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Yes, I know I'm supposed to be writing up the EA rant right now but after my experiences with this particular game, I had to share my thoughts on what was wrong. The EA rant is still on the way but first things first, I want this off my chest. Also, if you enjoy Morrowind, fine by me. I can understand why others like this game despite the issues I'm going to address but I gave it a good enough chance and had enough of it after 15 hours.

A few weeks ago, I saw Morrowind and Oblivion uploaded to Steam along with an offer where you could get the two games with expansion packs for 20% off, making it just £17.50. I thought it was a fantastic offer and couldn't pass it up considering both games have great reception.

Just recently, I found a great time to start playing Morrowind and not getting distracted by other games and when I just picked it up, I couldn't quite get into the plot. I thought maybe I'll catch on later with it but eh, I guess I didn't care enough about the main plot in the end.

I like to give every game I play a chance so I didn't stop playing after an hour or two. In the past, I've played games that required me to spend a few hours before passing it up and I knew Morrowind was no exception. It took me a while to get used to the surroundings and how the combat system worked. The fantasy settings did look very good and it was fun to explore the areas, although I probably only saw 10% or less of the whole game.

The combat system was atrocious. I know about the character's stats and shit as with other RPGs I've played and I was aware of the fatigue bar affecting the character's performance with battling but what really got me was even if the fatigue bar was full, my character was still missing quite often. What's worse was that even when my fatigue was very low, the character's success rate at attacking the enemy wasn't much different.

This really frustrated me since I often rested to recover health and fatigue and when I search for some enemies to fight, the last thing I want to see is my character failing to hit a goddamn rat with his double axe. It's worse when as a low level character facing some of the weakest enemies in the game, they should not have to struggle killing a fucking rat with a double axe. I mean, I could be a better hero than this piece of shit. GET YOUR ASS BACK TO THE FRIER, DAMMIT!

Oh, if anyone cares what my character was, he was an Argonian Warrior. I chose Argonian simply because it was a reptilian creature and suited best for me and the Warrior class was a good option to choose in my view. So yeah, it's a shame how a character such as the one I had somehow missed attacking a rat a few times at full energy.

What else really annoyed me was the jumping mechanics. OK, it's only fair to take damage from a huge fall but when you're going to fall in deep water from such heights and STILL lose some of your health, that's really fucked up. Falling in water should prevent you from taking damage. Imagine you're playing Tomb Raider and Lara took damage from falling from tall heights EVEN IF she falls in the water. Wouldn't that be a pain in the ass? Also, the way to increase your Acrobatics is really silly when to level up, you just need to keep jumping. Yeah, spend all day pressing the jump button and you'll have a high level in Acrobatics in no time. I was level 60 in this specific skill before I packed it in.

The game engine for Morrowind is awful. Quite often I experienced the game lagging and even freezing for a few seconds. For a laptop that runs modern games very well and struggles to play a 2002 game, this isn't a good sign at all. What's worse is that Oblivion runs much better than Morrowind...THIS DOES NOT ADD UP AT ALL!!

That's not even the worst issues I had with Morrowind. The biggest trouble were the glitches I came across. The first experience was falling below ground randomly a few times and this is definitely bad when you can't get back up except by inserting a console command to put you in the town you were in but that doesn't actually put you back on ground where you were, only to a specific part of the place. This may not sound bad but some of these commands actually place you somewhere away from the location itself making it impossible to travel back by foot. Your only options would be to go elsewhere via console command or a spell to get you there assuming there is such thing. I don't know since I never looked that far and have no desire to.

The next glitchy problem was being able to discard/sell key items. Although I should have been more careful with some of the items I got rid of, the game designers should have had the decency to prevent you from throwing away items you need for quests. For one of the quests I wanted to complete, I needed to give Character A an item Character B wanted me to deliver. However, it turns out I accidentally dropped the item out of the inventory and what did I had to do in order to get this quest done? I had to insert a console command to give me the goddamn item! You don't get to sell key items in Final Fantasy, Pokemon and such, so why was this allowed in Morrowind?

And the last glitch I came across which was the one where I thought enough was enough was NPCs disappearing, most especially when one guy who was following me around for one quest and after climbing over a hill and looked back, it turns out he disappeared. I spent half an hour searching for him and were wasn't a trace of him. Sure, I could have just reloaded the latest save but after that, I thought "Fuck this, why continue when I'm bound to experience yet more similar problems?"

That was a few too many bad glitches and I felt I gave this game more than enough of a chance. 15 hours of playtime and it all ended with having too much trouble with glitches. As it was a Steam release as well as Game of the Year edition, it makes you wonder one thing. Did they even test the game before releasing it? You'd think a company like Bethesda Softworks who are most likely a big company (not huge like Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony, though) would have had some good game testers to find any bugs but nope, some major ones were horribly overlooked.

Of course, Daggerfall is said to be much worse but we're talking about Morrowind here. Like I said, some of you may enjoy this game despite its glitches but it really kills the fun for me when I have to start cheating in order to make progress in the game. And yes, I'm aware that there are mods that solve these issues but really, Bethesda Softworks themselves should have fixed them, not someone outside the company.

In conclusion, Morrowind was a game I've been curious about for a long time now and recently had a great chance after a great Steam offer for the two Elder Scrolls games as well as having a kick ass laptop. It all seemed good from the beginning but shortly went downhill from the appalling combat system, silly jumping mechanics and a poor game engine and of course, the goddamn glitches which should have been fixed by the company themselves. I'm sorry but third-party mods just doesn't do it for me so I won't be searching for ways to fix these problems. And now, one thing left to do to Morrowind: UNINFUCKINGSTALL!