4/5 ★ – Macian27's review of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Switch.

I feel so conflicted by Skyrim. I’ve played ~160 hours modded, 40 (and counting) on switch, and god knows how many days messing with mods and enbs. Is the combat good? No. Are the quests dynamic with good dialogue? No and no. Are the villages and cities believable? No. Are the characters believable? Hell no. To this day, a decade later, Skyrim is a buggy, incomplete mess of a game that shouldn’t be fun to play. The central loop of brain dead combat, loot, sell, and level up various skills is almost insultingly basic. But Skyrim has the most ineffable charm, is the perfect “x” factor. There are almost no meaningful choices in the game, but the moment to moment gameplay, world, art design, and music is so entrancing that I keep coming back. It’s really the ultimate stress reliever, and the variations in play style are subtle enough that I’m spending my first “beat the whole thing” vanilla game play through thinking about how I want to do my next playthrough. Update: abandoned my “completionist” run after forty hours and switched to a stealth archer build. I just manhandled the Ebony warrior and everything looks pathetic by comparison. Over 300 hours in and now all I want to do is buy a 3080 for rtx Skyrim.