The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

 PC
User Score
8.4

Generally favorable reviews- based on 12985 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10,547 out of 12985
  2. Mixed: 1,375 out of 12985
  3. Negative: 1,063 out of 12985
Buy Now
Buy on

Review this game

  1. Your Score
    0 out of 10
    Rate this:
    • 10
    • 9
    • 8
    • 7
    • 6
    • 5
    • 4
    • 3
    • 2
    • 1
    • 0
    • 0
  1. Submit
  2. Check Spelling
view
per page
  1. Cmsn1991
    Apr 27, 2015
    9
    Very large world to explore with a rich enough world that I'm pretty sure I'm never actually going to bother completing the story from all the distractions.
  2. stocean
    Apr 27, 2015
    10
    Okay, now that the paid-mod is gone I can rate this game back up to 10.
    The base game alone would be 8~9/10 but with mods it's easily 10/10 or even 11/10.
  3. bigpappaflea
    Apr 26, 2015
    10
    I will not mince words. Skyrim became one of the best modern games because a community of amazing and talented people made post release modifications. These transformed an expansive game into a full and rich experience that could be enjoyed for hundreds of hours. THEN THEY BURNED IT TO THE GROUND. NO PAID MODS.
  4. game_over
    Apr 26, 2015
    8
    If Valve and Bethesda were truly concerned about modders getting their just due, would they be taking a 75% cut?

    Like other paid content, are Valve and Bethesda going to provide QA, oversight, and ensure continued support for mods? Why change the implicit agreement e.g., free mods, with gamers who have already purchased Skyrim? The answers to these questions demonstrate that the    If Valve and Bethesda were truly concerned about modders getting their just due, would they be taking a 75% cut?

    Like other paid content, are Valve and Bethesda going to provide QA, oversight, and ensure continued support for mods?

    Why change the implicit agreement e.g., free mods, with gamers who have already purchased Skyrim?

    The answers to these questions demonstrate that the actions of Valve and Bethesda are disingenuous at best.    … Expand
  5. FatGabeBadGabe
    Apr 27, 2015
    9
    after lifting the payed mods you can look it up on steam its over with they won't be doing this anymore.

    I now feel they can have a good score I'm giveing it a 9 out of 10 but really the game is kinda lame by its self the mods are what makes it good
  6. celt93
    Apr 27, 2015
    8
    Edit: Paid mods are gone but modgate will not be forgotten. We will stay vigilant, and we will be watching.

    Skyrim is worth playing once again, hopefully Fallout 4 ends up the same way.
  7. Nokturnalex
    Apr 26, 2015
    10
    I'll change my review if they get rid of putting mods behind a Paywall.

    Bethesda and Valve are encouraging modders to place their mods behind a Paywall in a pre-existing open source modding community. The problems with that should be obvious. (Extremely easy to steal other people's work or steal it and change it to be unrecognizable) Not only that, but they want to take 75% of the    I'll change my review if they get rid of putting mods behind a Paywall.

    Bethesda and Valve are encouraging modders to place their mods behind a Paywall in a pre-existing open source modding community. The problems with that should be obvious. (Extremely easy to steal
    other people's work or steal it and change it to be unrecognizable)

    Not only that, but they want to take 75% of the proceeds modders make and won't even give smaller modders anything until they make over $400, of that they only get $100.

    Nexus on the other hand. has a donation button pop-up. If you like the mod you can donate directly to the mod creator. 100% of the proceeds go to the author for doing all the work, instead of valve and Bethesda stealing 75% of the money for doing nothing.    … Expand
  8. Milkdew
    Apr 26, 2015
    10
    Very disappointed in the fact that this game now has paid mods. The vanilla game has a woeful poorly ported console UI, which is absolutely sub-par. If you wanted to fix this, you could, by using the free SkyUI mod, which makes it a great UI. If you now want to play the game with the great UI, you will have to pay extra for that...
  9. screamshield
    Apr 26, 2015
    0
    A horrible day.Paid modding is added now and is killing the modding community.Once an ok game with mods is now utter trash.

