Having just played Baldur's Gate for the second time, and longing for some epic tale to immerse myself in, I bought Morrowind GOTY on the off-chance, in the hope that it would quench my thirst for another truly emotional RPG experience. Well, I can safely say that that was the best 30 quid I EVER spent. More than quench my thirst, it drenched me like a tsunami and swept me away, and well over a year later I was still wringing out the last few drops!

Being also an FPS fan, I really do prefer a 1st Person view with mouselook and ASDW controls, so my first impression of Morrowind was instantly one of relief and pleasant surprise. While other games such as Summoner, Gothic or Wizards and Warriors had previously been a bit of a pain for me, Morrowind promised to be the perfect combination of everything that I looked for in a game.

Alright, so a few years down the line it's showing its age (no Havok or ragdolls, slightly dated - though still good - graphics, no lipsynch etc,) but in terms of gameplay, storyline and sheer vastness this has yet to be beaten by anything - even Oblivion. For me it was like every night for over a year I could play out another chapter in my own heroic adventure which even Frodo would be shocked at. So many places, caverns, secrets, factions, quests, friends and foes, that even after finishing the main quest you can still keep playing for months in search of ancient Tamrielic
artefacts, hidden shipwrecks, faction advancement, easter eggs and all sorts. It just goes on and on. And on.

All that, added to the expansions included in the GOTY edition, and you can see why it was money so well spent. It's virtually like having two MORE games on top of what you've just been through, each with their own quests, races, enemies, weather etc and the odd novelty here and there. I originally bought it for Xbox, but when I saw it going cheap for PC, I bought it to be able to make use of the thousands of user mods available, and the TES3 Construction Set that allows you to make your own mods. Oh, and pretty much any PC can run it nowadays :)

Any downsides? Well, really only two:

1) You can ruin some quests by killing essential NPCs or creatures
2) All things must eventually come to an end :(

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Created Jan 10, 2008 at 10:03am • Submit your own review...