After being severely under-whelmed by Oblivion, I was giving serious consideration to skipping this sequel to it. Fortunately, I was convinced otherwise by a friend because this one was a very very large step up in every way from it's predecessor.
To start with, I played it with the very nice PC exclusive HD texture pack which made it look a lot prettier than it's console counterparts. The PC version also allowed the use of the console which was necessary to get around a few game breaking bugs. This is quite a buggy game....and as I read more of the Skyrim Wiki through my progression, I became more and more aware of how many holes there are in the engine and quest scripting and just how many ways the game can be broken and how much harder it is to fix on console versions.
Asides from the obvious graphical upgrades (both stock and HD addition) which provide both much nicer looking locations as well as a great deal more variety and detail in said locations. This makes all the walking that you do (of which there is again, a lot) at least interesting to take in all the scenery around you. The voice acting is also greatly improved, although does not have quite the star-studded cast of Oblivion. The keyboard short-cuts and interface are enormously improved allowing for much speedier navigation of everything taking full advantage of the keyboard and mouse which is greatly appreciated.
I also enjoyed the story much more in this game over Oblivion. Instead of just being some dude who just stumbled into a quest, this time you are a "Dragonborn". A descendant of a member of the Royal family from Oblivion who have the ability to use their voice as a weapon by learning magic words or "Thums". You come into this knowledge at quite an opportune time in that Dragons are just starting to return to the world and the Dragonborn is the only one who can truly kill a dragon by absorbing their soul and their "Thum" along with it. This gives the story a much greater sense of an epic and a great sense of accomplishment when you complete your mission and even the smaller goals along the way.
The game-play itself remains mostly unchanged from before in that it has action RPG level progression and you pick the kind of traits you want to develop. Again, I went with a skull-cracking bruiser who cuts dragons into very small pieces.
The only drawbacks that come to mind are the aforementioned enormous amount of walking. And while the nice scenery does help to alleviate the boredom of walking, even this wears off eventually. And some of the areas that you have to get to are in very inaccessible places either around or on the other side of or on top of enormous mountains that you have to find a way around or up and this can also wear a bit thin over time and starts to feel just like padding the way with pointless obstacles.
I only did the main quest in this run but will definitely return to it to do all the DLC at a later date. With many more mods attached to it to make it look even prettier. The screenshots here will be something to aim for. And while I did thoroughly enjoy it and would easily recommend it to anyone I still don't think it lived up to the enormous amount of hype surrounding it or all the "best game ever" claims. It's good, but not that good. Looking forward to going back to it though and pushing it and my PC hardware to the limit.
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