Pros: Lots of freedom, music, being able to make your own class
Cons: Ugly characters, glitches, takes a long time to work up your skills
The Bottom Line: Even if you don't normally enjoy RPGs, you need to give this one a try. It lets you off the leash and allows you to do whatever you want
despina83's Full Review: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind for Xbox
Let it be made clear that I've never really had the patience for most RPGs. Honestly, Final Fantasy VIII was the only RPG that ever really appealed to me, and Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night, if you can count that as an RPG (well, action/RPG). The turn based battles and slow pace and "where the hell do I go now?" factor usually usually just aren't my cup of tea. And my attention span and patience aren't the greatest. So most would probably have recommended that I stay away from Morrowind. Actually, I was hooked on it and played it nearly exclusively for months.
You start out being released from prison and sent out to make your way in the world. You get to choose your race, from the usual suspects like orcs and dark elves. Each race has their own strengths and weaknesses, but most of the faces you get to choose from are just plain ugly. Then you select your class or you can create your own class. Classes include theif, knight, warrior, mage, assasin, and barbarian, to name just a few. Your skills increase as you level up throughout the game. The best way to gain skill points is by using that skill. For instance, if you want to be better at picking locks, go out there and PICK LOCKS. It's pretty simple, but it's a long, gradual process. In the beginning, you'll probably have a lot of trouble just making your sword connect with anything.
The thing that I love about The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is the freedom. You can do whatever you want, whenever you want. Unlike most RPGs (or games for that matter), every square inch of the world map is free for exploration from the very start, and let me tell you, this world is massive.
There is a "choosen one must save the world from a great evil" story in here somewhere, but to tell you the truth, I played for months without doing anything related to the main quest. And nobody cares. You don't have to. You can spend every day just exploring the countryside. There are several towns in the game in explore, from tiny fishing villages to huge majestic towns. Then you've also got dozens and dozens of caves, mines, grottos, shrines, and bandit hideouts to explore and loot. And speaking of loot, just about anything you see, you can take. From napkins and spoons on a table, to pillows on beds, to precious jewels and weapons. You can even pick pocket people and steal their items and gold right from their pockets. Of course, people are less than pleased when you take their stuff, and they may attack you and yell for the guards that patrol the towns.
If you don't feel like playing through the main quest or exploring Tamriel, you can earn gold by picking flowers, bark, and plants and selling them (they're useful in alchemy), diving for pearls and selling them for a hefty sum, making potions and selling them, ruthlessly slaughtering every character you meet and racking up a giant bounty, helping out village people in side quests, joining a guild such as the thieves or fighters guild, or collecting the game's many books and reading them. The possibilities are endless.
While the environments are quite beautiful, the character models and animations are rather atrocious (espescially for the XBox), but they get the job done. The sweeping score is gorgeous, but there are only about four or five tracks that repeat themselves over and over, and after hours and hours of playing, it can get a little
repetitive.
The game is also a bit glitchy. It depends on your XBox. Mine doesn't give me too many problems, but occasionally my character falls through the ground or suddenly finds themselves walking high above the ground with no visible means of support.
Overall, Morrowind is an excellent buy, espescially when you consider that the Game Of The Year Edition (which you can find dirt-cheap) adds even MORE places to explore and even MORE quests. Just because you have little patience or a general dislike of RPGs, you may really enjoy this. Few other games give you this amount of freedom to be good or evil, take whatever you want, go whereever you want, and take as long as you want without any regard for the main storyline.
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