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Type: Roleplaying (Fantasy)
Rating: 3/10
Another big dissapointment, like most of todays RPGs seem to be.
After about ten tries, everytime telling myself "Come on, maybe it really gets better once you've played it a while!" I gave up. So it could be that my review is too negative because it really gets better after a while. A long while, probably. I can't imagine that, though.
Anyway, here's what I have to say:
Graphics look ok, though I've already seen much better - especially as the performance is bad compared to, say Uru, which looks just gorgeous and which I could play without problems with the highest possible quality settings while for Morrowind I had to lower everything to a "barely recognisable" and still the games runs only halfway fast.
The interface is crowded. Especially if you have to play in low resolution. You can have lots of windows with lots of text and icons in lots of places on the screen. Control is ok, because you can define the keys yourself.
Mixing Roman and ancient Japanese culture might be a new one but unfortunatly, it doesn't really work, at least that's my opinion. They should've sticked with one of them and just done it right. Additionally we have the usual bunch of about ten or twenty other races which adds - talking quantity-, not necessarily quality-wise - to the fray. The usual amount of newly invented monsters which all look different but still act the same (that is run towards you and try to kill you).
The world is big, like in so many other games. Unfortunatly, like in so many other games, that only means that you have to run around for 95% of the time in the faint hope of getting to a place where actually something happens. It may even be something interesting if you're really lucky.
This is especially bad, as even when running you seem to only crawl around the landscape; I always thought Gothic was bad in this but Morrowind beats 'em all. Don't ever think of just walking; you (and I mean you, the player) will die of old age before your character reaches the next town.
Technically the wold is divided in many (many, many) small "cells", which you will encounter about every 30 seconds - which in turn will make you encounter a 5 second loading delay for every one of them.
Note: If heard that other people didn't have such problems with loading; it probably is better if you have lots of (that is > 256 MB) of memory.
There is a fair number of cities and unfortunatly too many of them are also rather big. And of complicated design. And sometimes filled with lots of "filler" buildings that you can - as usual - enter without anybody caring about it. Why you should wish to enter them is another question though, cause there's not much interesting in them, mostly. You'll also encounter lots of merchants which will offer large amounts of stuff that you can't use and even more stuff that probably nobody in the game can use.
Apart from, as mentioned before, much much running around there are the usual quests you have to fullfill, if only so you don't immediatly die of boredom. The tasks range from the rather unimaginative "Go forth and slay that evil, evil monster which ate my rice pudding!" to a daring "Please, please, please bring back my grand aunts ring which - oops! how foolish of me! - I accidently dropped in that murky puddle over there" which really scores points for originality - or does it?
Which leads us straight to the story. Er well, what story? I couldn't find one ... maybe I just didn't search hard enough.
The tasks are all but difficult, as far as brainwork is concerned. You'll just have to find the right place/person/monster/artifact (which of course involves much more of the inevitable running around) and you're done. The monsters (at least those I encountered) are usually slain with one successful hit; problem is that you'll miss them most of the time, which makes the battles pretty un-entertaining.
Well, at least one positive thing to say: I couldn't find them. The game ran really stable on my system.
Play Nethack instead.
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Last modified: September 11 2008 09:38:14 by Thorsten Thielen URL of this page: www.c2226.de/reviews/games/morrowind.phtml |
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