The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition

If you want your physical life absorbed by a new better digital reality, sure play this game. I don't suggest it because your soul will be consumed and you'll never see the light of day again.

What's to say that hasn't already been said about Skyrim? Perhaps the ultimate first-person (or third-person) action role playing game of its generation (and for many Mllennials, of ours too), The Elder Scrolls V: SKyrim falters only in its scaled-down scope from the previous entry. Some of this can't be helped because the province of Skyrim is just smaller in size than Cyrodil, which formed the bulk of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but also some of it was trimming of systems and streamlining of combat to get more people into the fold. I'd say the tactic worked, but I also have the unpopular opinion that all the lost attributes, major and minor skills. plus custom magic creation did bog down some of the experience in the previous game, however devilish it could be to abuse those mechanics in order to make godlike characters without needing to actually cheat. The most inportant thing is you can still play your way, with a fully customized character, and even though you technically no longer have classes to guide how your leveling progresses, you can still specialize into a tank or longbow sniper like all the previous games. This formless and limitless leveling system does mean that eventually you can have maximum everything, and will be that ultimate godlike character just from enough playing, but I don't think there ever was an Elder Scrolls game that you couldn't break somehow just with enough play time. For the average player, they just want an immersive experience that is easy to pick up and hard to put down; they want an escape into another world where they can live out a fantasy, or just get from point A to point B and save the day before popping in another title to play. Skyrim delivered all that, plus an art style that has aged like fine wine to the point most people don't even care about the fact the engine under the game has more holes than a cheese grater, and was already a generation behind the competition when launched. All the myriad bugs and glitches train the player to save often, and although patches would ultimately get the worst offenders, there is still enough jank left in the game that people playing the game long-term will inevitably seek mods to correct what was left untouched when Bethesda moved on. Luckily, that same mod community has blossomed into one so big that we would end up getting entire DLC-sized expansions to the game, unofficial remastered graphics for those who absolutely need a 15 year-old game to feel like a bloated unoptomized modern one, and all for free. Honestly, I think some of the better expansion mods like Wyrmstooth, Falskaar, and Midwood Isle should be incorporated into the base game, but that's just me. The fact Tod Howard has spent those 15 years just re-selling this game back to us on different platforms while letting the community extend the life of the title indefinitely with this fan-made content is sort of telling that maybe Bethesda doesn't believe they can top it. The bottom line here is Skyrim did what Oblivion and its predecessor did not, even if it is the svelte, streamlined "Elder Scrolls Lite" entry into the series compared to others in the series. That thing it did was get enough people invested in the game that the aforementioned community of content creators blossomed around it in the first place. Being able to play the game across three console generations, myriad PC generations, and now mobile nearly two decades later is also kinda neat. You can literally play this game forever if you want, and with official Creation Content or free mods to keep adding new adventures, it's probably still the single best investment in the genre you can make. The pending Beyond Skyrim mod content will also see every single province plugged into the base game with all their own quests, making the whole content of Tamriel playable in an "offline" Elder Scrolls game for the first time since the original entry. Some may argue for Oblivion Remastered, and it sure looks great, plays mostly the same way the original did with quality of life improvements, but you need to have ridiculously expensive hardware to run its shiny and resource-heavy Unreal 5 engine. Skyrim even in it's decked-out Special Edition with Anniversary Edition content download can basically run on a potato nowadays, so there's few people out there who can't play this game, making it even more essential if free-roam action RPGs are your thing.

Best game I've played growing up without the internet. I enjoyed every second of exploring this game for the first time play through, and then the second play through, and then the third play through, and the fourth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

broken and full of game breaking bugs I completed a questline and it completely softlocked my game

Had to take an arrow in the knee just to play this game. Overall: 10/10 I’ve been playing Skyrim since I was a kid, and even in 2025, it’s still an absolute classic. The game may be old, but it never gets boring especially with the modding community keeping it alive. You can easily give it a modern look with visual mods or completely transform the gameplay if you want. Skyrim is still one of the best open-world RPGs ever made. Highly recommended for the nostalgia. ~Go Steal Some Sweet Rolls~

Would totally recommend. But only if you use the mods to fix everything those idiots at Bugthesda broke. Also try out Skyrim together. It's funny as heck watching your friend launched into the air by a Giant.

Brilliant game, quite the epitome of fun. It makes the player feel as though they have transcended beyond reality/ escape it. Truly magical.

