Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Feature Scores
Explore all 81 feature scores for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, organized into pros and cons.
Scores by Feature
Summary
81 reviewed features-
Very positive 4.5-5.029 (36%)
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Positive 3.5-4.426 (32%)
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Neutral 2.5-3.412 (15%)
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Negative 1.5-2.411 (14%)
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Very negative below 1.53 (4%)
Pros
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Exploration is Skyrim’s clearest consensus strength. Roads, caves, ruins, random encounters, hidden quests, scenery, and unexpected detours constantly reward curiosity and make simple travel feel like play.
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Use-based skill growth, perks, and classless development are among the game’s most praised systems. They make character growth intuitive, flexible, and tightly connected to how the player actually behaves.
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The soundtrack is one of the strongest points of agreement in the entire set. Its exploration themes, battle music, choral pieces, and Dragonborn motif repeatedly heighten atmosphere, emotion, and discovery.
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Across original, remastered, portable, and modern retrospective coverage, Skyrim is consistently described as highly enjoyable and hard to put down. Even critical reviews tend to return to how much fun the overall experience remains.
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Skyrim gives players extraordinary freedom to ignore the main story, change builds, join factions, wander, craft, steal, explore, or simply live in the world. That agency is central to nearly every positive assessment.
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Few attributes receive stronger agreement: alternate builds, faction paths, huge content depth, mods, portable versions, and self-directed role-playing keep people returning for years and even hundreds of hours.
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The open world is one of Skyrim’s most universally praised achievements: dense, scenic, explorable, and filled with reasons to leave the road. It still serves as a benchmark for player-driven fantasy exploration.
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The game is packed with guilds, dungeons, side quests, crafting, exploration, homes, books, random encounters, expansions, and role-playing diversions. Its breadth is one of the strongest points of agreement across the sources.
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Environmental detail is a defining strength, from weather and mountains to towns, dungeons, waterfalls, clutter, and small interactive objects. The world’s density repeatedly makes wandering feel worthwhile.
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Skyrim’s frozen region, cities, factions, politics, histories, architecture, and ambient details form one of its most celebrated strengths. The world often feels like a character in itself and gives exploration lasting meaning.
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Questing is a major strength, especially in guild and optional storylines where chance encounters can blossom into long, surprising adventures. Mundane fetch quests exist, but the best side content is repeatedly considered stronger than the main plot.
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Skyrim remains exceptionally easy to get lost in because its world, weather, sound, routines, role-playing freedom, and environmental detail work together. Bugs and repeated NPC behavior can break the spell, but the broader immersion survives.
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Skyrim can absorb hundreds of hours through quests, exploration, character builds, expansions, and mods. Several reviewers still had major content left after dozens or even more than a hundred hours.
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Perk trees strongly reward experimentation and specialization, with meaningful bonuses across combat, magic, stealth, crafting, and social skills. Build planning remains one of the most satisfying long-term systems.
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Flexible race choices, appearance options, classless builds, and use-based skill growth let players shape very different characters. A few reviewers miss deeper old-school specialization, but build freedom is overwhelmingly praised.
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Mods are central to Skyrim’s longevity, adding fixes, visuals, quests, systems, and radically different playthroughs. Platform restrictions matter: PC is strongest, consoles vary, and Switch support is notably limited.
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Books, factions, history, Daedric stories, regional politics, and environmental storytelling provide enormous background depth. Engaging with the lore can make quests and locations substantially more meaningful.
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The Nordic landscapes, weather, lighting, architecture, and strong visual mood have aged extremely well. Even reviewers who call the raw graphics dated still praise the art direction for making Skyrim distinctive and beautiful.
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Portable Skyrim is repeatedly singled out as a major success. Switch and Switch 2 versions make the huge world easy to dip into anywhere while preserving strong image quality and generally stable play.
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The best faction quests, books, lore, and optional stories earn strong praise for writing, even when the main plot or routine dialogue is less consistent.
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The landscapes, lighting, weather, vistas, and later-edition upgrades often look beautiful, while character models, old textures, pop-in, and some port-specific artifacts expose the game’s age. The visual verdict is strong overall but clearly version-dependent.
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Skyrim improves sharply on Oblivion’s repetitive dungeons, with more individualized layouts, environmental variety, shortcuts, traps, and discoveries. Repetition still creeps in after very long play sessions.
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Smithing, enchanting, alchemy, cooking, and equipment creation make gathered resources useful and support self-directed builds. Survival Mode gives some of these systems, especially cooking, even more purpose.
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The base game’s enormous content and replayability make it strong value for many players, and some bundles add DLC, Creation Club content, or free upgrades. Repeat buyers are more skeptical when an Anniversary release adds too little beyond versions they already own.