    Thank you Valve and Bethesda for ruining the modding community.
  10. Vio
    Apr 29, 2015
    10
    I saw a guy with 11 000 hours of playtime for this game. My own is over 300, and I haven't even gotten a quarter of the way in. Just be wary of any hint of paid mod introduction.
  11. Shermans
    Apr 23, 2015
    1
    Now with 1,000,000% more paid DLC, first horse armor now this. Greedy company is, greedy. I wouldn't buy another game from them if they paid me to take it.
  12. Sh4d3
    Apr 26, 2015
    0
    You know to me skyrim was a real deal I would pay 50 bucks plus the expansion and get tons of beatuful free mods to enjoy and hours of new gameplay.
    Now what you get is chance to make Valve even more rich by stealing money to the modders and asking players to pay for stuff which was born free!
  13. vistachiri
    Apr 26, 2015
    0
    This game has it's problems, and it's strong points.

    Bethesda tends to release expansive, games, brimming with potential, but their eyes also tend to be too big for their stomach so to speak. They end up releasing games brimming with bugs (Also in many of their games they seem incapable of actually making a normal humanoid head. Skyrim was the best so far at this). They've relied    This game has it's problems, and it's strong points.

    Bethesda tends to release expansive, games, brimming with potential, but their eyes also tend to be too big for their stomach so to speak. They end up releasing games brimming with bugs (Also in many of their games they seem incapable of actually making a normal humanoid head. Skyrim was the best so far at this). They've relied heavily on the mod community to fix these things after the beginnings of it in Daggerfall (where modding wasn't supported), with Morrowind, it was full on support for mods, and someone at Bethsoft should have rightfully gotten a huge pay raise. It helped make tons of loyal fans for the entire series, and if you think it didn't affect the success of the games? You are likely delusional.

    Here are my problems with it.

    Dumbed down. The removal of several systems that were present in previous iterations of the series were not an improvement. Skyrim often feels like it lacks customization.

    Magic kind of sucks. It's been kind of going downhill for the entire series though, but there are several seemingly confusing oversights. Such as the lack of mark and recall spells.

    Where are my vambraces? Sentence says it all.

    The biggest downside now though: Paid mods. Yes the thing that skyrim relied on heavily since it's launch, and the thing Bethesda has been relying on for, idk a decade or so, is now open to purchase. Just like DLC, aren't you excited consumer? Oh and the creator of the content gets 25%, 45% going to bethsoft, and 30% going to Valve. So the person doing the work, gets a quarter on every dollar. Clearly a framework based on the outright exploitation of the work of others for financial gain. The legal issues alone are staggering, unlicensed student versions of 3dsmax, appropriation of the assets of others under a non-commercial license suddenly appearing in commercial mods, outright theft of mods, the fracturing of the modding community. It's a bad thing. They did this game in, but hopefully we can all stop it here. Paid mods? No more.    … Expand
  14. Auslander66
    Apr 26, 2015
    0
    Like most Bethesda games, Skyrim is only mediocre when played without mods. With mods, the cool factor rises a million times over. Mods let you change almost every element of the game, adding immeasurable fun, and replay value. With that said, this is going to be a negative review because Bethesda, and Valve, have enabled a system where modders can now sell their mods on Steam.

    This act    Like most Bethesda games, Skyrim is only mediocre when played without mods. With mods, the cool factor rises a million times over. Mods let you change almost every element of the game, adding immeasurable fun, and replay value. With that said, this is going to be a negative review because Bethesda, and Valve, have enabled a system where modders can now sell their mods on Steam.

    This act has already led to some modders pulling their mods from free sites like Nexus. Why is it a bad thing for modders to be paid for their work? Because that's not what modding is all about. I also mod, but I would never charge someone for something that is essentially done for fun, and with the notion of sharing with others. Modding has always been something done by the fans of a game, for other fans of the game.

    For companies like Steam, and Bethesda, to try to monetize that, is nothing more than greed. And get this, the modders only recieve 25% of what they charge for their mods. Guess who gets the other 75%. This move sets a really bad precedent for things to come. You may not play Skyrim, but what if Valve started doing this to all their games? Modders for all games could potentially start charging people, and then the whole modding community would just turn into a huge market that nets big money for greedy corporations.