This game is special, no pun intended. Vibes and atmosphere like nothing else. Modding is where things get interesting - few games offer the same level of customization with mods as Skyrim. If you're interested in that, this is the version you probably want, not the standalone Anniversary Edition. Specifically, version 1.5.97, which has a very robust mod ecosystem and compatible with just about everything. If you want to play with the Creation Club content, look into the "best of both worlds" patch. I think at least 200 of my gameplay hours have been spent testing different mods and modlists (try Wildlander if you like survival gameplay, that one's been my favorite so far). It's gotten a lot easier now than it used to be, with Wabbajack auto-installers and curated lists to form a base to build on. Todd's magnum opus still holds against the test of time, and I predict will for many years even after the release of TES6.

this game is nothing without mods in the modern day with mods, this game genuinely rivals modern rpgs since you can choose exactly how you wanna play this game with what mods you wanna download if you like games with memorable characters, i recommend serana dialogue overhaul use mod organizer 2 for everything

Hey you, you're finally awake. Enjoyed the game so much I bought it twice and 100%'d both editions

One of my fav games of all time and a very dear game to my heart, played it on many different platforms and every one of them has over 100 hours. That's it, that's all i'll say, you get the drill, Skyrim is praised to death and it deserves it.

Todd will be proud if you spent at least 100 hrs in this game, and having it in your library is just the bare minimum

After years of owning this game on several platforms I finally sat down and got every single achievement and i've gotta say, This has to be one of the best games of all time. I will always come back to Skyrim for many many years to come.

Great game by itself. Massive modding community; probably the largest to ever exist.

Just started this game not long ago.. Insanely fun screaming(Shouts) at enemy see them rag-doll all over the place!!! the loots detail looks so GOOD!!! one thing i had to complain is why can't u sprint and jump?? overall still positive

I usually dont play to this type of game with no turns in battle, but skyrim lets me explore so much that it compensates the free battle style. The fact it also allows you to have shortcuts to level up some habilities makes it more interesting for me, because that way i can focus in the exploring and be crazy in game.

TL:DR; Very enjoyable, but wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle. You don't play a role in this RPG, you are the player playing as yourself, hoovering up content sans context. For everything negative I am about to say about Skyrim, I did enjoy playing it a lot. It has an amazing atmosphere, soundtrack, surprisingly good world-building (when you can find it) and did a lot to solidify and refine the style of Open-World RPG design that Bethesda had been working on since Morrowind. I think the thing that bothers me most about Skyrim is how light and hollow every interaction is that isn't killing something or check-listing actions for a quest. There are plenty of quests -both silly and serious- in this game and thousands of locations to stumble across and discover, but after a short while it starts to feel the same. The same caves, the same bandits, the same monsters, the same spells/weapons. One of the reasons why "stealth archer" is such a common way to play these games is that you get to engage with a lot of mechanics at once in deeper ways than "use biggest damage sword" or "use biggest damage spell" I think what seals the negative score for me is that after enough time, it feels like playing an MMO with no other players in. Its a wide beautiful world where nothing much changes from quest to quest. I kill more things, I collect enough bear arses to hand in, I get XP, I level up, I get better loot, I repeat. If you want a game like this, fill your boots and have fun. But its not an RPG, its a looter-shooter with swords and in retrospect its why Fallout 4 was such a disappointment to me. I WANT to play a role, I WANT quests to be exclusive to roles and not things to check off a omnipresent-player list. I want New Vegas, basically. But with dragons. The mod scene pulls a lot of weight too, like every Bethesda game before it. Fixing bugs and deepening gameplay in a multitude of ways, god bless 'em.

after about 500 hours on playstation i can confidently say ive spent more time modding this game than ever playing it 10/10 would do it again

It’s perhaps ofttimes difficult to realise what an utter morass of inferiority we find ourselves in amongst the cacophonous sewer‐luge that is navigating the modern video game oeuvre. [i]Skyrim[/i] increasingly appears the benchmark palate‐cleansing bath salt to sharply wake and remind us of the standards we once held, of what good games, despite caviled flaws, used to look like. As Richter said of Bach, “it does no harm to listen to Bach from time to time, even if only from a hygienic standpoint” – and so can it be said of [i]Skyrim[/i]. [i]Skyrim[/i] was clearly made by those genuinely impassioned by what they were creating and who, being free from the omnipresent whip of “social justice” at their backs, were capable of finding original inspiration – and if ever a starker contrast there were to prove the existence of King Midas’ inversion, look no further than Microsoft’s brazen bride‐kidnapping of Bethesda and the subsequently soulless stillborn of [i]Starfield[/i]. It also bears repeating: the ‘cancelling’ of Jeremy Soule was the killing of the White Hart; God offered his hand, and your hedonic addiction to schizophrenic altruism was a blade through the palm. Revel proud in your bloodlust, you spiritually castrated halfwit, such talent is few and far between. Ultimately [i]Skyrim[/i] is, still, brilliant.

There's bugs but wow there's so much things to do. Great for introvert nerds who hates going out. Played for 261 hours and I still have so many incomplete quest and more unknown quest to find. Better than other expensive games that be finish like less than a day.

