The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is Overrated

This video is made by Maiq the Liar.

A decade later? skyrim was a decade ago!

Bringing up Divinity and Witcher 3 at the start of the video?!? Look I get the game gets a lot of praise but that sentence lost me totally different generation of games, I would be comparing it to games like Gothic

Btw fatigue affects almost everything early game. Including spell casting chance and merchantile skill

NPCs... yeah they are just NPCs, a stationary lore-vending machines. Being a member of fighters guild i am delivering alcohol 2 times to some miners. And getting a code book or something. Wanna join guilds? Okay. You are accepted. In Morrowind it is just like that. In Oblivion you have to get recommendations from all mages guilds in order to enter the college. Shurikens and darts? Nobody used it. Especially ebony or even daedric variants. Basically collector's items. Same goes to most artifacts. Leveling is basically random... as only random decides if your skills are advancing. As only successful actions make skills grow. Blocking is all random and with this system could be not included at all. Fighting becomes a lot easier when character is like level 10. And levels up faster as well. Fatigue system is utter BS. Player is most likely moving around by jumping. Meaning that the most dangerous foe at the start of the game is unarmed bum. In Oblivion unarmed attacks damaged both fatigue and health. On chop/slash/thrust yeah... also, slash is the slowest attack and thrust attack is fastest. Balance in Morrowind and item logic are non-existent. Tanto swings slower than dagger. Some items with better material have less enchant capacity. Daedric tower shield can be enchanted with 9 health point regen constant effect which renders player immune to lava or drowning. Acrobatics of 125 renders you immune to fall damage. Artifacts being meh, and some "basic" items like Daedric Battle Axe are just OP. Sujamma is OP. Fryse hags have winterwound daggers with 100 frost damage enchant and cost 1000 septims. Life ring/belt, are items that heal 10 health points per use. A character with enchantment skill of 25 can use them both up to 7 times, which means he can restore 140 health easily. And they cost no more than 15 septims, have charge of 15, which means they recharge over time quite fast.

I was agreeing to most takes until he said enchanters charge "reasonable prices".

14:39 this is not true. heavy armor is heavier and so it makes you more encumbered. the higher your encumberance the slower you character moves

combat was awful and that made it hard for me to get into it, but the world is so fascinating that like Gothic - I keep coming back.

I played morrowind all the way through for the first time a couple years ago. After researching how to properly buld a character i actually loved it way more than i expected to. After getting introduced to open world rpgs with skyrim. I went back to oblivion and struggled. I went back to morrowind and really struggled. Once i finally figured out how to properly do combat in morrowind i actually like it. Most of my problems with the game is the fact that classic Bethesda glitches mixed with how morrowind quests didn't give waypoints directly to the next person to talk to made it hard to tell if i was in the wrong place or if the game broke. Morrowind today is a game that you would do well to use the wiki or a walk through if you are getting stuck in a specific area. Considering it came out before i was born its pretty fucking good and if i had my way i would have bathesda remaster it today

Something i always hold uncertainty about is the demand for things out in an open world. Similar to compariong art and architecture, games make interesting choices in how to place content in a world that must necessarily include space that serves no purpose mechanically. Im pretty curious if there are rpgs out there that make some deliberate, interesting choices about how to place or not place things you can put your hands on or interact with to any extant. I like that you very briefly mention how oblivion is beautiful everywhere, as one can argue that a structure can serve an aesthetique purpose instead of a utility purpose. But i think one of the most interesting questions to engage is whether "purpose" must be served at all, and why. One game i do know that id be delighted to see you talk about is the 2005 pc game parhologic who has a notable npc who deals with the philisophical implications of aesthetic vs utility in buildings, even going so far as to build structures that dont make "sense" that you can traverse yourself in the games small world. Mushroom trees are pretty damn epic though.

mans doing the downvoted to hell speedrun

I played it for the 1st time for around 10 hours and it gets boring pretty quickly compared to Oblivion, Skyrim, Baldurs Gate 1,2 & 3

I think you are probably still being too charitable, lol. Bethesda make bad games with the only saving grace being that they are moddable and thus salvageable by immense community effort. I've spent many thousands of hours on their games, but never finished a single one of them, lol. Even with mechanics overhauls, visual improvements and extra content from mods, I always end up getting bored of the games and drop my runs part way through.

why have different kinds of attack? why have different kinds of armor? why have a different combat system with hand-to-hand compared to others? why have different weapons? answer; IT'S CALLED FUCKING ROLEPLAYING. And some of us roleplayers, are really sick of bethesda removing things, that makes us able to roleplay.