    So, though I had fun with it in the past, I do not recommend Skyrim to anyone. It's your call to get it, but when the only thing that makes the game any good, is about to become paid DLC, that's when the game turns foul in my mind.
    Posted April 23.    … Expand
  15. gabekillskids
    Apr 25, 2015
    0
    game has gone far above advertised price with the monetization of everything with little or none going to the content creators and there is no quality control on portions of the game being charged for.
  16. Wicked069
    Apr 26, 2015
    0
    As a paying customer I am enittled to my opinion on and will cry fowl when something is wrong

    from my point of view.Paying for 3rd party mods / dlc / micro-transaction is a bad idea and should never have been allowed to be add to the steam work shop. This will only make game devs more lazy and release even more broken games, so the free labor of modders can fix it and then    As a paying customer I am enittled to my opinion on and will cry fowl when something is wrong

    from my point of view.Paying for 3rd party mods / dlc / micro-transaction is a bad idea and

    should never have been allowed to be add to the steam work shop. This will only make game

    devs more lazy and release even more broken games, so the free labor of modders can fix it

    and then charge the customer for it, and the devs get to keep most of the profits. The only

    thing that made this game great ( for the most part ) was the free support from the people

    making mods, and working with other modders to make the game even better. Now the devs want

    it to be an extra fee for people to pay so they can make even more money off its customers

    for work they had nothing to do with other then release "free" software ( that by buying the

    game we really paided for ) that helps make it possible.    … Expand
  17. PhoneyFree
    Apr 28, 2015
    7
    After the resolution of the "paid mods" debacle I can now endorse this game again.

    Solid enjoyable game, greatly enhanced by mods. With mods it's a 10.
  18. zIRaX
    Apr 26, 2015
    0
    Paid modding, and the fact that Bethesda supports it.
    Just no...
    I played this game for so many years, ever since release date and up to now I still play it. I am so disappointed in Bethesda to agree to this arrangement made by Valve. I never thought I would say this, but don't buy skyrim it is not worth it. The game itself is fairly mediocre, I can only recommend to play this game    Paid modding, and the fact that Bethesda supports it.
    Just no...
    I played this game for so many years, ever since release date and up to now I still play it. I am so disappointed in Bethesda to agree to this arrangement made by Valve.

    I never thought I would say this, but don't buy skyrim it is not worth it.

    The game itself is fairly mediocre, I can only recommend to play this game with mods. So after you paid some money to play a game, you gotta pay more money to play the game. That's sound like a win/win for you as a customer right?

    Before this whole incident, I would say buy skyrim, because there is SO MUCH MORE to the game, than the game itself. You can spend YEARS trying out all the mods made for this game, but guess what. You can't do that anymore unless you pay some more money.

    The Mods was the thing that kept skyrim alive, the thing that made skyrim so successful to this date almost 4 years after its initial release. The mods were the reason why skyrim did so well in the top selling games on steam, but how do you feel about paying money for things that "may" work?

    A lot of mods conflicts with one another, so if you for instance buy a mod that changes weather effects, and another mod that changes water effects. Your game just straight up crash, no error message, just crash to desktop. Oh and by the way you paid money for that.
    It's even said by modders that the game itself is fairly unstable and quite hard to make stable mods for, you can easily run into scripting problems that just crashed your game, or suddenly npcs stops interacting with you because of some scripting errors. Yup you paid for that as well.

    So I strongly recommend that you don't buy this game, and that should hopefully send a clear message.
    If you are thinking about buying the game now, I'm afraid you are too late to the party.
    The game has been out for several of years, and a lot of people had their fun with it. This game may now rapidly start dying out due to this pay wall, and the free enjoyment most people had is no longer free for you.
    Unlike you I am in a lucky position because I already own the game, and already have most mods from when they were free. You on the other hand, since you are reading this you probably don't own the game, and don't have the mods as a result.

