Morrowind may have its flaws, but if you can look past them, you are in store for an amazing gaming experience.
Morrowind, the third game in the Elder Scrolls series, is set in the imperial province of Vvardenfell, the land of the dark elves and living gods. You, the player, start out on a boat, where you learn that you are a prisoner freed by the order of the Emperor himself, the reasons for which are not immediately made clear. The main quest starts off with your character joining the Blades, the Emperor's eyes and ears throughout the empire. The first few quests are simple information gathering quests, but before too long, the storyline blossoms into massive political clashes and assaults on ancient strongholds where great enemies await. It is hard to get too far into discussing the excellent main storyline without spoiling major pieces of it, so I will leave it at that.
At the start of the game you are offered an option to customize your character's race, gender, and appearance, but overall, the amount of options are lackluster at best. Outside of race, gender and appearance do not make your character look very distinctive. You are given a list of pre-made faces to choose from, and once you make your choice, that is about it in terms of customization. Of course, you can choose the clothes and armor your character wears, which will cover most of your body anyway, but still, more customization options would have been nice. Your race, however, will determine quite a bit. Each race looks distinctive, and NPC's in the game will treat you differently based on your race. If you are a Redguard, other Redguards might be a bit friendlier to you. However, if you are not a Dark Elf, the native inhabitants of the island will call you an outsider, with some being a bit more apprehensive or hostile towards you. The amount of races (and the percentage in which they are found) feels right, as there is a decent enough variety to keep things interesting throughout the game.
The main issue most people will have with the game is when you are released from the brief tutorial that begins the game and set into the world of Vvardenfell. The game gives you very little direction, and for the first few hours, it is very easy to get lost. Thus freedom becomes a double-edged sword: on one hand, it is very nice to be able to choose your own fate, on the other, it is easy to lose your way.And even when you do figure out how to get around and what you are doing in general, it is still very easy to lose your way, as unlike the more recent Oblivion (where you get an arrow to point you around), you are given only general directions by NPC's on how to get places. Compounding this is the confusing journal system where quest details are logged, so at times you have to rely on memory and wits where you probably shouldn't. There is a good amount of enjoyment in exploration, but when you can't find that tomb you've been looking around an hour for, things can get frustrating fast. I recommend using a map online to find your way around (An Elder Scrolls wiki site has a great interactive one) if you get too lost, or simply don't find much enjoyment in exploration. The game also offers little in the way of fast travelling outside transport from city to city and a few teleport spells, so most of the time you will have to walk to your intended destination, which takes patience.
In your exploration of the massive land of Vvardenfell, you'll come across a wide variety of landscapes and enemies. The center of the map is a wasteland and it only gets worse as you get closer to the center, where a great enemy lies. The rest of the map is filled with detailed fields, forests, and swampland. However, you'll spend most of your time in the dead, dreary part of the map, so the game's nice (though now dated) visuals sometimes feel wasted. Scattered about the map are countless tombs, caves, and buildings to explore, which while most of time exploring them yields items of only moderate value, it is not hard to eventually strike gold, finding a legendary item tucked away deep in a cave in the middle of nowhere. It is truly a great feeling when your exploration is rewarded with a great item, and if you explore enough, the rewards will be great.
Morrowind's cities are truly one of the highlights of the game. From the sprawling city of Vivec, to the quiet but beautiful Balmora, you'll come across plenty of variety and action in the cities of Vvardenfell. Not only are there plenty of people to interact with, the game even features architectural styles depending on which faction rules the city. The Great House Televanni, a group of mages who like to keep to themselves, feature tall towers which require magic to navigate successfully. The warrior-like House Redoran features walled stronghold-like cities, which blend into the area they are built into well. The Imperial Legion cities are built like forts, with tall stone walls and in some cases, a manor or castle like structure where the head of the city lives. Tribunal Temple cities are the most unique, as their cities feature large standalone island-like sections of multiple floors, and there are even more styles than this in the game. Each faction has its guards patrolling the city, and the inhabitants of each city act unique to their allegiance, so each city has its own feel and a uniqueness to it which is great to experience.
The only commonality each city features is the law. Crimes in Vvardenfell fall under Imperial law, which is simply a set of fines based on the severity of the crime. This system fits the playstyle of the game well, because sometimes you will have to commit a crime to complete a mission, and if for a murder you were arrested and executed, the game would be very difficult. At the same time, it makes little sense, as other characters you are sometimes tasked to dispose of are issued death warrants for murders, where you can simply hand over some gold (the game's money system) and get off with a verbal warning. There is a threshold where you are issued a death warrant and all guards will attack you on sight (and NPC's will refuse to talk to you), but there is a way around this if you know the right people and have enough gold.
Morrowind features a plethora of side quests to try, from the many, organized guilds (including, among others, fighters, mages, and thieves guilds), to random quests given by strangers met in towns or the wilderness. Most of the guilds start off with minor fetch quests or other simplistic quests with simplistic goals, but as you become a more prominent member in a guild, sometimes you are asked to find powerful artifacts, go on long pilgrimages, and assassinate prominent members of the world of Morrowind. Simply put, join every guild you can, as you will have a ton of fun doing the missions for them, especially near the end. Most other side missions usually give small rewards, but they can be a nice distraction from the epic scale of the main quest or the guilds.
