Poll: Morrowind: Should I get it?

[TristanBelmont]

It's probably the worst game in the series gameplay-wise, and that's not even because of dating like with Arena/Daggerfall. Because the combat is based on chance and RNGs, it's garbage, and being an Elder Scrolls game there's quite a bit of combat.

I don't recommend it.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Because the combat is based on chance and RNGs, it's garbage

How the hell does that follow? All it means is that success depends on forethought about your character development rather than your finger-twiddling skills. I'm not defending Morrowind as I'm not an Elder Scrolls guy, but it's a pretty dumb comment.

 

[Hafnium]

It's good but it hasn't aged well. Wouldn't recommend to most people today, though I really enjoyed it at the time.

 

[Vrach]

To clarify, the only elder scrolls/Bethesda stuff I've played is Skyrim, Fallouts 3 and New Vegas, a couple of hours into Fallout 2 and about ten minutes of morrowind on a friend's PC. Seeing it half price on Steam, would you guys say that it holds up well nowadays? Because from what I've played, I couldn't hit anything, not even a worm, so does it get better, or am I best off sticking with the modern Elder Scrolls games?

In short, is it still playable and fun given the competition of newer ES games?

In short, yes.

The only real hurdle is if you can handle the graphics. It's my favourite game, yet I still can't bring myself to play it again because I have an aversion to the old graphics and it takes some tuning to get it to a proper resolution, widescreen and such.

But other than that, it's a brilliant game. Don't worry about not being able to hit stuff, it's just what the system's like. You need to level up a skill to make it useful and melee skills initially have a bit of a ridiculous miss rate. It doesn't take long to level up a skill beyond that point however, but if it truly bothers you, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of combat overhaul mods out there if you wanna skip it.

The story's brilliant. If you're not too spoiled by having everything voice acted in the past decade, you'll love reading all the tidbits and the character dialogues are about 100 times better than they are in any other Bethesda game.

Morrowind also has one of the best systems in terms of magic, except... you have to two-hand magic casts. So you can't do it like you did in Oblivion/Skyrim, having a sword in one hand and a fireball spell in the other. However, this too, is moddable. That aside however, there are a LOT of fun spells to mess with and it's miles better than Skyrim's magic system, which I found so boring, I couldn't even be bothered with it, despite my love of magic in TES games.

It also has something no other recent TES game (and indeed, pretty much every other game) has. Actual directions. Now, your mileage may vary with how much you enjoy something like that, but it's the feature I miss most. Because not everything is voice-acted in Morrowind, the developers could afford to give you instructions on how to get to a certain location. Which means, your quests are not "go to the GPS-marked dot on the map", but "follow the road north and take the turn at the oddly shaped rock until you see a cavern" kind of thing.

 

[Vrach]

2) Boots of Blinding Speed
This is a quest reward obtained from Pemenie, who can be found on the west road out of Caldera. It's quite an easy quest even at low levels. The boots make you run very fast, but also blind you (haha). There are ways to wear the boots and still see, but you can just bind them and a normal pair of boots to hotkeys so can run blind and periodically switch to normal boots to see where you are going.

Unless something was wrong with my game, the boots don't entirely blind you, they just reduce your brightness a lot. I could still see where I was going just fine and coupled with a permanent levitation staff (weak levitation, but Speed is still a factor when levitating), you could easily just fly anywhere you want. But yes, you should definitely bind replacement boots, the boots offer pretty much no protection

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

Unless something was wrong with my game, the boots don't entirely blind you, they just reduce your brightness a lot. I could still see where I was going just fine and coupled with a permanent levitation staff (weak levitation, but Speed is still a factor when levitating), you could easily just fly anywhere you want. But yes, you should definitely bind replacement boots, the boots offer pretty much no protection

IIRC, those boots set the global vision modifier to .1, so you still had 10% visibility. You could find the craziest shit digging around in the TESCS. Morrowind was loaded with quirkiness.

 

[Stavros Dimou]

Why don't you try Oblivion instead ? The game of the Elder Scrolls series directly before Skyrim.
Oblivion is more recent and it will be closer to modern gaming standards in all aspects including graphics,audio etc.
It will be easier to get used in its ways and have fun with it than with Morrowind.

Many people will tell you that Morrowind is the best Elder Scrolls game,and perhaps they will even go as far as to say that it's the best RPG ever.
But let's put some people's nostalgia aside. Morrowind perhaps might have been an awesome and groundbreaking fresh game when it came out. But it came out in 2001,13 years ago. So before going to delve in it,remember that its a 13 year old game that its development started in the ps1 / n64 era.
With that in mind,expect a game that while it was quite good for its time,it is only going to be (perhaps) the best RPG the world had seen up to 2001. But since then the genre and industry moved forward.