Good gameplay for the time, decent plot, lots of fun mods. Glitches are fun.

Never gets old, the settings is one of the best if not the best in RPG genre, you just love to walk in skyrim and kill a few bandits on the way then duel with a dragon.

Great game. But I dont think it deserves a positive review since its so full of bugs that you have to fix with console commands

Skyrim feels like the comfy home i never had, always come back with a smile on my face This is as much an action rpg as a relaxing asmr game, and its the most modded game ever, so its the perfect platform to tweak it to your liking, there really is nothing else like Skyrim

Skyrim is one of those unique special type of games that will always be an amazing game, I'll always keep coming back to. 5/5 as always & 10/10 with mods lol.

There is no reason that such an old game, re-released so many times, should still have game-breaking bugs in it. It's inexcusable. Nobody other than the developers of the game should have to go down a laundry list of janky steps and faulty console commands (that don't even seem to work) to fix major problems.

Loved this as a teen on Xbox, loving it now on PC as an adult. Very nostalgic for me. It's one of those games where you say "I'll play for just 15-30 mins" and then suddenly its 3 days later, your house is full of cheese wheels, you're married to a werewolf and you keep talking about an arrow in the knee. The world is massive, beautiful, full of weird and interesting stories/quests just waiting to be found. You'll constantly get distracted from the main quest and that's the point. Yeah it's buggy sometimes but here I am years later still playing & loving it sooo....

underrated as hell its 2025 and its still a top 5 game def would recommend

While I know it's not the best elder-scrolls game out there by a large margin, Skyrim has a special place in my heart. If I were to guess, I'd assume I have around 300 hours on the PS3 edition of Skyrim, and I never even beat the main quest on there! That's how big this game is. Even after completing the main story, I'm still finding fun things to do almost 20 hours later! And if I ever get bored, I can just restart the game with a new challenge idea. Skyrim is truly a special game, with near-endless potential for replayability! Just know that the writing can flop every now and then, and the character-creation/leveling is HEAVILY simplified from previous elder-scrolls games. Even with those issues, I'd give it a very good 8/10. TLDR: The game is flawed, but incredibly fun with a lot to do.

The only thing this game is good for is modding it until its unrecognizable. and then its worth playing again lol. i mean if you've never played it then go ahead and play it for the first time but other then that, just download it and mod the living crap out of it until you can't even recognize it anymore.

Great! Working on getting all of the Achievements right now, got to love a besesda game, as long as it's not Starfield! 10/10

I came to it after my cousin and mom its great, its glitchy at times but it just works. PLAY IT

Skyrim is a great adventure; the map is perfect, the quests are memorable, as are the characters. You can complete the main quests or explore and immerse yourself in one of the best experiences ever. The voices are amazing, you can be marry, be a vampire, a werewolf, some races to choose. I love it

Be a cat, jump onto every table you see, and kick everything on it to the floor.

Stop buying this game over and over for every farking platform. It's fine. It's a game. I play it still time to time. But compared to the OG release over a decade ago, all this has is WORSE modding overall in exchange for a microtransaction system with some community content thrown in like an ape hurling dung. Ohh they made some graphics better...aka porting mod content and calling it original ideas. The human work hours put in to coding extra security for this engine could have produced a whole game, or at least some bug fixes... The Redguard Woman missions are still bugged. A mission thats hard to avoid, shows up early, and has been almost impossible to complete since release. (If you already know where the quest ends, you can bypass the bug preventing the release of the prisioner). THEY ADDED MICROTRANSACTIONS BEFORE FIXING A BUG AFFECTING THE FIRST(and one of few) QUESTS FOR THE REDGUARD "RACE". Viking game neglects black folks? I guess that tracks tho

I recommend this game its a great game by its self and has one of the best modding communities of any game ive ever played the mods keep it up to date looking like it just came out

I'd still prefer Oblivion more but Skyrim is really good game for anyone wanting a game to play buy this one.

If you are looking for a perfect escape from this disappointing reality look no farther. Is there some bugs to this game yes. But most of them can be fixed with a simple reload of a save. I recommend this beautiful game to anyone! I love it definitely the game I am constantly falling back on.

Skyrim has been around FOREVER and I have played it FOREVER... It's a fun game to come back to even after years of being off, it can be easy and a mix of hard whatever you want it to be. you make your character and just do whatever you want... (No killing chickens.) It's a old game that PEOPLE SHOULD at least try once, even now my bf is playing it for the first time and enjoying haha

this game is a nightmare to mod dude, i played fallout new vegas and rarely had issues modding but skyrim is a whole other thing. ive had issues that i couldnt fix only to come back tommorow and find it fixed itself. like i had all my saves corrupted yesterday and now theyre magically back like how?

