Mini Review: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition (PS5) - A Still Great RPG Bolstered By a Lot of New Content

If anyone's got any questions about this ten year old game, let me know and I'll try to answer them!

The soundtrack is one of the greatest ever made in my opinion. Do you know about how many hours of content is added from creation club?

Soundtrack is utterly fantastic and never really talked about, glad it’s getting some love here. I’ll hear nothing bad about the voice acting though, I’ll never tire of hearing a random companion scream that Skyrim belongs to the Nords while attacking a giant spider 😂

As with other games of this age and older let them rest. They had their time in the sun, let’s look forward and stop living in the past

@Dalejrfanfreak Very hard to say. In terms of quests, maybe around 10-20 hours? There are a couple of longer quests added through Creation Club, and a whole load of smaller ones.

Add in the time that it takes to get all of the added weapons, armour, spells... It does make the game feel even bigger.

@nessisonett One of the best ever video game soundtracks, in my opinion. True masterpiece.

@kingbreww Never understood this mindset. People read old books, watch old films, listen to old music, etc. all the time. Why only limit yourself to "new" game releases when the past is filled with classics to experience or re-experience?

Good games are good games.

Some games age like wine.

Skyrim aged like milk.

The load times are a lifesaver. I forgot just how many times you have to load into and out of buildings and whatnot.

@Ralizah because life is about new experiences, not repeating the same ones

It's taking over my life once again. The exploring is just as good as ever. The PS5 loading times are a game changer...

@kingbreww So you, like, never do anything more than once? If a song you know comes on the radio, do you make a point of turning it off? Never rewatched a favorite movie? Don't reminisce at all, or go back to old, cherished memories?

There's nothing inherently valuable about "new" experiences, and you can still occasionally revisit the past without wallowing in it.

Besides, I'm sure there are people who have never played Skyrim before. So, for them, it would be a "new" experience.

@ShogunRok Any graphical improvements other than 4K60fps?

@Ralizah yeh I don’t spend significantly more than 100 hours replaying a single experience though

Does the PS5 version use 3D audio? That would sound amazing out in the wild listening to the wind and THAT soundtrack. And extra skids-in-my-pants fun times when a Draugr comes up behind me.

@ShogunRok I’ve got a pre-order in for the Skyrim Atmospheres suite on vinyl! Love how immersive the sound design is just running about the wild.

@Olmaz seems to be the same as far as I can see. But the textures really benefit from the 4k.
No Dualsense (adaptive trigger) support here.

It a nice game but it never really spoke to me. I find the combat really boring and after a while i got bored not to mention the PS3 version i played was a horrible mess. But with that problem is gone i believe it runs great. But still its not my thing not calling it a bad game anymore the PS3 version was horrid. But its not for me.

@Olmaz Nope, it's the same graphical fidelity as Special Edition as far as I know.

@Robbirtles Nah, no 3D audio sadly. No DualSense support either.

The voice acting really is just next level bad lol

The fact they could get Max von Sydow as a voice actor in the game is amazing. I think his acting is one of the best in the history of cinematography in Bergman's movies.

I get that the upgrade to PS5 is free so I shouldn't complain too much but if you could describe the most bare bones kind of upgrade this would be it. Still a fun game and another excuse to grab the platinum again, but bit of a missed opportunity to really kick it up a notch with some genuine PS5 features.

Soundtrack was it's strongest holding point. Oblivion was better in terms of soundtrack but Skyrim was bloody good...

Shame the game is not as good as alot of people think. A decent RPG with some shoddy lazzyness.

@Ralizah people are just so dumb 😂😂😂

I dont know what to think of this games many releases and still no comprehensive bug fixing. I dont think it deserves my money.

My main complaint with Skyrim still doesn't seem to be fixed (unless someone modded it somehow). The game has a pretty glaring flaw in that there's no real incentive to actually explore the open world, you're only really exploring about 10% of the map where the quests are located. It makes the open world feel like pointless fluff. This game really needs a collectible like the Korok Seeds in BotW or the oculi in Genshin Impact, something that really encourages you to explore every nook and cranny and make the most out of the massive world. Until they fix that Skyrim will always be kinda meh and overrated, there are much better open world games including the two I mentioned above (and one of them is a Gacha mobile game for God's sake).

So we ended up receiving two half-baked remasters from publishers that have made billions from the games. Never underestimate the pure greed and depravity of the AAA industry.

@Mauzuri it's perfectly safe yeah. I use Creation Club stuff plus lots of mods and never had any issues ( apart from PC which has 1000s more mods to conflict )

@ShogunRok I feel like they could have really took advantage of the DuelSense. I mean lock picking for sure could have got some love.

@Bolt_Strike I respect your opinion, but I disagree. I loved exploring the unknown. You would often stumble upon a ruin or cave or coven. Even a Dragon. It was fun just to see what's out there. Often running away noting to come back when your stronger.

@Bolt_Strike There's nothing to fix as your complaint is something most of the playerbase doesn't have with it.

