Elder Scrolls: Skyrim [DARGONS EDITION]

As a side note, make sure you pick up some Falmer weapons while looting quest caves in the beginning. As easy-to-obtain weapons go, they're pretty damn good, and they'll probably last you through 20+ hours of playtime. And take a couple of Ancient Nord weapons home, too (also easily obtained in the beginning) as you can use them to craft some pretty good weapons at the Skyforge later on.

The good:

*The game is fucking awesome. It's like they used everything that was great about Morrowind and Oblivion and left out everything that sucked (the most noticeable exception being horses; more on that further down.) Skyrim is so easy to become immersed in. And damn if it isn't beautiful!

*It's actually fun to level (most) skills now, as opposed to the 'grinding' feeling I often had while playing the previous games.

*The crafting system is much improved from previous installments, although I do miss spellmaking at times. Smithing and gear upgrades are awesome though.

*The Radiant AI upgrade is pretty amazing. NPC's actually do react to your decisions now (unlike in Oblivion where they were supposed to, but generally didn't.) The game also uses dynamic logic to micromanage how everyday events will play out depending on various things you've already done.

*The general dialog and scripted events are so much better than in previous Elder Scrolls games.

*The random ruins and caves are no longer incredibly boring.

*The majority of the sidequests are very interesting, and there seems to be very few FedEx quests.

The bad:

*The new interface is quirky at times, although it does look good and is far more streamlined than Oblivion's.

*Horses are pretty much useless unless you want to scale mountains (they can climb steeper inclines than you can on foot.) You can get anywhere pretty fast by simply hiring a cart then walking whatever short distance is left, and your companions can't keep up with you when you're riding a horse because they cannot ride horses themselves. They left horse combat out too, again, so you have to dismount to return blows when you're being attacked in the wilderness. That's not even mentioning the fact that horses can die and they tend to pull a lot of aggro (if a Dragon happens to spawn in your area and targets you, you may as well say goodbye to your horse.) Horses also have no inventory, again, which was a major letdown for me. As a side note, you can still fast-travel on horses when over-encumbered, so maybe they're not totally useless.

*It's REALLY easy to make huge piles of gold if you follow the pick-up-everything-that-isn't-nailed-down approach. I currently have ~20,000 gold in my pocket and I own the Whiterun house with all the upgrades (a combined total of 6800 gold) on top of that. I feel like I never really have to work for anything in the game that isn't skill- or level-related.

*The Dragons are far too easy after you've killed two or three of them.

*The Dragons are far too easy after you've killed two or three of them. Seriously.

*Marriages seem like an afterthought. They offer no real benefits except a meal you can collect once a day, a positive status effect after sleeping next to your wife, and a 100 gold bonus (profit from a store she supposedly runs in your absence) that you can get from your wife each day. They could have gone in a much better direction and made it more like Fable, with divorces, children, etc.