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The streamlined favorites and equipment menus are widely praised on controllers for making a complex RPG approachable. PC-oriented interface criticism exists, but the general menu design is one of the stronger usability improvements.
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Skyrim’s cold, rugged setting, weather, audio, and sense of place create an unusually strong atmosphere. The world often feels compelling enough that players simply stop to look around or wander without a quest goal.
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Exploring, fighting, looting, leveling, getting distracted, and discovering another objective remains highly compelling. Multiple reviews describe the loop as addictive even many years after release.
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Ambient wind, wildlife, combat effects, environmental sounds, and upgraded audio help sell the physical world. A Switch-specific audio-warping problem is a sharp exception to otherwise strong sound work.
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Survival Mode meaningfully changes Skyrim by making food, sleep, warmth, travel, and planning matter. Most sources enjoy the added immersion and challenge, though it is deliberately more demanding and not for every playstyle.
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The major expansions and Anniversary/Creation Club additions add substantial quests, locations, systems, and replay value. Opinions split on individual packs and on whether re-release bundles add enough to justify another purchase.
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Gyro aiming, motion controls, mouse support, amiibo/Zelda content, and even native GameCube controller support add worthwhile platform flavor. Implementation quality varies, but these extras are usually viewed positively.
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Objects, crafting stations, homes, books, theft, routines, and small physical details make Skyrim unusually interactive. The ability to affect and inhabit ordinary spaces is a major contributor to immersion.
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Weather, lighting, spell effects, auroras, god rays, and remaster improvements can be striking. Some ports introduce distracting reflection, color, or pop-in artifacts, but the overall effects work is well regarded.
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Many sources enjoy the mix of dragons, undead, creatures, bandits, and fantasy enemies, with some praising the designs strongly. A later perspective argues the underlying enemy mechanics become limited and repetitive with time.
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Skyrim is not viewed as a wholesale revolution, yet its streamlined progression, classless character development, open-world density, and combination of systems were important refinements that helped define modern open-world RPG expectations.
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Most versions are praised for stable performance within their targets, including strong handheld results. The recurring complaint is that some newer ports remain capped at 30fps despite hardware that seems capable of more.
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The classless skill system, Shouts, dual-wielding, crafting, exploration, and flexible interaction combine into a broad, rewarding RPG toolkit.
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Story opinions are mixed. Some sources call the main campaign excellent or epic, while others see it as predictable, thin, or weaker than the faction and side-quest stories that make up much of Skyrim’s appeal.
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The streamlined classless progression is approachable, but the sheer number of possibilities can overwhelm newcomers. Starting slowly and engaging with a small area at a time can make the game much easier to absorb.
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Performance is highly version-dependent. Several ports are stable and newer editions improve optimization, but older PS3 issues, Switch 2 input/framerate choices, and occasional slowdown keep the record from being spotless.
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The less rigid level scaling and ability to encounter enemies above or below the player’s strength are generally improvements. Some fights still swing on luck, cheese tactics, or overpowered builds, and Survival Mode changes the balance substantially.
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Archery and ranged combat are often praised as accurate and satisfying, especially with gyro or VR. Mouse/input-lag issues on some ports and occasional collision problems can undermine that precision.
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Loading varies dramatically by platform and edition: older console versions are often criticized for long, frequent waits, while PC and newer Anniversary versions can load extremely quickly.
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Dragon and major encounters can be spectacular, tense, and memorable, especially early on. Repeated attack patterns, easy exploits, and shallow scaling make some boss fights lose impact over time.
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Treasure, unique gear, crafted equipment, and exploration rewards give players frequent reasons to search dungeons and wander off-route. Some individual chests disappoint, but the broader reward loop is satisfying.
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Voice acting ranges from strong and immersive to forced, repetitive, or too obviously recycled across NPCs. The size of the voiced cast is impressive, but performance consistency is uneven.
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Stealth is more readable and strategic than in Oblivion, with detection feedback that supports careful play. It can also become overpowered, especially when combined with archery.
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Movement and third-person play are improved over Oblivion and can feel responsive, but traversal is still basic and horses or first-person combat can feel awkward compared with newer games.
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Emergent role-playing can create surprisingly personal attachment; one player describes genuinely feeling the loss of a companion within a self-made story.
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Frequent autosaves, quick saves, and multiple files can reduce the pain of bugs and experimentation. Reliability is still undermined when glitches force reloads or long sessions lose progress.
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Faces are improved over Oblivion and can look more expressive, but they still sit within an aging character presentation.
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Fast travel is convenient, but Survival Mode’s removal of it can actually deepen discovery; carriages provide a limited compromise when long-distance travel is needed.
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Skyrim has a huge population with memorable factions and some distinctive personalities, but repeated archetypes and limited companion depth keep the cast from matching the world’s richness.
