The Elder Scrolls Online Review

Each class has their own skill tree, as you would expect in an RPG. Nightblades get inherent bonuses for stealth, Templars have healing abilities, Sorcerers get companion animals, and so on. While these classes can be manipulated to play however you want - I saw a sorcerer tank running around in heavy armor, wielding two-hand weapons - there are benefits depending upon your playstyle. Templars are good if you are looking to play alone as they have self-healing abilities, therefore they are less reliant on teammates for support. Nightblades work well as part of a group as they are best suited to striking unsuspecting enemies and need others to create distractions. The balance of these classes seems dependent on play-style, but it’s only a single piece of a giant character-creation puzzle.

There are times when it is easy to get lost in The Elder Scrolls Online. I spent long chunks of hours, roaming the gorgeous landscapes, defeating ancient evils, and wondering where the last few hours of my life went. When Elder Scrolls Online finds it rhythm, it is an all-consuming experience, but one that unfortunately gets occasionally interrupted by the previously mentioned issues. One of the best design choices of The Elder Scrolls Online is an interface which fades away when not being used. It allows these moments of solitude an exploration to show off the game’s beauty.

The Elder Scrolls truly is beautiful, which is especially impressive given the game’s massive amount of content. Each faction has five different zones - some have a couple of mini-starting zones - which boast tens of hours of gameplay. From the snowy mountains of Skyrim to the golden deserts of Alik’r, the game is diverse and expansive. Nothing is overtly gated at the beginning of the game, but the deeper you travel in to the world the more high-level content you will find. Playing through each faction, with their multiple storylines means you are in for hundreds of hours of game time. The Elder Scroll series is well-known for its sprawling worlds and large amounts of gameplay, and yet this game dwarves its predecessors.

One of the strengths The Elder Scrolls Online boasts is its action-RPG combat. With no auto-aiming, movement is almost as important as it is in the previous games. In fact, it is the movement which makes the first-person camera hard to use. My Nightblade liked to hang back and shoot enemies from a distance, thus backtracking and dodging were important aspects of the movement mechanics. You can park-and-shoot like other MMORPGs or simply charge in with your heavy armor, but The Elder Scrolls Online allows for more creative tactics. Certain bosses require quick movement, as you might have to stop a healing process or hit a weak spot. The drawback to this mobility-focused combat is it isn’t always apparent whether or not you’ll be hit. With all of my dodging, retreating, and advancing it almost felt random when I would avoid damage. It is refreshing to have a more active combat design for an MMO, but it is not as finely tuned as one would hope.

In between your fighting and questing you will be confronted with the ambiguous task of leveling up. There are multiple sections of skills available to your character, these sections are separated in regards to the class, race, armor, and weapon choices you make. Your class and weapon sections give you active abilities that are assigned to hotkeys and every section has its own series of passive upgrades. Leveling is a very deliberate process and picking the wrong skills can lead to a very frustrating end-game, but it's hard to determine what skills are important in the long-run. Understanding the nuance to the numerous available skills is tricky and you’re going to need help. There are tons of fan-made sites which can help craft the character you want, but without a guide I felt myself randomly selecting skills I thought sounded cool, only to find them useless as I progressed. It would be nice if the leveling process felt less like fumbling in the dark, as anyone who isn’t looking to do the extra-credit reading is going to find themselves re-speccing as they approach high level quests. Re-speccing can be done at any time after you find the shrines - which is simple enough - but costs 100 gold per skill point, getting to be seriously pricey for high level characters.

The quests themselves are a mixed bag. Some of them are your standard, “Kill 10 werewolves” fare, others are tied to some well-written stories which will make you press on to find out how they conclude. The layout of each quest is fairly cookie cutter, dungeon maps are reused giving you consistent deja-vu and the meat of the quests is killing ancient foes through well-worn tactics. It is the content itself which makes these quests unique. You might be trying to save a Tamriel version of Brigadoon or uncovering the secrets to an ancient murder. You’ll get three keys to unlock a central chamber or use a secret amulet to make a boss killable. The best part about the structure of these quests is some offered choice. You can elect to turn against a rich brat trying to uncover a long hidden relic or vanquish its ancient protector. The element of choice is something lightly tied to all Elder Scrolls games and it is nice to see it still alive in The Elder Scrolls Online.

There are many elements in the Elder Scrolls franchise which are well-suited to an MMORPG. Crafting is a natural cross-over from the single-player experience, tweaked to fit a world where economy is a global concern for all players. There is no more consistent leveling by forging and breaking apart an infinite number of iron daggers. Zenimax requires players to spend time out in the world searching for materials in order to build better weapons, armor, and clothing. Most of these are fairly prevalent, the exception being leather which can only be gathered from random dead-animal drops. Leather can be so hard to find you will actually encounter hordes of players sitting in a dungeon where they know they can find some of this rare crafting material. It represents another design issue overlooked at launch.

You can also learn crafting by deconstructing armor, weapons, and enchantments you find in the world. The more rare or foreign an item, the more you will learn from it. It creates a nice choice for players, deciding between using the valuable item they received at the end of quest, or deconstructing it to better their understanding of a craft. Alchemy, enchanting, and provisioning (cooking) work much the same way. Players can build their skills through experimentation and deconstruction, however it is a slow and tedious process which requires hours of commitment. As stated previously, those who became expert smiths in Skyrim by burning through iron daggers will be in for a rude awakening.