    TLDR: Paid mods, do not buy.    … Expand
  19. Deustodo
    Apr 26, 2015
    0
    This once was a great game, but now it is just a lab for the most **** experiment ever, to now pay for mods. There is a reason why mod stand for both "moderator" and "modification", because both of them do their job for free.
  20. Beeras
    Apr 27, 2015
    0
    Skyrim is not worth it without mods.
    Allowing Bethesda to earn money from mods just encourages them to do more buggy releases.
    Yes they deserve money for making the base game, and that's the money we PAID when we purchase the game. Yet Bethesda has to go greedy and ruin the modding community. Imagine a future beth meeting: A: hey wanna fix the dragon? its flying backwards B: nah    Skyrim is not worth it without mods.
    Allowing Bethesda to earn money from mods just encourages them to do more buggy releases.
    Yes they deserve money for making the base game, and that's the money we PAID when we purchase the game. Yet Bethesda has to go greedy and ruin the modding community.

    Imagine a future beth meeting:
    A: hey wanna fix the dragon? its flying backwards
    B: nah mods will fix it. and we'll get paid too.    … Expand
  21. Xarxan
    Apr 26, 2015
    0
    Thank Valve for destroying PC gaming's very soul. R.I.P. you mediocre waste of hdd space. The mods that once brought on the top are being strip from your skin as we speak. And I can't bear to look at such suffering.

