Chrys's Grove of Nonhuman Shenanigans

Me when I sneak in my friends' pockets to see what they do all day

Skyrim Review: Skyrim as a whole was solidly okay. Many mechanics I thoroughly enjoyed: the alchemy had one of my favorite implementations outside of games specifically focused on alchemy, and returning home every time I filled my carrying capacity to take a brief respite to forge and enchant and shop and grind levels in all those ways was always a lovely change of pace from the dank crypts throughout the rest of the game. Being able to become a werewolf or serve daedra or become a master thief or assassin were also fun side quests. However, as a whole, the game lacked a ton of lore, story, or novelty to really keep me hooked like I had hoped. Only about 10% of my playtime was actually spent working on the main story, and the rest was split between random exploring and achievement hunting, and a handful of other questlines centered around other factions in the game. Conceptually, I really liked the Companions (a pack of werewolf warriors), and the Thieves Guild, but in practice, a majority of all faction quests kinda blended into the same homogenous "go here, maybe do a dungeon or similar challenge, come back". It was fun for a time, but I was only about halfway through my total playtime, if that, before I was going "okay, let's hurry this along." Overall, the game had a lot of openness to different character archetypes at a glance (I went for a khajiit master thief, focused on dual wielding and light armor), with a ton of possibilities for character progression in both the clash of steel and the banality of town life. However, most of those same character options were fairly shallow and not all that different in practice, and it didn't scratch that RPG itch for every character/run to feel like its own unique experience. Overall, a solid 5.5/10

a bit later than I had hoped, but I finally remembered to write my Skyrim review x3