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Inventory selling and merchant limits can be tedious in the base game, while Survival Mode makes food and ordinary supplies feel meaningfully valuable. Resource balance depends heavily on how the game is played.
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Skyrim usually avoids feeling like a conventional grind because exploration and skill use produce progress naturally. Some later players still find repetitive leveling or optimization chores annoying.
Cons
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Bugs are the most consistent technical complaint, ranging from funny physics oddities to broken quests, stuck NPCs, and progress-loss situations. Many reviewers tolerate them because of the game’s scale, but later re-releases are criticized for still carrying old problems.
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Animation is one of the clearest signs of age: stiff NPC movement, robotic scenes, dated combat motions, and awkward character behavior come up repeatedly. Later editions improve presentation around it more than the animations themselves.
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Crashes, freezes, and forced save reloads appear across several versions and eras. They are less universal than minor bugs, but when they occur they can erase progress and materially hurt reliability.
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Enemy AI is a recurring weak spot: pathfinding can be exploited, companions and enemies get confused by geometry, and dragon behavior can become predictable. Some versions improve aggression, but the overall pattern remains rough.
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Pacing is a recurring weakness around the long intro and main-quest structure. Repeat players especially dislike the unskippable opening, and starting the dragon storyline too quickly can overwhelm the quieter exploration rhythm.
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The mature violence, gore, sexual themes, and alcohol references make the game a poor fit for younger children. One review suggests some teens may handle it, but the overall suitability signal is clearly mature.
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Followers are useful in fights and can add personality, but their pathfinding and positioning are frequent frustrations. They get stuck, block routes, or behave awkwardly often enough to be a recurring complaint.
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The fixed, narrow field of view on some console versions can make camera movement uncomfortable, particularly on larger displays. Lack of an FoV control is a notable port limitation.
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The game is not especially family-friendly for younger children because of gore, violence, sexual themes, and alcohol references.
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Anniversary Edition on PS5 is criticized for making little meaningful use of DualSense features.
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Interface quality is platform-dependent: controller menus are often streamlined, but PC layout and some base UI choices are criticized as clumsy or messy. Mods such as SkyUI are frequently treated as practical fixes.
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Combat styles are not equally effective: stealth archery is repeatedly overpowered, magic can be uneven, and melee lacks the responsiveness of stronger modern action RPGs.
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Accessibility is inconsistent across versions. Streamlined RPG systems help newcomers, but console ports are repeatedly criticized for missing basics such as an FoV slider, brightness controls, and broader visual options.
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NPCs make the world busy and believable, but deeper interpersonal writing and companion development are limited. Repeated voices, shallow relationships, and generic interactions keep characters behind the environmental storytelling.
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One DLC questline is criticized for bland locations and an unenjoyable structure, showing that added content does not always match the strongest base-game questing.
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VR makes Skyrim’s scale novel to inhabit, but imprecise interaction, compromised visuals, and unresolved interface/combat problems keep it from being the strongest way to play.
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Dialogue is uneven: some reviews praise natural conversational flow and a large amount of voiced material, while others find the script generic, repetitive, or uninspired. It rarely matches the strength of the world design.
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The opening is divisive: it can establish tone effectively, but its unskippable length and early information overload hurt repeat play and have caused some newcomers to bounce off the game.
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Skyrim’s enormous ambition is balanced by visible rough edges. Some releases feel polished overall, yet persistent bugs, dated systems, and missing quality-of-life refinements keep it from feeling consistently finished.
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Dungeon puzzles can be memorable early on, but several sources find traps and puzzle patterns overused or too simple across a very long campaign.
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Combat is the biggest design tradeoff. Magic, archery, dual-wielding, Shouts, and hybrid builds provide variety, but melee is repeatedly described as floaty, clunky, shallow, or dated.
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Mission quality ranges from imaginative faction stories and strange side adventures to repetitive fetch tasks and cave-clearing errands. The amount of content is huge, but not every activity is equally inventive.
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Faction choices and individual quests can alter outcomes, but the main narrative often absorbs very different role-playing behavior without much consequence. The freedom to act is stronger than the long-term narrative reactivity.
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Fishing receives mixed reactions. Some find it simple, relaxing, and fun with worthwhile quests, while others call it boring, overly restricted to designated spots, or too shallow to matter.
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Re-releases improve resolution, lighting, framerate, loading, portability, and bundled content, but opinions are mixed on how much they modernize the underlying game. Old animation, bugs, and limited new features make some editions feel low-effort or unnecessary.
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Controls range from fluid and precise on strong versions to frustratingly sluggish on specific ports. Switch 2 input lag and some PC/VR control issues stand out against generally solid controller play.