    Especially when it is your very own family that do it.
  22. Grumpy_Kraken
    Apr 26, 2015
    0
    After what Bethesda did to the modding community (allowed paid modding) on a game that was already stripped down and unfinished, I have to give a poor review in hopes that they remove this.
  23. Dune_Jumper
    Apr 27, 2015
    9
    One of the RPGs ever made. It has so much content, it can keep you playing for weeks.
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  24. Snowgirl
    May 8, 2012
    10
    This game is beautiful and it has soul. While I think it's not the best TES game, it surely stays true to what makes this series amazing: insanely detailed world, fantastic atmosphere, the huge open world that calls the adventurer in me to explore every corner and delve into the legends of the Nords. The art style, music and character models make Skyrim the most spectacular experience soThis game is beautiful and it has soul. While I think it's not the best TES game, it surely stays true to what makes this series amazing: insanely detailed world, fantastic atmosphere, the huge open world that calls the adventurer in me to explore every corner and delve into the legends of the Nords. The art style, music and character models make Skyrim the most spectacular experience so far in terms of a living world to explore. The RPG mechanics are getting thinner (stats, skills, birthsigns, attributes) but the progression and character customization are still pretty solid in their absence and a good improvement from Oblivion. I can't wait for the expansions for this game.… Expand
  25. Synplasm
    Feb 13, 2012
    6
    A game of two halves. The first of which is enjoyable, interesting, engrossing and fun, the second of which is disappointing, tedious, annoying and dull. The second half arrives at an unspecifed time but believe me if you play this game long enough it will make itself known to you. I got my money's worth for sure, but I ended up with negative thoughts about this game which is the mainA game of two halves. The first of which is enjoyable, interesting, engrossing and fun, the second of which is disappointing, tedious, annoying and dull. The second half arrives at an unspecifed time but believe me if you play this game long enough it will make itself known to you. I got my money's worth for sure, but I ended up with negative thoughts about this game which is the main reason for the 6. Who came up with computer generated quests? Who? I cannot think of a better way to make quests mind-numbingly dull. I really can't. Sorry but you can stick your shill job where the sun doesn't shine, buster. Perks. By the time that I was eligible for a lot of these they were completely useless to me. Besides, some of them are useless anyway and others replicated by items that you can get. The banality of almost all NPCs starts to get to you after a while too. How many times did I hear the same conversation in the Palace of Kings? 'He's either with us or against us'. How droll. The main mage's questline is extremely poor, the civil war affair not much better. They need some new writers. Try harder next time Bethesda and make a full game, not one that runs out of stamina half way through.… Expand
  26. bukhrin
    Mar 7, 2013
    10
    400 hours and still playing this. Not many games nowadays gets you going after 40 hours. Sure, it's not a scripted kind of game, but in a real RPG kind of sense, this whole land of skyrim is literally your gameboard.
  27. Ukrutor
    Feb 26, 2012
    0
    **** I don't want to review a game after 2 hours of playing it, but i don't have stomach to play this any longer. I can't understand how can any company make a game with 100+ hours of content, but totally fail at UI. Most of those 100 hours you spend searching for items in totally **** up inventory. Shortcuts and using spells is another tragedy. Never seen a worse console port. Some can**** I don't want to review a game after 2 hours of playing it, but i don't have stomach to play this any longer. I can't understand how can any company make a game with 100+ hours of content, but totally fail at UI. Most of those 100 hours you spend searching for items in totally **** up inventory. Shortcuts and using spells is another tragedy. Never seen a worse console port. Some can say there are mods now that fix this, but i don't want mods, i want complete game from the company, not modders. World is open, but there are hardly any interesting places at all. Dialogues feel like being made by a 12y child. No epicness, no intelligence, nothing at all. Your character is boring, you can't give a **** about him. The choice of race hardly matters to you or the environment. As long as ppl worship crappy games like these, there is no future for gaming.… Expand
  28. slothosaurus
    Nov 11, 2011
    9
    So i've played this game for the past 12 hours now. And i do have a good bit to say about it.
    1.) all these people **** about the intuitiveness of the controls do have a slightly valid point, the Q command on PC for switching between "favorites" does seem a bit awkward. however, it pauses the game, where before, quick swapping weapons did not. so it adds to the your available options of    So i've played this game for the past 12 hours now. And i do have a good bit to say about it.
    1.) all these people **** about the intuitiveness of the controls do have a slightly valid point, the Q command on PC for switching between "favorites" does seem a bit awkward. however, it pauses the game, where before, quick swapping weapons did not. so it adds to the your available options of combat tricks to move around and use. the menu is also a bit messed up - it needs some fixing. i wish that it had been slightly more convenient, though most people who play PC games play on generally high sensitivities, so unless you're on an m18x like i am where the screen is bigger than it should be, it's not a problem.
    2.) the other things people have **** about is AI, and the sharpness of textures - easy, fix your contrast. and for AI, i feel like the majority of people who have so far played this game do not understand that this game is NOT about combat. this game has combat thrown in to develop your character and make it slightly more interesting. this game is about story lines, and personal choices. i don't care if it plays like minecraft, because this game wasn't meant to be BF3 or MW3 (which is both like and have played extensively)
    3. so now that all your **** has been put aside and you 0-raters have been put in your place, we'll get to why this game get's a 9 in my book. A) the story line is perfect, as it introduces a level of depth that is accessible to all players of the spectrum in their willingness to see the world in which they live
    B) the game play is fun, entertaining, unique, and i have, actually, stopped to look at mountains and rivers, as well as waterfalls and even the bodies of dragons
