I used to be an adventurer- until i took a Skyrim to the xbox
Long answer first. Visually, Skyrims pleasing to the eye. Its obvious a lot of effort was placed into environment design, as well as character design and audio. So, a good game to look at and listen to. To play, however, thats.... something else.
See, Skyrim has a story, but the player can ignore it. The main campaign is involving enough, but it seems like something for the player to do, rather than enjoy. The other quests, faction quests such as the Companions and the Dark Brotherhood, have the same problem, with all the missions devolving to "go here, kill this, get this, come back, profit." It gets tedious, and more often than not you decide to go off and do something else instead.
Skyrim as a world is fun to explore. You have to set days on your schedule aside to just roam the land, looking for people items and places. (case in point: dont do this with the Strategy Guide, or that fun disappears). But when the time comes when you have all the gear you could ever want, and your gold measures in the tens of thousands, then exploring is all the game relies on to keep you playing- which wasn't effective in Oblivion.
But things have improved from Oblivion other than the visuals. Characters are less generic, although not by much. Combat is better too, with the new dual welding system making for a more tactile battle. Firing a fireball from one hand while swiping your sword with the other is hard to beat. And the new dragon shouts are good: if you actually go through the process of wall-finding and dragon soul collecting it takes to get the decent ones (I really wanna find out who in bethsheda said that calming animals made for a decent SHOUT)
So, Skyrim is a good game IF you consider the world of the game makes the game. With the awe inspiring visuals making up for the lack of awe inspiring gameplay
On the otherhand, its not a good game BUT its a good looking one. If thats all you need then go ahead and enjoy, just don't expect me to give a favourable review just becasue "it looked nice"