One of THE greatest open world, rpg, mmo games of all time. even now years later the game is still so much fun. With great story telling, quests, memorable characters and so much more. This is a game worthy of praise.

Revisiting Skyrim after years... and it still feels like coming home. I first played Skyrim over a decade ago, and I just returned for another adventure. Somehow, it’s even more magical now. The music still gives me chills, the open world is still breathtaking, and the freedom to play however you want—warrior, mage, thief, or all three—is unmatched. Mods have breathed new life into it, but even vanilla Skyrim holds up remarkably well. There's something about wandering through Whiterun, climbing the Throat of the World, or shouting enemies off cliffs that never gets old. Whether you're a returning Dragonborn or a new adventurer, Skyrim continues to be one of the best RPGs ever made. 10/10, Fus Ro Dah never gets old.

i killed the final boss 1 day after buying the game 18 hours of play time very fun

This is one of my favorite games. Every since it came out I have loved it and I have now gotten it for my PC as in the past I've had it on both Xbox and Play station. Highly recommend. 100000/10!!! :D

Still good even after thousands of hours over the course of 10+ years on multiple accounts and PCs, and even mods. Quicksaving in small towns with my deadric weapon drawn never gets boring either, best type of venting ensues right after. P.S. Apparently I need to describe something in order to post so: Fus Ro Dah will always remain my most favorite mechanic of the game, simply for how beautifully the enemies fly away and then die like 3 seconds after they land. Such a gracious and powerful shout.

Includes game breaking bugs that are still not fixed. And I mean the kind you can't work around or fix without starting a new playthrough

I used to play on PS3 and loved it. Now I play on my laptop and love it even more. I highly recommend playing on your laptop or gaming computer

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition (Vanilla) Review Playtime: 246.6 Hours – No Mods Platform: PC (Vanilla Only) 🐉 Overview After 246.6 hours in vanilla Skyrim Special Edition, it's clear why this game continues to stand as one of the most beloved open-world RPGs of all time. Without a single mod installed, the experience still holds up incredibly well—thanks to Bethesda’s worldbuilding, freedom of choice, and atmospheric immersion. Skyrim isn’t perfect, but what it offers is timeless: a sandbox where you forge your own identity, explore at your own pace, and build a legend around your choices. For a vanilla experience, it’s surprisingly deep, stable, and still addictive after all these years. 🌄 World & Exploration Skyrim’s world is its crown jewel. From the snowy peaks of Winterhold to the golden forests of the Rift, exploration feels natural and endlessly rewarding. Even after hundreds of hours, I’m still stumbling across caves, ruins, and quests I hadn’t touched before. The environmental storytelling, paired with Jeremy Soule’s phenomenal soundtrack, creates a sense of true escapism. There’s an unmatched beauty in simply wandering—from witnessing a dragon swoop over the tundra to watching auroras light up the night sky. ⚔️ Combat & Character Progression Combat is straightforward, but offers room for creativity. You can go full stealth-archer, tanky warrior, conjuration-heavy mage, or mix it all together. Perk trees give your build direction, and even in vanilla, there’s enough flexibility to make every playthrough feel different. Shouts, the Dragonborn's iconic abilities, add a unique twist to combat—especially once you start unlocking rarer ones through exploration. 🏰 Factions, Quests & Roleplay Skyrim shines in its faction storylines. The Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild, College of Winterhold, and Companions each offer rich arcs that can dramatically alter your playstyle and gear. The main quest, while not the strongest, provides a satisfying power fantasy of becoming the Dragonborn, slayer of Alduin. But where the game really thrives is in its side quests—small, personal stories that fill the world with emotion and consequence. 🧭 No Mods: A Valid, Clean Experience With 246.6 hours played entirely vanilla, I can confirm: You don’t need mods to enjoy Skyrim. The Special Edition is already smoother and more stable than the original 2011 release. Sure, there are quirks and bugs here and there (a signature Bethesda trait), but nothing that breaks the experience. That said: If you're just starting to learn how to mod games— "Do NOT" make Skyrim your first modding project. Skyrim’s modding ecosystem is vast, but unforgiving for beginners. A poorly managed load order, broken scripts, or incompatibilities can easily corrupt your save or ruin dozens of hours of progress. Learn the basics with simpler games first—then come back when you're ready to dive into Wabbajack builds or manual modding with MO2 or Vortex.

For many, Skyrim is just a game… But for me? It’s a living world. A place where I breathe with the sound of my footsteps in the snow, where I’ve lived through the distant roars of dragons and the secrets hidden in caves. I don’t just play — I live, I fight, I explore. Every locked door, every puzzle, every forgotten path… they’re all a part of me. And I wish I was truly there… among its people, under its sky… in the heart of that endless legend. I wish.