    C) the game went back to religion having an actual element on the gameplay like it did in morrowind, which is nice and helps you see things. it also actually shows cultural perspectives based on races like they did in morrowind, and the levels are completely designed from scratch, which is one million times better than oblivion. As far as how this game compares to other games though? I'm still at a 9, because i do not believe that any game will ever deserve to be on the level of morrowind, even if i've played tf2 and MW3 for 10-15 hrs each this week, i thought morrowind was the beginning of everything games should be, and this was continued into skyrim, though not perfected, and thusly, i give it a 9.    … Expand
  29. DrCola
    Nov 28, 2011
    10
    Subtract everything you hate about past elder scrolls games, add everything you love, add a better engine that does not crash on you every 10 minutes and is not a steaming pile of bugs, pretty up everything, make the faces cooler and make just about everything better and you have skyrim. This game is a masterpiece, its the game that we have been waiting for in 2011, (Most titles this yearSubtract everything you hate about past elder scrolls games, add everything you love, add a better engine that does not crash on you every 10 minutes and is not a steaming pile of bugs, pretty up everything, make the faces cooler and make just about everything better and you have skyrim. This game is a masterpiece, its the game that we have been waiting for in 2011, (Most titles this year have been bad to say the least) This game would deserve a perfect 10 if not for the super lame secondary main quest which is the civil war, you can kill the final boss in one hit, I understand that level scaling is bad in most cases, but in some cases things have to be level scaled. The annoying part is, the civil war is about the length of the dragon questline! this game would get a 9.7 in my book now, thanks to that one little detail, but since metacritic forces me to round up my score, 10 it is!
    Also, if you really want to complain about the crappy interface of how you painfully select everything and how its built for a controller, do one of the two following things : get a mod, or use a controller, we all have USB ports!    … Expand
  30. JEgroeg
    Dec 29, 2011
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Where do you begin with a game like Skyrim? At first I was thrilled, but by the point I had beat all the guilds, mainquest, civil war, Deadric quests, and most the miscellaneous, I realized this was the pinnacle of the complete devolution of the Elder Scrolls as a series. The guilds lack depth and have no purpose. A hack and slash barbarian can lead the College of Winterhold by fighting through a few linear dungeons. The Dark Brotherhood is shorter than Oblivion and lacks the dark humor and unique kills. Most assassinations are simply, go here and kill this guy with a marker over his head. The Companions are equally short and devoid of challenge. Every guild treats you like an outsider then after three quests blindly trust you to be the next leader. Once you become guild leader the random filler quests generated are so repetitious you will be burned out quickly. The Thieves Guild is extremely guilty of this. The random thievery quests are so unoriginal and for a game the prides itself in its AI the people basically let you rob them blind. If they detect you don't worry, they won't call the guards and you can walk back in an hour latter and rob them again. Then there is the fact that there are no actual consequences to your actions as almost all the characters even slightly related to a quest are made unkillable. For a game that prides itself in character choice, why do I have no choice in this matter? The perks are poorly implemented and completely unbalance the game. They will leave you one shotting any enemy with a bow, enchanting armor to cast entire magic schools with no cost, and other outrageous feats that remove all challenge from the game. In just three hours you can craft a god-tier suit of armor and kill everything (except half the NPCs with immortality) in the game. The crafting system has no depth and isn't even related to you respective skills. Why can a character with 15 in smithing craft an item at every attempt? Let me see anyone inexperienced in smithing create a dagger at every attempt. And did I mention weapons don't decay after use, hardly the pinnacle of realism or even providing adequate challenge. I mean if weapons don't decay why even have magicka deplete with spells cast? The civil war quest line is a joke, both sides are mirrors of each other and don't even use different tactics in battle. The main quest is predictable with a typical enemy that has no real motives other than destroy everything. At least Dagoth Ur had motives. He wanted to unify Morrowind against the Empire's invasion at any cost. Skyrim's main enemy is a dragon that wants to destroy the world, how original. Then there is the matter of the new AI system which the developers clearly banked on generating worthwhile and memorable quests. Quite simply it completely fails to generate quests with any degree of complexity. Furthermore, the Norse culture and lore seems like a secondhand rehash of established fantasy clichés. Overall this game hardly even qualifies as an RPG. So much has been streamlined since Morrowind and Oblivion. Even custom spell creation is gone. Nearly every quests has only one way to complete it and it usually involves killing/finding an item that has a magic arrow over its head leading you directly to it. Sure the graphics and environments are nice, but they're nothing amazing compared to the current crop of PC games. Justify this games greatness with the rave reviews, record sales, or mountains of cash it has generated but time will be its ultimate judge. This is just another example of a studio catering to the masses to maximize profit and everyone is eating it up. So this concludes my review of The Elder Scrolls: Call of Duty… Expand
prev
Page:

Awards & Rankings

2
#2 Best PC Game of 2011
1
#1 Most Discussed PC Game of 2011
2
#2 Most Shared PC Game of 2011

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
94

Universal acclaim - based on 32 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 32 out of 32
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 32
  3. Negative: 0 out of 32
  1. PC Master (Greece)
    Feb 29, 2012
    90
    Unfortunately, Skyrim trips and falls on its own (most probably, to make the cool-sounding deadline of 11-11-11) and just before it reaches perfection as the ultimate specimen of its genre, it self-destructs in a crucial aspect of game design: the interface and the peripheral components (inventory, journal, map, etc)... but that is not to say that Skyrim is anything but a truly majestic, epic RPG that will suck you right in its cosmos.
    Read full review
  2. Armchair Empire
    Feb 14, 2012
    100
    Skyrim is definitely one of the best games of 2011, but if the DLC holds out, it might just be one of the best games of 2012 as well.
    Read full review
  3. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Jan 19, 2012
    90
    Skyrim is the best open world RPG you can get. A true evolution of genre is not flawless but still it is the game you love to live in. [Christmas 2011]
See all critic reviews »