Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind Review – Spoiler Free
The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind is a new addition to the world of Elder Scrolls Online. Players who are already deep into the Elder Scrolls universe and lore as well as those already playing the online MMO will know what they can expect here with this game. Those who have played The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind in the past, will also probably know the world of Morrowind quite well and will have a little bit of a nostalgia feeling visiting everything again.
For myself, I have only experienced a little bit of the Elder Scrolls universe in the past. My only time with any of the games was with The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim and while I enjoyed that game a lot, I wasn’t so sure how it would be online and being a person not so into online MMO games, I skipped buying The Elder Scrolls Online. I was however lucky enough to receive a copy of The Elder Scrolls: Online Morrowind to review for this site and was interested to check it out. Luckily you don’t need to have played any of the previous online parts of the game to enjoy Morrowind, you can get straight into the new sections from the start.
The first time I started up the game, I felt immediately immersed in the world of The Elder Scrolls. It seemed to me that there was a lot of attention to the details made by the developers to maintain the lore of the series of which the game was set in.
There are books scattered all over the place telling stories, there’s countless characters for you to meet, many lands to explore. The world of Morrowind is vast and full of things to encounter.
Like many fantasy stories, your character will be placed at the centre of what is a great journey. In the game you will pursue quest after quest, each one improving the lives of the citizens of Morrowind and everything there. It’s good really and slowly as you defeat enemies you level up, learn new abilities and become stronger. Eventually you’ll be so strong that you won’t shy away from any quest. It’s all about you and your journey in Morrowind, you explore, meet people and get really strong!
I enjoy the story of the game and all the lore that’s there for a player to devour. But as an online game it can be at times a bit odd. Sometimes you can see other players doing the same quests you are. This to me kind of takes away the special feeling that a single player game has, for example something like Uncharted. It’s only you doing the tasks there, you don’t all of a sudden see another Nathan Drake with a different outfit going through the same area. To me this slightly takes away from the main story line’s feeling. At times the game felt like to me that I was in a Morrowind theme park and I would chat to different people in the land while I visited. It’s cool, but at times it’s like being in a theme park where the workers say the same thing to everyone that comes by and give all the visitors the same quests.
The battling system is good. For what I’ve experience with MMO’s it’s not anything I would say is bad at all. There’s sword fighting, magical abilities and special animals you can bring with you to help you take down enemies. It’s fun to get through fights and as you get stronger things are more satisfying. As a person who is more of a casual player of this series, there is quite a steep learning curve though and it took me quite a long time to figure out what I was even doing in the battles or how to stay alive. But if you put some time into these things, it becomes easy after time and a bit of fun.
The graphics in this game were impressive and I found them to be better than I thought they would be. I was playing the game on PC on max settings and could run it all quite easily. There seemed to be a high level of attention to detail put into the world of Morrowind. I’ve read online in a few places where people are saying that they did feel some nostalgia walking through the world again. I felt nothing as I haven’t played it before, but from the beginning at least visually, everything looked impressive.
My favourite thing about the game was the music. Much like my time with Skyrim, I loved listening to all of the tunes. Even if they were just playing when nothing really interesting was happening, I enjoyed it. There’s a lot of good tracks in this game to listen to and at times they do help to give the feeling that I am in a massive online fantasy realm.
Overall I enjoyed my time with this game. Even though MMO’s aren’t really my type of game, I could see that there was a lot of content in here for someone who purchases it to devour over time. There’s a high level of attention to detail with the world and things felt like they were all just right. The questing system and the main story is interesting enough, even though at times with other players running around I felt like I was in a theme park, it was all somehow still pretty good. It’s a game though that you have to put a lot of time into it to get things right, but if you do, you’ll master the combat quickly and have a good time exploring Morrowind.