I personally too got intrigued into getting it,but after I had played Oblivion and Skyrim,the more recent ones,because I was receiving all that hype/excitement from people on the internet who where saying that after Morrowind the series started dumbing down,and how hardcore and fun it was etc.

What I discovered was a game from another age - carrying all the usual for the era RPG stereotypes,tropes and things you would expect,like unforgiving difficulty,endless painfully slow walking on empty land,getting lost without having a map / compass system to make you clearly understand where you have to go etc,unvoiced npcs with long texts in the screen you have to read,etc.

I would say that Morrowind has way less action than the more recent TES games. Skyrim is an action-packed RPG to the fullest,something happens all the time and you swing your sword,and they managed to condense lots of content like enemies,npcs,dungeons and quests in less space,something that unofficially I call "content density". Well the most negative aspect of Morrowind for me personally is that the 'content density' number of Morrowind is way lower than Skyrim or Oblivion,meaning you will be walking a lot more in the wilderness without anything important / interesting happening.
I remember trying to get into Morrowind,and instinctively I started doing what I would be doing in Skyrim / Oblivion too, which is to just get away from the starting area to any direction and expect to find the adventure on my way.
Well it wasn't like that. I've been walking with my slow character for like 10 or 15 minutes to different directions,without meeting a quest-giving NPC or dungeon or any place or person of interest,getting bored with it and not knowing what to do next,until I eventually found a cave. Once I found it I thought of getting inside to explore,and there I was introduced to the unforgiving nature of the game,'cause this was the cave of a bandit who apparently was a much higher level than my character,and butchered me in seconds. Thankfully I saved before starting the fight when I found the cave,so I tried again and again to beat that bandit but couldn't.He was too powerful for my weak character. I then decided to leave the cave with a very bitter taste in my mouth,as it was the only thing of interest I had found until that time in the game,and I decided to look for another place of interest. I was wandering around the wilderness for about 20 more minutes,without finding anything of importance and getting lost,and I gave up.

My suggestion to you if you haven't played Oblivion yet but you like The Elder Scrolls universe is to just play Oblivion.
Has lot more content density and it will keep bombarding your journal with quests so fast that you will soon end up having so many things to do you will forget what the main quest / mission was all about.

 

[Quickman]

If you enjoy the annoying screech of demon birds then yes, by all means purchase it.

On a serious note, it has more depth and customization options then Skyrim. Less broad appeal, more nerd appeal. I cannot speak for how dated it may seem as I have not played it in a decade, but by all means give it a shot if you wish to.

 

[Bad Jim]

2) Boots of Blinding Speed
This is a quest reward obtained from Pemenie, who can be found on the west road out of Caldera. It's quite an easy quest even at low levels. The boots make you run very fast, but also blind you (haha). There are ways to wear the boots and still see, but you can just bind them and a normal pair of boots to hotkeys so can run blind and periodically switch to normal boots to see where you are going.

Unless something was wrong with my game, the boots don't entirely blind you, they just reduce your brightness a lot. I could still see where I was going just fine and coupled with a permanent levitation staff (weak levitation, but Speed is still a factor when levitating), you could easily just fly anywhere you want. But yes, you should definitely bind replacement boots, the boots offer pretty much no protection

You probably had magicka resistance. Bretons and Orcs have some as a race perk. There are also a few items with it.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

Second best in the series after Oblivion in my great opinion. So get it.

 

[TristanBelmont]

Because the combat is based on chance and RNGs, it's garbage

How the hell does that follow? All it means is that success depends on forethought about your character development rather than your finger-twiddling skills. I'm not defending Morrowind as I'm not an Elder Scrolls guy, but it's a pretty dumb comment.

Because it's rather frustrating to wail on a rat for five minutes and never actually cause it damage despite your axe/sword/whatevuh physically touching the enemy when you swing. It's a broken system.

 

[UMID]

I've been replaying Morrowind for a few weeks now. I can recommend setting the difficulty low starting out, and ramping up as your skills improve. Because as TristanBelmont stated, the frustration of being weak in combat can easily put you off the game.

For my part, I'm actively trying to break the game. I've been minmaxing like a mofo up to the point that I can pretty much cruise around, explore and enjoy the lore and atmosphere. Whenever I feel like more of a challenge, I dial up the difficulty.

That's me though, I play all TES games for the love of lore. If I want visceral medieval-style combat I'd rather go for Mount and Blade.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Because the combat is based on chance and RNGs, it's garbage

How the hell does that follow? All it means is that success depends on forethought about your character development rather than your finger-twiddling skills. I'm not defending Morrowind as I'm not an Elder Scrolls guy, but it's a pretty dumb comment.

Because it's rather frustrating to wail on a rat for five minutes and never actually cause it damage despite your axe/sword/whatevuh physically touching the enemy when you swing. It's a broken system.

