It's a fantastic game of course, but there's plenty wrong with it.
Instead of giving a full depth review & going on forever about how amazing it is like everyone else, I'm going to highlight the games issues that some reviews may have missed (or were paid not to mention). So here goes.
- NPC's behave unrealistically when a quest line is complete. For instance, I completed the thieves guild quest line & instead of getting new dialogue & accolades from my homies it was the same lines. One guy still tells me to go & see so & so if I want to join the guild. Not good at all.
- Companion AI is dismal & it aint no joke. One quest I had two companions that just kept getting stuck, falling off ledges & firing arrows into walls. That quest sucked believe me.
- Snow effects are piss poor. My character, horse & NPC's do not leave any footprints & snow just looks unrealistic in places. The game has some great atmospheric affects but not everywhere. I found an unsheltered bedroll at the top of a mountain & not a flake on it.
- I don't know if it's the same on the PC version but load times are a real fun killer in this game just as they were in Oblivion & Fallout 3. Once you've filled in a lot of the game world, you'll be fast traveling a hell of a lot. Well get ready to be staring at a load screen for a good chunk of your time. Maybe it's technology restrictions, I don't know but it sucks.
- The games frame rate can simply die from time to time. Like a slideshow. It's rare & it fixes itself but I've never known a console game to have this. We're talking single figure fps here. It usually fixes itself but on two occasions I had to restart the Xbox. (elite system with game installed to hd)
- Bethesda just don't excel at AI. Why is it when I slay a massive group of bandits & their leader, that one little straggler continues to attack me & shout at me. He would run off but no, life is clearly very cheap in Skyrim because he just wants to die. This single track AI has been present in all Bethesda RPG's that I've played. I hate it.
- Bethesda are clearly no good at animation either. The horses look bad. Worse than even Oblivion. They just don't look right & your horse and/or character will just disappear from view as you move the 3rd person camera around the horse. NPC's still look too stiff overall & some of them will just start reading or eating mid conversation with you. Lip syncing is much better though.
- Underwater travel is glitchy as hell. There is a quest that requires swimming to the bottom of a lake. The frame rate died & the underwater visuals kept switching back to land visuals but underwater(if you get me. just go swimming & you'll see).
- Dragons get repetitive & too easy after a while. I slayed dozens of them. They get harder but not that much & you'll still fight really weak dragons even at level 40 or more. These can be killed in a couple of hits lessening their image of awesomeness. I also had a quest character killed by attacking dragons forcing a reload of an older save.
Like everyone else, after a few hours I was like "best game ever" & scored it 9.5 but 70 hours later the bugs & annoyances do take their toll. Don't get me wrong, this is some game but just a bit more work was needed to earn all the acclaim it's currently getting in my humble opinion.