Recent reviews by -BRH- Tangled up in Bluegrass

Of the fully 3D rendered Elder Scrolls games, Morrowind is the one where your stats actually matter, how you build your character matters. Oblivion ruined everything with the leveled world where every enemy gets stronger as you get stronger and ruined the leveling system. Skyrim threw Stats in the garbage entirely but I still find it more playable than Oblivion, which in my opinion has the worst RPG elements of the 3D rendered Elder Scrolls games (which is scary because Skyrim has barely to none RPG elements), but Oblivion is a fun setting and world and fun lore implications.

People who rate Morrowind poorly based on the combat have a poor imagination, but I can't really blame them. Your ability to land melee attacks is greatly dependent on your own stats as well as your enemy's -- when you miss point blank, that is simulating that perhaps your character isn't an expert swordsman or your enemy sidestepped the attack. The word "simulating" is very important because there is no physical dodge animation nor sound queue. In my ideal world, an Elder Scrolls 6 would throw the Skyrim perk trees in the garbage, reintroduce skills, classes, attributes and dicerolls, but add significantly more feedback to a missed attack or failed action. With the greater technology of today, surely they could figure out a good way to show that an attack was glancing or an enemy sidestepped.

The diceroll combat like I say is greatly dependent on stats. You can almost look at your weapon skill as a percent chance to hit, but it is also affected by other factors such as your own attributes, an enemy's attributes and skills, and spell effects. This gives a really genuine sense of progression that I just do not feel in Skyrim or Oblivion. The potential for attacks to fail makes successful attacks more gratifying. As your character lands more attacks, you skills level up. As your skills level up, your character lands more attacks. It's a feedback cycle that simulates your character being a breathing being in the world who is actually progressively getting more skilled. It is much more satisfying than putting another perk point into my One Handed skill so I will deal 5% more damage with One Handed.

Many reviewers say the combat is terrible. The combat is terrible in *all* of the 3D rendered Elder Scrolls games, including Skyrim. Dark Souls, Skyrim is not, and every character you make regardless of what race you pick feels exactly the same due to the lack of attributes and classes. Morrowind's replayability to me largely comes from the wide array of characters you can create when building a class, you can actually create varied characters, and the main story quest line has potential for ambiguity and player interpretation.

Shipped from Cyrodiil a prisoner, the player has just been pardoned of their crimes and told to follow orders lest they be marked a treasonous deserter. They are recruited into the Emperor's service, the missions given to the player are steeped in mystery right from the beginning. No quest markers means you will have to use that big organ between your ears to decide where to go based on written directions from the natives. The player doesn't even know what their objective is for about a half dozen quests into the main story, and then when a trusty superior offers some explanation to the plot, it just thickens.

The island of Vvardenfell is diverse in regions from marshes to grasslands to dry ash and volcanic lava rivers. The landscape is covered in hillsides and dotted with abandoned ruins of the mysteriously vanished Dwemer, shrines to Daedra lords, caves which house bandits and monsters, and ancient Dunmer burial crypts defended by the spirits of the honored family dead. The creatures of the land are very alien looking, not your typical wolves and bears. The cities are huge for a 3D Elder Scrolls game that isn't Daggerfall, the people have interesting things to say (even if different people of the same profession have very similar things to say, I'll take it over non-important characters in the later games having literally 1 dialogue option). The land of Morrowind, to me, is so much more intriguing and creatively cared for than the medieval setting of oblivion or the viking setting of Skyrim. The warriors of Vvardenfell craft their armor from tough bug-hide instead of iron. Many Dunmer wizards magically coax giant mushrooms to grow into the shape of living quarters and grand lodges. A main source of food for the native Dunmer is eggs -- not chicken eggs -- but eggs laid in subterranean caves by ugly creatures that the menial "egg miners" depend upon.

All of this combined with the ability to create varied custom spells, a long list of spell effects either forgotten or "outlawed" in the future, a culture well defined and unique, a slew of wonderful in-game books detailing topics from history to rumor, some portrayed as fiction and some portrayed as non-fiction. The native religion has many books dedicated to it, often conflicting -- you will have to decide for yourself what to believe.

You will have to decide many things for yourself, but the signposts will point the way.

No other game since Team Fortress 2 has gotten this many hours out of me. Factorio is the ultimate base-building game. It's tower defense, technology progression, and total automation rolled into one. Anything in the game that you can craft, you can automate. It's very satisfying to reach certain milestones in a game of Factorio, like when you finally have defenses automated for your base and you can breathe a sigh of relief for a while, or when you figure out oil processing for the first time, or when you get robots to help you build your base and keep you supplied. This is not a game for everyone, your first time playing it will test your problem solving skills, and if that's not for you then you will get frustrated with Factorio. But if you hang in there, everything will start to come to you. And eventually your brain will evolve while playing Factorio as you learn the game and get pre-planning skills, and you can see your factory sprawling ahead of you before it is even built.