I think rather it is your imagination which is broken, if you can't understand that physical contact is only representative of a combat attempt and success in hitting depends on your in-game character's skill.

 

[Mr Fixit]

Yeah I would, but I still love the game.

Everyone always hates on the combat, but I was killing things straight off the boat. All you need to do is find your races strengths & combine that with the right class(always make your own) & right sign(Steed all the way). Oh & steal everything in that first town Seyda Neen & sell it for some equipment. Kill some mudcrabs & stay out of the water damn it.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

Because it's rather frustrating to wail on a rat for five minutes and never actually cause it damage despite your axe/sword/whatevuh physically touching the enemy when you swing. It's a broken system.

It isn't a broken system in the slightest. You're meant to use your imagination to fill in the details of its combat system. If you swing your sword and it misses, that indicates that your enemy managed to dodge the blow or, due to a lack of skill, your character missed. In this sense, Morrowind is a true RPG rather than an action RPG because it's dependent on your character, not you yourself. That's what separates Morrowind from it's more action-oriented sequels.

If you don't like the system, then fine, but don't call it broken if you apparently don't know what you're talking about. Some friendly advice there.

 

[Vrach]

You probably had magicka resistance. Bretons and Orcs have some as a race perk. There are also a few items with it.

Aha, could be! I think I was boring enough back then to play a Breton

 

[Superbeast]

I'm very mixed on Morrowind - I only have the basic game, and only on Xbox (I don't have any of these new-fangled consoles) so modding is very difficult.

If anything, my biggest problem with the game is that there is far too much choice, and I am always restarting because something feels "wrong", or I have levelled up the wrong skills (that requires some manipulation - putting enough points into minor skills to get the maximum 5 stat increases in a particular skill without increasing your major skills and hitting a level cap far too early).

What kinds of races and classes (Well, skills - I am aware enough to realise that it is better to create your own class than pick a standard one) are recommended for decent play?

In the past I have gone for Nords with Axes or Swords (and minimal magic as it seems to be a complicated system) and Heavy Armour (for the best defence when you can't hit something). I always end up not being able to carry enough (despite huge endurance and strength) to really complete many of the early missions/a decent looting spree, and still manage to get killed off by rats, scrib or the damned slaugherfish. Heck, the most annoying part was exploring an area at levels 1-4 and encountering the sodding fire-demons or ice-demons that my character could do nothing about, and not being able to run away fast enough! Heck, I tended to find I was progressing well through the Guild missions but couldn't complete the basic missions for the main dude (trying to get into the ancient citadel ruin).

Mind you, one trick I learned was to 1) steal the key on the shelf in the room where you get your papers, before getting them (and dropping it before you are caught) - this allows you to get into the armoury for a serious looting spree early on and 2) get a hold of Mark and Recall somehow (spells, scrolls, enchanted gear) to set up a teleportation point in Caldera to sell stuff to Creeper for maximum money.

It is certainly an odd game - graphics aren't brilliant and Cliffracers are annoying as hell (especially travelling to the North to find the ship full of pillows to complete part of an early mission that for some reason does not appear in your journal), and it is very easy to get lost and run into creatures you can't kill. But it is very addictive and very interesting to find a game where you really have to work the game to find out what you are meant to be doing, locate decent items and so forth. I would at least recommend giving it a try, and getting a good few hours/levels into the game so that basic tasks/spells can be carried out more successfully than not, to see what you think of it.

So yeah, I think it is worth giving it a go, and cheekily taking any chance you get to try and get some advice/help !

 

[Odbarc]

I liked Oblivion but Morrowind was pretty cool too. I didn't play it for very long but I did end up stealing items and selling them to merchants for about 3 days.
Can't say much for the gameplay, I didn't do much else.

 

[Seracen]

In answer to the poll: Morrowind is amazing! As for whether you should play it...that depends on how much you need modern gameplay concessions, voice acting, and graphics...

Visually, Morrowind is still great, but it shows its age, esp when compared to later ES games. Gameplay CAN be unforgiving, depending on your class and whether you like to grind out levels (I ended up breaking the gameplay balance by hopping around and spamcasting in the middle of nowhere). Finally, there's an awful lot of text to read through, in the interactions that aren't voiced.

Again, no problem for me, but different people's mileage may vary. However, the main reason you SHOULD NOT play vanilla Morrowind...

There is a total conversion mod for Oblivion that includes Morrowind. I never played it, b/c I'd beaten Morrowind by the time the mod released. I am uncertain as to the status of the total conversion mods for Skyrim...but I believe they are doing Oblivion AND Morrowind within Skyrim.

So, if you prefer the better graphics and modern gameplay, go that route. Oblivion is still imminently playable with mods and graphical overhauls, even if Skyrim spoils us somewhat.