@Mauzuri You sure you don't have that backwards? Skyrim's events are mainly located in towns and dungeons and feels more like the game that's empty, empty, empty with nothing happening in the actual overworld. BotW has a lot more shrines and Korok seeds throughout its world and even if not that, there's often treasure and enemies all over the map.

@Ralizah totally agree 👍

@ShogunRok have they done anything at all graphic wise( draw distance, lighting etc) apart from 60fps or is that literally it?

8? Very generous for game that aged like milk. 6 at best if u like the soundtrack. Lol pros timeless game loop and then under cons braindead combat roflmao. Btw its arpg not rpg.

@Mauzuri dont se why its controversial if u don't like botw or any game considered a clasic? My friend cant stand witcher 3 and the rest of our group agrees its excellent. He would rather play dead island riptide all day then touch witcher 3.

@Mauzuri I'm not quite sure what you look for in an open world game, but if you're only spending 10 hours on BotW and not finding what you're looking for, you're probably doing something wrong. BotW does just about everything Skyrim does plus more. I've played both games for 100+ hours so I have a pretty good idea of how both play (although it's been about 3 or 4 years so I don't remember everything), and I can definitely say that what I'm looking for, incentive to actually explore the overworld instead of just passing through it to reach the next town or dungeon, doesn't really exist.

@Sladey69 Same graphics as Special Edition, just 60fps.

@Splat 100% agree. Even with Skyrim's basic combat, it would be great to have some dedicated haptic feedback.

@Radekbejbl1 Like the review says, combat is only one part of the gameplay loop. A lot of things that Skyrim does aren't especially great (particularly by today's standards), but add it all together and it's a very compelling mix. More than the sum of its parts.

@Radekbejbl1 It’s still one of the greatest games ever made. The comprehensive world hasn’t been matched since. The combat might be a little rough now (maybe then too), but the freedom it offers and the way it offers it really isn’t available or has been matched in another game since. It’s about the world of Skyrim, not tightly designed combat encounters. This is very different from a Souls game.

@Radekbejbl1 The sheer ignorance of why you just said is astounding. “Praise Skyrim’s”? Why is that plural. Please tell me what other Skyrim there is. COD need a break, it’s dull now, I hate battle royales, and AC has lost its identity in a terrible way. Some GaaS are good, but many aren’t.
Skyrim is widely considered a great game. Look at the critic scores and general user consensus of it. It’s positive foe good reason.
And if you count every great thing about Skyrim and what it offers that hasn’t been done since you’d be amazed at how much other haven’t done.
You made a giant assumption about me based on literal ignorance (that you attempted to throw at me) and it failed terribly.

@Mauzuri Yeah, you're definitely playing BotW wrong (in fact I would argue that's not how open world games should be played period). BotW generally isn't the kind of game that you just set a destination, go there, and ignore everything, it's a game that's meant to indulge your curiosity. You see a suspicious location in the overworld and explore it to find a chest, Korok Seed, or Shrine. The towns serve more as a base of operations to gain supplies and enhance your gear so you can go back out and explore. Skyrim doesn't really work like this and that's the problem, because again, it's not a game that really gets you to explore every nook and cranny, and therefore doesn't really make the most of its open world. You can't just go off the main road and look for puzzles or suspicious locations and find something worthwhile, there's nothing there. The actual content and rewards are largely contained within the towns and dungeons and there's no real reason to engage with the rest of the overworld which largely defeats the purpose of having one.

If you like the kind of game where you just go from A to B for quests that's fine, but you don't really need an open world for that, a linear or sandbox style game (think something less like BotW and more like OoT) would suffice. If you're designing an open world you want to give players a reason to go off the beaten path and explore at their own leisure. No such reason exists in Skyrim.

@Bolt_Strike I need to play more BotW (beat the first boss, or one, the desert one), and I found that unless I had an objective in mind it was boring. I had to be journeying somewhere and indulge in curiosity along the way, or else I found nothing and the game felt empty. Skyrim felt better to explore without an objective in mind to further the game. There are tons of things to find they all have a little story or reward to it. And you find them more consistently.
So I found the opposite to be true.

Can anyone explain “timeless gameplay loop” please?
I never played this game. It always looked very janky to me although people around me have been playing it for years.

@Ralizah Exactly. The other day l was playing Soul reaver 2 after so many times. But my record is always on Contra hard corps on Sega mega drive

@kingbreww Dude you can look forward while repeating your past experiences that you enjoyed the most. That's how life works

Bringing back some good and bad memories. Remember excitedly booting this up on the 360 back when it released 10 years ago.

I've moved on from the bad performance though. Playing Special Edition on PC will still suffice for me.

@ShogunRok hi, does this upgrade improve the psvr version used with ps5?(I guess not).knowing this franchise there will be a psvr2 version of the game when psvr2 comes out. I would be hyped about that although will probably make you buy Skyrim again for umpteenth time lol.

@Jgb559 Nah sadly not, Skyrim VR is an entirely separate game. And yeah, I wouldn't be at all surprised if a better version of Skyrim VR was released at some point!