What most people were expecting was "The God of all gaming!" I expected a Bethesda game, it seems my expectations were more than met, this is why I don't buy into hype, because that way I end up not being all bitter once a game is released, I just get to laugh at the flaws I expected and be pleasantly suprised when it works out better than I expected in some way or another.
For the record, I got it as a gift from a friend, on release day, I personally was planning to wait till a steam sale around christmas, but apparently that just won't do...
Now, my thoughts on the game thusfar, combat feels much better, and I can smack shit with my shield(so much more worthwhile HAVING A SHIELD in Skyrim) also, crafting in it is well planned out, it works and I get to make my Warrior/Smith character I've been wanting to make, also unlike oblivion, where if you are not a marksman by trade and specialized to all hell with a bow it becomes completely useless to you, in Skyrim it still kills shit even though I have NO PERKS in bow use at all, and is thus useful in situations where I feel it might benefit me to kill a deer or something so i don't hafta buy leather to make armour with.
Also, dual wielding is fun, Magic is far far better in execution, and FEELS less crap.
Oh also almost forgot to mention unlike oblivion, you can "un-notch" an arrow by hitting R so you don't hafta losse the damn thing into the ground and pick it up, if you don't want to take that specific shot, or have prepared another arrow when you really should have switched to your axe, which has happened to me, where I know I'll miss if I take the shot and probably die because I won't be able to adequately defend myself in melee.
Yeah the people still generally look like soulless automatons when they talk to eachother in groups standing in the courtyard or whatever, and there's almost no life in the cities/towns at all, but I EXPECTED that, so it's one of the things I laugh about.
Still, I do wish they'd have taken some inspiration from games that have copious foot traffic in their cities and at least made some people patrol random paths(other than guards) to make cities feel like there was at least something going on as you pass through. Then again I never spend much time hanging around in town unless I'm selling/crafting something at the local smithy, or turning in a bounty on that latest bandit mop up that I picked up due to my tendancy to murder bandit camps for fun while doing other things anyway.
I say it was better than expected, not as good as it could have been, and yes overhyped to the point of no return, but it fills a niche in my gaming needs and it does it fairly well.
I give it a rating of 8/10(when compared to their other titles) and comparative to hype I would assign it a 4.5/10, I guess as my personal opinion meter I would say:
Flaws are visible, but contained and not game ruining.
It's stable(at least on my machine)
The gameplay flows smoothly combat horse riding, the works.
The environment well built, it lacks the obvious immersion breaking scaling of it's predecessor, and it has actual wolf PACKS not just a bunch of singular wolves meandering about randomly for no given reason.
Leveling system is much improved, and works seemlessly, allowing greater character development, less hassle.
Menus although better designed than oblivion show their consolefication as they don't scroll following the mouse they only scroll properly when using a gamepad or the keyboard to navigate them, which is definately the sign of some shitty porting(Bad Bethesda, BAD!*hits with rolled up newspaper*)
Hell, I'm not a game reviewer, maybe I should start, but not today already too long of a post,
The game is fine, not great but good better than personally expected.
