse. The people are diverse, and the react to you according to how you treat them, how you look, etc... The only problem: I have a newer system (2.2 GHZ Norwood Proccessor, 528 RAMBUS Ram, IBM 7200 RPM Deskstar Hard Drive, and a GForce3 Ti 128MB). Even with this system I am experiencing chopiness when I move between sections. I hope that the patch will decrease load time (I may just overclock the Video Card and see if that works). Overall great game.
Rating:
Summary: A Must for Mother's DAy
Review: Most mother's have never played a computer role playing game (if they are over 40). What a way to get them started! I have been eagerly awaiting this game and have not been disappointed. My sons convinced me that this was the BEST - cutting edge - wonderful graphics - I could become the woman of my own fantasy world! The idea that I can create my own FEMALE character with infinite powers makes this totally appealing. I feel like Wonder Woman - action - vision. The worlds go on and on. The prerelease accolades will pale in comparison to those received after purchasing and playing the game. Be ready for the most exciting RPG ever! If you don't own it, you will ask someone to loan it. If you love your mother, get her the collector's edition - she will know you really care. What fun! A Mother
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