I realize Overdue Review is an overdone segment on this blog, but I have tried to only do games that are still relevant. They’re games that are still popular, and often are still expanding with new content. Elder Scrolls Online is one of those. Again, this is available now on Xbox Game Pass. And worth playing, if you can get it on a great sale. I wasn’t blown away with this game by any means, but I do find it entertaining.
Elder Scrolls is an extremely popular fantasy franchise that started in 1994 with the roughly conceptual game “Arena.” Since then, it has become monstrously successful, the fifth iteration, “Skyrim,” being ported to just about every imaginable platform. It has always been a solitary experience, until Elder Scrolls Online came out in 2014.
If you’ve played Elder Scrolls, it’ll mostly help you with dialogues with NPCs, crafting, and understanding the lore. And if you like Elder Scrolls lore, like I do, there’s a good chance you’ll like this game. It has deep, rich legends to everything, and lots of books and such about to read and enhance your grasp of the world. The story is quite good, if you can keep track of the players involved.
The typical Elder Scrolls races are divided up into three factions, each faction with unique quest lines. You still all play the same main story, but side quests are different and you explore different worlds. Picking your beginning character class is very important, you have choices of how to spend your skill points, but you’re confined to the skill trees of your character class and race. I have tried all the classes, and my favorite so far is my Argonian templar, which is a paladin-like class. I do a lot of major healing, but I also wear heavy armor, which typically isn’t spellcaster armor, but this is of benefit because I dont have a tank who I can play with on the regular.
There are several expansions to the base game, but the base game alone will net you a lot of play, especially if you experiment with classes as I have. I hate giving a score to a game, because I don’t think it is a good representation of what is typically a complex work of art. But like I said at the beginning, this is a game I would only get on a good sale. If that helps. Worth playing, but don’t waste your money. The graphics are not the best, especially skill effects leave a lot to be desired, the leveling system is somewhat mundane, and there are a lot of things which are just unclear about game mechanics.
UPDATE: If you read my Rage 2 review, the short version is: great game, but Bethesda let a game be released so buggy i could not beat it. A hard-lock bug happened to me on my playthrough of ESO as well! Unbelievable. So disappointing.
HereticDerek 