Spears are great in Morrowind, you can take absurd fights and not die due to the range diff.

On one hand, I almost entirely agree, but on the other, some things you said about the removal of skills just didn't make sense to me. Spears were pretty much the only melee weapons with any degree of variation, due to the fact they actually gave you a functional difference other than a damage number, in the form of extra range. I'd love to be able to skewer enemies from a distance and play footsies with enemies for an advantage in skyrim, rather than having to just block or dual wield to augment damage. Also, barely anyone complained about unarmored going away? I beg to differ, I think being able to play a quick foot monk or an extra elusive pure clothed thief, or a crazed nude barbarian would all be amazing additions to any subsequent games, but it's simply not viable. Giving a simple speed boost and or fixing the already existing dodge roll from oblivion could've been a perfect way to do it. Oblivion and Skyrim may have more set pieces and memorable moments, but one side effect, or simply a trend coming along with that, is what I feel is poorer writing. There is no good reason why you need to bring the Amulet of Kings to Jauffre rather than Baurus, there is no good reason for the companions quest line to force you to be a werewolf. That fighter's guild mission where you accidentally kill a town may have been memorable, but even if you recognize that something's wrong, you're not allowed to progress the quest until you kill them all, same with the black hand quests. Dawnguard is especially egregious for forcing you to hand deliver an elder scroll to the vampire lord, even if you talk to Isran about it, then having Isran reprimand you for being stupid, when you only did exactly what he said. Not even mentioning the fact that they don't immediately detain Serana, and that you aren't able to kill her for the entire game... those are the things that make me prefer Morrowind's writing overall, even if it was basic, at least I didn't have to facepalm every few quests.

My biggest problem with morrowind is how much time i have to invest in it compared to other great games out there.

Unfortunately, it's not "over a decade old", it's over TWO decades old. Things like the Witcher 3 & Divinity Original Sin shouldn't even be in the discussion for comparison IMO. You should go back and play Baldur's Gate, not the enhanced edition, the 1998 version of the game and perhaps some other RPGs from the time period and readjust your critical viewpoint, because like so many people today, you shouldn't judge things by today's standards, but by the standards of the time they were created. That would be like criticizing Van Gough for not being more modern like Picasso. Don't get me wrong, I'll freely admit that Morrowind has issues, whether do to developer choice or time, but it's not like we didn't know that at the time. We lamented that we didn't get the rest of Morrowind to explore, we didn't want a refund because it wasn't included. While a 3 year development window seems virtually impossible today, that was not the case 25 years ago. It's viewed so great because we didn't have anything like this available to us before and it had a great story and world that you could get immersed in like nothing ever before. The fact you want to compare it to games developed 15-20 years later is a testament to how much it got right and how much it influenced gaming. So no, I don't think it is overrated. Just because something isn't perfect, or people did things better later doesn't detract from how great it was to play over twenty years ago.

There is in YT comparison Gothic vs Morrowind. Gothic vipes the floor with MO in terms of worldbuilding.

Morrowind wasnt "better" graphically. but that isnt the point. its systems were dated and from a time when people understood that 30% chance actually meant you stood a good chance of missing 6 hits in a row. because the engine is rolling a D10 and getting a roll of 8+ is actually not going to happen often. so technically the newer systems are "better" or more user friendly, since a hit is always a hit, and the skill determines damage done. But morrowind was far superior. No one ever complains that you get to be the grand master of the everything guild in 4-6 easy quests. Nobody ever complained that you could make a magical ring with bound sword with constant effect to give your character a never ending weightless daedric sword. that springs out of your ring. Nobody ever complained that you could make your own spells, so you could literally do a Flaming pirate punch that exploded into a fireball when you punch someone. that shit was amazing.