Easily one of my favorite games of all time. Never have I experienced a game with this unparalleled level of immersion, where it's so incredibly easy to completely lose yourself in its world, which is accomplished with a mixture of a sublime sense of progression and pacing, rewarding open-ended exploration, engaging mechanics, high degree of interactivity, inventive lore, a memorable soundtrack, and beautifully creative alien landscapes and architecture that give the game a unique identity and atmosphere.

The game has a fascinatingly bizarre world, and it does a superb job of fleshing out the history, politics, conflicts, and culture of the Dunmer people. It is by far the best game in the series in terms of worldbuilding. Everything about its universe is very experimental, surreal, and "out-there", and it's a shame that Bethesda abandoned this philosophy in later titles, since this is one of the best things about the game, and all of it really helps to immerse the player in the amazingly interesting and strange place that is Morrowind.

This is a game that will demand a lot of your attention and dedication, and is definitely not made for those with short attention spans who can't handle slower-paced RPGs. Instead of mindlessly following a quest marker, you will have to actually pay attention to dialogue and use your wits to traverse the map and complete your objectives. If reading lots and lots of text, following written directions, and trying to get yourself into the mindset that your character would have in-world by being engaged to what's going on around you doesn't sound fun to you, then Morrowind is probably just not your cup of tea and you won't have a good time with it. The mentality you need to have when getting into a game like this isn't too dissimilar from when you want to sit down and read a good book. Personally, I find this to be one of its best characteristics.

Morrowind can be quite unforgiving and doesn't do a lot of hand-holding, but that's part of what makes it so special. Its mechanics have a lot of depth to them, and allow for a lot of experimentation and player freedom (I think this video does a great job of exemplifying this). I absolutely love the RPG elements, which I think are the perfect balance between complexity/depth and not being too unwieldy like Daggerfall when it comes to the stats, skills, attributes and so on, alongside the layered clothing and armor system, which all make building and progressing your character one of the most engaging things about the game. I also love the amazing systems in place with almost infinite possibilities like Enchanting and Spellmaking, as overpowered as those can be.

Now, despite all the great things about it, it's far from perfect. The game is quite clunky and hasn't aged well, both graphically and gameplay wise. If you're coming from Skyrim or Oblivion, it's almost certain you're gonna have a hard time learning the game's ropes, especially the archaic combat system. The game is REALLY unbalanced and some aspects of it can be really frustrating while others are far too easy, since there are many exploits that the player can abuse to break the game. Also, even though the soundtrack is one of the game's strongest aspects, it can sometimes be kind of repetitive due to a relatively small quantity of tracks.

Most NPCs in the game are fairly generic due to copy-pasted lines and basically just serve as lore vending machines, not to mention being extremely dumb and robotic and basically lacking any sort of AI. The wiki-style dialogue system makes it nearly impossible to roleplay your character through dialogue choices in the same way that you would in other RPGs, so you shouldn't go in looking for that experience. You play a game like Morrowind to feel completely absorbed into its rich fantasy world, learn about its history, explore and adventure, join different guilds, build your character, experiment with its mechanics, become more and more powerful, etc. Just like any of the other TES games, you shouldn't really go in looking for a story with lots of different moral choices and branching paths, since that's just not the point of the game.

Let me also just take a moment to give potential new players a few important tips to avoid frustration. First, SAVE OFTEN. Second, make sure to only use weapon types that your character specializes in, in other words, don't try to use the crappy Iron Dagger that you get at the start if you didn't pick Short Blade as a skill when creating your character. Instead, do some quests in Seyda Neen to get some gold since they usually don't involve any combat, talk to Caius Cosades in Balmora to get some more starter money, and then use that cash to buy some decent gear that your character can actually use. Third, you need to keep in mind that, unlike Skyrim, Fatigue is an important mechanic in this game (especially during the early game). If your Fatigue is low when you enter combat, your character is much more likely to miss their attacks, and running and jumping everywhere will quickly deplete it. So, try to carry some Restore Fatigue potions with you, and if you see an enemy ahead try to either start walking slowly to regenerate a bit, or just rest for an hour in-game, which will completely refill your bar. Fourth, always make sure to hold down left-click and charge your attacks until their animation is complete instead of spamming them since charged attacks generally do much more damage than fast attacks, which are really only viable when using Short Blades. Finally, don't be afraid to look up how certain mechanics work or to consult an online world map[gamemap.uesp.net] for the game, Morrowind came out during an era when the player was expected to look at external resources to play the game and it came packaged with a manual[assets.ctfassets.net] explaining a lot of the game's systems and a physical map pointing to all of the major locations. You could also try giving this short video a watch for some more very useful tips, it doesn't have any spoilers and will not ruin your experience by teaching you exploits and item locations like a lot of other guides do.

Last but not least, I would strongly recommend installing OpenMW[openmw.org] and following this guide[modding-openmw.com] to enjoy an enhanced, stable, and mostly bug-free version of the vanilla game on modern systems.

With all of that said, Morrowind is a masterpiece, albeit a very flawed one. If you persevere through all of its problems, what awaits you is one of the most incredibly engrossing and rewarding experiences you will ever have in an RPG. 8/10.