A bit better than Oblivion - still bad
But let's talk about Skyrim. The best name for it would be jack of all trades. however, none of these "trades" are well made.
Main story - i admit is better than in Oblivion (you can't really make anything worse than Oblivion's story) but still very generic. again you are the one who has to save the world - do you got a choice in it? - not really. there are no twists or turns in the story - you can't choose anything - just go kill the bad guys. as far as i remember Elder scrolls should have some choices in it. the only choice you got is to either join some guild or not - do a quest or not - these are not choices. you can join every single guild, you can do every single quest no matter what you choose or what you chose before. You can be a swordsman and be the grandmaster of Mage guild without using a single spell troughout the game. Just ridiculous. funny part - some oblivion guilds had interesting story - not skyrim guilds. every single guild story in skyrim is generic and short.
well at least you can choose the side on the civil war - 1 choice in the whole game. but it doesn't really matter which side you'll choose - nothing really changes in the skyrim world no matter which side you choose. mighty open-world RPG we got here. The whole game is a Hack/slash RPG in a disguise. combat is the backbone for every single quest (apart the fetch me that item quests). and story is incredibly poor in every single quest (which is understandable in hack/slash rpgs).
Most of the quests in Skyrim are somewhat tedious. They usually involve some boring character asking you to go to a narrow dungeon with no real level design to retrieve some artifact you know nothing about. I can't tell you how many times a character has asked me to go get his or her family amulet or sword that happens to be in a cave crawling with bandits.
There was even one time when I decided to apply for the Bard college, as soon as I stepped into this school, they asked me to leave and do a fetch quest! No explanation on what the quest was about and not even an introduction to the college or anything.
One of the biggest problems in Slyrim are the NPCs; all the characters never ever have anything interesting to say, you can never have good conversation with them and you are always just waiting for them to shut up so you can get a quest from them and look for some action. And because of this, it's so much easier to play as a jerk in this game than any other RPG. Whenever I play an RPG, I'm always reluctant to be the bad guy. But in Skyrim, I joined the Dark Brotherhood (the assassin guild) and the Thieves Guild and killed random people on the road for their loot and I didn't care! There was even one character that the game wanted me to sympathize (I won't spoil who it is but I will say she is a female dark elf) and instead of giving her character by adding interesting dialogue, they just gave her cute green puppy dog eyes. Nice try Bethesda! James Cameron tried to do the same thing with the Na'vi in Avatar but I still hated every character in that movie.
I feel like if there were better conversations and more dialog options during interaction with the NPCs, I might have been able to feel more of a connection with the characters.
Fighting system - boring and repetitive. hit hit hit - or spam 1 spell or shoot shoot shoot. bad combat wouldn't matter if this game wasn't a hack/slash. but as it stands it is a hack/slash game with boring combat.
Smithing is also completely broken. The amount of experience you earn when you craft a dragon-scale plate armor is the same amount as when you craft a leather bracer. In other words, you can exploit the smiting system and level up by just constantly making the weakest armor in the game. It's just ridiculous. And no matter how you fix this it's still gonna be broken.
Loot system is dead in skyrim - thanks to OP crafting. after you reach 15-20 level - just craft 1k iron daggers or something - get 100 lvl in crafting - and you can get legendary steel plate armor which is not far away from daedric or dragon armor. and soon you'll have enough dragon bones and scales to craft dragon armor anyway. Buy 1 daedra heart in whiterun and voila you get the best weapon in game at level 20. There are no unique items, after early game you sell all your loot for gold or don't even bother picking it up. so what's the point in killing anyone or doing any little side quests if you can't get any interesting items from it? (remember the story sucks). OFC, don't forget the enchating+alchemy+crafting OP combo. but you don't really need it to beat this game.
Leveling up system is meh. The usual Elder scroll system with some tweaks. never really liked this system too much. However, in skyrim it's clear that developers made the leveling up system as capped as possible to provide some replayability value to the game. because there is no replayability value in story - remember no choices - you can do everything in 1 go. so they cap the char to force you to try other builds - a lot of perks - not many perk points gained.
Enemy scaling is a bit better (some caves are lvl capped) than in oblivion but still ridiculous. For example, dragon scaling makes no sense. the first dragon encounter - you beat him with few shots and no gear and without any real help from npcs. quite stupid - mighty dragon dies to 5 wooden arrows. 1 way or another the whole scaling thing is stupid - that's the whole point of RPG - to get stronger and be able to beat enemies you couldn't beat before. Leveling up system becomes pointless. Bethedsa could learn from gothics (1 and 2) how to make a logical enemy scaling in an open-world.
dungeons are repetitive and small, there is nothing to explore in this skyrim world. a lot of empty space above surface and small dungeons with creeps in it. bad story, boring npcs and world, obsolete loot system, bad combat system, mediocre leveling up system, retarded enemy scaling, repetitive dungeons - and you got skyrim.
Oh and don't forget the childish puzzles. why put such retarded puzzles in the game? what's the use of a puzzle if 5 years old kid can solve it in 2 minutes? just let us put the key in the dungeon doors without the need to spin 3 discs a couple of time - oh yeah, i managed to figure it out - it took me 10 secs to do so.
But the biggest problem in Skyrim is that the reason for everything, the reason why you do all these quests is just to make your character stronger. It's just so you can get flashier armor and gear. Now while this may be rewarding to some people, I'd rather have a reward that helps me achieve an ultimate goal. You see, 99% of the quests in Skyrim have nothing to do with the dragon crisis. Say you become the leader of the Companions guild; it makes sense for you, Dragonborn, to use this advantage to kill the dragons. I mean wouldn't it be cool if you could order your fellow Companions to go slay the dragons hiding in a mountain? Any time Dragonborn earns a title of guild master or thane of a town, he or she should be able to use that against the dragons. The ultimate goal of killing the dragons should be the entire theme of the game.
Take Mass Effect 2 for example; there are a lot of things Mass Effect 2 does wrong but it's a fantastic game because every quest and side-quest has something to do with the ultimate goal of the game. Every time you successfully complete a quest in ME2, it will somehow be a benefit for the final "suicide mission". There is a great build up to that final moment and it makes every little mission in that game rewarding.
In Skyrim, it always feels like I wasted my time after I finish a guild quest line. The world doesn't respond to me any differently, it didn't really open up any new levels, and this didn't help stop the dragon crisis which was something my character was born to do. I never feel very rewarded when I do anything but the main storyline.