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I feel like I'm in the vast minority when I say that the game is heavily overrated
People make paragraph long rants on why skyrim is an amazing masterpiece, all while Todd sweats heavily behind the curtain, fearful for the day people realise he just bashed together a bunch of random shit to create a bloated mess
Nah, you're right.
As someone who kinda liked morrowind, and was disappointed with oblivion, skyrim just fell flat for me. The engine got better, but there just was less and less substance to it each game. Ignoring the content, just the base mechanics were stripped down to almost nothing.
I've got a friend who is experiencing oblivion for the first time after years and hundreds of hours of skyrim. They're becoming increasingly upset at skyrim the more they learn about what was in oblivion but was removed.
You're maybe in the vast minority of normies, but I think a lot of gamers have actually realized how lame Skyrim is. There's certainly hours long rants on Youtube breaking down each little issue the game has, as well as examining it from the perspective of modern game design and as a failure of the Elder Scrolls brand, but beyond that; is anyone really holding up vanilla Skyrim as the pinnacle of gaming any more? Even Bethesda realized it needs mods to be enjoyable.
To be fair, Morrowind needs mods to even be PLAYABLE
Skyrim is one of my most played games in my library. It's a 6/10. Better sandbox RPG games in the same genre just do not exist.
Skyrim was released in 2011, originally designed for the PS3 and XBOX 360. According to Statista, over 60 million copies have been sold as of June 2023. Regardless of any subjective feelings we might have, let's agree that the game couldn't have been this popular based on hype alone, so there must be something that makes it special.
I suspect that what you're experiencing is not an overrated game, but the source material for a broad swath of games that have improved and iterated on many of the mechanics and ideas that were presented in Skyrim (and Morrowind, Oblivion, etc).
It's like saying that you're a fan of sitcoms, but you hate Seinfeld and Friends. Those shows weren't perfect, but they created demand for a new type of show that has been modified and improved in numerous ways since they were aired.
Similarly, Skyrim is far from perfect, but when you put it into context, it is easier to see why it was successful. In 2011, Skyrim was THE option for an open world rpg with skill progression, decisions matter, and a crafting system. It was released in the same year as the original dark souls, Portal 2, battlefield 3, and Minecraft. If I'm completely fair, the Witcher 2 also came out in 2011, but had a more linear storyline, and was also one of the first games where your decisions mattered.
The fact that we're even having a discussion about this game in 2025 should be a testament to its success. While I haven't played it in years, I'd have a hard time agreeing that it is overrated. It certainly isn't underrated, so maybe we could agree that it is appropriately rated, given the relevant context?
Regardless of any subjective feelings we might have, let’s agree that the game couldn’t have been this popular based on hype alone, so there must be something that makes it special.
by that logic, mc donalds is the best restaurant in the world.
They don’t let just anybody open a restaurant in the Louvre.
Appeal to tradition fallacy
Just because something seemed good back then, doesn't mean it aged well. This is especially bad for skyrim because Bethesda made oblivion and new Vegas before it
Eh... It's boring...
Any decent DnD session or literally writing your own story surpasses it in my opinion
My first impression of Skyrim blew me away.
I came down from the hills early in the morning into a sleepy little village. Feeling peckish, I struck a nearby chicken to harvest it for meat, and was immediately made an enemy by the village. Without any weapons I ran towards a small bridge, but got surrounded on both sides. I jumped into the river and let the tide carry me all the way down away from the angry mob down onto a snowy plain where a blizzard was taking shape. I wandered through the blinding snow heading for the tree line, whereupon a met a frost troll herding goats. To my relief he ignored me, but as my hunger took hold of me, I decided to try to take a goat for myself. For the next 6 hours he stalked me across the landscape. I ran through woodland and mountain and lake to escape him and still he came in relentless pursuit. I ran upstream away from his lumbering stride, swam through parts unknown until I came to a town, where to my relief, there was an armed guard. I tried to beg him for help, but he recognised me from somewhere and took to arms instead, as the troll continued to stalk me from the otherside. Trapped between certain death, I jumped into the river once more, and to my everlasting relief I saw a fleet of guards attacking the troll. He made mincemeat of them, and then turned to me and smiled.
I think at this point it's a lot of nostalgia. But the game does have a lot in it, so once the jank becomes endearing rather than off-putting, it is easy to lose yourself in my experience. There are still heaps of quests and parts of the game I haven't finished. And if I want to replay something, I can approach it very differently each time.
I think it's an okay game. I think it was the best available game with mass appeal (see overlap of marketing with early Game of Thrones) during formative years for a lot of people, which extended and amplified the volume of discourse.
100%
To be clear, I think the game is still fine, but like the worst kind of fine. Like mediocre fine. Like I find the vast majority of quests absolutely mind numbingly boring, even if they technically add to the experience and function perfectly well
People point at the fact that you can walk in practically any direction and stunble on a quest or landmark, but I really have to ask how many times they've actually done that?Let alone how many have gone on to complete the quest or dungeon once found
Almost all quests and dungeons, outside of the main story/side quests, felt practically identical. It gets to the point where you feel like you're forcing yourself into cave number 196 just to get another level up so you can pick locks slightly easier, meanwhile all the enemies become slightly beefier, undoing all your progress
And don't get me started on the levelling system. I hate how enemies don't really get harder the further into the game you are, but rather they just have more health and damage. When you can barely go back to some bandits at the start of the game after 15 hours it really feels defeatist
Compare this to botw and elden ring. Yes, they have a similar problem where their shrines and catacombs started feeling samey towards the end (and on subsequent playthroughs), but each one still had a unique gimmick, making them stand out amongst their peers. I love replaying each one every now and then (gone through botw 6 times, elden ring 3, started skyrim 15+ times and completed 0)
The most fun I'll always have with Skyrim is wistfully thinking what my next character should be, before playing for ~2 hours, and remembering all my problems with the game