45. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PS4)
I was one of those people that was all aboard the Skyrim hype train before it came out in 2011. I remember distinctly preordering it, and going to pick it up from an independent game store near where I lived at the time on 11/11/11. This was followed by my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, fighting over who got to play it on our PS3. I really enjoyed Skyrim when it came out, however I remember it being very buggy and certain missions just outright wouldn't work due to said bugs. Still, I really enjoyed it, did mostly a ton of side quests, and logged probably 60+ hours on it. However, I never actually beat Skyrim, meaning I never finished the main quest of the game. I wanted to finally change that so I went back and not only completed the main quest in the game, but also a good 30 or 40 side questlines.
Skyrim is an amazing game! It's fantasy world is breathtaking, it's gameplay is very good and a massive improvement over previous ES games, and most of all it does the open world thing so well that many other open world RPGs definitely used it as a template for their games. Still, despite my glowing praise of the game it still is not without its flaws, the biggest one being the main story quest line. It certainly starts out strong, however the longer it goes on, the more it just comes off as generic fantasy with few characters, scenarios, or interesting plot elements to keep you engaged and inspired. It just felt like i was being told, "go there", "talk to that guy", "get that item", "return that other item" and it just felt like running errands that got real old, real fast. I still thought it was pretty cool at times, but overall I enjoyed exploring Skyrim, doing side quests and guild missions, and just discovering interesting stuff while off the beaten path. That's where this games real value lies, which is a shame since the main story is where it should be. And while I did enjoy my time playing Skyrim 90% of the time, towards the end I kind of was ready to stop playing. I'm not exactly sure why that is, other than maybe me not wanting to continue the main story quests. But regardless, Skyrim is an amazing WRPG and I can only hope whenever ES6 finally does come out it lives up to how cool Skyrim is. (10/7/22) [39/50]