The audio of the game could be another point of contention which may decide how much you enjoy the game. While the music is great and memorable, and most sound effects at the very worst acceptable, the spoken dialogue (or lack thereof) may bother some players. The only spoken dialogue, outside of cutscenes, is small bits like "Hello!", battle cries, or cries of pain. The rest of interaction is purely text based, where you ask about certain topics and the NPC's will expand on the topic, whether the subject is a mission or rumors around town. This may feel like a big step down to some who have played more recent games, but I offer an alternative viewpoint. While it is less immersive, it allows for much more detain in conversation. In games with spoken dialogue, like Oblivion, the NPC's often cannot go into too much detail on a subject, and you have to listen to the wishy-washy voice acting. Text based dialogue offers more detail at a sacrifice, but a sacrifice I deem worthwhile.
Conversation works as you would expect it to, as you pick a topic from a list to discuss, and the NPC will expand upon it. Sometimes you are prompted to give a response based on what the person says, which oftentimes will determine the outcome of a quest. The game features a persuasion system which lets you get information from people they might not otherwise be willing to give. You can either offer a simple bribe, or based on your speech skill, can admire, taunt, or intimidate your target. Admiration causes your target to like you more, Intimidation will cause a temporary boost in disposition, and taunting can cause your target to attack you (which is one way to avoid being charged with murder, making them attack you first). It is a simplistic system, but an effective one, even if you will lose a bit of money in bribes to get the information you want.
Morrowind's leveling system is a bit different than other RPG's in that it is not based simply on experience points gained by killing enemies or completing quests. Instead, you choose ten skills, like lock picking, where the skill itself will level up as you pick locks, and once you gain ten skill increases, you level up. Upon leveling up, you can increase your attributes, which can affect your health, points available for magika use, how hard you hit with weapons, or even how lucky you are in general. While it can at times mean a bit of skill grinding is necessary to level up (though skill trainers are available for a price), this system does a good job of making you believe your character is becoming stronger and more experienced when he levels.
Combat is probably the game's biggest weakness. Swordfights usually amount to you and your opponent flailing your swords at each other until one of you dies. Magika is the game's magic equivalent, but it is hard to use on moving targets because most spells are a simple bolt of magic power which must hit your target to be effective. These bolts do not lock on to your targets in any way, so it is hard to use magika, and it can be easy to dodge is your opponent is shooting bolts at you. Ranged battles are the worst of all. This is because depending on your skills, sometimes (if your skills are low, oftentimes) you can walk right up to someone with your sword, swing, and completely miss. You can shoot an arrow right into someone, only for it to be completely ineffective. It is at least logical when your character fails casting a magika spell, as it would not make much sense if you could at any skill level cast any spell you learn with ease, but failure remains frustrating whenever it happens. The game seems to calculate a chance to hit (or cast successfully) based on your character's skills, attributes, fatigue, and weapons used based on your opponent's whether or not an attack is successful. Failing an attack (or strings of attacks) is probably the most frustrating aspect of the game early on. At least, as time goes on and your skills increase, missing becomes far less frequent.
Morrowind is a bit unique as it can be played from either a first person or third person perspective. The first person view is far superior to the third person view, as it is very hard to aim your sword strikes or magika bolts, as it is much easier to aim from a first person perspective than the third person view, which lacks even an aiming reticule to assist you. Playing from the first person viewpoint is not only easier in this sense, but it is much more immersive, as you feel like you are a part of this huge fantasy world, and there is a joy in that feeling which is hard to beat.
Morrowind's two expansions, Bloodmoon and Tribunal, are both very good, and included with the Game of the Year edition. Each offers a different gameplay experience, with Tribunal dealing with the god Almalexia and the various goings-on in the Morrowind province's capitol city, Mournhold, while Bloodmoon takes you to an island northwest of Vvardenfell, where werewolves, disgruntled soldiers, and tribes of fierce soldiers await. Tribunal is the superior of the two add-ons, as it offers a more exiting, engaging storyline, as well as a ton of great, new characters and items. Bloodmoon is still very good, but at times it feels like the entire add-on is wandering around the island of Solstheim, with action only intermittently interrupting. Both add-ons are essential for the full Morrowind experience, as they offer forty-plus hours of new content as well as a greater challenge than the main game, making these new places ideal to explore after you have done all there is to do in Vvardenfell.
On a final note, one issue everyone who plays Morrowind will deal with at some point are the glitches. While I will not harp on about them, crashes are not all that uncommon and other oddities will occasionally happen which can break certain quests or areas. The official patches help quite a bit to combat these problems, and there are some unofficial patches out there Morrowind enthusiasts created which make these glitches a rarity, so look into getting some sort of patch for the glitches if you decide to give Morrowind a try. Simply put, the bugs are a problem if you let them be, but there are methods to prevent them from happening.
It is easy to say that parts of Morrowind have not aged well. This may be true in some cases, as the combat system is terrible and the graphics do not hold up to modern day standards (though plenty of mods are out there to make it look better). However, when the game as a whole is examined, the sheer amount of content, freedom, and immersion the game offers truly make this game a gem for anyone with a remote interest in RPG's. Some parts of it may turn the modern gamer off, and it may not be the game for everyone, but if the game pushes your buttons like it pushes mine, you're in for a once in a lifetime gaming experience.