The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Review
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Along with the faction quests, you'll also stumble across several daedra (evil demon) quests, where you'll be given the option of helping the daedra (for a nice prize) or not (for the betterment of the world). The daedra quests are some of the most interesting and memorable in the game. For one quest you'll visit an Alice in Wonderland style mad tea party, and you'll be tasked with curing a former emperor of madness. In another you'll need to invite a priest to dinner -- where he's the main course -- and you'll have to decide if you want to partake or not. In a third you'll experience a Skyrim version of The Hangover, and you'll have to remember what you did with a magical staff during a drinking binge. Unfortunately, the quests in the game have two major problems. First, they have almost no impact on the world. No matter what you do or don't do, nothing much will change. This is most noticeable during Skyrim's civil war, where the Imperials want the status quo and the Stormcloaks want more religious freedom. You can pick a side and end the conflict violently, but afterwards you might not be able to tell the difference. Worse, during the war itself, you're allowed to walk right up to the enemy faction leader and talk to him, and not only will nobody think to stop you, the leader will calmly exchange pleasantries with you, even if you've been cutting down all of the soldiers in his army. Other than some random comments here and there, the game just doesn't notice what you've done.
The second problem is that for some reason Bethesda went heavy on "miscellaneous" quests, which are mostly just one-sentence mini-quests to kill somebody or retrieve something or deliver a message. These quests get tiresome pretty quickly (especially the oft-repeated quests to kill anonymous bandit leaders and wayward giants), and they don't add anything to the lore of the world or to the campaign. They just give you an excuse to visit some of the caves and lairs and hideouts scattered throughout the world. Sadly, you're probably better off ignoring most of these quests and focusing on the core quests.
Gameplay
Skyrim's gameplay mechanics are about what you'd expect. You use the WASD keys to move your character, the mouse to steer, the left mouse button to swing your main hand weapon, and the right mouse button to swing your off hand weapon (or shield). You can also use the 1-8 keys (but not 9 and 0) as hotkeys for weapons and spells, and Bethesda actually added in some hotkeys for interface pages (like M for the map page) so you don't have to go through the tab key for everything.
Sort of oddly, spells in the game are handled like weapons, where you have to equip them and ready them in order to use them. That makes spells a little cumbersome to use. For example, for my character to cast something simple like "candlelight," he has to swap out his shield for the spell, then ready and cast the spell (which takes a second or two), and then swap out the spell for his shield. And since the spell only lasts a minute, he has to keep repeating this sequence over and over again every time he explores a dark cave, which isn't a lot of fun. Life would be much easier for casters if they could just press a key to cast a spell rather than repeatedly reshuffle their equipment.
The gameplay itself is in line with Bethesda's other games, with a balance between combat and conversations. The combat engine works pretty well, with smooth animations and nice lighting effects, and between spells, shouts, abilities and weapons, you're given lots of options for how to grind up your foes. Conversations, on the other hand, are a little more simplistic. Sometimes you're given the option to persuade, bribe, or intimidate, but otherwise your dialogue options are just a way to learn more information or to say "yes" or "no" to quests.
To keep combat interesting, Bethesda employed a bit of level scaling, but not to the extent seen in Oblivion. Instead of converting all enemies to your level (and making your level meaningless), Bethesda decided to create a variety of enemies and then change which ones you see during your explorations. So early in the game you might run into some basic bandits, but then later you'll encounter bandit thugs, bandit plunderers and eventually bandit marauders. Other enemies, like dragons, trolls and giants, appear to have fixed levels, and so they're nasty when you first meet them but then get easier by the end of the game.
Skyrim also has a collection of traps and puzzles to keep you on your toes. The traps function more for ambiance than as a threat to your character's life (they don't do a lot of damage, and your character regenerates health anyway), but they made me think of Indiana Jones more than a few times, and that's always a good thing. The puzzles, meanwhile, aren't especially challenging (most only have 27 combinations) but Bethesda did what they could with levers and rotating columns, and it's always nice when locations are more interactive rather than less.
